I have been playing Forza since the very first Forza Motorsport on the OG Xbox, I love this franchise more than any other racing franchise, I loved the first Horizon and is my favorite racing game of all time and I still enjoy playing FH5.
The reason that im telling you all of this is because FH5 shows me that this franchise is heading in the wrong direction and it seriously needs competiton, and that is coming from someone that has played Forza since the beginning and still loves the franchise.
There is a lack of soul in this game, I know they are trying to get more new players interested into the franchise but by doing that they have forgotten the thing that has let it come this far. YOU that are here reading this post in this forum because at the core of it you still love this franchise despite all of its problems and want it to do better. By making a game for game pass players that will only play the game for an hour and say this is the best Horizon ever and never touch it again they have made the most shallow Horizon ever, full of bugs and tedious grind, full of awful multiplayer that doesnt let us dedicated players race what we want, if you want rally only sadly you cant do that because you must play with the rest that doesnt care to get better and better in a racing discipline to be as fast as you can, which for me is the beauty in racing.
I want this post to be a very respectful wake up call for the developers of this franchise, so here are some of my suggestion as someone that wants the best Horizon ever. Stop only catering to new players, let us have custom adventures, ranked adventures, more interesting Festival Playlist with community created content, improve EventLab by making it less buggy and give more freedom to the creators like letting them decide where the race starts, make interesting Horizon Stories that are more than just get to a destination quick, let us have a proper car meet lobby where we can hang around and show off our cars.
I would love for everyone that truly love this franchise to give their suggestions aswell in this post, lets give feedback to the developers so that they can truly make Horizon 5 the biggest and greatest Horizon ever, dont forget to be respectful, the developers are people like you and me so dont be rude, just tell them what you think is the best for the game and hopefuly they can choose the best suggestion and improve the game as much as they can.
Thank you for reading this very long post, My best wishes for all of you Forza Gamers.
I would like community created content removed from festival playlist. I don’t like it. To me most of it is silly. An option for those who like it is give it its own life in the game somehow.
I guess my view is where some people don’t want to have to do trials or eliminator, my least favorite is the community created events.
My suggestions:
Fix everything.
Keep playlist as is but without community content. Give it its own improved part in the game.
Remove cars as rewards for specific events. Put cars in Forzathon shop. Allow all weekly prize car be purchasable at 70% completion and that can de achieved offline.
Make cars and spins harder to get…or allow us to choose easy or hard collection options.
I actually disagree, but not because of the silliness. Believe me, I want the series to mature again more than anything else. Instead, I disagree because the community content is literally the only thing keeping this game fresh. So far, only thing PG have done to spice things up on their own is add one new Trailblazer. Maybe they’ll do more, but for the time being, the community is making a greater effort than PG themselves.
I think there’s been progressively less game to the games in the series. And I’m not talking about the amount of things to do, but rather the way you go about doing them. More and more it’s become just a laundry list of things to do. And the weekly chore list is just a bald faced extension of that.
Of course, any series that establishes and leans into a formula might start to feel like such a laundry list. The trick, I’d say, is tying it together so that it actually feels like a game. And that’s where it’s been more and more lacking. Fixing that is a matter of game design that’s above my pay grade. Maybe focus on making a great solo/co-op game first, establish a solid PvP with at least basic choices second, and only then worry about artificially extending replayability.
Also: if you’re going to have players gaining levels, those levels should do something.
They could have created a separate campaign for each discipline such as drifters, street/road racers, cc/dirt/offroad racers, dragsters, creators, and gamesters (think eliminator etc).
Each campaign is tied to a unique deepish story where you start from the bottom and work your way up. As you progress through your choosen campaign you are challenged more and you master your choosen discipline. Upon completion you can pick one of 5 unique cars that can only be obtained via that campaign.
Campaigns are repeatable and slightly different each time you do them. This allows more dedicated players to obtain all 5 unique cars in that discipline.
Each player must choose at least one campaign at the start. Upon completion they get 3 unique cars.
