When I first saw that Forza had moved away from the #Forzathon events on the hour to the less structured Arcade Format that they have now, my first thought was, “Cool, now I can hop on whenever I want to participate and if I’m doing something else, I don’t have to drop what I’m doing to participate.” My second thought was, “Crap, that means that you’re not going to have consistently low levels of participation and it’s going to be really hard to complete all three rounds.”
Unfortunately, I was right. I’ve yet to see more than five or six drivers, including myself, participating in an Arcade challenge; and, as a result, I’ve yet to see a group complete all three rounds. There are two main problems - scarcity (or lack thereof) and score requirements. Because the events only popped up once an hour in Forza Horizon 4, you almost always had at least a few people hanging out in the starting area waiting for it to start and it wasn’t uncommon to see upwards of a dozen cars, engines revving, ready to go. But because of the new structure and the lack of scarcity, people are less likely to show up for events in Horizon 5. Compound onto this the low winning percentage and I’m sure that makes participation is even lower.
Additionally, the scores thresholds feel exceedingly high, especially in comparison to Horizon 4. I’ve had times where two or three drivers where able to successfully complete all three rounds in Horizon 4; but it feels impossible in Horizon 5. Again, I’ve participated in a number of events and even with six or more players, we barely made it to round three.
However, I am not one to come with a problem and no possible solutions. I have four suggestions to improve the Arcade events. Any one of these alone may be sufficient, but some combination of the four would probably produce the most enjoyable outcome.
Number One: Decrease the frequency. The perception of scarcity makes people want things more. If the events occurred less frequently, people would be more inclined to participate; it’s just human psychology. And it doesn’t have to be hourly like Horizon 4, it could be 15, 20, 30 minutes (personally I think the top and bottom of every hour would be best; you could also add some flavor by having the radio DJs talk about it).
Number Two: Increase the duration. One reason that these challenges may be so much more difficult than their Horizon 4 counterparts to complete is that you only have two-thirds of the time.
Number Three: Lower the score thresholds by about a third (see also Number Two). The rewards for participating are not exceedingly rare or valuable, the difficulty of the challenge should reflect that. Unless there’s some crazy reward that I don’t know about yet for finishing the third round, lower the scores required for completion. And if there is, make it more of a skills-based thing (e.g. Three different cars need to trigger a speed trap at a certain speed) rather than simply a cumulative scores build up.
Number Four: Increase the incentives. Increase the reward for each round, add a completion reward, or add a weekly bonus for completing a certain number of rounds each season.
The Arcade events certainly should not be easy, but they should also be achievable. Right now they are not and the difficultly isn’t on par with the rewards, so participation is low which makes completion even harder. Personally, I’d like to see some combination of decreasing the frequency and the score thresholds while leaving the events at the 10 minute mark. And I’m sure somewhere you have data showing participation and completion rates; so experiment with the variables until you get things to a happy medium.