So I apologize in advance, this thread is a bit of complaining. If you don’t feel like looking at that, I’m not offended.
First and foremost, I’ve been playing Forza since FM3, more or less, but over the span of those games up to and including 6, I drive C-Class, pretty much exclusively. I like C-Class because the speeds are still sane, and there is a decently large selection of cars to chose from. As neat as the supercars and racecars in the game are, I have no interest in driving them as things get out of hand way too quickly, especially in public lobbies. Give the average knuckleheads in the lobbies increasingly fast cars, and the amount and severity of wrecks seem to grow exponentially. Now, that in and of itself has nothing really to do with C-Class, that lies with the players. Another issue that isn’t strictly C-Class related, is Forza’s favoritism to horsepower over grip and/or balance. I can sit here and spend hours making a wonderfully balanced, well handling car and hone my cornering skills, only to be blown away by a 400-500hp muscle car that can’t turn to save its life. Just look at the FM5 leaderboards, the vast majority of track records (in C-Class at least) are held by a rally engined car that, although it can’t turn for **** is overwhelmingly quick down the straights.
Anyhow, I’m sure I’m not the only person to prefer C-Class racing, so how come is there no proper C-Class lobby in FM6? There are proper lobbies for D, B, A, S, R, P, and X, but all we have for C-Class is this silly “Introductory Racing” where everyone is a ghost…I may as well just hot lap if that’s all I want to race against.
Another issue is with car selection. What is the theory behind the selection of vehicles that get put into the game? Adding things like Jeeps, Hummers, pickup trucks etc. is downright ridiculous as this game has no off-road component to it, which means that all those vehicles are used for are for wrecking other players. Same goes for the vans, they simply have no place in this game. Why doesn’t T10 add more proper cars in? Hell, you could start by adding back cars that were in previous versions of the game. Just looking at FM4’s car list, a quick few to add:
Chevy Cobalt SS
Ford Pinto
Honda Civic VTi (1994)
Honda Civic Si Coupe (1999)
Honda Prelude SiR (2000)
Hyundai Tuscani Elisa
Lexus IS300
Mazda RX-7 (1990)
Mitsubishi FTO (1998)
Mitsubishi Starion (1988)
Nissan Versa (2009)
Nissan Sentra SE-R (2007)
Pontiac GTO (2006)
Pontiac Fiero GT (1988)
Saab 9-3 Aero (2002)
Toyota Supra Turbo (1992)
There are more that I can easily think of off the top of my head that seem to have mysteriously been missing from some or all Forzas:
Honda Accord Type-R 1998-2002
Dodge Neon ACR/RT 1995-1999
Nissan 240sx/Silvia 1995-1998
Subaru Impreza GDA (Bugeye)
Mazda MX-6/Ford Probe
Mazda 323/Familia GTX/GTR
Nissan 200sx (S12)
Opel Manta
And so on and so forth
Another thing that has always bugged me in Forzas pertains to wheels. Firstly, props to T10 for finally adding a few more wheels in FM6. However, T10 needs to figure the whole wheel offset thing out: when you upgrade tire width in Forza, all of that additional width goes inward. Not only does this look ridiculous, but it’s also unrealistic, most of the additional width should be going outward. Seeing cars in game that have something like a 305-section tire mounted, yet completely sunken in wheels just looks plain old dumb, but I also wonder how this affects the performance in-game. Anyone that has ever mounted wheels and tires to their car in real life that are wider than factory knows that the way the car feels to drive is instantly and obviously different.
I also have some aesthetic gripes: The Forza rear aero/wing, in particular, looks really bad. It’s been bad for all of the Forzas I’ve played, and it continues to be bad. Is it really that hard to not have a one-size-fits-all approach to wings? And who designed the god-awful wing that gets put onto the back of the hatchbacks?
Another “ugly” thing is the lowering of some cars, or in some cases, the lack thereof. Cars like the Honda CR-X and the Dodge SRT-4, for instance, even when fully lowered still sit way up high in the air, which is just silly, whereas you can take something like the Ferrari 250 GTO and lower it so much that the tires stick through the fenders.
Anyways, if anyone has made it this far, I thank you for reading, and please let me know what you think of what I’ve written, maybe I’m just crazy.