At least on Steam, player count is a joke. 4k at launch and it hasn’t hit 2k since October, with the average hovering below 1k.
The game as it is can’t be called anything but a complete failure, considering FH5 has 10k CURRENTLY playing. More than 10 times the number of people are playing a 2.5 year old game instead of this brand new one. Different demographics, sure, but that’s still an embarrassment.
The game is fundamentally flawed and so far Turn 10 hasn’t even admitted that they’re remotely aware of this fact, let alone that they’re willing or able to address it.
Does anyone think such a thing even has a chance of happening? Or was this game just dead on arrival and we’ll have to just hope for another decent simcade for non-Playstation players?
I personally think it’s dead. When you can’t do what you want in a game that you paid for it’s usually a bad outcome. The updates are not coming fast enough to save this game. This will probably be their last motorsport because they ruined the name with this one.
The likelihood of a major comeback might be similar to the likelihood of me winning a multi-million-dollar lottery jackpot:
statistically, it’s possible, but the odds are too small to expect it & plan for it.
The game doesn’t seem to appeal to any large audience:
it’s not fun enough to attract & keep new players,
and it’s too much worse than prior installments to keep long-time fans interested.
I don’t think anyone is expecting anything big to happen until the Nordschleife drops in Spring 2024. What month is anyone’s guess. The Car Pass runs out in March or April, and no roadmap has been provided for customers beyond monthly car pass updates.
Remember how Redfall got that 60fps visuals update several months back and some people took that as a sign that Arkane was working to save the game? And then nothing else happened?
That. Until Turn 10 strongly confirms otherwise, expect the Nordschleife update to be the last update. Assume that, because of the game’s performance in sales and Game Pass numbers, that Turn 10 has been told in no uncertain terms to fulfill all contractual obligations and then drop this game like a bad habit.
We’ll have to wait for another Simcade for non-PlayStation players. The game was dead on arrival. Nothing can save it. The ring is going to be slow understeery and boring for every car. It’s just not going to flow.
The racing is great (in specific cases), the driving experience is great (at times), the multiplayer is well structured, and the force feedback is good after you find settings that work.
It’s just a shame that almost everything else about the game is a mess, either due to bugs or design choices.
I hope they can turn it around because I can see the potential, and Game Pass gives them the time to do so, but it’ll be a tough task when it’s had such a poor reputation for the last 3 months.
I’m not expecting any meaningful changes until the spring. Thats not to say there won’t be patches that could fix something substantial, but something like changes to the progression or drift and drag mode will not happen until spring. At least, that is my expectation.
That’s a lot of qualifiers/disclaimers & hoops to jump through just for players to get a roll-of-the-dice chance at occasionally experiencing a nugget of fun in a game.
Indeed.
By definition, gaming is recreation: it’s supposed to be fun by design.
…If it’s only fun for a small fraction of the time spent playing, and only under a rare cosmic alignment of optimal circumstances, then it’s an overall failure as a game.
We all want this to be a great game, but if it took 18 years for this series to get here, how much longer will it take for it to get anywhere near its “potential?”
…Its downward past-to-present trend-line over the last decade does not fill me with hope.
The bad outweighs the good by too much, and I doubt this game’s creators will ever make all the drastic changes needed to make the good outweigh the bad.
I don’t know why, but I’m hopeful that we will see some meaningful improvements in the next update, I think (hope) they’ve learned from over promising and under delivering since pre-launch and will shadow drop some big changes soon.
Me personally would love an actual SP experience which could and should include race cars with tyre and pit strats.
Huge improvement to AI.
New track.
Penalty improvements.
More MP content. ( Would love to see leagues similar to FM6) also more longer races and some sim / damage races. Would help clean up contact incidents.
Graphical improvements.
Listing tunes and liveries in post race MP…
Full LB’s.
Anything else to bring back old players and attract new ones. Without players there is no game. (Legacy tracks)
Obviously the levelling system I’m sure they have got the message, whether they choose to anything who knows, but we can hope.
Don’t get your hopes up. They’re patting themselves on the back for the cars to come on car pass which are firsts in the simcade genre. Unfortunately the sound department is horrible, so the cars leaked won’t sound good.
We need an apology and some accountability from Esaki and Greenwalt before things move froward, and that’s not happening. They’re just going to brag about the exciting cars coming up here for the next few months, and not acknowledge the broken physics one of them surely has. Expect the same drip feed of bug fixes and content and a few cool car pass cars that don’t sound like their IRL counterparts. Nothing more.
Something tells me they’re believing they have a Google, or an Amazon so they can say “we knew it all along” which is not the case.
So many generic sounding cars, copy pasted from prior versions, sound mixing is awful (Race Transmission is so loud, overpowering massive V8s like the C7 Corvette etc), no relation to the real cars.
I think theres just too many things that need to be fixed or changed. This game just isnt good, bugs aside, its almost comical how this game ended up this way. Its pretty much a downgrade in every conceivable way to prior installments. The graphics, the sounds, the menus, the upgrade system, the economy, the amount of tracks, the lighting, the weather, the career, the leaderboards, losing features, losing options. How would anyone making this game think that this was acceptable.
Even if its a gaas, why would you strip a game down like this. This isnt a new ip, this is the 8th installment, most people who play would have played one of the prior games, what did they think no one would notice these things.
Well, not in every conceivable way, and certainly not graphics and lighting. Digital Foundry did a pretty thorough comparison of FM and FM7 and it’s clear that it is a solid update over the prior game. It would be one of the few things that are definitively better.
Sounds? Sideways. I mean, they’ve actually used the same library of bland and generic engine notes sounds. We’ve got transmission whine now though the sound mix is off.
The economy. Sure, maybe?
Amount of tracks. At launch yeah, but if it survives long enough, maybe not.
Weather? Definitely an upgrade. It’s fully dynamic now so I don’t know how you could call it a downgrade?
Career. Absolutely and emphatically so. (Downgrade)
What about physics? Definitely better too.
What the game lacks is content, passion and attention to detail. Single player content that is diverse, deep and engaging, not grindy, repetitive and bland. AI that actually has racecraft and not just pace. Audio that is raw and visceral. Multiplayer regulations that actually work.
Anyway, seems the game is just gonna die. I’ll see out the car pass, drive Nordschleife and then just move on to other games.
Turn10 still aren’t communicating beyond oblivious tweets, Chris and Dan are long ago MIA
I agree. I don’t want an apology. Corporate apologies are by their very nature meaningless. Actions speak louder than words. My hopes aren’t up it’s that the silence is deafening and I think we might me in for a surprise. Okay hope
Next forza update (uninstalled for 2,5 month already) will be AC2 for me…kunos can sent some champagne bottles to “what remains of” turn10 as i won’t probably be the only one…
Well done turn10 and associated “genius big heads” decision makers…
Weather is better, but i wouldn’t Say it’s “fully Dynamic” on multiplayer it’s only a weekly pre-setting of race, the Time and weather are pre set, it should be a random sélection.
Another thing that is a vast improvement on prior titles is the file size. Somehow it manages to come in at over 140gb, despite the lack of content. That’s some impressive (lack of) file compression. Imagine how large it will be with a track a month for the next 4 months.
Whole situation is bit sad as what then if Forza fades away… exclusive games are what makes worth or not to own this or that console… I happen to like Forza in general and if that fades out then xbox fades out too…
(In case you can’t tell, I’m being sarcastic)