Denser map features

Suggestions Hub Horizon Features Environment
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No matter where the next horizon game ends up landing i wish for a better map.
What do i mean by that? Well… Here are my points:

The problem with Mexico is that is one big open land. Its probably as diverse as
horizon 3 in terms of enviroments but what i cant help but think its a bit “blant” and “dead”.

Recently i ended up on a youtube video and i heard that the devs think that big cities arent fun. And i gotta say i disagree strongly if thats really what they think.

Surely I don’t expect the game to have a massive enormous city. But Edinburgh or Surface Paradiee size of city is absolutely reasonable. I expect something on the level of horizon 1-3 when it comes to environments. I think it shows with horizon 5s boring Mexico that players want a more dense map.
Mexico is by far the worst designed map when it comes to that.

And i know for a fact from watching the streams where you present the game that the map was built to accomodate for all the different gamemodes like horizon arcade which isnt a bad thing per say. But in a way it is. And im talking about eliminator.

I think this gamemode is ultimately ruining map design for the sake of a more enjoyable experience in that gamemode. And i understand that. But in the end of the day its the map design that suffers from this.
Why? Because in order eliminator to exist and be more fun the enviroment has to be more friendly. Less forests, less/smaller towns. Which leads to a more bland and boring map. Even though i havent played horizon 2 but just seeing gameplay of it i can say for sure that a more open map isnt necessarily more fun.
You probably know horizon 2 had “roadtrips” as part of the main capaign. I wish for a map that
can make roadtrips as fun as in horizon 2. And in comparison in horizon 5 you could literally drive from point A to B going in a straight line.
Guanahuato has a road that goes from the entry to the exist of the city that lasts like 20 seconds. A drivethrough a city should never be this short.

Something that i also dont like about horizon 5’s map is that how the servers are populated. Which makes the map feel even more empty. In horizon 4 at least we knew how many people are in the lobbies. And the map always felt well populated. Mexico however? Nothing like it. I remember on launch just freeroaming the map and there was just nobody around. I wanted to do horizon arcade just like in horizon 4’s forzathon live and it was just me.
There were barely any players around. Imagine everyone just arriving in mexico and doing horizon arcade?
Wouldve been so much more fun. Im going off topic here but hopefully i made my point.

Horizon 3 was basically offline. So the map was filled with AI drivers. And i do admit it can be a bit of a pain with that many cars constantly coming up if im trying to drive fast but it also helped populate the map. And made one of the best maps in horizon history even better. Maybe you could introduce a feature that can let us change traffic density?

Now onto seasons. I loved seasons in horizon 4. But in horizon 5 each season is basically the same. That weekly change of seasons brought variety and freshness to the map. Something that just does not happen in horizon 5. I wish for more impactfull map/ wheater changes. And i have to say i liked winter in horizon 4. Players these days have become too soft.

And the roads? Every road is so spaced out. Its like it was designed to have as many straights as possible. The main city and the jungle which are arguably the most dense areas of the map they’re all stuffed on the edges of it. Again probably because of eliminator.

Summary:
What id like to see is a denser map. Still open to explore as many areas as possible but i wish you’d give us the feel from the older horizon 2 and 3’s maps when it comes to density. Make roadtrips fun. Remove eliminator. Give us a reason to drive the extra mile. A highway is a nice addition to the map but when its a straight line that just goes across its a bit boring.

Have gas stations, car meet areas especially for street racers in the night. 24/7 Shops, a port even. A proper city the size of Edinburgh or Surfers Paradise at least.

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Honestly, totally agree big cities are extremely fun. So many good games in the past with cities im sure we can all think of them GTA 5 & 4, San Andreas, NFS Carbon and Underground 2, Cyberpunk - the list goes on.

I have to agree as well with gas stations, we need more car parks, more structures like buildings or multi story car parks, more cool bridges and tunnels.

A port at the ocean would be amazing with containers, everyone always loves to drift around them.

Some more diversification in the towns, cities and AI is much needed in FH5 to give the feeling of a real environment like GTA 5 does. That kind of makes you feel immersed inside the game.

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Yep! Especially the last 2 games are completely missing simple things that could make the world map feel even more real and have more flavour to it. Wasnt it horizon supposed to be real life but idealized? I guess thats what makes open world great.

When they announced now nfs unbound i saw this pic:

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Im a little mixed about the game itself but does that look amazing. We need unique structures like this in horizon.
PG been saying how much time they spend taking many photos for refrences of the countries they’re in. They should spend some time finding unique structures like this as well.

The word horizon essentially suggests that the game is going to have lots of wide open roads and beautiful scenery and probably not be very dense as a need for speed or gta map. And thats faire. Keep that in mind!

But in horizon 5 the center of the map is left so bare and empty because everything is tucked on the edges of it… That it ends up making the world seem really bland. And all of this just so that eliminator can work better… :confused:

Still i know for a fact people have been asking for years to have things like 9/11 shops and gas stations. And those are like little touches to the map that could elevate the whole open world experience to another level.

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  • I want the next map to feel realistic. Now it’s like you’re playing with toy cars on a maquette. Add alleyways, gas stations, shops, malls, police stations, hospitals, schools, train stations, parking garages, etc.

  • To further add to this it should have a big city and some smaller cities and towns. Add a real commerical airport, train station, harbour, etc.

  • The traffic is the most unrealistic traffic I’ve seen in any racing game. Cars drive in the middle of the highway and stop for no reason. That should really be reworked. Also much more traffic cars, perhaps even generic unlicensed cars if licensing is an issue. Shouldn’t be too hard, racing game developers have always done that.

