The best career I played recently was NFS-Prostreet-PepegaMod
which is a free for download Mod,
you don’t even need the original game coz the Mod runs on its own.
One of the common complaints across racing game subculture is…
Many racing games have forgotten they are supposed to be games first and foremost e.g. They’re supposed to be FUN… Not tech demos and ultra-realistic simulators to showcase the latest in consumer hardware.
This is why we have different subgenres of games within the racing/driving genre e.g. Simulation, Arcade, Simcade, and even “Chill” driving games.
Euro Truck Simulator and American Truck Simulator are prime examples of “Chill” driving games that while technically impressive on a lot of levels, are in fact casual driving games at their core. They don’t treat the act of transporting tons of goods from one place to another like the often exhausting, frustrating and sometimes dangerous act it is in real life. Because it wouldn’t be fun if they did.
Contrast this to iRacing and Assetto Corsa, that try and simulate what high speed competitive motorsports are like in various aspects. This is still “fun”, but fun on a different level aimed at different players.
The thing both of these wildly differing games have in common is… They’re games, and their primary reason for existing is to provide fun for players in different ways.
However, step outside these two extremes, and too many games like FM (regardless of bugs or design decisions), GT7 and the like are trying to “legitimize” the existence of racing games when they don’t have to. Does Call of Duty have to “justify” itself as a highly accessible arcade shooter every year?
No. It doesn’t.
So, why is there this need/want/desire for racing games to have to “prove” to the gaming world they should exist?
And more importantly, why does that always mean, removing the “game” aka FUN, out of the game as way to make it and the genre be taken more seriously? What kind of mindset is this? Where did it come from? And why are so many big studios & developers embracing it and removing the fun out of the genre?
So many questions…
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I feel like what the community means by “simulation” a: has changed across time and b: changes from person to person.
It doesn’t seem like it’s enough to a large group of people to simply simulate the physics of driving. These days, if you can exist in game with a controller in hand that’s sim’cade’. Doesn’t have every annoying regulation the FIA has ever dreamt up? Sim’cade’. It just comes off like it’s never enough for some people.
forgot that i even still have that game on my original xbox, game was fun
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I also think a big part of it is when we’re younger, our first exposure to racing games (most likely) are arcade games like NFS, The Crew, Outrun, etc.
But as we get older and start to drive IRL, many of us want to graduate to more “serious” driving games that require us to use more of our real world driving skills, or learned racecraft skills in them. Even if it’s a simcade and played on controller.
The act of just holding down the left trigger (throttle) and being a bumper car (no damage) drifting around corners at impossible speeds eventually loses it’s appeal and gives way to the need for something more challenging… Be it simcade, or full sim. This, of course, can lead to full sim setups, or just using a wheel and pedals more than a controller whenever you play a racing/driving game. It’s a natural evolution, and one that is most often tied to age and life experience.
I also believe another reason that directly address what you wrote about simcades “never being enough”, is many big studios take the fun out of their racing games because… Those games aren’t actually made for gamers, or even car enthusiasts. They’re made for an illusive segment of the audience who they (Publishers) believe must have an “elevated”, or “prestige” experience when playing a racing game. This often means taking the fun out of the game in order to prove “This game needs to be taken seriously!” regardless if it’s a licensed game (WRC, F1, MotoGP), or not.
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You would think that after making these games for 18 years they would know what balance people want and expect from the series. With this new game they’ve put themselves into a weird no man’s land between being a game and a sim.
On the sim side, they have much improved physics, but they still have nowhere near the level of systems or detail as true sims like iRacing or ACC. On the game side, well, there’s not much of a game here. They still have more or less the core gameplay of past games, but just… worse. Less content than ever and awful design decisions throughout make the gameplay less than compelling.
The new physics are great, but not so great that the super sweaty sim racers are going to jump ship from iRacing. And for the rest of us that just want a casual but realistic racing game, that’s too bad, because the game on top of their new physics engine feels like an afterthought that was stuck on at the end.
