Horizon Open makes me genuinely angry

Forza Horizon Forza Horizon 5 FH5 Discussion
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This is such a terrible online racing system it frankly amazes me how there’s people that consistently play it for fun. There are so many flaws with both the format and gameplay of it, it’s not worth playing

Let me start off with the checkpoint system. It’s been nearly a decade at this point and they still haven’t actually bothered fixing the ridiculous punishment of missing checkpoints. Missing one in an offline race and being forced to rewind is no big deal, since it’s AI they rewind with you. But in online missing a checkpoint and being forced to rewind instantly spoils your chance of placing well in the race.

The big kicker is it’s such a simple issue to solve: remember how they countered wallriding with forced slowdowns? Why on earth have they not reused that? Have a system where missing a checkpoint slows you down for a second or two, and gets exponentially longer and slower the more checkpoints you miss? This just goes to show PGG isn’t just lazy, they can’t even be lazy in the playerbase’s favor.

Then we have the actual checkpoint and racetrack design. It’s so bad I can’t even begin to wonder why the map was even designed like this. The barriers only cover the outer turns, not the inner ones. Combine this with the stupidly generous checkpoint system and you have a recipe for terrible racing. The checkpoints needs to be DRIVEN IN-BETWEEN, not ran over or have their outside brushed to count. We need a stricter checkpoint system and have inner barriers limiting the about of corner cutting a player can do.

The wait times are killing the entire point of Open as well. I don’t even know why. You can wait up to fifteen mins waiting for a race to start, placed in an even emptier husk of the game world. You end up being put in “in-progress” races where you need to wait for the race to finish. The weird thing is sometimes this system just skips over races, and you’ll see “a race is about to start” only to have the actual event start without you and you have to wait for it to finish before getting into a game. On top of that you’ve missed a race in the overall championship so you’re starting already behind with no points. Ideally, we need the option to have the queue automatically search for a new starting championship. I don’t mind waiting 30 seconds extra to get into a new championship opposed to waiting for a five min race to finish and put me in an ongoing one.

The actual design of the roads for racing are pretty bad too, as shown by SepiSP4’s video here:

We also have the game so painfully designed for casuals that there’s nothing in the game to deter players from actually driving like crazy people either. The game lets you freely ram AI with no penalty and this carries over into Open Racing. The amount of rammers that just get away with how they treat other players is disgusting.

We also have plenty of routes for the game to choose from and yet only the same three championship layouts per racing discipline get rotated around.

There’s also meta crap like the Boneshaker and any other tune needing engine and drivetrain conversions to be competitive but you can already see the problem with those.

In other words: I’d love to race against other IRL players in Forza Horizon but there’s so many flaws I rarely bother and when I do, I often walk away more angry than satisfied.

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Yes missing a checkpoint in online racing will spoil your race. You didn’t do the race well and your opponents did. Slowing you down for a second or two is way too lenient. They could make you stop, turn around and go back through the checkpoint. Letting you rewind is being fair.

When discussing the track design and checkpoints not having to be 100% driven on the inside you then complain that the checkpoint system is too generous. This is logically flawed. Just because you don’t like it that other people can take a better line than you doesn’t mean that the rules allowing for brushing against are wrong. Adjust your driving to the rules. Others are obviously able to make the adjustment.

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I’ll give you the wait and lobby issues. Absolutely garbage.

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I don’t agree with you OP on the checkpoints thing. It’s not an issue for me and I wouldn’t want to see it changed.

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I second that. I’m the one that almost always brushes through the checkpoint flags with my tail, particularly on dirt tracks, to gain a second or two. And I think that’s part of the reason why I could still make it to the podium for missing an early checkpoint sometimes.

I also think the present penalty system for missing a checkpoint is good enough as it makes you to actually put in a little effort to drive properly. In the event that you still encounter some drunk drivers who constantly ram you, my go-to method is to hold the line and force them out. Works all the time. If they’re not forced to rewind a considerable distance as a penalty as per your suggestion, you’d be rammed by them up till the finish line if they had a powerful car.

Finally, the waiting system. Am I the only one who don’t care about the leaderboard points earned in any open online races? To be honest it really makes me a lot happier if I didn’t have to do all three races. That’s how much I don’t like about them.

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I don’t like the current online racing setup in general. What would I prefer? Put simply something similar to FH4. Two separate race modes, ranked vs non ranked. Proper match making in each mode. Option to join single race vs 3-5 race championship. Players can’t join championships already in progress. An auto report cheat / bad behavior option. Leaderboards based on win/loss ratio + competition. Custom lobbies with full customization.

