@GreaseRodSucho , 90% listen? Well, the developers do say they listen, and yes, to a point they do. But it’s more like 10% listening. No where near 90% listening.
Horizon 5 has been getting complaints since it launched. Are people seriously noticing now all of this? Its been a year.
From the bugs since launch like - game crashing ,performance issues, convoy issues, online not working - Took them btw about 2-3 months to fix because they stopped working for the holidays. Which essentially left us with close to no significant updates other than fixing some accolates.
I could go on and be even more specific: Horizon arcade not scaling properly or pulling players together, pop up graphics issues when using high settings, many many in-game exploits, pixalated graphics, the nvidia graphics bug that recently was fixed has been in the game since it launch( it was a driver issue but still) , the vram memory leak, lag when you challange someone in eliminator, eventlab didnt have save and edit, super7 still dont have that (guess nobody cares for this), cheaters in online racing, cheaters in eliminator, cheaters on every leaderboard,
People have been very vocal for many months about the lack of progression, the crappy festival playlist., the horizon stories and the bad dialogue, the map being boring and dead- no gas stations, no car meets, servers not getting properly populated as back in horizon 4. No ranked racing, no unranked team racing, co-op literally had 1 championship that kept on going on repeat, the music is bad
They’ve been recycling cars from previous games all year. Did people notice just now? Carpass - some good, some not so good. And again car pass was supposed to be: "cars new to forza " and ended up with getting changed to “cars new to forza horizon”.
Hotwheels - a medicore expantion with a big map almost empty when it comes to activities, a short expantion, horizon story - cringe, map - big but empty and dead as the mainland, anyone knows about the issue with the cars dipping into the track? Basically if you drive on a loop and dont have a rally suspention your car dips into the track because of downforce. It slows you down and can make you loose controll of your car.
And im probably missing a ton more things here feel free to add more if you want.
And i dont think people here are a small voice. Reddit hasnt stopped complaining since the game launched. People have been complaining a lot. I guess this update was just the tip of the iceberg
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I agree. But you’re talking to the preacher here. I was merely highlighting that the increase in complaints over the past 2 weeks was wide spread across all social media platforms and forums, and not just a special case here on the official forums.
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One thing I did like that Payback did with the separate setups was a Drag car looked the part, so did the off road cars. I was a little miffed that only the salvage cars and 2 others were like this (the “super builds”). That '55 Chevy looked killer in black as a drag car.
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People have been complaining since the beginning yes but I think what annoys people and myself is that it has been a year since the game release and they can take no more, also they said that everyone was excited for Hot Wheels expansion but as I was reading the forums I’m not so sure about that
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Also, small debate about licensing how can they say that it’s not possible to have some cars when they are indeed in other games, for exemple take CSR2 on mobile you have plenty of vehicles that have been requested, of course the amount of work is clearly not the same and you can’t add it as rapidly as CSR2 but they have the licence as other games so I think sometimes it’s just an excuse and they can do better than that with their firepower
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I think its pretty safe to say that most of the staff members behind Horizon 1 have long since retired. The developers now, including Mike Brown and all of the other people on the livestreams, strike me as people who see Forza as another entry on their resume or game in their portfolio. It’s just a job to them, no passion required so long as it pays. Even Torben strikes me as the kind of guy who bases all of his clues off of Wikipedia pages.
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100% with you and when you look at how Mike Brown is driving on the streams you can clearly see that he has not played his game a lot
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They may have a passion for making games (in general), or at least it started that way. There is a big difference between passion for creating games and passion for cars. I can’t see anyone (at least those on the streams) being a car person.
Not to say car people would necessarily make a better game (Ian Bell comes to mind), but you would thing there would need to be a “technical advisor” position that could point them in the right direction, or at least give them the side eye when they come up with a “bad idea”.
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Anyone else have FH2 as better than FH3 or how common is this opinion? I started the series with FH4 in Nov 2018, then went back and fully completed 2 and 3 respectively before 5 was released. Horizon 2 has the better map IMO, online road trips, and felt a tad bit better to me. FH3 was still very good but I also didn’t play much online on it. I get the feeling the online scene was very well received when the game was in its height popularity, but I played it just to get all achievements in 2020.
