I’ve got an idea the map has been updated to only reflect players near your location. I’ve entered freeroam and seen half a dozen local players and an otherwise empty map, and then Fast Travelled to a different region and found a new series of local grey dots floating about while the previous ones have disappeared.
I won’t speculate on why PG might make that change in the hope that maybe Max could confirm if that’s been recently introduced… Is that a thing? Does Max comment independently?
I’m disappointed with the small area of snow on La Caldera too, and had similar thoughts about the Snow tyres. I’d envisaged a larger snowy mountain range, something akin to a drive-thru Blizzard Mountain from FH3. I guess there’s an opportunity for custom snow maps using those roads, but it is underwhelming as it stands.
Maybe the planned expansion packs will find a use for those snow tyres?
We’re not even three months in… it’s too soon to judge the franchise by the release stumble.
The servers have been reworked for this game…rather than having a Horizon Life session where you have 72 players, there is now one Horizon Life session. When it works, properly, you will see the other players within your immediate vicinity and, if you drive to another place, you then get a new set of players in your vicinity.
I would presume that it was done to cut down on server capacity as they will need less servers for this.
This is not true. If it was, there wouldn’t be so many convoy issues, including errors about not being in the leaders’s session. That pretty much proves there are different sessions.
As someone who has grown up with Forza starting with the original Motorsport, the magic of the series really seemed to die in the Xbox One era with maybe the exception of FH2. Switching to a live service model really killed the franchise for me and the Horizon series only seems to be getting worse.
Should have just set FH5 in an area where there are real seasonal changes to represent.
I’ve been hoping for a Forza Horizon set in Japan for a while.
Up until now, the FH games were more or less set in countries with a lot of car manufacturers and/or a history of motorsport. FH1 (America), FH2 (Italy), FH3 (Australia), FH4 (UK) all made sense in this regard. So then it comes to FH5 and I ask ‘why Mexico?’.
Oh well, maybe Japan for FH6? A showcase vs a bullet train? Some Initial D style drifting on precarious mountain roads? Something really new and different on the radio stations? Horizon Stories that properly introduce funky Japanese car sub-cultures like itasha, bosozoku, and dekotora? Racing through richly detailed urban centers in cute little kei cars? An expansion full of Super GT and JTCC cars? Sounds awesome to me.
I don’t trust Playground to create a modern Japanese setting that matches the level of attention to detail Sucker Punch had in Ghost of Tsushima’s feudal Japan.
I mention that game because it’s the highest profile title from a Western developer which tried to recreate a Japanese setting and Sucker Punch did a great job with it. I dare say it looks better than FH5 to me, despite the lower res textures, and much more immersive too.
Considering how low of an effort Playground Games’s interpretation of Mexico feels, I would not get my hopes up for them to do Japan any justice if they ever placed a game there. The E for Everyone rating alone would kill most of the vibes you’d want from a racing game set in Japan.
I could care less what country/city or fantasy world the map is based on. As long as it’s interesting, has things to drive though, around, up and down. Not some big flat pan cake.
To be fair, the FH5 does have some cool places. The problem is they are tucked away somewhere like on the edge of the map far away from where most of us drive or care to drive to. If they shrunk the map and moved around cool places/assets to be in popular locations then I’m sure the map would be much better.
In saying that, I would have loved to see FH5 create a map like GTA5 where you can drive through big cities, explore and get lost in the city.
I personally miss all the updates there used to be on this site. We would get updates weekly on upcoming events, new features, or bug fixes. I would look forward to the weekly update on what they were working on.
We hardly get any updates on their progress anymore and the game is still buggy for far too long.
There was an event someone used to do for monthly car pack reveals that I miss. They would have a riddle of some sort for each car, and the guessing game was amusing to both watch and engage in.
And in Motorsport the community would organize a sort of Hot Lap event with a particular car on a given track. I occasionally enjoyed participating in that - not to seriously compete, just for the fun of it. I haven’t looked at the Rivals thing they’ve been doing here. Maybe it’s similar. I’ve just been assuming it’s inherently more competitive.
I think there’s a natural tendency to romanticise past titles (aah FH2… halcyon days), but those releases weren’t bug free, or exempt from player criticism.
The FH4 servers were shockingly bad for a very VERY long time, and it was common to spend ages sitting in lobbies (like 10min +), only to be kicked out or find all your teammates had quit. The times when updates were delayed for days or even weeks, only to arrive and break the game. Everyone hated winter, people complained the dirt tracks didn’t have enough dirt, the map was too small…
I believe FH5 has more problems at the outset because it’s a far more ambitious game; something of a tapestry of new and old inclusions… and their potentially mismatching code. I don’t agree with all of PG’s choices (I didn’t like the Accolade system much in Lego, and I’m not convinced by it here, but then I didn’t like Lego much. But I loved Hotwheels, and plenty of players HATED that), however I can’t fault them for trying to provide players with the best open world car game on the market.
