I think I'm finally done supporting this franchise

Forza Horizon Legacy Horizon FH3 Discussion
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I was really looking forward to a new Horizon; it’s definitely my preferred way to consume Forza versus the “main” series. As the game started up I was overcome with a sense of pure excitement and joy, which is quite rare.

Since early access I’ve completed the final showcase, hit level 100+, did 300 promo cars, and reached Platinum status in the Giant Bomb car club, a good 1M+ XP above the actual Giant Bomb account which has been playing for over two weeks already.

But for everything I like about it, all of which was essentially established in Horizon 1 and hasn’t changed much since then, I think I’m fully done supporting the Forza franchise financially.

I really got burnt with the Ultimate Edition of Forza 6 because that game just wasn’t good; it was basically a watered down version of Forza 5 with the same forced “booster card” micro transactions as Halo and Tomb Raider, IMO. But with Horizon 3, I got screwed (we all did) because the Ultimate Edition doesn’t even live up to its name. Over the weekend they silently popped an “Expansion Pass” onto the store for $35 with no details about the two expansions.

That’s bad business from a consumer perspective for two reasons:

  1. If you buy the “Ultimate” or “Definitive” edition, it should be exactly that. Instead this franchise continues to find ways to nickel and dime its most loyal players every iteration.

  2. The intentional and manipulative lack of transparency. Imagine the uproar if the Expansion Pass had been announced before launch AND it wasn’t included in the Ultimate Edition (just like it isn’t for Final Fantasy XV). So instead they just didn’t announce it at all and slipped it onto the store after the fact. Just shady. And honestly at this point, $100 is already a lot for these games. Arguably too much for the same rehashed content year after year.

Bonus #3. The practice of selling “mystery box” content is a very dangerous one. The store description for the Expansion Pass is literally a single sentence with non-original screenshots. So they’re more than happy to take your money and not even really tell or hint at what you’ll be getting.

I may still play the games as from my Forza Rewards level I obviously do enjoy them for the most part, but I completed most of this one in less than two days and what’s left isn’t particularly appealing. There are 63 courses total, but they expect you to replay them approximately three times each (via Championships), in addition to another full round with the Exhibitions. That’s just the lazy design masquerading as replay value from Horizon 2 repackaged in a slightly different way.

You also have virtually no incentive to use any other car other than your best one, and in this game that’s narrowed down even further to the Horizon Edition vehicles because they offer such a dramatic boost in credits, XP, or skill points. I miss the Horizon 1 challenges where every car had its own unique list of things to do. That was way more compelling.

End rant. Opinions, rebuttals, and cat memes welcome. :slight_smile:

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Whilst we all have choice how to spend our money I think this point is way off.

When I bought the Ultimate Edition I was told it would get me VIP plus car pass. I also knew the car pass covered 6 car packs.

I knew that was the limits of that edition. It was well spelt out.

At no stage did I expect it to cover anything else.

There is nothing manipulative or intentional.

In fact what they have done is no different from the previous versions of the game in that there was a car pass and vip and still the expansions were extra.

If anything they have improved over FH2 as there is a discount to be had for Ultimate Edition versions when getting the expansions.

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I paid $80 for the ultimate version from Amazon with prime. I probably won’t buy the expansion pack because I don’t really care but I love that I got some car packs, and double money from the Ultimate edition.

Frankly, paying $60 (or $48 if you bought from amazon or elsewhere) for this game seems like a hell of a bargain to me. Considering what you get from other games for that price…

I’m assuming the expansion packs will be like they were in Forza Horizon 2. I bought both of them there and honestly hardly ever used either one.

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I bought the skeleton, peasant, vanilla version of the game, and I don’t regret it for a second. Looked at the Ultimate Edition(s) etc. and immediately concluded that it is not for me. I don’t think these are designed to match the value of the base game by exact monetary comparison, but really just luxury editions for people with that kind of cash loosely lying around - and that’s neither an insult to the latter nor the devs. It’s just the way it is.

