i don’t have a high opinion of Drifting in the first place, it’s like in the same bracket as Drag racing / Funny car racing to me. it feels like Horizon has placed a heavier influence on Drifting from FH3 to FH4 and i’m worried it will be at the forefront of the next one. now i’m not saying drifting should be removed, but it needs to be a background distraction at best.
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I’m not a fan of drifting. There, I said it. I have been grinding through those challenges and am now down to my final two. It has not been pleasurable. Though admittedly, I have gotten considerably better at it.
That being said, there are enough players who do enjoy it. There are enough cars specifically for it. And you can make nearly any car into a drift car. (I happen to have a particularly successful drift Bug as well as now a drift Limo - but that is another story) It tends to be a problem during nearly every Forzathon Live thing and people are struggling to make points or skidding off the road and losing their run. More than one has been lost due to that stage by itself. So yeah, I have my own gripes about it.
What I would ask is you make it a separate thing. Like Drag Racing is now. There are very few times where drag racing shows up as a requirement to do. So when it does, it’s just whatever. I feel the same for drifting. It can stay where it is, the events, the placement of the tracks, etc. But pull out the requirement to do it in order to get some overall accomplishment. My 2 cents anyway.
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Personally, I don’t care much for drifting. I don’t have anything against it, and I marvel at what I’ve seen skilled drifters do on YouTube. My drifting, however, is much more like… dredging. Or sinking. (If you could imagine a horse stuck in quicksand, thrashing about, that’s more or less me trying to drift.)
I don’t mind seeing drift zones in the playlist or in #Forzathons (which, btw, is probably one of the best things to come out of this game…I mean, how often do you find yourself in multiplayer working as a team towards a goal with strangers suddenly at the drop of a hat?)
What I DO mind is that when any car can be tuned to drift, PG goes and wastes capital and resources to offer the FD pack, featuring seven cars that can’t do much else other than drift. Perhaps a seasoned tuner or a more clever player can find uses for them, but the handing is so out of control-obnoxious I just have no patience to bother trying. They’re not even unique or interesting cars, they’re all pre-existing in-game cars…three of which are the same make/model (and a Maloo, too? Really?! Why?!). Seven boring cars only for drifting, can’t do anything else with them. All S1 class. They might as well have just made them all the same car make/model. The only one I even bothered to prep for forzathon drifting was the #232 Nissan 240SX. But those seven throw-aways could have been seven ‘other’ cars, perhaps from the Manteo List. Perhaps crappy, junky jalopies. Coulda been ANYTHING.
It annoys me in races to see the drivatars blasting about in the FD cars (which are, I believe, all extreme track toys) without batting an eyelid.
I have tried modding some of them to use in races, but this has always been prefaced by a lot of driving around getting a feel for the car first, and even then, they can be very, very twitchy even round the most benign corners. They’re like the Agera RS – fast in a straight line, but demanding so much caution in the corners that all that speed is wasted. Same goes for some of the Hoonigan cars.
I assume that these things can be made to work if you use manual or manual with clutch, and probably a wheel or controller.
Normally for FLs, I’ll use my Honda GRC for drift zones. I’ve occasionally used my FE Renault 5, but it often ends up spinning because it’s a bit overpowered. But I agree – you could use just about anything in the game to drift.
Here’s a thought for, say, FH5 (whenever that might be), skill zones where you use these cars to drift, jump, barrel roll, crash through obstacles etc. Bit like Stunt Driver, but not just a story. Otherwise, they’re a bunch of novelty cars that DJS might fling about with consummate skill, but which us lesser mortals struggle to rein in.
It’s in the background already.
My biggest issue with drifting stems from American pro drifting. An overemphasis on power and, thus, twin turbo V8s. So there’s zero diversity in rides: everything is a random chassis with an LS engine. The FD Pack is an accurate reflection of what it is in reality, with only Ford running V8s other than Chevy, and only because Ford officially sponsors the teams…
Nevertheless, drifting is almost never necessary to progress in the game. The cars you can get by 3-stars in all Drift Zones can be acquired very cheaply in the AH and Drift Zones are very rarely featured in the Playlist. So I don’t know where the complaints are coming from, really.
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I didn’t like drifting when I first got the game, but I like it now. I think that drifting is more fun once you get the hang of it. It is also good training for races with sharp turns, and slippery grass.
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The skill to drift is a necessary one, especially in a game where more than half the roads are dirt and Rally driving is the best way to go fast on dirt.
Now from what I’ve seen, there’s no requirements for Rear Wheel Drive cars in any of the drift events, if there is, I haven’t seen it yet. That means you can set up a 4WD car to do massive high speed drifts with relative ease, or you can use someone else’s tune to do the same thing. It might make the drifting purists angry to run a 4WD drift car, but oh well.
I only recommend two things for people trying to drift in this game. Turn off the assists, and switch to manual transmission.
Drag is for kids without any skill.
Drifting (RWD) needs skill and improves your driving skill very much. You want to learn drifting if you want to be in full control of your car.
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I hope Turn 10 does something cool with their “Experimental Drag”, because right now drag racing in Forza isn’t much different from what you experience in Flash games. The Forza Horizon side of the coin might even be worse, in fact.
I’m proud to say I won my Rat Rod in that PvP drag event, though. Keeping the Six-Window on the track was an absolute terror! I’ll do a million Trials before doing that again.
I think drifting is a good way to give use to certain cars which simply don’t cut it for racing (yes, Hellcat, that’s you). In Horizon you can load the car with power and it will drift beautifully. Motorsport requires more finesse, especially when chaining whole tracks.
I believe drifting also bypasses the classes since there’s no reason to think a car at the top of a given class will always be the best choice for drifting. What matters most in drifting is points not time. Therefore, it’s more “democratic” since in road racing you pretty much have to be at the top if you want to be competitive.