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“You didn’t do the race well and your opponents did”
By driving a high down force car and ram others players off track.
And usally if someone got ram off cp ONCE he can drop from 1st to 5-6th in the final result. And no way to comeback.
It is too powerful than actually try to race to win.

Win a position earn 2-4pts
F someone off cp you earn like over 10pts.

The current checkpoint system basically F some car type if they are lower downforce and not a top corner car.
Because there lots more cp in corner and Side push people from a angle is lots more effective than straight line.

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The OP mentioned NOTHING about people being the cause of him missing the checkpoint. If that were the case, then there are two possibilities. 1) It was an accident and life goes on. It’s just a game. 2) They did it intentionally and you can report them assuming you recorded the race.

The point is that if you totally miss a checkpoint (because you took a bad line or just couldn’t drive) and lose the race, you shouldn’t get a smaller penalty just because you don’t like the fact that you missed the checkpoint.

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Note that it’s next to impossible to miss CPs in hot wheels too lol.

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Except the off-track Hazzard courses and a few places where the track is open on one side.

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I think the some of the cp are too harsh.
Some of them are like 8-10sec penalty in a 2min track. The player dont earn anything on cutting that cp.
Usally people just quit game and there are no racing anymore.

Instead of making a better cp system so people can focus on racing/playing.
You suggest people should always record and write a post on everything happen on the track…
How many post we have to make just to report cheater/rammer just for quick play a game?

It is like 1~3 cheater in 1 weeks and I have to record 3-4 races and cut them for report.

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And

“Reporting things” dont actually fix problem.

I take 30-40min to write a post to report a cheater > I meet another cheater in game
So we need anti cheat.

If I write a post on a rammer.
I will still meet another one later sometime. is it going to “prevent” the problem?
No

And sometime it is not rammer it just accident or lag but the system is so bad we cant have close racing easily.
I cant report a “lag” or “accident”

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I agree with OP.

To other people about CP: have you never had very long loading rewind? or used rewind just to find out that one rewind is not enough and you miss CP second time?
Maybe it would be better to get rid of checkpoints and add penalty to your time? Like 1 sec out of boundaries = 1 sec penalty. That would probably would help also with “bad design” as shown in attached video by OP.
Although I see 2 problems. Don’t know how current CC tracks would work + rammers would push you out all the time.

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Happens more often than I’d like. And yet I still feel that the OP’s proposal isn’t a good one.

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Given PGG aren’t likely to fix the online racing system anytime soon, here’s a suggestion I found worked for me when I was getting frustrated with it:

Realise that the system is bugged, online championships are inconsequential (rewards for finishing top aren’t really THAT good) and the route designs are lazy. The do one of the two:

1: Build a fleet of meta vehicles, learn the fastest way to get around the routes (simple enough as they rotate the same ones), shunt people off and win/podium every race. I got bored of this pretty quickly…

2: Build some more “realistically” tuned vehicles that suit your style, forget about wins/podiums and have a good time battling for 4th/5th/6th/downwards against players with a similar mindset in cars you enjoy driving. Had probably some of my best races on FH5 at the mid/back of the pack and I don’t really worry too much about the meta players speeding off into the distance, they’re hardly earning anything worth having I don’t already own anyway

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You actually admit to having used a meta vehicle and engaged in aggressive driving against other players?! While I’m glad that you claim to have gotten bored about it and stopped, it says volumes that you did it.

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I’ve been noticing (experimenting) that between hitting rewind right away when missing a checkpoint and letting the game reset me, it feels faster letting the game reset me and it’s always a good line to the missed checkpoint. The game never does that didn’t rewind far enough thing. Maybe it’s just a perception, I certainly haven’t done a scientific comparison lol.

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Yeah I was raging pretty hard against the game not being the game I wanted it to be so decided if I couldn’t beat them, join them…

I personally found it was the dullest way to race, especially on the rare occasion I ended up in a lobby nobody else was doing it and I was finishing miles ahead so I stopped doing it

I guess my point was online can still be fun simply by adjusting your attitude/expectations. There’s some really great players out there, usually 1 or 2 in each lobby who is up for some good clean fun racing

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The problem is the game dont have anything protect players.
The only way to self defence is driving aggressively with meta-ish things.
You give someone space when side by side they may just suprise-push-you at cp

Then a 3man race become 2 player attacking each other and I walk over them.

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Honestly the level of satisfaction from snatching a podium place after watching some meta-vehicle drivers ahead of me all clashing and knocking each other off is more satisfying than any win

But yeah the penalty and reporting systems suck which is probably why so many resort to meta vehicles and aggressive tactics (or simply not playing online at all which is a real shame, nobody should feel pushed out)

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