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I’m probably one of the few people on the planet who considers Horizon 2 to be the prettiest game in the entire franchise, including the Motorsport games. Yeah, the textures are nowhere near as detailed as all the games that came after it, but the lighting in Horizon 2 is still unmatched. The lighting filters they used were perfect, especially when it rained. The whole map felt entirely new whenever it rained.
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Yes, making the cars look the part was the best part of the game. Too bad they didn’t carry it forward into heat. Too bad other games don’t hit on the same level. You can make “EVERY” car in FH5 a 4WD vehicle but no one every knows it. A 4WD conversion should LOOK THE PART. Lifted, big tires, new bumper front and rear. Maybe even chop off the top. And if the car manufacturers won’t allow the mods then don’t allow the change. I have a “schtupid” peel 50 with “THREE WHEELS” that’s a 4WD! How schtupid is that? I’m genuinely surprised they didn’t allow us to put a 6.2l or a diesel in the peel.
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I’m not happy with the game, and I’m not defending it. I’m defending the developers, the actual hardworking people who catch all the anger at the state of the game while they surely wish it could be better too.
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I’m sorry @AutumnalGlow , If the developers, who as you say, worked so hard to make the game they surely wish could be better, then why didn’t they just make it better? They were, after all, the developers.
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The term “developers” is often thrown around and can mean one of two different things. On one hand it could refer to the actual developers who write the code. On the other hand it could mean the entire development team which comprises of many different roles, many of which don’t involve writing a single line of code but instead involve design, architecture, project managment, analysis or twiddling thumbs (aka scrum masters).
Ultimately from the outside we can only criticize PGG as a whole, as the game is a product of the company and not a specific role in the company.
Personally I would like to think the actual developers (people who write the code) are quite talented and the problems fall else where but honestly who knows. Only they know.
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True, but in my context I refer to the entity of PGG as the developers of FH5. But in all honesty, the “developers” aka programmers within PGG have not done a bang up job of qc or proof checking their work. I mean we all can point out many little errors in many areas of the actual programming.
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I wasn’t directing that comment at you btw. Mainly everyone. But even your response is a good example because although the programmers write code and unit tests, they are also part of a larger team and for example rely on testers to pick up bugs/issues during the UAT phase which may have slipped through the gap. Or regression testing where a new feature may contain no bugs but may have broken an existing feature. Ontop of this programmers come and go and some programmers inherit a load of … they have to deal with. But again, we just don’t know without being on the inside. Which again is why we can only criticize PGG as a whole.
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If I were to speculate though, I would say the reason PGG is the way they are for good or bad is due to some/all of the following:
- Poor decision making. I don’t believe Microsoft are to be blamed for aspects of FH5 that are lackluster.
- Unwillingness to break from a model they have used for over a decade of developing a base game + 2 expansions.
- A code base which has grown out of control and is in dire need of an overhaul/rewrite.
- Huge dependency on other companies like Turn10 to make changes to key aspects of the game.
- Lack of testers or poor practises in this department
- Unwillingness to innovate.
- Lack of understanding of who their player base is and what they want.
Now I’m not saying this game is bad. I have and still do play it. But have you ever watched a tv series that is really popular. So they make another season and another and another… It gets to the point where they are making new seasons just to milk as much money as possible. Well here we are…
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I pretty much agree with all your points, but the first. I have no doubt that Microsoft was the one who really pushed live service concept onto Playground Games, and I also wouldn’t be surprised if they winked, winked, nudged, nudged the idea of a battle royale, and Mike Brown and other people in charge of creative decisions at Playground took the hint and ran with it.
That said, your other points are spot-on. Lack of competition and the fact that criticism still mostly seems to be a vocal minority has definitely been a major cause of stagnation. Otherwise, we probably would have seemed some long due changes. It’s just a pity that the same people who sling waste at Call of Duty every year en masse just doesn’t seem to exist in the racing genre. Because, while Horizon 5 is certainly competent and occasionally great, it’s definitely a product of its time. A time being where games, except for one or two titles a year, are drowning in bugs, money ploys, and player-retenting chores.
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For sake of argument let’s assume that’s true. Now is that an excuse to deliver a poor quality lack luster live service? Food for thought.
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