I really liked British Racing Green stories, learning about the cars and wouldn’t mind if there were been more dialogue and more missions. I also liked Isha’s Taxi missions, though it took a while for me to realise one mission I felt was frustrating would became very easy during winter. LOL
Stunt Driver missions were mostly okay, LaRacer too. World Fastest Rentals… so so, but Skill Streak was… a bit much. I have Fortune Island Expansion and were already done both Drift Clubs and Skill Streak was mostly more of the same and felt quite grindy. I understand people who want old Bucket list system back, though I appreciate PG experimenting with new things. Sometimes experiments are successful, and sometimes outcome isn’t necessarily positive. For me Skillstreak was the point where I came to think that okay, enough of this. Maybe it would be time to use more imagination with mission types.
The only Horizon Story I liked was British Racing Green. It was really neat getting to learn about the car you were driving, it’s origins, history, significance, etc.
The rest of the Stories were no different than the bucket list challenges from previous games, just with added dialogue. It was the same, ‘drive here, do this’ type of deal. The ‘story’ aspect felt forced.
Just wandering what influences the daily payout from the 3 businesses in the game? I’ve got 30 stars on all 3 of the businesses yet I seem to get different payouts from one day to the next. It’s not like I need the money or anything, but it would be interesting to know what the deal is with them.
They give more or less 12,000 after a day, and the reward is doubled to about 24,000 after two days. The payouts are not 100% consistent, but they do keep close to 12-24k. It continues adding 12k each day, but for some reason it only messages when you have earned 12-24k after a few days. If you are gone for three days, the game doesn’t say you earned 36,000 for a business, instead it says that you earned 24k for a business and another message saying you earned 12k for that business.
But it’s never the same amount each day. For example, today I have 12125 from the Car Files, 12250 from Isha’s Taxis and 11875 from World’s Fastest Rentals. Yesterday I had one business pay almost 14k.
I know that. It might be because each business updates around a day but not exactly at 24 hours, so it would generate differences, and the time you get on might mean a business was able to make more. Or maybe it’s like that because real life payouts are different from time to time. I don’t know but these are my guesses.
Horizon Stories is a terrible replacement for the Bucket List. Here’s why.
[Mod Edit - thread merged - MM]
I’m being honest, I really saw Stories as a proper successor to Bucket Lists until I thought more about it. Bucket Lists are much better than the current format, and here’s why.
Bucket Lists don’t have a starring system. There’s a set score, and nothing else. They also weren’t rigged, either. I completed every bucket list in Horizon 3 without any guides. Meanwhile, most individual Story missions are impossible unless you do some stupid thing before starting. One of the LaRacer missions requires the player to pull a full 180 at the start of the race, it’s IMPOSSIBLE to three star it otherwise. How am I supposed to know that? And the World’s Fastest Pagani mission? I’m a solid driver who can hold my own pretty well, i’m not perfect, but I know the physics and how to drive properly. I managed to three-star it ONCE. I cannot do it again. It’s all on that first corner, which is rigged anyway since you’re supposed to cut through the park!
Bucket Lists can be incorporated into the Weekly Festival Playlist MUCH better. Imagine a new one every week that counted towards percentages!
There doesn’t need to be some reason for something. The reason you’re doing it is it’s awesome! There’s no poorly put together unrealistic story to explain why we’re jumping an engine swapped Meyers Manx.
BUCKET LIST BLUEPRINTS. These were amazing! You could make a custom car build (complete with license plate) and do whatever you wanted! Set a skill score? PR stunt? Drift skills? Just take a cruise to a pretty spot? You can do it! Recreate movie scenes, make super tough challenges, or show players secret routes! You can even pick what song played. THAT’S customization. In fact, you can often set up fun scenarios yourself, without any annoying character spouting exposition. You can’t even properly implement custom Horizon Stories without it being complete garbage since you need a voiced character and multiple missions, opposed to a since Bucket List mission.
