I get that a lot of people enjoy customizing their characters. For me, it’s a part of any game that I find tedious. However, I’m not every customer so sure, fine, whatever.
But I agree it should not have been part of the wheelspins. I don’t need to try to earn accomplishments so I can…get another hat. Yay. The $5000 are insulting as it is, but thanks to the auction, I can actually buy a car with that, so hey.
I would have moved it to it’s own thing and had it run by Forza Points. More exclusive items have a higher point cost…none of it anywhere near the cost of the cars except for maybe certain exclusive items. Then some items would be given in addition to the regular rewards for an accomplishments, such as the Online Adventure levels, etc. Goliath win, etc. Yay, I got a hat/t-shirt I can show off.
But otherwise, unless I genderbend, there is a whole bunch of stuff I would not put on my character/avatar. A lot of the styles are ridiculous. And it is hugely wasted on me. Which is fine…but you are taking up a number of wheelspins to do it, so it’s not like I can just ignore that aspect of the game.
Doesn’t really bother me, to be honest. Most of the items are perfectly fine for customizing your character, like shirts, sweaters, jackets and stuff. Wouldn’t mind even a bit more normal clothing items. But they clearly went over the top. I could have done without a few items. Plastic mustaches? The clown mask? I refuse to unlock that one even when it’s available. Nobody needs a sequin chicken suit. For a while, I was even changing my character’s outfit for each season, but that got old after a while.
It’s fine. It’s there, but if you find it overstaying its welcome, it’s easy enough to ignore.
I don’t mind being able to customize my character, but I do agree the way cosmetic items were implemented on FH4 is extremely poor with the cosmetics competing for cars and credits on wheelspins, and the cosmetics having too much focus in general in a game that’s supposed to be about cars. As has been said many, many times, it feels like much of this part of the game was copied from Fortnite in a lame attempt to appeal to that crowd and blindly copying what other “successful” games are doing.
The clothing items were intended to customise your character, though lacking depth and focus on character customisation. Certain items could be redesign to be similar to real life items. Jackets should have a wider parting between the buttons / zippers to see the T-shirts as most of them have captions on them.
I believe the developers tried to expand on the same concept that the racing suits in FM7 with the hope that it would generate more potential customers to the game by giving it a slightly SIMS / Second-Life feel to the game. However, without proper character interactions except through stories - the clothing items in the game lacked any necessity. With the primary focus of Horizon centred on seasons, the clothing items included were catered to all four seasons - thankfully. The featured stories or the seasonal playlist could have required characters to wear a certain type of clothing to complete an event, which would be the perfect combination in terms of the focus of the stories mode. The perks that forzathon had could have been a great addtion to the clothing items as well - players wearing clothing items to increase Cr. or Exp. In short, the clothing items were underutilised and is a pointless feature to the game.
Forza Horizon 1 and 2 were catered to the normal racing fanbase as well as music festivals which was the key point of Horizon. With the addition of the Hot Wheels DLCs and LEGO DLC,assuming the developers were trying to create a game catered to younger audiences as well. Should a game advocate subtely materialism in the younger generation? No, I think that drawing a fine line between the principles the parent’s are trying to instill in their kids vs. the outside influence. However, the whole game as a package is in my view successful in reaching to all age groups - which is what I believe is what FH3 and FH4 is aiming at the moment. From this point of view, its understandable why we have chicken suits etc in the game.
The removal of clothing items from various modes such as wheelspins, Forzathon shop etc. would be a welcomed addtion to many, though leading to a useless wheelspin structure, like we have now. Unfortunately, the focus of the game has to have more depth to invite players to partake in the offline gameplay as the rewards will be either credits, cars or forzathon points. The game will then be considered a grind just like other racing games. Thus, the clothing items provide a not-so-ideal, but practical distraction to the grind for credits. I would say I am on the fence of this - if clothing items were to be removed from the game, an improvement to the feature such as a rework for a better seamless multiplayer without the current sessions fiasco, a core feature of this game, would be the best substitute.
I play MMORPG’s and character dress up is my faw pass time, so this is just awesome. I like that I’m able to dress my character according to season and such is great.
Getting stuff via WS or SWS well ok, just getting the items in a Cr shop would be even better. Nobody is forced to dress their characters and clothing items more or less stop appearing on WS when you get them all.
