I think we have room for a difficulty harder than Unbeatable, if appropriately implemented.
In Forza Horizon 5, I am bored with every race I run against the AI having to be at “Unbeatable” to get a little challenge. The rubber band isn’t good enough if you are skilled enough. Once I open a gap, they keep up at a distance but can’t ever catch up. The rubber band holds them close, but doesn’t help them enough to catch up. It makes the endurance racing, 1 hour or longer races usually maxing out at the 50 lap cap, I like to do end up boring because I passed everyone in the first 2 to 5 laps. Sure, Unbeatable may work in short races sometimes, but doesnt hold up in longer races at all. This leaves an opening for something more.
A more challenging system could take the speed of the unbeatable difficulty and increase it just a bit, but instead of using a rubberband system to make it try to be competitive, you use a “straggler boost assist” system. This way, no matter how good you are, you will not outrun everyone once you get to the front. The boost assist won’t be active for the player, but only the AI. This would also not allow the “slingshot pass” of an overly strong rubberband system. It would boost AI more the faster you go and in relation to what position you are in race. This would provide a more consistently difficult challenge, while keeping it feeling fair.
This added “challenge difficulty” could be used to make interesting challenges with Eventlab.
I will admit playing racing games for 20 years now has probably skewed my bias, which is why I think that a new high difficulty needs to be approached with care to not make people angry about accessibility.
In some of the other games I play, there are modes that are made for the pure challenge, but don’t heavily restrict players who can’t meet the challenge and pass it yet. They provide a reward if you choose to attempt them and can pass them, and provide a challenge to make you strive to get better at playing. My best example of this is Final Fantasy XIV raiding. They have regular difficulty for everyone, but they also have Extreme, Savage, and Ultimate to give those looking for the challenge something to do and those looking for a way to get better a challenge to try to overcome. These harder difficulties aren’t required to do in order to get the most out of the game, they are an extra challenge with appropriately unique rewards.
If we take this structure and move it into Forza, we can create multiple things with it, using not only the current “Unbeatable” difficulty, but an even more challenging difficulty, whatever it may be named. I personally would just call it “challenge difficulty”, or even just go with “savage”.
With the strength of the multiplayer content in Forza Horizon 5, I believe that single player content is where most issues, especially with endgame content, are located. This means we need to focus on what is currently the single player endgame, Festival Playlist.
Currently, many non-casual players complain about the Festival Playlist being too “grindy”, which imo is not true in comparison with other games but we will go with it for now. I believe part of what makes the Festival Playlist feel like a grind is difficulty. The players that will be playing and completing it every week are gonna be more seasoned than casual players, and while the difficulty may be fine for casual players, seasoned players aren’t challenge, causing them to feel like it is more of a “grind” than it actually is.
So, let’s start by cutting down on some of the events in the Festival Playlist, and rotate what is in it more. Smaller, but, more variable. This will solve some of the grind feeling, and open up time for seasoned players to have another option for content.
This new option/mode would use “Unbeatable” and “The Challenge Mode” difficulty in order to give seasoned players who do want to have something to really engage with something to do.
You could call it “Horizon Xtreme Club”.
This feature needs to be separated from the FOMO of the standard Festival Playlist, because if you are providing a real challenge, you want players to be able to work at it in their own time.
In this mode, you could introduce multiple types of events to push players to get better, and with the “Eventlab” suite of creation, these challenges can be tailor-made to challenge players in ways normal races wouldn’t.
Examples of “Horizon Xtreme Club” potential events:
- Endurance Events
- Elimination Timer Sprint Races
- High difficulty PR stunts
- High difficulty regular races
…and there is easily room for more
Now, even if a game mode is well implemented and fun, you need to give players rewards that make them feel like their effort and time are being rewarded, and since this mode is meant to be an “endgame challenge” mode, we need rewards that are worth it, which is more difficult than it sounds.
Let us consider what makes a reward worthwhile and related it to Forza to see what could be offered as a reward.
One reason people do a difficult optional challenge is to show off to other people how good they are. How is this relatable to Forza Horizon 5? Badge rewards are the best system for this. But, we also have unique avatar apparel. Both systems, especially badges, would allow players to show off their skill.
We could also add a username modification system. Unique colors to make your username show up in could work. Text tags could work in this too, such as "Endurer “X” " for doing endurance races, "Outrun “X” " for elimination sprints, etc.
Another reason is for game currency, which is a bit more challenging as currency value changes depending on how you play and how long you have been playing. Since this mode will be created mainly for endgame players to challenge themselves, many of these players have an excessive amount of the available currencies in the game, so currency rewards will probably be ineffective as a draw outside of being outrageously high.
The currencies in the game are credits, forzathon points, and perk points. Most endgame players have plenty of these currencies, so we wouldnt be able to use it as a primary reward, only a secondary reward.
The last reason is for collectibles, perks, and tools. This would include cars, wheelspins, super wheelspins, music, and rare avatar items. These rewards find value in their usefulness to the player. Most players in endgame will have most cars, so outside of rare and extremely expensive cars, this reward won’t work. Wheelspins and Super Wheelspins give cars and credits, so they don’t have much unique value. Music and rare Avatar items are okay, but not exactly desirable since they appear in the standard Festival Playlist.
Then we have a little unique thing I wany to propose. Customization unlocks. Of course, this would be very limited, and my best idea is “Forza Edition Rims”. Where Turn10/Playground makes funny, comedy, and unique wheels related to the challenges that are completed.
Then we have to factor in exclusivity versus accessibility. Since this will be a mode that not all players will be able to beat, we need to take that into account. This means that we can’t put some rewards, such as unique cars, behind success in this mode, as it will make some players unhappy.
With all this factored in, the best plan for rewards would be this.
Primary Rewards:
- Unique Badges and Unique Apparel
- Ultra-Rare Cars (mainly barn finds and similar one-time only cars)
- Unique Customization (Forza Wheels Idea)
Secondary Rewards:
- Forzathon Points
- Perk Points
- Very High Credit Rewards
- Hard-to-find Cars
Now, how frequently should we have this mode “updated”, and how should it be access by and shown to players?
I would say at first we should have at least 2 or 3 challenges, and have them related to the Festival Playlist Monthly theme. Every series add at least 1 new challenge if possible, but preferably at least 2 or 3.
With this model, we can reward a unique badge related to the theme of each series. For example, the upcoming “Midnights” series could have a challenge badge of a “dark night circle with a crescent moon slightly covered by a cloud”. This would show players you completed all the extreme challenges for that series, and give a cool unique reward alongside the 3 events inside the series collection, which could give rewards themed to the challenges and the series them, along with another chance at a “one-time reward” vehicle.
Sorry for the super long and detailed, nearly essay you could say, suggestion.
What are y’all’s thoughts on the idea?