Anyway since Horizon has always partnered with Fast and Furious, Hoonigan, etc. the game is as much about hooning as it is about racing. Drifting is also one of the best ways to farm skill points. So it’s not going away… Even though I feel that FD cars are overkill since they go completely against the spirit of the game which is to build your own street ride.
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You’re not going to win a drag race without knowing how to tune, which IS a skill. Running a manual transmission also requires proper timing, which is another skill. Try competing for times instead of just racing for who crosses the finish line first. Before the days of widespread cellphones and internet usage, I used to compete with friends in the 1km drags in the original Gran Turismo on PS1. We kept track of the fastest time and would call eachother as soon as we beat the time, even if it was 3am.
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OK, there is something but drift is completely different beast.
There can be a spirited debate as the relative merits of learning drifting as a skill, but it is a skill, when done properly. Sadly, this can be rare.
Where I would like to see drifting receive less emphasis in the game, is with the “Drift Zone” banners along the side of the road. It is hard to claim that drifting is already “in the background” with the visible pollution of the “Drift Zone” banners.
Why is Drifting accorded this “special” treatment? No other disciplines are specifically called out by the Developers - “Hey Drifters, here is a special place just for you! Go For It!” Do the Devs think we cannot recognize a good place to drift, and it has to be marked with the banners?
With no option to remove or hide the banners, the only option to avoid them is to complete as few drift zones as possible. I have been at Drift Zone Level 1 for a long, long time. When called upon to score a number of Drift Zone stars to complete a Forzathon challenge, (score 9 stars in total from a drift zone), I will always use Ambleside, and try to score just a single star at a time. If the requirement is to 3 Star a drift Zone, I just pass on that challenge. I really do not want to open up any more Drift Zones, just because I dislike those banners so much.
Why is Drifting accorded this special treatment? No other disciplines are specifically called out by the Developers - “Hey Drifters, here is a special place just for you! Go For It!” Do the Devs think we cannot recognize a good place to drift, and it has to be marked with the banners?
I would love to see an option to “hide” all of the various banners around the track.
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Drifting is already a background distraction. It is considered as PR stunt, and it’s the least used of all of them. The banners in drift zones is just a visual cue to say there is a drift zone, and you don’t even need to do them. Sure, there is drift aventure andndroft story, but that isn’t what drift contests are about. It’s pretty much sliding as much as you can left and right.
It’s part of the game and I have worked it. And gotten better at it. That being said I still have two to work out yet, though really close on one of them.
There has only been one time that I can remember where a weekly challenge required you to 3-star a drift zone. Otherwise it is “get x stars at Drift Zones” so if you had to do it 9 times to get 9 stars, whatever. I’m to the point where I can almost always get 2-stars and about 50-50 on getting 3. I have improved because the game has made me work at it. I want the badge, the award, the whatever…couldn’t really care about the car, the Capri FE or whatever. But I’m not so obsessed that I will work at it to the point of frustration. No game/accomplishment is worth that to me.
Where it gets me is during the Forzathon Live challenges. Every now and then, there are people who can drift. But most of the time, I am the best or second-best drifter there. Many times, this is where the Forzathon fails or at least takes the most time. Lately (I think since the last patch) considerably more people have been in the Forzathons. For most of my time playing (less than many of you) sometimes there would be four…most times only two, and often just me. Well, doing it solo is impossible, for me anyway. And on only two occasions have I completed a Forzathon with only two people. So lately, I have often seen about 8 people running the events, which is great. But even with that, the Drift Zones remain the hardest part.
Regarding the flags, couldn’t care either way. If anything, they let me know where a drift zone is so I can skip the first flag and proceed as I want to (same with the speed zone gates) so I don’t get entered in to the challenge. What I would like would be the ability to deactivate the zones just like you do on the map. If you go to the map, and click off those types of events, they no longer show up on the map. Well, if you did that, they would also deactivate so they don’t trigger just because you happen to go through one. But that is more of an annoyance rather than something that actually affects gameplay.
So take it or leave it, Drifting is part of the game. I personally don’t want it to become more integral than it currently is…but who knows, by then I might actually be good at it. lol
Even if drifting isn’t to the absolute forefront in the game, there seem to be very few cars that are difficult to drift. Even cars which I’ve modded for handling will still drift about whether I want them to or not.
As for my own ability to drift, I’m less bad at it, but remain deeply inconsistent, veering between a decent run one minute and wild oscillations from side-to-side the next.
As IngoingCake said above, “Where it gets me is during the Forzathon Live challenges. Every now and then, there are people who can drift. But most of the time, I am the best or second-best drifter there. Many times, this is where the Forzathon fails or at least takes the most time. Lately (I think since the last patch) considerably more people have been in the Forzathons. For most of my time playing (less than many of you) sometimes there would be four…most times only two, and often just me. Well, doing it solo is impossible, for me anyway. And on only two occasions have I completed a Forzathon with only two people. So lately, I have often seen about 8 people running the events, which is great. But even with that, the Drift Zones remain the hardest part.”
Oddly enough, I’ve been in a similar situation myself where I’ve realised that in spite of not being great at drifting, I’m still better than most of the other participants. But without sufficient numbers, even if I could always three star a drift zone in Forzathon Live, I’d have to be able to drift like DUBS on YouTube to complete the round. I’ve been in several FLs of late where the first two events have been knocked out probably in under two minutes. And then there’s the drift zone.
oops double entry
Yes…you can’t do some of the speed zones unless you can master doing an ultimate 180
They have standard drift suspension, so their steering angle is much bigger, which makes the car very unwieldy in races.
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