In conclusion, saying that the super fancypants editions may not match their exact value by whichever standard is fair enough, but I do think they are wonderful and well made racing games with tons of stuff to do. Surely as a veteran you recall all the reused content of previous titles, but that’s some high level nuisiance.

You’re obviously having a good time, you just seem to dislike the deal you struck. So maybe you should just continue with the vanilla versions and enjoy yourself, rather than angrily gambling with luxury toppings!

:slight_smile:

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I’ve literally just bought the Standard Edition too. I think I’ll be more than happy with it. In the end I never got any DLC apart from a few select car packs for Horizon 2 or Horizon 1 and never had a problem having fun with them. While my gamer brain demands to have definitive editions of everything I’m happy that my logical brain made this decision as the DLC is now worth more than the base game, in fact it’s always been this way for Horizon games.

While I agree that Horizon does offer much more for the base price than most games out there I just cannot warrant that kind of expenditure on one game anymore. Even Fallout 4 with all the DLC’s only set me back £60!

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Pssh, I got Fallout 4 in an Amazon sale for about £25, along with the Season Pass while it was still cheap (£25 I think).

All in all, that was about £50 for a ton of content, not forgetting the Season Pass that includes everything. Even if I’d bought the game from new that’d still be less than £100 or so, £100 for EVERYTHING in the game. I can pay that for a Forza game and get about half the stuff for the game. Why the huge difference? All points towards this series clearly milking it’s fans for money, because they know the fans will throw money at them no matter what.

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I can agree that the Forza franchise is starting to get annoying with some of it’s practices, my issues aren’t with pre-order stuff and big collectors edition content, or microtransactions; cos I really don’t participate in them. Well… I did for Forza Motorsport 6, I pre-ordered the console; but I wanted a console and it really was a better deal than buying one from gamestop, but I did it more for the console than the game. lol! With that exception in mind I decided after the first Forza Horizon title that I’d not pre-order anything from Forza again.

My problem is with details within the game, and the decisions made regarding content and features. I still have fun playing the game, sometimes begrudgingly.

I think that’s the important thing to remember. Did you enjoy the game? Preorder content, collectors editions, microtransactions; honestly they’re not needed in my opinion, and I don’t hate them meerely for existing, and it’s because I DON’T have to use these options to play the game.

In the end, here’s how I feel about the Forza Horizon 3.

Is it fun? Yeah!
Was it worth $63? Eh…
Was it worth trading in a few games I don’t play anymore and only paying $6.50 out of pocket? Absolutely!

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Bye Felicia!

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In Your Opinion.

Actually, the game adjusts the cars and builds/tunes of the drivatars to match, as closely as possible, the vehicle YOU enter. You can literally enter ANY vehicle in ANY race, with the exception of the Midnight Battles.

There is ZERO need to use any specific car, or even to upgrade/tune a car to be “competitive”, unless you WANT to. It’s about choice, you see.

I’ve run 99% of my career in bone-stock vehicles (mostly c class). I’ve spent maybe 5 minutes total in my HE cars.

Note: the above applies to SP career only, online is a different story. HE cars are benificial in roadtrip/adventure, but that game mode is already broken IMO.

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This about sums of your post sir, no need for all of the filler because people make post like these every single Forza game and still play the game along with everyone else :slight_smile:

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Playing and paying for are not the same thing. I’m going from a $100+ annual customer to a $2 maybe Redboxer.

But damn the Kool-Aid is strong in this forum. I regret trying to stand up against blatantly devious business practices that affect us all whether people want to admit it or not. My bad.

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You mention Kool_aid so you must be aware that Apple is many times more devious than any software or hardware company on the planet, as well as all their games being free for about 5 minutes and then you have to start paying.
Maybe you just need a break for a while because this is actually quite a good game, have a look at the majority of rz6cing gz6mes they nearly all have extra content and dlc you have to pay for.

