Battle Royale games always had an element of RNG to them. The loot, where the circle goes, etc.
But the Eliminator has TOO much and it punishes players in multiple ways for no reason.
For example, the visibility in the game is pretty awful when you put it in the context of a race. One of the game’s lethal traps are the trees, but it’s kind of hard to avoid them when they’re placed in large clusters of what seems like breakable flora. The point of the trees is to make sure you drive carefully to avoid hitting them, but it’s not even fair when the tree is hidden behind several clearly breakable bushes. The farm crops as well, it’s no big deal in freeroam, but your vision is PAINFULLY obstructed when driving through them. Don’t get me started on the jungle swamp area south of the map, you’re basically blind. No amount of slowing down and cautious driving can save you from a tree stump.
There’s also the breakable props too. I hate how much they slow you down, it’s waaaay too much for an arcade racer. And coinciding with the nightmare that is the jungle section, the “pile of logs and branches” is VERY broken. You could hit them going 100+ MPH with a battering ram and you’ll still lose over three quarters of your momentum as well as careening off it and getting sent into the nearest tree. There’s no way you can tell when you’re going to run into them either, they blend in perfectly with the ground.
Then we have the final race. In FH4 it worked well. It wasn’t perfect, but it had a decent level of consistency and majority of the players would have a good idea of where the circle is going to be. If the circle ended up in the top left corner of the map, the final point was going to be the bottom right. But with FH5, it’s all wrong. The final point can go absolutely ANYWHERE, it’s a total crapshoot and requires WAAAAY too much luck.
Think of it this way:
You’re inside the circle, and have 30 seconds to decide where you think the finish will end up. You’re stuck deciding where it is while cautiously cruising in the general direction you think has the biggest chance. But then you hit the border before the counter is finished and you’re forced to stop and give up all that momentum. Then the countdown hits zero and your floor it, only to discover the circle is in the complete opposite direction and not only did the lucky ones pick right, they’re naturally ahead of you because they were on the opposite side of the circle. You have 0.0001 chance of winning. All 12 drivers somehow have to mess up and crash while you don’t crash either. It’s impossible, you might as well give up right there.
Factoring in Forza Horizon’s sluggish (but still amazing) simcade physics where anything from a sudden change in elevation to clipping a solid object immediately costs you the race, it’s way too much.
I propose:
It’s always the Dry Season in Eliminator (no farm crops, riverbeds, majority of bushes and breakable trees are gone)
Props slow you down MUCH MUCH MUCH less, especially THE BRANCHES AND LOGS
At the final race, you get a preview of the finish line and it’s location ahead of time
Maybe further physics tuning exclusively for the Eliminator just for heavier gravity and better traction, RWD cars are useless and should be avoided like the plague
It’s super frustrating to be an aggressive, risky player taking out several players only to quickly lose the final race due to it ending up in a place I’m not expecting. I want to lose to a better player, not any of the technical garbage that plagues this mode.