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The thing that no one has brought up yet, but has always been the elephant in the room is…
When did ANY Motorsport player say, “They give me too much credits, cars and cosmetics! I want less rewards for playing the game!”
I honestly believe TPB at Xbox, T10 and PGG now think the same audience who likes FH, also like Motorsport?!
Sure, you can like both. I like both, but I know I’m probably in the minority because a lot of Motorsport players don’t like the more “kid-friendly” presentation the Horizon games use… Even if the actual driving and having fun with cars is equal to, or even better than Motorsport in certain ways.
This is the only reason I can think of why they would change the game play loop so radically to include the awful car leveling and upgrade unlock system?
A lot of FH players have complained about the Prize Wheel spins, and just being awarded a Hypercar without earning it. But that’s FORZA HORIZON. It’s geared toward a more mainstream and possibly younger player base than Motorsport. So, it can be “expected” because the game is meant to be a game - first and foremost - That keeps people coming back for more. A real live service built on moment-to-moment reward loops.
Of course, there’s always the argument the change was made to entice Game Pass players to keep subscribing if they can’t unlock all the cars at once. But I honestly believe that was a secondary bi-product, and they really thought they were addressing a community complaint that has more to do with Horizon, than Motorsport?
If that’s the case, then this game never had a chance, regardless of all the bugs and lack of content.
It would explain A LOT if you think about it, but it’s just a theory.
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FM7 didn’t do too well despite its long career.
I think Motorsport players as a whole do want more progression-- the thing is that most of us are saying that in reference to Horizon since that’s the only thing we’ve seen in 6 years. The progression structure in Horizon is pretty much non-existent with the 24/7 wheel spins handing out hypercars an hour into the game.
Somehow T10 took this feedback and came to the conclusion that what the community wants is a F2P MMO style grindy hellscape with zero rewards for our efforts. I just want a classic Forza progression system; I don’t want to grind for an hour for the privilege of upgrading the tires on a car I just bought.
Seeing the product we ended up with, it feels like they hired an evil genie to read the customer feedback. “Oh so you want more progression? Wish granted.”
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Yeah, my problem with that was that they took the ability to customize the car the way you want to away for career races. It’s like they missed one of the really big reasons people played Forza in the first place.
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Like I stated in my analysis thread, it’s like somebody with no game design/reward loop experience just looked at other games “progression” systems e.g. Call of Duty, and said, Yep. That’s the system we’ll use even if it makes no sense in a racing game, while also removing all the rewards that motivate players to keep engaging with the system.
But if you’re T10 and Xbox, why not?
It accomplishes the things we’ve all speculated on like forcing Game Pass users to renew their subscriptions if they want to level up all the cars, and it also gives T10 time to finish the game if they can prolong what little content there is. It’s sad how the wort aspects of FM support each other instead of FM being a good game on its own.
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Something just hit me:
There are basically two ways you can have progression in a racing game.
- Progression that unlocks cars in increasing order of power.
- Progression that unlocks events/tracks in increasing order of complexity/length.
Forza Horizon uses the second method. This should be obvious since the main thing you unlock in FH are the different venues for the individual disciplines and car classes e.g. Street Racing, Off Road, Cross Country, etc. All the respective disciplines culminate in a long endurance race like The Goliath (Road Racing), The Marathon (Street Racing), The Titan (Off Road), etc.
The goal of FH is not to unlock different tiered cars per say. It’s a sandbox where you’re given starter cars, but then can do whatever you want. You can concentrate on unlocking the venues and more races, you can play some of the stories that give the history of certain vehicles, you can do PR stunts, etc. This is why I hope it never changes as much as many Horizon players might disagree. It doesn’t need a traditional progression system because it’s at the point where it would take away from the sandbox it’s built up.
