Forza Horizon 4 Car Wish List thread data
UPDATED: See my January 2021 post for a stats update as of Series 31.
With three weeks left before the launch of Forza Horizon 4, we’re on the eve of a look at the official car list from tomorrow’s Week in Review and Monday’s Forza Monthly livestream. The Forza Horizon 4 Car Wish Lists thread has just passed its 500th posting so this is a good opportunity to assess the cars that the community has been hoping to drive in the game.
I’ve tallied up every car requested so far and have posted the results here. Be sure to read how I arrived at these numbers below, followed by the numbers in later posts. I’ll update the thread again when we have the launch roster and will continue to update this thread after launch (as DLC cars will be added at a rate of 2 each week), so please continue to participate in the wish lists thread!
The Car Wish Lists thread began in early 2017 and already had 60 user entries before FH4 was announced at E3 in June 2018. The community has built a car list from official gameplay footage since then, but this game release cycle has been unusual in that there were no weekly car reveals over the summer. As of September 6th there are 505 posts, a portion of which are multiple posts from the same users.
Initial Overview:
- 475 unique users (estimated)
- 3,760 different car models or types listed, including 210 professional racing models
- 9,600 total listed items (1,820 cars listed by 2 or more users, 785 listed by 4 or more users)
- Average: 20 cars per user list
- The most requested model was mentioned by 30 out of the ~475 users, a rate of 6.3% or 1 out of every 15 lists.
Can you guess the community’s most requested car? See the next post for the top 500+ models.
Chart: visualizing the top 1,820 models by number of user requests (Max: 30, Min: 2)
Caveats and Methodology
It’s important that the community recognize that ranking this data does not mean that the most requested cars are coming to the game soon or at all. The wish list thread is feedback, not a vending machine. A perennial comment/question from the community is “Why don’t the developers give us the cars the community wants?” In fact, the developers monitor community feedback and have commented on this topic before: see this FAQ thread for details. Even if adding game assets were as simple as picking off the top, consider the numbers: the most requested car is only mentioned by 6% of the community. Turn that number upside down and you’ll find that 94% of the community asked for anything other than that car. What the numbers show is that the community has incredibly diverse interests. Insist on adding every one of the thousands of cars requested and you’ll put the developers out of business.
Counting the cars and presenting the data in a meaningful way is also significantly more challenging than counting Track Wish Lists for FM7, not only because the free form entry method of the forums allows users to write in highly everything from highly specific trims to just an engine code. How do you decide whether a model is different from another? For a Mopar fan a 2018 Dodge Challenger with a V6 is not the same as a 2018 Challenger T/A with a powerful V8 engine. In game, these cars might even be in different performance classes. But maybe to a Porsche fan, a Challenger is a Challenger. Are a 996 and 991 the same “911”? No! But maybe yes in the eyes of JDM fans who themselves are particular about the difference between the early S14 vs later S14. Round and round it goes.
Ultimately I decided that for counting, a “model” would be based on generation and body style, while engine and drivetrain variances within a generation would be merged. For instance, if someone listed both the Civic coupe and Civic 5-door in the same model year, I counted those as separate models. But in the case of someone listing the same year 911 Turbo and Carrera, I counted it as one request for that model generation. I did count extreme performance variants separately, so you’ll see the Dodge Demon counted separately from the regular Challenger. I also counted popular models like the M3 separately from regular 3-Series requests, since some users made sure to request “non-performance” versions of cars. There’s plenty of room for debate about this approach so I’m happy to hear ideas on how to merge or separate model counts. In any case I encourage everyone to browse the wish lists thread and see the specifics for yourself; every time I think I have the master list, someone comes along with a car I never knew existed.
(realistically, I think the 22B is meant to be the be-all-end-all for the GC era, but I still wouldn’t mind a lower spec one. And a bugeye while we’re at it, because everything else is in, so why not.)