No annoying characters or dumb plotlines. Remember that mission in the new Express Delivery story where we smash through junk on the street? Because the city council wanted us to? Really? Why not just call a cleanup service? The LaRacer missions? I mean the concept of it all was fine but LaRacer is easily 2018’s most annoying video game character. Her existence is also responsible for this monstrosity of a post: https://forums.forza.net/turn10_postst133966_I-have-a-crush-on-LaRacer.aspx
With these stories, the gameplay doesn’t really lend well to the actual plot. It’s not very immersing when you’re shooting a British automotive history documentary, but the timer is rigged so you have to huck your 200,000$ Aston Martin across a field at 90mph opposed to smooth, clean driving that would fit in a documentary. If that was a Bucket List it would still be a bit odd, but at least it doesn’t matter story-wise.
SEASONS. I’ve already voiced my opinion about Seasons and here it is kicking yet another feature in the face. Trying to do 90% of these missions in Winter is absolutely impossible. I’m confident that the Pagani mission in World’s Fastest is legitimately impossible during winter, opposed to “extensively unlikely” the other seasons warrant. For a whole week straight, the game literally deters you from enjoying one of its features. If we had weekly Seasonal Bucket Lists, each one would be tailored to the season.
Please, Playground. Bring back the Bucket List, if not now at least in a future title. If you really want to keep Horizon Stories, you can do both since their different enough features, but I recommend making improvements. Cut the bad characters and cheesy plots. No stupid hidden routes that are required for a perfect score. Make the actual reasons you’re doing whatever you’re doing SOMEWHAT plausible. Forza Horizon 4 has had so many missing features from earlier games. Thank you so much for bringing back Horizon Promo, but please don’t let all this other stuff in the dust! Bucket Lists were essential to the full Horizon Festival experience. Stories don’t fulfill that same experience.
I thought about this in the last week as well. And I absolutely miss the bucket list. The bucket list was so immersing and cool, the title of some bucket list challenges alone made me somehow look forward to do them. Some were a puzzle even, which made it all the better.
The one thing about Horizon stories is that this is not about racing or fun, it is mostly about pulling out your map, find the beeline and directly drive to the objective. It takes no skill and due to rewind, you will master it in the first try most of the time. Additionally, I hate them blabbing and they get on my nerves since I cannot press a button and be over with it, but I have to endure it till I can finally start the mission all the time. The worst offender was the upgrade heroes story, which required you to do 3 drives and 2 were absolutely pointless unfun and a waste of time.
If I had to choose, I would bring back bucket lists without a second of thought. For me the stories were a nice idea, but in reality they are boring, way too long and I experienced them as a chore that I had to go through.
When I completed the Bucket list it said that only 1% of people completed them all… really I don’t see much difference to a story. In Horizon 5 they need to do something new that is more fun… Outrun the police for 5 minutes without being tagged type of thing.
Bucket List was a great showroom for the cars, and in FH3 you even had the Blueprints.
Horizon Stories, on the other hand, are poorly written, with uninteresting characters… Not all of then, as Joel’s and LaRacer’s stories were good (which has nothing to do with LaRacer the character). Top Gear was also a great story, better than the whole of Lego, in fact. But the rest of the stories feel as something cheaply put together, with a hurried script.
These Stories aren’t really better than what we had 20 years ago with NFS Porsche Unleashed’s Factory Driver mode. In fact, they’re much worse, in script and in challenge.
Its a good idea but the Horizon stories look and feel cheap; having these little scenes where the NPC has their back facing towards you every single time because you know they don’t to animate any facial expressions is lame. Mini cutscenes to introduce these characters like in Horizon 1 would have gone miles into making them feel more relevant.
The execution can also be really hit or miss, there was an upgrades heroes story without any new upgrade heroes, so I wasn’t sure what the point of that was.
Also the last Horizon story, parcel delivery, really? I’m the forkin king of Horizon and I’m doing delivery challenges in a van? Is that “fun, freedom, beauty?” I don’t know how anyone thought that was the reason I played Forza.
