I, like many people, am extremely disappointed in this game. The lack of content is seriously alarming, and the fact that T10 don’t even bother listening to their fans is also a major red flag. They don’t care to ask us what we want to see in the game, or what bugs we want them to fix. They just do whatever they want and completely ignore us, and it’s honestly time for that to change. T10 need to start asking users what they want in future updates. Ask what cars or tracks we want, what features we’d like, any bugs we want fixed etc. Or, make a forum post about planned changes so that you can get REAL feedback from your players and fans, in order for you to understand what we actually want from the game; that way, if we don’t like it, you don’t have to add it.
You’ve had 6 years since FM7 came out to make it work and you’ve messed it up. Start listening to your audience and maybe the game will redeem itself.
This forum has a Suggestions Hub and a Troubleshooting Hub.
…Not that the last 18 years of player feedback seems to make much difference.
When games are released with so many bugs/defects/issues, “PoSt-LaUnCh SuPpOrT” can take years to get them fully functioning properly - and by that time, game companies then release another half-baked installment/sequel that has more bugs to spend years patching again.
When games are released with so many bugs/defects/issues, all the “PoSt-LaUnCh SuPpOrT” needed can get in the way of adding new features.
T10 released the first Forza Motorsport game in 2005, so if this is what they’re delivering after working on this series for more than 18 years across 8 installments, I don’t expect them to do better going forward.
4 titles in a row in this series have seen reductions in features, little (or nothing) new & innovative added, declining sales, deteriorating quality, worsening customer satisfaction, shrinking player engagement, and little ongoing coverage/exposure from major influencers in the genre.
The downward past-to-present trend-line over the last decade gives me the impression that it will likely only continue getting worse.
The problem is that the forum is an echo chamber with no discussions from the T10 Design/Product Leadership Teams (the developers are doing their jobs, it’s the game design and T10 leadership that’s the problem). It’s radio silence until the first two weeks of every month, and then we are provided a predetermined car/track/feature list along with a list of fixes that we can expect only half to be actually fixed along with several new issues.
There are not very many people playing FM now, and that is sad. The current Car Suppressi…I mean Progression system only exists to inflate game time, as it adds nothing to the game (past the first few career sessions) other than a barrier to having fun. I connect with my cars just fine building and tuning them, as driving production cars in stock form is unpleasant and unnecessary. Then you add ~1.5 hours to car level 25 (~3.0 hours to level 50) for each car adds up when you are talking nearly 600 cars, and you are talking hundreds of hours in just driving to unlock parts to build a car to race -OR- You forget about 75% of the cars in the game and just run Touring Cars and GT Cars in MP Hoppers.
Listening to the community? From my perspective, they’ve had their chance and choose not to have a discussion. We just get what we get and we need to accept it I suppose. They are making the game and they already have my money, but I will most likely never pre-order or even purchase another T10 or Playground Games title. What does that mean? Nothing, at least not to T10.
Who do we know that is admin on here? I vote that we ping them in every single post like this until we either get banned or they listen.
It’s obvious that they don’t check this, or Reddit. I would personally be okay if they at LEAST acknowledged us and told us to go pee up a rope. This absolute silence from the higher echelon is deafening and says more than words.
They have not listened to one suggestion since day one.They have gathered their awards for their ‘best in class racer’ 'best accessability award-(they deserved this one)'or whatever awards they decided to give themselves and are just gonna keep with the slowest drip of content possible while still keeping the ‘service game’ alive in case more shills come along ,like at Christmas.Should snag a few soccer moms into buying for their weekend sons to keep them happy amiright?
I’ll give you guys an example of T10 ignoring us:
How many years has the community been crying out for Fujimi since it got dropped? About 10 years, right? Well, still no sign of it anywhere in the game.
Another: How much did people want FH5 to be set in Japan? A lot, right? So T10 decide to give us Mexico instead. People even wanted FH4 to be in Japan, but they gave us Britain instead.
Not to mention all the other stuff which is still yet to be fixed despite constant reports from the community.
Slight correction: Playground Games handles Horizon, Turn 10 handles Motorsport
Speaking on that note, it kinda baffles me how things seemingly aren’t shared across Horizon and Motorsport, outside of the occasional handful of cars (Though the topic of the car selection in Horizon and in Motorsport is a whole can of worms that I don’t quite want to open here).
Horizon had the bucket/cart system for upgrades since FH3 I believe, but Motorsport didn’t get a similar feature until FM 2023 (paired with car points unfortunately).
Horizon 4 and 5 introduced us to spacers, but I was pretty disappointed to find out they didn’t make it to FM. Even a small change in how the wheels are set in the arch can make a big difference in how the car looks.
Horizon 5 had some cool paint features added, such as layer masks, paint groups (for the body of the car as well as for rims), and adjustable luster/texture(?) for decals. FM thankfully got masking and paint groups (though paint groups for some rims are downgraded, oddly enough), but the adjustable luster/texture didn’t make it.