We distrust fawning praise, but blanket criticism also deserves some side-eye.
If they fix the problems with FH5 it will be better than the previous games, but being as FH5 has bugs from FH4 it seems from past experience that they will not totally fix FH5.
I’m not sure if I buy into the “it’s harder to…” theme. It took me far less time to get every car available in game than it did in FH4. We’re barely 3 months in and I have basically finished whatever “campaign” races there were, have all the currently available cars and have more than 25 million with nothing to spend it on. FH4 lasted more than a year before I reduced my playtime to once a week to get new cars. Online is still a mess, so there isn’t a point in trying to trudge through it. Expansions may peak my interest again, but only for so long…
This pretty much nails it for my experience. Been playing since FH1 (somehow missed FH2 but have been pretty engaged since). I’m still trying to get the 5 final cars I can get - not including the unavailable Pre-Orders at the AH - in FH4. I have all of the cars in FH5, have been a willing player in the Accolades system, reaching about 24,000 in rank, but now I am finding myself drawn back into FH4. This next update with Chinese cars becoming available is not really interesting for me. I mean, the whole connection between China and MG is kind of cool, but beyond that? Meh.
I’m in the US, and I actually love the FH5 map with all of the different biomes (and I appreciate the relatively true-to-form aspect of Mexico’s seasons), but that FH4 map was so well done in a relatively smaller space. The definite difference in the seasons had the effect of expanding the feel of the map for me. I like the reasonable ability of HS avatars compared to FH5 also. I imagine (could be wrong) that PGG has decreased server capacity for online racing, as the lobby waits seem unending.
Ending with a complaint about FH5. WHAT IN THE HECK IS THE DEAL WITH THE DUSK/TWILIGHT TIME OF DAY FOR ONLINE RACING? I am in my fifties, and I know my eyes aren’t the same, but yesterday was in an online race on the Cathedral Circuit and hit those tunnels/catacombs, and could not see a single thing. It wasn’t much better outside, either. (Rant over.)
Well, as far as play style…I built whatever car I have available at the time (if there were class restrictions), otherwise, I prefer to build older/classic vehicles. Kept most of my cars A class or below when possible (supercars not withstanding). By the time I was done with the “campaign”, I had 75% of the cars in the Autoshow and the welcome pack and car pass cars. The rest were available in many of the accolades as prizes. Yes, I have the car pass and the VIP, but that didn’t net me a ton of extra wheelspins, just minor boosts to winnings. Bought and sold probably 30 Pontiac GTA’s for the wheelspins, but it’s more of a chore than it’s worth. I only log in a couple of times a week now as there isn’t anything I “need” to do. Usually Thursday/Friday to complete the weekly challenges and net new cars.
I actually regret buying the ‘Add Ons’ pack for my gamepass version, I think a better approach would have been to do what you are doing and max out the base game before I look to try anything new.
I suppose I just assumed FH5 would have met my expectations of at least matching FH4!
I think the map is great & a very heroic effort. There’s actually a certain sense you are crossing the real Mexico which is very narrow in places – unlike the cartoonish Scotland to England in two minutes. The resorts remind me of holidays as a little fella. The suspension bridge as a useable fixature of the skyline is nice & the charge up and down the mountain is fun.
I do think there’s an over proliferation of night races. And a weird one with just the ribbon, is not a goer for me.
The game is mostly easier.
The cars headlights are not effective. Difficult visibility, fine. But my eyes need something to work with.
Not being able to see other players outside of your immediate vicinity does have a strong psychological impact when you look at it what seems like an unpopulated map. It’s funny how a minor thing like that does have this psychological impact.
The biggest annoyance for me is that the livery editor is unforgivably primitive and awkward with the same library of mostly unusable fonts. Not something I’d expect from Microsoft. They had the cheek to pretend it was more user friendly in one of those promo videos, LOL.
I don’t feel I’m robbed though. It’s a strong game. I just think there’s an uncomfortable amount of small things that could be remedied. They can’t quite balance how hard/easy this game should be. And there are some areas where this game is inferior to its predecessor.
Think of this game as any movie series…its rare for “Part 5” of anything to be more than “more of the same”…technically (bugs aside) its a step forward (look at how well it scales), but there’s a sense of “why am I here and doing this?” that is missing for me. I blame “Part 5” syndrome however…its not you, game, it’s me.
Mexico’s lack of distinct seasons is a real deal-breaker for me however, while I’d say that FH4 had 2 seasons: Snow and Not Snow, Mexico doesn’t really even seem to have that…add in the bugs where night is never really dark and the HDR or brightness changes on many cars between cockpit and external view, the way (For me) times and weather updates lag…(all of a sudden rain and clouds will stop abruptly and suddenly I’m driving in perfect weather again), etc…stuff like this really takes me out of hte moment, but the lack of distinct seasons is killing the game for me.