In general the entire Horizon franchise has clearly, oh no, I feel a massive rant incoming, something something watered down for fortnite kiddies something something something something recycled car models from 2005 how are the car sounds still so bad why hasn’t the Forza aero been updated in 10 years where is the new customization multiplayer still such a mess aaaaaaagggghhhh somebody stop me! lol
When they announced the existence of Horizon Story, I was expecting something akin to Midtown Madness 3.
A fun story and a challenge that makes us want to play again and again.
But in fact, it didn’t.
The characters are sparse in presence, and I still can’t remember the names of any of the characters other than Isha and LaRacer.
The challenge is just a bucket list and we are forced to do a PR stunt or a time attack.
I’ve never wanted to play these challenges repeatedly. The reason to play is simple. Because I want a prize car. Or because the Festival Playlist is forcing us to play this challenge.
Perhaps Horizon Story’s system appropriates the bucket list system, so don’t expect any innovative changes.
But I still haven’t given up hope for this feature.
Perhaps they’ll add some more Horizon Story in the future. I hope that at that time they will make this new feature more enjoyable.
I habe two solutions to improve the challenges. First, allow players to skip the initial cutscene, especially if it the challenge was already completed. Second, let the play skip all unecessary travels and go directly to the last,part of the challenges for these challenges that were already completed. It’ll be more fun to repeat a challenge to improve the player’s score.
the driving experience is already fantastic, the nonsense stories are frankly ridiculous and break the immersion. Meanwhile, Bucket Lists had no story and the driving experience was really emphasized, opposed to having Stories just have you beeline across fields to win.
An objective comprised of a series of small, successive goals (“starring system”) is more efficient and engaging than a large or difficult, single goal/objective (“set scores”). With Stories, star tiers allow for some sense of progression and/or accomplishment if a player didn’t knock it out of the park on the first attempt. Effort is rewarded with progression toward the objective and the remaining small goals invite continued engagement. In contrast, set scores (or otherwise large/difficult, single objectives) are “all or nothing” in nature, where losing by 1 point is the same as losing by 1,000 points…and the closer a player is to the 1,000 point-loss end, the less likely they are to continue engaging the objective. Try googling ‘small goals v big goal’ for methodology.
Problem solving requiring cleverness, a bit of guile, or just some old-fashioned out-of-the-box thinking doesn’t make it “rigged.” So you could only ___________ once and have been unable to replicate since, that means no one else can? There’s nobody more skilled or smarter than Novaly6933? Absurd. Maybe you’re just not that great at _________ ? Or maybe some challenges are meant to be challenging? ( “Game is hard.”)
2, 3, 4 - Agreed.
Okay, so the voiceovers/acting isn’t exactly Masterpiece Theater at Shakespeare’ Globe and the storyline/plots are more Sunday Funny Papers than they are Agatha Christie. I have a hunch, however, that thinking up storylines, plots, and dialogue tailored to specfic activities all revolving around the sole act of operating a motor vehicle across 10 or 12 sixty second segments while being as engaging and entertaining as possible is likely no easy task (though there’s lots of room for improvement). Sure, they could just not have the ‘story’ part of Stories (leaving us with just ‘-ies,’ I guess?), I’ll bet you dollars to donuts there’d be non-stop whining from forum posters all exasperated desperately wanting bucket list evolution, the next step, some might even call it the “proper successor,” which ironicly happens to be a story format…
That all said, I do agree bucket lists could/should return, though integrated into the existing event/custom race or route Blueprint feature. And to your point about song customization (something I also enjoyed), I envision more aesthetic customization, for example just like live blueprint race events hosted by players and featured on the map, I’d like to see event fliers (with user-generated images/screenshots, player/club branding even) with custom race/routes AND/OR bucket activities, players creating and hosting their own #Forzathons or Stories (less the Kiddie City voicework). So, bucket lists as a feature of Custom Bluelists, not as a standalone feature, and not replacing Stories as Stories the idea has merit and should be improved upon.
“Game is hard.”)