Every Livestream Mike says " We ArE LisTeNinG tO Our CoMmUniTy".
[Edit - profanity removed, see the Welcome Guide above - MM]
Nobody wanted you to nerf the Wheelspins. A Super Wheelspin meants to be “Super”. Removing them from car masterys and nerfing them to be useless is something nobody asked for.
Whats with the real issues ? Texture Bugs, wonky physics, bad ai. You put in new cars which are bugged ??? Your newest update broke more stuff than fixing it. Convoys dont work, online is bugged, wheelspins are useless. Endurance races are worthless. Hackers are overflowing the servers.
We all (at least the people that get annoyed) should stop playing for a while… the decrease in playtime might change their mind. It’s gonna cost them money, in the future, because loyal players like me will think twice before buying another horizon game. It was fun while it lasted.
Playground have no interest in loyalty…as they know that there will be new players to fill that void when FH6 releases…I imagine a lot of players that played FH4 (and the previous games( didn’t buy FH5 yet it did the game no harm. As long as it is on Game Pass, there will always be players. Even if millions of players leave, there are still millions more playing.
Their only interest in is in the “Time Played” statistic…that seems to be their sole barometer on this game…as long as that is doing what they want, then they are happy…if it’s trending down, then they will do things like mess up the skill masteries or nerf the wheelspins so that it’s harder to get anything and force players to play more to get the same as before. Every single decision in this game has been, seemingly, designed to prolong play…I played FH4 yesterday for the first time since FH5 released and everything in that game is quicker (well, asides from Online of course), from race loading and then exiting, menu mavigation etc etc. It demonstrates perfectly that this game was designed to be as laborious as possible…player enjoyment was never a factor in their decision making.
The wheelspins were one of the few things working in the game properly with hundreds of bugs in everything else, to mess with the last working thing is crazy.
They could have made it so that we are only allowed one of each car in our garage which actually fixes a lot of problems with duplicate cars, but also fixes duplicate wheelspins. Then make switching tunes easier so that our one car has several tunes available. When it comes to storing the extra tunes in the cloud they are saving on storing extra cars in the cloud.
So there… I solved all the problems without upsetting everyone.
I actually briefly popped back into FH4 as well, to visit some cars they removed from 5. I also decided to see how Forzathon was doing, so I joined one and there were EIGHT other players doing it with me. It was a hoot, I forgot that Forzathon/Arcade could actually be fun.
Same. There are a lot of people still playing FH4, and to me it doesn’t seem as if there has been much drop-off in it. Online activities, whether through open racing or even the Trial, are generally well populated. I have really enjoyed going back.
Yeah i’m doing the playlist each week its not dead. Lots of new players. And always ~60ppl in lobby-
Before closing i’m putting some cardupes in ah and yeah its crazy was never doing this amount of money before
The Playlist wasn’t added for fun, it was added to increase engagement and keep people playing. The reason? Most people play through Game Pass. If people keep playing, they keep paying that Game Pass subscription. This applies to most decisions in the series’ development since Forza became a guaranteed Game Pass inclusion on release. Playground Games and Turn 10 are Microsoft companies, and Microsoft has a lot of interest in keeping people on Game Pass as long as possible, so Microsoft will pressure their game studios to create games that prioritize maximizing the number of people playing for a long time over anything else. Forza is the perfect series to milk as much as possible. This is what happens when large companies are involved: everything is about maximizing profit. Even the way the games are structured and content is updated can be traced back to that profit motive. Fun isn’t what matters. It’s money.
The thing is that fun and profitability don’t have to be mutually exclusive. But PGG lacks people with the imagination, understanding and vision to produce a game which achieves both.
You’re absolutely right. They can coexist. But companies have realized that they don’t need to maximize fun. People will play regardless, through fear of missing out. This leads to things that are generally not fun, like challenges and grinds that people don’t really want to do, but will do for the reward. After all, if they don’t, they don’t know when the car (or other item) may return. Maybe they don’t even want it right now, but maybe someday they’ll regret not having it. And while Forza absolutely isn’t the worst case of FOMO, it’s absolutely here and its purpose is to keep people on their Game Pass subscriptions as long as possible.
A game can be incredibly fun, but people will put it down eventually to play new games. A game can give you new chores with rewards each week, and that means you need to stay subscribed, or you’ll miss out on the cool new rewards.
You’re probably right in many ways, but I’m letting my Game Pass subscription go when it runs out in a few months so it’s backfired with me. It’s a choice for them - make the game as good as it could be which will create REAL engagement, the type where we enjoy it and WANT to keep playing it. Or make it a grind-fest to create FORCED engagement, and to add insult to injury remove so-called ‘exploits’ (which are only their game mechanics being used by us), kill the wheelspins so they’re a waste of time, plus the endless lists of removed features, bugs and bad decisions that we’ve seen so far.
I should get Min, Meet Max today. I’m normally in the rivals competition but what play time I’ve had this week has been wasted on the weekly chorefest as I don’t trust them to retrospectively fix the earlier seasons. Then I’ll be on bare minimum. It took two and a half years to get tired of FH4, but I’m at the same point already with FH5. I might even skip the playlist completely and wait to buy the cars in the AH, or just go back to FH4.
A bit of grinding / optional tasks and FOMO is fine I think, but it is evident with Forza that it has become the game’s primary focus, with the actual gameplay being almost incidental, like putting the cart before the horse. I used to play first person shooters and put thousands of hours into them. They had an element of grinding for levels or to unlock extra weapons but those were the icing on the cake; the cake itself was very tasty and fulfilling, and provided endless enjoyment. It’s why people still play Battlefield 4 even though it’s 9 years old this year. Of course Battlefield has gone downhill sharply since then but that’s another story, and sadly the whole industry is getting lazy and complacent.
This is exactly why I’m opposed to Game Pass as a business model.
People are supporting it today because it provides cheap access to lots of games they didn’t really want to play, but “since they’re on Game Pass now, why not”. However, the end of last gen saw the first few games designed around Game Pass: Sea of Thieves, Forza Horizon 4 and Gears 5. All of which with exploitative design.
Anyone who enjoys traditional games should be wary of what they’re helping shape by subbing to Game Pass. It will never be the smorgasbord of single player experiences people think it will. The gaming industry is not the TV/film industry and Game Pass is not Netflix no matter what Microsoft tells us.
I’m 50/50 on Game Pass: On the one hand, I hate it because of how it is affecting gaming. On the other, if it wasn’t for Game Pass, I never would have played Halo or Mass Effect to mention 2 game series as I wasn’t even considering playing games beyond Forza Horizon 4 but the free month of Game Pass when I got a console led me to the Masterchief Collection which in turn led me to subscribe longer term which then led me to Mass Effect and countless other games I have enjoyed.