Simple solution to those that hate this … ignore it and get on with your life.
PS
Sometimes I have a feeling that people complain about something, just for the sake of it.
When i started this game 5 months ago, i diden’t really minded how to dress my character, sure finding Clothes in WS o SWS was annoying expecially when i needed credits for upgrading cars or buying new ones, but yeah, it took a while before i had the cars that i wanted.
Now i’ve started prestige 3 and i’ve bascially have bought everything (except online related cosmetics) and im actually having fun customizing my character at every season change. The whole clothing concept could be great in an open world game like this but its poorly designed, i mean, even the last NFS did a better job with the clothing.
Nevertheless, im hoping that FH5 will have different clothing stores around the map like Gta, that we can buy things with actual credits instead of putting them into the WS.
This “useless” wheelspin structure was a staple of FH2, FM6, FH3… FH4 only made it even more useless, since the clothing clutters the slots.
Racing games have always been an acquired taste. Up until Forza Horizon 4, it was very rare for any racing franchise to surpass the 10 million sales mark. In fact, even FH4 didn’t do it, as the game is also available via Microsoft’s Game Pass subscription-based service, so it can be assumed a sizable share of its 12+ million players did not buy the game. The only ones that did not only hit but also surpass the mark, among games with licensed content (before you bring in things like Mario Kart), were Gran Turismo and NFS, and Gran Turismo was the only consistent high seller. None of these games needed gimmicks to hit those high numbers, just pure racing.
It’s worth mentioning that much of FH4’s success can be attributed to FH3, which had none of this nonsense, and whose prize requirements were less draconian. It’s also worth mentioning that similar moves in FM7 led to the game being a bit of a flop, as it had trouble outselling FM6 despite being on PC as well as Xbox. So why was FH4 able to hit the 12 million players mark, you ask? Because it is like an arcade version of Assetto Corsa. You can’t mod it, sure, but there’s, like, 700 cars to choose from. You have beautiful roads and you have the easiest progression system ever built. In FH4, anyone can be a hero.
That’s what makes FH4 successful. It’s not the chicken suits, it’s not TG, it’s not the Playlist. None of these are ever brought up when people ask why you should play FH4. It’s driving dream cars with easy physics on beautiful roads and feeling like a winner no matter what you do. This is a game in which you can wreck your car and earn points for it. You can even brute force your way to success with unlimited rewind. As long as people have that, they don’t care about bugs and inaccuracies in cars. Their driver could even look like a potato: they’d just laugh it off. We are not the average Horizon player here. The type of casual player Horizon has been catering to is the guy who has trouble beating the offline seasonals and can’t tell an Audi from a BMW.
Unfortunately, this situation means the product had to be diluted to the point where it became unrecognizable. Forza Horizon has created a whole generation of Forza players who can’t race if their life depended on it, and those that do absolutely require the AWD crutch in order to keep the car on the track. The name “Forza” used to mean something in the simulation world, now it does not. Microsoft did not have any heavy hitter this gen and decided to milk Forza Horizon to the extreme so people would have a reason to subscribe to Game Pass. When you try to make your game reach the widest audience possible, the core gameplay suffers. It’s inevitable.
This wide audience as well as the lack of competitors has made Playground sit on their laurels and do very little to advance the game. The Eliminator is basically taking your leftovers from lunch, putting them in the fridge and serving them in the dinner with a different spice: it’s just glorified H2H racing. The new Horizon Stories have poor scripts, poor voice acting and very easy requirements. Even Lego did not have the magnitude of Hot Wheels. But what goes on the news is “Playground keeps supporting the game, how awesome!”, because of what I said earlier: even if people play FH4, chances are they are the casual within the casual, and customers like these accept anything as long as they have pretty, shiny graphics to look at and easy gameplay/progression.
Even the things Playground did add to FH4 were done better by the competition, further establishing how halfhearted most of the effort actually is. Character customization, which is the topic’s subject? TDU had them beat, like, almost 15 years ago. Garage? NFS, TDU and GRID 1 beat them, among others. Customization? Tons of examples: Juiced, TXR, NFS past 2015. Story? Even the worst NFS story is better. FH4 is not even the absolute best in its own franchise, as many people are more appreciative of FH2 and 3’s audio, environments and progression, and no FH4 content tops Blizzard Mountain from FH3.