Forza Motorsport, on the other hand, is where a traditional “Zero to Hero” progression that focuses on cars and increasing their power fits better because it’s supposed to represent real world motorsports where all the venues are “unlocked” so-to-speak. Some have existed for almost almost 100 years, so it makes no sense to restrict them vs. the cars you can race on them.
The main problem with the careers in previous Motorsport games is they’re too short, AND try and give the player an overall introduction to various disciplines and types of vehicles instead of concentrating on one thing and following through with that.
GT7 is also guilty of this. Most modern track focused racing games are also guilty of the buffet-style “career” and might benefit from having more focused campaigns that do the “Zero to Hero” progression a lot of people want.
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Forza has always been about celebrating the world of racing and the cars/engineering that been a part of that using mostly real-world locations. The history they put into it is important. I love that stuff because there is such amazing diversity in the world of automobiles. Being able to drive a 1940’s cigar shaped Ferrari racer all the way to the most modern Bugatti supercar is the point.
I don’t see the issue with the current progression. There’s only so much you can do. You have the cars slotted into classes and then the tracks…that’s it. I frankly don’t see anything special with the past systems used in Forza so I don’t know why some people are so obsessed with still using them. They weren’t anything special people.
what career are most people expecting when buying a track-racing-game with detailed physics and photorealistic real-world tracks?
Is it maybe more a typical racedriver career? being able to working the way up from kart to F1 through different cups and car classes with some kind of serious approach like contracts with racing teams and obtaining racing licenses.
given that Horizon is the funny casual game that work very well with gamemodes that doesn’t need much connection to the real world like eliminator, capture the flag, hotwheels, lego, 600m jumps and stuff
imho fh5 has more environment for a builderscup that is complete fantasy and has nothing to do with the real world.
Where does that “connection to the car” idea comes from thats lead to the builderscup and car leveling?
Was it to make multiplayer races cleaner? It just doesn’t work out that way.
No beginner get any racingskill out of the builderscup. You don’t even learn what a Apex is.
If I would have two racing games in my portfolio as a corporation I would try to get casual cargame customers as well as the serious sim customers.
If FM is not the serious counterpart to FH5 there is no need for FM because adding real racetracks to FH5 is no problem. It has allready a system to create custom-races with the ability to share them. And so many things are already improved in FH5 like the liveryeditor.
FM could be a Trackrace DLC for FH5.
So IMHO FM have to be way more serious. Car leveling and a Builderscup career doesn’t fit into a track racing game. The FM career should be racing licens leveling.
There’s a pretty big issue with it when we are having to do mindless laps of rivals in an untuned car, either in person or AFK, just to be able to use the cars in a sensible way.
Even if they removed that pointless grind, the career is then far too short. Every single event that they add as a “featured event” should be permanent, so that the single player content gradually builds over time.
A ginormous list of events nobody but the most hardcore enthusiasts will bother doing.
yes like every game of every genre
the achievments of any random (AAA) game shows how many people had a playthrough
if the game has good reviews its mostly like:
first mission ~90%
last mission ~15%
its always only the hardcore gamers have a complete playthrough
in FM it says for the achievment
“complete one series in career” 60%
“complete one tour in career” 27%
“complete four tours in career” 7%
so most people started the first race in BuildersCup and gave up immediately, not even bother to finish the first series.
F1 23 “finish 23 races” 28% (F1 season = 23 races)
NFS Heat “complete chapter 4” 18%
so a good career in a racing game should get way more than 7%
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You guys are living in the past and it’s best you wake up quickly.
Even in the past, some of the best racing game campaigns I’ve played weren’t as long as your typical Gran Turismo slogfest.
just don’t know what you talking about, you hit the reply button under my post,
but Im not “You guys” and I didn’t mentioned GT in my post
From Forza? A seasonal cup series with a leaderboard that is longer than 5 short races, that’s it. it would be nice if they let me design my own series so i could decide how many races at what venues, how many laps and what car class. I’d also love to experience those tire wear physics, but they’re trying to extort $10/mo for that privilege 
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