The real key for the life of this game is organized racing.
If they just worked on giving us the tools we need to better organize things ourselves, fixing the tools that we have that are broken or limited, making the basic features of the game function reliably it would go really far towards keeping the game going strong.
In organized leagues we already have “regulations,” qualifying, penalties and stuff and we have had since we started in FM1… Granted we have to work within the game’s limitations, for example, since replays don’t work right it can be hard to review incidents and such. There are also other bugs that make us fight the game but we still find a way to go on. At the moment, we have to fight cars colliding in pit lane, cars starting the race stuck in pitlane, cars getting incorrect braking lines when the track loads, and despite all of that we have some great racing to make up for it and get together twice a week for organized events.
Outside of that, occasional content that is relevant to motorsport is all that is needed. Take the last free cars we have received… That updated Ferrari FF thing? None of us have touched it for more than the rivals event (if we even did that), but the Audi TCR? We are halfway through a 6-week long season with it and it has provided excellent racing and has been our best attended off-night series in years.
I don’t understand how people play these games only in single player or only in the hoppers/leagues. The AI is pretty terrible to race with, the careers past FM1 have just been tedious, the hoppers and “leagues” (aka hoppers with points) are terrible pretty much all of the time. This time around, free play is better than it used to be but it’s still not enough.
It used to be easier to keep things going with the public custom lobbies. The playerbase would naturally thin out, but you could find people you enjoyed racing with in those. Sure, some hosts were jerks, but just try another lobby and you would eventually find people you enjoyed racing with and would add them as friends and race together going forward… It was a very “natural” feeling progression of meeting players and forming your own little racing series or race formats and themes.
Now with the hoppers, no one has any control to do anything about wreckers or corner cutters, there’s no creativity in lobby rules or formats, and we have no control over the track rotation (which is terrible most of the time). Everyone distrusts everyone else, and there’s generally no communication. While I still occasionally race with people I met in custom public lobbies way back when (lots have moved on to better racing games though), but I can probably count the number of people I’ve added to my friends list from public hoppers on one hand.
Obviously with organized leagues you have some issues… Each one has it’s own sort of “culture” and standards for how aggressive you can be and how they sort out incidents and so on, almost all require signing up to another forum or Discord or whatever, and depending on how fast you are you can find yourself in with people of varying skill levels that aren’t always as pleasant to race with as some of the others. It can take a little bit of searching to find one that is a good “home” but being able to have competitive races against people who drive with integrity (or at least try to, in the case of some of the less skilled guys) and can talk cars and racing with and so on is what really makes these games, and I find it a real shame that more people don’t even try to find that experience. It’s kind of a “can’t go back” thing though… After having good races with a group, I’d probably just stop playing the game rather than go back to single player or hoppers.
Of course, the ability to make races more engaging would go really far too. A lot of that can come from close competition, and some of that can be and is done by organized leagues with interesting formats or car builds, but basic things that every motorsport game should have like fuel burn and tire wear that actually has an effect on the race makes the races more interesting, gives people new skill sets to work on improving, and allows players to play to strengths (not the fastest person out there? work on winning with smart pit strategy). Different tire compounds as well as changeable weather conditions so you have to decide when to pit for rain tires would be another step… But they likely won’t do any of that, as it would probably confuse the casuals and Horizon crowd and put them off playing this series.
