I just did about 45 minutes of Horizon Open. Jesus Christ the netcode is unplayable. Any contact with other players seems to have random physics effects, feels like its seconds away from clipping either player through the map. I haven’t played open in a very very long time but its worse than I ever remember it. And way worse than the playlist trials.
Light side by side player contact on a straight? Congratulations, all your vehicle velocity is now directed straight towards the wall.
Interestingly I just jumped back into some Open this week myself. Not a lot but it seemed more messed up than before to me. In terms of the joining sessions being even worse. And in terms of other players being more win at any cost drive dirty to win. So, yeah, I had a lot of close encounters but can’t recall any odd physics effects from it.
Story time extra 
Had one very satisfying win where a “driver” ran me off 3 times, while I was trying a clean pass or they corner bombed me, over the course of 3 laps, spinning me right sideways on the track at one point, and I still managed to come back each time and pass them again for the lead. The last time I went to pass them I deked them out and they went sailing out of the checkpoint but somehow it didn’t count as missing the checkpoint for them…
…which recalls an earlier race I lost when I was assigned a missed checkpoint for one I was clearly inside of, with a wall at the flag that I didn’t hit no less, so how ? So maybe there are some issues with the servers or something.
OK, story time done Oh oh, I think that means it’s time for a nap… no, a rant, yeah that’s it !
It seemed to me the race type schedule (there was a schedule at one time wasn’t there ?) has been thrown out the window in favor of a simple random multiple streams of race types. But, I wasn’t really keeping tabs or spending a lot of time. Just a feeling I had. Annoyingly it seems to have gotten even “better” at “joining” sessions already finished after making you pick a car for what you think you’ll race and then dumping you in a totally different race. So much time wasting. And even when you think “Well, finally ! A fresh session !” Yes, joining, waiting for drivers to be ready, yeah I’m ready and been waiting a couple minutes already, and up pops yet another “race in progress” , lap 1 of 3 or 30% done. And when you finally do decide to just suffer through yet another partial session to have a full session, that session starts with just 4 drivers… and you know there are drivers out there who joined the session and were waiting and are now seeing “race in progress”… 
Yeah it’s just a poor overall experience, I would play a lot more were it not for the unnecessarily long gaps between races + the wait you mention.
How this is the best a 1st party title can do in 2023 I don’t know, GTA 4 is 15 years old soon and had a more efficient and reliable online + relayed more helpful information to players.
Horizon 5 online is a mess.
We’ve known this since launch, but it’s very unreliable in whether or not you’ll get dropped from a race/convoy, and the overall racing experience while in lobbies and convoys has a lot to be desired, too, from a technical standpoint.
Horizon 5 offline with the AI is broken.
So, where does that leave us?
Personally, I’ve decided to not play this game any more because it’s just not fun.
The technical issues severely detract from my overall enjoyment of the game… Even though the game as a whole functions 95% of the time for me e.g. No crashes, no graphical glitches, no performance issues, no game stopping bugs, etc. However, it’s the key areas (AI; Online) that don’t function that might as well make the entire game unplayable by default.
What prompted me to finally abandon this game is what we’ve discussed time and time again about the AI, and how it just ruins a core part of the game.
I hate to beat a dead horse, but I tried to do another endurance race (Goliath) because I wanted to test a Ferrari 450 build, but 3/4th into the race, one of the AI who was at the back of the pack suddenly received a speed boost from out of nowhere and went on to win. This is with me making zero driving errors and taking the car to the limit as far as MPH. But the AI just flew on by because “That’s just what it does - lol”.
So, when the race was over I just turned off my Series X, and decided I will be playing other racing games (sims, simcades) on the PC that have far more balanced and fair AI even if they aren’t the best.
Oh, and for those wondering, this was on Average difficulty. Not Above Average, not Highly Skilled, or even Unbeatable. The “normal” difficulty the entire game is supposed to be balanced around to give players of all skill levels a “fun, fair and enjoyable racing experience.”
BTW, this isn’t some dramatic declaration, “I’m leaving the Forza series forever, and PGG can go screw themselves!” while I secretly play the game and log hundreds of more hours in it. No.
I’m going to keep track of the Forza Motorsport news up until its release and see what the reviews from major outlets say, but more importantly, what the unfiltered user experiences are like before I decide to drop any money on that game whatsoever. The same will be true for the inevitable FH6, that will be coming in a few years as well.
If there are no positive changes to this series as a whole, then I will probably move on to other franchises because life is too short to keep doing the same thing over and over and expect a different result… Especially, when a lot of it is out of our control and depends entirely on how T10 and PGG intend to treat this series and its loyal customers moving forward.
1582 posts abd not on single developer or even a social media representative has offered to join in the conversation. Why? Because they obviously don’t care to engage with players even if those players want to try and make the game better.
I’ve been playing a lot TC2 lately and really enjoying the game. Honestly, saving my money towards a PS5. I’m pretty much done with anything forza. Only thing left is a wait and see for what Motorsport brings to the table. Definitely will not pre order that game or buy anything more than the base game. That is if I go with the XSX over the PS5. But Motorsport is going to have to generate some massive great forum content and be a relatively bug free release. If it gets released as a beta bug test game like FH4/FH5/FM7 then I know for certain I’m off to Sonyland.