Seriously, I’d love to see how Playground would deal with a fanbase as aggressive as that of Halo, or even Gears of War. They wouldn’t last a week if they pulled this stuff on those guys. Both 343i and TC were eaten alive many, many times… Over here, they have it easy. Too easy, in fact. I like the game, as my hundreds of hours in it can attest, but I can’t ignore its faults and the poor character customization feature as well as the poor method to acquire clothes is just one of many.
Cosmetics in themselves are nice, but they’re very poorly implemented here. They should have kept all the plain/generic shirts and clothing as things you can buy at any time from a permanent storefront whilst wheelspins only give you special or unique clothing. So many of the clothes are so out of place, plain or purely meaningless, and have no place being in the same spins as supercars.
Also the crowd it attracts. Players in chicken suits rolling rally suspension glitched 599XX Evos ramming their way to the podium. Just a buncha brats. I hate how the freedom of speech is extremely limited here. This whole system feels like some kinda fascist garbage you find only in N Korea or Mormon camps or something. Generic clothing and avatars. Just… No. Entirely too conservative for the real car culture.
I’m not really sure which of the following I really dislike the most. All of these really detract from the game for me.
Dancing, prancing, etc
Mandatary selection of a character and name
All the clothes, horns, chat phrases, etc
Not being able to COMPLETELY turn off all the music once and for all in all parts of the game. I still want to be able to hear the car and the outside sounds, so disabling the sound is not a good solution.
Wasted time in cut scenes the first time, much less each and every time I have to watch them.
Being pestered by the likes of Alex, Keira, and all the rest
The near constant being reminded that I am in solo mode.
I think that is it.
Other than these annoyances, I really love the game.
Your missing the point, it’s a racing/driving game, customising a character in an RPG or such is part of the game, wheelspins are a reward for driving so clothes shouldn’t be anywhere near them! Have them in the game by all means but they shouldn’t be core to the game! When you play an RPG and you win/find clothes they will be part of the core game(ie increase armour etc). I when I win wheelspins for driving I want a reward that’s relatable to the challenges completed! You don’t get a fishing rod if you win the cup in FIFA
You are perfectly fine for a wheelspin being the “core” of a racing/driving game but totaly against clothing? Oh, the irony. Clothing are a part of driving since you will probably be fined if you drive naked irl.
The concept of clothes in Forza isn’t inherently bad, but it’s current state leaves much to be desired. Here’s how i’d fix it:
First off, while I enjoy getting clothes out of wheelspins, I 100% understand why people don’t. You could’ve gotten a rare car or funds towards a tuning session, but no. You get a multi-colored top hat. I’d fox this by making clothes set awards throughout leveling up and gaining influence. I’d also have them appear in the Forzathon Shop. The actual clothes selection is pretty awful too. I wouldn’t mind the odd article of clothing that’s from real life, but it’s 60% of the clothing layout. Watermelon Leggings, Bunny Costumes, Pink top hats, it all sucks. A good example of an out-of-place outfit that still fits within the context of the game is the morphsuits. This game is set in a music festival, and morphsuits seem to be present at any massive organized party. Another thing i’d like to see is the implementation of real clothing brands and other merch. While I wouldn’t go the NFS route and slap in all the obnoxious streetwear brands that force you to dress like a hypebeast, I wouldn’t mind the occasional licensed clothing outlet. Hospital Records literally has their own clothing line, why couldn’t some of them be put in the game? Once again taking advantage of the game’s music festival setting, band merch from the artists in the game would fit well. I’d love to have my character rep a Jack White or Pennywise tee. As for the cringeworthy dances, it’s an obvious attempt to pander to the fortnite kiddie crowd and i’m having none of it. I want it completely removed for Horizon 5.
But it’s not part of core gameplay theres no irony there at all! Wheelspins are a reward for driving the key part is reward, how you package a reward is irrelevant I could not care if it was a box a chest or even just a here’s what you won! It’s the reward that’s core to gameplay not how you get the reward, my point is the cosmetic stuff are a left over from when the game was most likely going to include MT. You can tell they were dropped in by the fact that they are not gender specific. I have no issue with cosmetics in a game none at all, but they should not be used as rewards especially when 99% of the game they are unseen, it’s not even like fort it’s/ping/Cod where you actually see people 99% of the time.