Once a player has completed a campaign they enter end game content for that discipline. I.e. if you completed the drifters campaign you can now queue for online unranked or ranked drift races. If you complete 3 different campaigns then all end game content unlocks.
Now that’s just for campaigns… What’s next is what matters the most and that is end game content. If you read any of my posts then you have an idea of what this game lacks end game wise.
I think the game is lack of a traditional single player campaign.
(rank up your driver and unlock faster-car to use thing)
I understand the current design are for unlocking every class cars easier for their mp.
In the older horizon(2-3) I am always play MP only and barely touching solo mode except I want money for some car.
The current solo model is more like a 2nd unlocked free to play list after you finish 1st campaign.
In the multiplayer side I cant replay it for long time because “next race is CC” or my headlight is not working.
Or I got rammed but I dont want to play with that player again. So I quit. Then I dont want to do the bad matchmaking again.
Need for speed hot pursuit dont have ranked thing and it almost dont have much campaign… It is a very small game but people replay it alot.
I mean some people play it over 10years. or 1000mp races.
There is no bs in their mp race everyone can quicky join a race with the cars/class they like. nothing stop you untill you running out of energy.
And in team-police-racer chase mode we got the coop-friendship feeling with other players. way better then horizon the team race.
And I think instead of using fake player-npc to filling the game.
How about actually make some NPC driver with their own stats/level so we beat them and unlock things like a “Shutokou Battle(Tokyo Xtreme Racer)” or Kaido Battle(Tokyo Xtreme Racer: Drift)
Your game have lots of customize funtion right? how about use that to create car-npc? Maybe put a ken block in it?
20years ago these japanese game make npc with text-only story background. They have teammember/team master to fight and they have some interesting story background.
and they have unbeatable boosting npc too (with special effect) but since they are some legend driver with story so it is more understandable than your random boosting fake npc friend.
Maybe cut different race type into life-style mode thing.
In street race life-style campaign we play it like a Shutokou Battle/NFS.
In apex road race play it like PGR4/GT. or maybe like Ridge racer 4 we sign with different race team and they all have their own car line up to unlock? so maybe player can replay it with other team?
Not sure how to handle dirt/cc. (I always think offroad in this game are some distraction. Like putting american football in euro football game and mix it together in mp. Yeah they all ball game but not really the same audience )
I found the game to be too easy to get the accolades necessary to reach the Hall Of Fame. I bought the premium add on bundle, as I have Game Pass, so got the early access. I’d reached the Hall of Fame by the official release day with only having completed a handful of races as I focused on the Festival Sites and associated stories. Once I’d reached the Hall of Fame, I was like “OK, so now what?” There was really nothing to entice me back to the game at all.
The weekly playlist feels more like a chore, I hate The Eliminator, so don’t bother with it. The Trial is a mess most of the time, with God-like Drivatars that you have no hope of catching. I don’t find the game to be fun at all, as it’s really frustrating at times, and so inconsistent.
I liked the ranked racing in FH4, and although I wasn’t great at it (level 9), I still enjoyed the rewards every month. On the whole I find FH5 to be soulless and empty, and I lost interest in it within a couple of weeks from release, which is a first for any of the Forza series thus far. The game is a huge disappointment. That of course is just my opinion, and others will undoubtedly have different ones, but my personal experience has not been a very good one…
Yes, the weekly playlist is definitely a chore. Infact I tell myself I must do 1 weekly challenge each time i log in before I’m allowed to do anything else like rivals. This is exactly what a chore is. Btw sometimes I’m naughty and skip my chores and go straight to rivals. Just don’t tell the mods or I’ll get in more trouble.
Even though it didn’t last long in FH4 I always enjoyed the community championships that would be thrown in every so often, most of them were either proper-sized circuits or point to points that used parts of the map PG never did, it made them feel fresh and interesting even if it was a race that wasn’t that enjoyable.
A few gift cars or FP’s and the seasonal EventLab creation seems to be the limit of interaction between PG + the community this time around unfortunately.