I’ve been enjoying my time in GT7 (just got the PS5 earlier this week), it’s not perfect but it does some stuff Forza has not been able to do, pretty well. Plus it has the 917K, the actual “K” not the long tail and pink pig, but the actual Le Mans winning “K”…
That is just encouragement towards the PS5. I wonder which will come out first, GT8 or Forza 8? At the rate Forza 8 is moving the question might be: GT9 or Forza 8? 
Well, Polyphony is hit or miss when it comes to new GT releases. From GT6 to Sport took quite a while, then they came out the GT7 not too long after Sport (as it was built off the backbones of Sport).
I totally get that, and I understand that would help most people following the franchise, but from my perspective, they’ve used up all the words, to the point that anything they say is meaningless.
Granted that was probably mostly Mike Brown and his influence, but I can’t be sure, and I need real tangible positive change in game before I start trusting anything from PGG again. I appreciate the silence, in the hope it means they’re working. Of course it could be like the last every time they went silent and nothing came of it, but at this point I don’t see how anything less then a highly specific roadmap will help, and even that wouldn’t help much because I have zero faith they’ll stick to it, but at least I’d know that attempts were being made to put the franchise back in the right direction.
Mind you I also have zero faith that they’d even get that right, but at least I’d have an opportunity to voice my disgust at their commitment to adding even more advertisements disguised as stories nobody asked for.
Building a roadmap takes time and more importantly resources though, and whatever they’re doing for the second expansion is kind of locked in at this point for better or for worse. So the best we’d get is some generic crud and non-committing commitment if a dev showed up to comment, and frankly, I don’t want to hear more of the same.
Title doesn’t exactly welcome people in to have a constructive conversation, maybe start with that.
Gran Turismo 6 was released in 2013
GT Sport was released in 2017 (4 years)
Gran Turismo 7 was released in 2022 (5 years, or 4.5 if you want to be a little more precise)
I’m not sure because I don’t have flight sim. But my understanding is it works just great with that game. And, (other players) check me if wrong, but I believe there are other games where the players and developers have interaction which works to make the game better. So judging from that, it could work here with the forza franchise.
Asobo, the studio developing flight simulator for MS is WAY more engaging with their customer base. They have road maps. They engage with 3rd parties. Their live streams are not scripted and they actually take real, uncomfortable questions in their live stream Q&A.
Note: post edited for content.
True.
But on the other hand, Community Managers are supposed to have thick skins and be able to separate the wheat (legit concerns) from the chaff (haters and trolls). They’re primary job is to keep a professional rapport with the community in good times and bad… Especially, when they don’t have anything positive to report.
This is why I believe we’ll never see an official statement acknowledging the myriad of issues plaguing FH5 because it might be an admission on their part of not being able to fix certain core functions like the AI, or online stability?
I’m not excusing it, but the absence of any statement regarding multiple issues is the safest course of action from a business stand point, even though they have to know by now… They have to… There are major issues with this game that need addressing if they want people to keep supporting the franchise.
There are numerous games, big and small, where developers have more open and frequent interactions with the community even if they don’t always see eye to eye. The most important aspect of this is that even if the devs (or parent company/publisher) and community are at odds, them making the effort to at least, acknowledge the concerns of the community goes a long way in building a better relationship than just flat out ignoring them and pretending everything is peachy keen like T10, and PGG, do.
This is what people want more than anything else besides the issues they report being fixed:
They want to feel heard.
They don’t want to feel ignored.
This feeling is exponentially important for Live Service games like FH5 because everybody paid hard earned money for this title… Some of us upwards of $100, for the Premium Deluxe version that includes the Car Pass, and other additional perks.
Game prices are only going up, unfortunately.
So, any game dev and publisher, big or small, worth their salt will at least, try and make an honest effort to communicate with their players on a regular basis even if they have news the community doesn’t want to hear. It’s the professional thing to do, and also the “adult” thing to do because it gives paying customers the option to continue to support them (including future releases), and/or the choice to move onto something else if they don’t feel it’s worth their time, or money.
Exactly this. It’s one thing to drop a game like in the old days and essentially walk away and hope it was good enough for customers to come back for the next title down the road.
GaaS is a different concept and developers using it should plan for the necessary expenses to grow the product properly and engage their customers through the lifecycle well enough for them to want to continue the FOMO game.
If only that was the result or even intent, that is how you, me or anyone else would try and sell a live service game to someone, they always sound good in theory.
In practice too many studios simply use it as an excuse to half-bake the game and release day is little more than a starting point.
So apparently I ran out of Livery slots, I can no longer paint a car until I go clean up my saves.
No, I’m not a livery artist, Not anymore at least, I rarely mess with custom liveries, Im often just switching the factory colors from a car Im testing. But yeah, Now I have to spend a bunch of time culling livery saves to paint this mustang a different color.
There’s perhaps a better way to do this Forza.
Maybe dont have the main color parameter changes count as custom livery files?
Or maybe just give us more slots like they did in FH4?
I’m bouncing around the limit for liveries and tunes since quite some time already and even had to delete some liveries. Which simply censored as I’ve obviously spend some time to create said liveries. It’s one of THE main issues besides the other well known ones for me.
They’ve to be aware about this but simply don’t seem to care.
@T10ManteoMax: Can you please inquire and come back with a defintive answer if we’re going to get more slots or not?
Wouldn’t be necessary if it didnt save simple color region changes and not only actual vinyl edits.
90% of my saved livery slots are for cars I change from red or blue to white or black. Thats goofy. I dont know what the actual limit number is, But im pretty sure its less than the actual garage slot limit.
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