Forza Motorsport 7 Track Wish List thread data
With FM7 just about a year into release, I’ve tallied up the community user requests in the FM7 Track Wish Lists thread and have the results here.
The thread started in February 2017, well before FM7 was announced, and just under half of the requests were made before the complete list of FM7 environments was officially revealed in August 2017. As of August 2018 there are 436 posts, including some none-list comments.
- 425 unique users (estimated)
- 468 tracks or environment types listed
- 2,688 total listed items
- 290 tracks or types were listed by 2 or more users, 147 were from 5 or more users
- Average 6.3 items per user list
Frequency of track mentions gives a pretty good picture of the community’s interests, but not necessarily a complete picture. Some users may have assumed tracks were being carried over to FM7 and left their favorite tracks out of a posted list in favor of just highlighting new additions. Other users may not have posted at all for reasons based on other assumptions, or because the thread is an opt-in format rather than distributed survey. Ultimately 425 lists is a good sample but a small portion of FM7’s full community of players. I do think it’s important for the community to have a sense of what other users have requested, which is the main reason I’ve compiled the data.
Although this data is a recent snapshot of community interests, the information isn’t new to Forza’s developers. The community should understand that forum wish lists are one - not the only - source of feedback and consideration the developers use when deciding what to include in each game. When VIR and Homestead-Miami were added as part of paid expansion DLC for FM6, they couldn’t be included in multiplayer hoppers because some players didn’t have those tracks. The Nurburgring was absent at FM5’s launch and was added the following June (free for all players) only after it took “more than 30 artists from around the world working to build the circuit from the ground up and putting in more than 13,000 man hours to bring the track to completion.”^ Dan Greenawalt has said that “even in the 360 generation, Fujimi was the most difficult and time consuming track to make.”^ “The Making of Bernese Alps” video from FM4 provides some background about how tracks go through the development process.
FM7 launched with 32 environments representing both licensed real world locations and Turn 10’s original creations. Three of those environments - Maple Valley, Mugello, and Suzuka - had been in previous Forza games on the Xbox 360 and were rebuilt for FM7 after being absent in FM5 and FM6. Each Forza Motorsport release since FM4 has included a new creation, with Dubai as the featured environment FM7. There have been no DLC track additions to Forza Motorsport 7 as of August.
Two good resources for professional tracks are RacingCircuits.info and this Wikipedia list.
Read on for the results…