  • Add a proper highway system. Not 1 highway but multiple that have a system across the map that makes sense. Again, every open world racing game has this except Horizon.

  • Same goes for roads. Now it’s like they added all kinds of tracks on the map and drew random lines between them to make it look like roads but it doesn’t make sense at all. Make it look real

  • Mount Fuji was the perfect example of how to design a mountain with windy roads. Do something like that again.

  • FH3 had a good variation of different terrain. Desert, jungle, cities, towns

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Map will feel 80% more alive if they just fix the stupid servers lul

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The way small towns or villages have been designed needs to change up a bit. Take this as an example:

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A lot of the towns/villages in horizon have been designed to have 1 road and some buildings on each side and thats it. And thats just a bit boring to me. There are many examples i can pull from horizon 5 and even previous horizon games.

Like the beach resort:

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You’ve got this really nice beach resort and huge exotic hotels and a golf course and the houses towards the edge which is awesome. But then again they suffer from the same issue of just having one large road that just goes across.

One large road - then a bunch of buildings on both sides, large road few buildings on the sides…
Just like that area:

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In a fast s2 class car it takes less than 10 seconds to drive through that area. Say in s1, s2 it takes 15-30 and if you intentionally drive slower sure you can squeeze out more. But again its still just one road, few buildings on the sides and that’s it. Overall a bit of a bland experience given how beautiful this area is and if it was expanded a bit more would’ve been even prettier.

If all these spread out areas ( the hotels resort and this second one ) were packed up instead of spread out evenly on a larger scale area it would’ve immediately made the experience better. And if they had a few more roads that feel connected to one another - some large, some small would be ideal.

A good example in my book is playa azul. Take a look:

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The whole town is packed together. Yes it still could be slightly larger but at least everything about it is packed into one area unlike that one above i just mentioned. And it offers some good variety of roads. It truly feels like a proper beach town and that’s why i love it

My suggestion is that we should see more of this.

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Just to add: Forza Horizon 2’s map was more closed off as opposed to Horizon 5’s widely open Mexico. And thats why i feel there is a certain charm to it that should be preserved in a future map design. Im not saying block off everything. Obviously there should be a faire balance of both

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Last night I reinstalled FH3 for some little nostalgia and for the whole morning I’ve been driving around the map in awe of if all. I still can’t believe we didn’t get gas stations since FH3. Such a simple thing to add to improve the car culture vibe, just a place for people to hang out online while cruising.

As we are almost 2 years into FH5 it’s a little late to make drastic changes to the map but why not add a few gas stations around the world, drones and planes flying over the map just so that the whole world doesn’t feel static and empty. It’s the small things that would give life to the world at this point.

I really hope for the next game that the location would be something similar to Australia (New Zealand maybe?). Endless summer, car culture inspired and a map that isn’t based around a game mode (The Eliminator). Just make it so that it actually feels like we are part of a automotive festival and not a history lesson. The words Papa Fernando and Vocho are haunting me at this point.

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i might’ve went a little too far with calling the map suited for eliminator and call it a day and say thats why its bad. It is definitely part of the reason. Even expansion 2’s map proved it didnt need to be all flat. But also in a way thats how Mexico is. A simple google search serves a proof of this.

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I would love to see a map with the best features from previous titles:
FH1: Amazing mountain/Canyon roads that lead somewhere away from the map centre with a complete different vibe from the main map.
FH2: A bunch of smaller cities scattered over the map as outpost locations.
FH3: Bioms
FH4: Seasons, Forrest and Mountains that separate different areas/valleys.
FH5: Map Size, wide and flat farmlands to floor big offroad cars without crashing into trees or buildings.
We saw with the Sierra Nueva DLC that the devs definitely know how to build a dense and interesting map, therefore I hope that the next Map will have all of those features without compromising in size.

To all the people that want a big city, keep in mind that big buildings also come with an quality drop. If you play The Crew 2 and drive through New York you’ll see the fps drop, therefore the skyscrapers from Surfers Paradise where very simple/low detailed. I would love a bigger city, but what about no skyscrapers, but still modern 4 to 6 story buildings that provide a modern look but don’t drain all the power from the console and with still detailed buildings (plants on balkony, chairs, tables).

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Yes, the Forza Horizon 5 map is extremely empty just because they wanted it to be a good “Eliminator” map, when that game mode ended up flopping big time.

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I just played Forza Horizon 2 and 3, and they both feel like a bigger maps than FH5 (even though they’re actually much smaller) because they’re more dense.

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Never really noticed that. It is definitely positive to make a nice detailed and varied map. See The Crew Motorfest for example. Tons of towns, couple of large cities, lots of different terrain, DLC integrated in the main map, lots and lots of decorations around, beautiful clouds and lightning, very dense plants and forrests. The Crew players complain about Motorfest having a small map but to me (first time TC player) the map feels quite large.

And the whole game is 60GB vs Forza Horizon 5’s 170GB.

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Forza’s map is very large and has a lot of desert, making the game boring. If you could somehow bring the map to life by adding more green vegetation and small towns. More climatic events and expanding the ice area, as it is too small and lifeless.

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No more adding cars, and cars, we want something new on the map. it seems that the game is about roads without urban streets.

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Mexico has many beautiful cities, but the game forza horizon 5 leaves something to be desired, it has nothing to do with mexico.

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I came across a comment from reddit that i think encapsulates really well the whole design philosophy behind the last few Forza Horizon maps and why it needs to change.

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