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There were no forced microtransactions in forza 6
Only impatient people used them or people that had little time to play

No one forces you to buy extra content in fh3 either
Its all personal choice
Same as buying the game to begin with

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It’s no different than any other game with dlc now-a-days. Granted some offer season passes that cover most if not all content, but few (key word there) support fresh content updates every month. Let alone, expansions in between that immerse you even deeper into the game bringing more challenges. But to each their own.

Also… did you sleep much since launch? Lol I’m at or close to lvl 70 and I feel like I’ve gotten no where in the game, but I also drove around for hours looking for boards and discovering all the roads, all the barn finds, which I wish would have spaced out more honestly (also aware people are having issues with them not popping up at all, glad that wasn’t the case with me). Did a few buckets, 3 stars on all the pr stunts I have unlocked, except one as of tonight and only 1 championship down. I feel like I’ve along ways to go before I’m tired of it or close to the end.

All in all though from my wallets standpoint. I agree it’s a big chunk of money for a game, then to turn around and drop more an expansion pass. However UE owners get a discount on it til the end of the year. Which if it saves me a few bucks on the total overall price, and it keeps me enthralled in the game, for more time than I should be spending on a game… lol… I’ll gladly pay for a pass vs. What they did in fm6 where nascar and porsche were 20 a piece. Then handed out almost like candy during the forza rc. But it was a good incentive for players, and had I not owned both Ida been right there in leagues with everyone else bumping and grinding to win em.

Alot of money for the game at the end of the year, sure, but being entertained monthly by new, curious, odd, or fast cars and new places twice in a year, and maybe even more than twice with H3, as no one knows what t10/pg have planned over the next year. Not to mention forzathon challenges, weekly? To me it evens out.

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I understand where you’re coming from. When I picked up Horizon 2 and worked out how much all the different car packs, VIP pack, expansions, etc would cost I was shocked to the point where I didn’t actually buy any of them; I just played the game in it’s vanilla state and had a blast.

While I was pretty hyped for Horizon 3 and was prepared to get the Ultimate Edition a surprise bill put that plan on hold. Now I’m looking at all the issues with the PC version (my preferred platform) and how much all these packs are going to add up to and I’ve come to the happy conclusion that I’ll be fine with the Standard Edition. I’m in no hurry to blast through the game so I don’t need VIP; there’s over 350 cars in the base game alone and I doubt I’ll ever actually use all of them, more would just compound that issue (unless there’s a specific car I really want, in which case I can just buy that); the expansions are an unknown quantity at this point so I’m not paying upfront.

Overall it’s the way of the industry now and like the OP I’ve had enough of the overpriced DLC’s. I’m all for DLC when it’s good quality and priced correctly but for Horizon 2 I picked up the base game for £20 and then would’ve had to spend over £100 more to get all the extras. That’s just daft!

Of course the product description of each edition was pretty clear; no-one is getting screwed in that respect unless they didn’t read the description. While I don’t like the stupid cost of the full experience it’s in no-way mis-advertised.

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But you were totally happy to buy the Car Pass with zero knowledge of what’s in it?

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Thats not a great comparison, is it?

When getting the car pass you know you will get 6 monthly car packs with X cars in it. All you don’t know is which cars.

For the expansion pass you only know there will be two expansions, but what does that mean? Are they map expansions? Are they just big car packs like the Porsche expansion? Are they just more events on the same courses but with different surfaces (rally expansion in FH1)?

I can see where he’s coming from on this particular point.

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It is when you’re arguing out of principle like the OP is doing. They’re the same in that respect.

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Then don’t buy it yet, wait and see what’s revealed before the end of the year. I probably won’t take advantage of the discount if there are no further details, but it’s no surprise there are expansions to pay for above and beyond the base game - that’s good news to me though as I’m having a ball with FH3 right now and expansions can only keep that going for longer!

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