Another thing that’s kinda the reverse of that:
FM2 introduced the auction house. FH1/FM5, it gets removed. It takes them until FH3 to bring it back, and then they bring it back to FM again in FM7.
Car gifting was ALSO removed in FM5, didn’t come back in any form whatsoever until FH5. 8 WHOLE YEARS.
Actual multiplayer lobbies? ALSO removed in FM5. You see where I’m going with this?
Forza aero (the one with the curves on the wing): Introduced in FM5, still here 10 years later, even though we have CONSTANTLY asked for it to change.
Again, I get that FM and FH are managed by different studios, but my point still stands.
Branded upgrades (I’m talking stuff like tyres, engine upgrades etc)? Hasn’t been a thing since FM2. 2007. One of the coolest features ever and they’re just like ‘yeah… no’
My point: They just get rid of all the cool stuff, and either bring it back years later, or just keep it removed. And then the stuff we DON’T like, they keep, even after we make it clear that we don’t like it.
Yeah it’s just been a mess all-around. I think compared to Turn 10, Playground Games have honestly been knocking it out of the ballpark with Horizon. There’s been a ton of progress in between FH4 and FH5, and although there’s still some things that could be better (like the choice to have private lobbies), I’d consider Horizon to be doing very strong.
Forza Motorsport 7 IMO wasn’t doing too bad toward the end of its lifespan. Especially with the introduction and testing of FRR and the changes in collision physics, as well as some of the multiplayer lobby functionality. I guess that’s the biggest thing about FM to me, it just feels like the game went backwards. Lessons learned with FM7 were forgotten in the 6 or so year gap between the releases.
Bringing it more towards the topic of the discussion, the radio silence from Turn 10 is really killing the hope for the future of this game. There seriously needs to be some back and forth between the players and the development team.
What is the direction of the game going forward?
What kind of features are being worked on? Do these features align with what the player base wants? Are these features the main priority for the player base?
If there is one thing right now that you would like to see changed, what is it?
Something like that. We want to know what the development team is thinking, and they should know what the player base is thinking (at least the part of the player base that is willing to provide constructive feedback). The Suggestions Hub and Troubleshooting Hub are ways for us to provide feedback, but without any response from the developers it just feels like having a heated discussion with a brick wall.
One thing I think needs to be continually emphasized was that Horizon 5 really didn’t start to begin a recovery until shortly after Mike Brown left. That first year of post-launch updates was rough, and reeked of commercialized apathy; the Hot Wheels Expansion, in addition to being an inferior take on a property Playground Games had already handled nicely once before, was effectively a three-hour commercial - and a poor one at that, since none of the press releases that were used as scripts even bothered to address some of the brand’s more influential figures like Ryu Asada (who I believe passed away either sometime before or after the DLC released). Then there was Extreme E and the 10th Anniversary updates, and the less said about either of those, the better.
Thing is, one of the reasons Horizon 5 was able to weather that is because they were and probably still are the face of the franchise now. People see Forza and instantly think Horizon. One of the reasons that Turn 10 really needs to get it’s crap into gear is because they no longer have the playerbase that will tolerate extended periods of nonsense; most of them are firmly Horizon devotees now. The few that remain needed and expected Turn 10 to drop a 10/10 banger of a video game, and what’s currently here barely rates a 4; worse, they are currently behaving as if they dropped that 10 and we’re all just idiots for not recognizing their greatness.
Unfortunately for Turn 10, the numbers are all but screaming in their faces about the effectiveness of that strategy. Motorsport 2023 can barely stay above 1000 players on Steam, it’s far, far, far down the XBox sales charts according to the Microsoft Store, and it just fell off of the same store’s Most Played Games list. People can see that the emperor has no clothes, and they’re not much of a looker, either.
This game needs massive, beneficial changes to be made to it to survive, and they simply do not have a year to stumble and trip their way through middling update after middling update. The sales aren’t there, and the players won’t tolerate it. Neither will Microsoft, for that matter, especially now that the year is thoroughly shot for XBox because Starfield’s underperforming and Bethesda’s scrambling to save that. Turn 10 has weeks. Not months. Weeks. After that, the knives are coming out, and I really don’t see how they escape a massacre of a restructuring.
That thing about forza aero is one of the things that pisses me off the most. F remodel that ugly thing. When I saw that FM is going to be a complete reboot I was hyped about it… I’ll never have to look at it. At this point I think they’re trolling us with it
T10 doesn’t seem to be passionate about any of this anymore and PG only seems to be passionate about goofy crap. The Forza brand as a whole has fallen quite far. Sure, FH5 has better sound and such, but FH is still a shadow of its former self. Might look pretty, but it’s pretty shallow beyond that. FM… I jus dunno anymore. A tech demo for handling model I guess. About all I get from it.
