Has anyone seen if custom public lobbies will be returning to Forza with F6? Man I hope so. Playing Project Cars has reminded me how much better it is when you give the player the freedom to race how they want, and it’s something Forza definitely needs back. I hope they don’t continue their current trend of removing player freedom instead of giving more of it.
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The opposite I’m afraid.
No custom public lobbies, they figure it will take players away from the leagues or something?
Too bad they focused on leagues rather than bringing the community back together like it once was and letting each person enjoy what they like doing instead of… Here’s what you get, take it or leave it.
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Searchable public lobbys aren’t that difficult to do and T10 have done them well in the past. They clearly have a reason for moving in a different direction. They aren’t doing it to spite people or because they can’t be bothered. Developers like T10 have to make the next game in series but also take the long view on certain aspects of the current/next release. I think that they’re working towards something involving the cloud, drivatars and multi player in general. Whatever, they will have very good reasons for doing what they’re doing - it just may not suite everyone.
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Saying that they could have good reasons for removing cherished features without providing reasons is foolish. No logical speculative reason could support removing a feature that only helped the franchise grow and be more fun in the long term with a more active community.
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So you’re saying they did it just to spite their customers? If the feature is not there, it’s either because it’s too hard to add for the payoff (probably doesn’t apply here), they intentionally want to make the game worse (I find that unlikely) or they don’t think it’s particulalarly important and possibly detrimental (most likely in my opinion).
We can only speculate since most/all of us are not privy to their design meetings, but I would guess they want to prevent the online community from getting too fractured. I would guess that they believe that’s a better way to grow their community. Just,be caused its cherished by you doesn’t mean it’s cherished by all.
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I’ve always wondered if it was a money thing. I know zero about servers and networks, so maybe someone who knows could answer this: Would having the ability for everyone to host their own public lobby require something more costly than just having set hoppers?
Cost wise I don’t see a difference. You’re hosting X number of races for X number of players regardless of who sets the race parameters, whether it’s the server or one of the players.
Costwise there is an humongous difference (when looking at the question of TheBadJesus). According to the stats, Microsoft is supposed to have 300,000 servers in place for XBL worldwide. Even if these servers are unmanaged, low-cost, low-peering, they still cost “around” $1500 for a 3 year lifespan making it $450 million in 3 years that could be saved if the whole infra got torn down and we go back to native player-hosted sessions only.
With no industry-standard, no way to detect cheaters, no way to certify infra, every single player hosting a session is a liability to the enjoyment of the services as a whole. So yes, I would very much like to pay MORE for MORE dedicated infra to make sure games run smoothly online!
People are confusing what type of online games there are versus whether they run peer to peer or on dedicated servers.
Cost is not a difference between private or public custom lobbies.
Cost may be a difference between running peer to peer versus dedicated servers (assuming that the servers are extras rather than using server capacity that would otherwise be idle).
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Businesses rarely disclose reasons behind major franchise decisions.
I can only guess that it is possible that CPLs are so good (lol) that they may end up segregating the community more so than intergrating it. Imagine everyone finds their own niche hideouts, few folks play the common lobbies or leagues, new players with a fresh XB1 go into private lobbies and feel left out, they go into leagues and they are empty. I think T10 may be thinking long and hard about how the game is presented to new players, and as a business, they probably should.
I’m not saying that I like it, but trying to be open about it. Never know, it may all work out… the success of leagues may open the door for CPLs to actually make a comeback if T10 determine leagues can indeed sustain well and develop their own loyal following.
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I think PAYNE has hit the nail on the head, here.
Now, I’m not really a crazy MP guy (and what appears to be a new focus on SP for F6 is music to my ears), but I can see this making sense. It just makes the game more accessible to more people; heck, I remember when I did give MP a real earnest shot on Horizon 1, I was annoyed that the same ribbons seemed to keep popping up, over and over again. Did that game have these “custom lobbies” I keep hearing so much about? If it did, they didn’t really work for me.
Well then they should add them also not just none at all
You can create custom lobbies but they can’t be made public or searched. You can invite friends into your lobby, that’s all. Public online racing will take place only in the Forza Racing Leagues mode, which seems to be some kind of ranked matchmaking.
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Yeah well that’s no good for drag racers
Ugh, well that’s too bad then. I guess I’ll wait and find out more about this league feature, but it’s still pretty disappointing. For me, Forza has the best racing gameplay, either in FM or FH, but online racing is key for me, and lately Turn 10 has removed a lot of what made their games so fun. FM5 was still ok, but Horizon 2’s multiplayer, IMO, was terrible, never letting you pick where or what you really wanted to do. I hope this isn’t just more of the same, or else my Forza days may be behind me.
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The how & where racing is a skill you need to develop. Yes, I agree there are often more races in cars or on tracks you might not like but it takes good driver to succesfully finish (and win) the whole lot. Personally I cannot be bothered with anything over S-class racing in multiplayer; too many errors and thus pile-ups but I absolutely love running these fast cars in hotlapping.
I do hope that T10 will adjust or finetune the online gaming experience making it more suited to cherrypick the races you want to do.
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Thanks for the input, but you misunderstood me. Its not that I’m not good at what’s offered, I’m very good at it, it’s that (especially in FH2) what’s offered is often not what I enjoy doing.
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I will agree that it is disappointing that custom public search will not return. The league idea is great for a competitive atmosphere. Some may agree and some may not agree with my opinion. Custom public is what bridged every type of community together and to find new people. If people did not have friends on Forza at the time. People could just go in and search for a lobby. My only question is that will you be able to spectate in league lobbies and private lobbies? Have not seen anyone bring this up, but that is a separate topic.
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Rejoice, for Xbox One backwards compatibility is coming - and Forza 4’s coming with it.