So it seems like there is quite a bit of unrest in the Forza community right now. I tried to like this game, and I still kinda do. But after trying to play in a multiplayer private lobby last night, my liking for the game is slowly fading. My issues are the following –
Frame rate drop in private lobby – I was doing just fine in a public lobby, but while racing with my club in a private lobby (Basically all I do in Forza) I was very disturbed by the absolutely horrid frame rate drops I was seeing. I am playing on Xbox, is this an issue with my setup or the game?
Private chat / lobby chat – This whole switching you to party chat while joining an online lobby kind of stinks, and the lobby chat is still not working properly.
Homologation (spelling?) – At first I thought this would be a great idea, but the more and more I see how it works, the more I dislike it. Good idea, bad practice. Put the class system back in multiplayer and on the leaderboards.
Locked cars – Yeah I get it, you want your game to be an RPG… sort of. Just unlock all the dang cars, a lot of us came here to race the cars we want to without some invisible barrier preventing us from doing so. Example: I was telling myself all week before release that I was very much looking forward to whipping the Aston Martin Vulcan around the ring, much to my surprise, I cannot do that just yet.
AI still sucks – We are now basically forced to play the career mode, and I am not opposed to doing that, I enjoy the career. But the issue is that the AI is still stupid as ever on certain tracks. Some tracks we will have a tight race, others tracks have the AI braking in zones that it just doesn’t need to. Come on guys, the AI has been horrid in this game for as long as I can remember, make it better! If I am playing on unbeatable difficulty, then I shouldn’t be destroying the field by 30 seconds on a “long” 20 minute race. Also the AI has zero awareness of their surrounds, they constantly sideswipe you or blatantly block you. I do have limit aggression turned on.
Public lobbies are still a disaster-- Now granted the full release of the game was yesterday, so it’s obvious some pretty new drivers were out there. But jesus, all you have to do is deploy the most basic of penalty system for cheaters and over aggressive drivers. Not only would it get rid of wreckers, but you also could remove all the unneeded walls in the game that make most of the circuits look crowded and not show off their true beauty.
Game is too dark – I tried adjusting my TV but am still thinking that the game just needs to be a couple shades lighter, also brake lights are very difficult to see. For those of us who do not play with braking line, this makes the game more difficult.
No pit strategy – I get it, you’re not trying to make a real sim. But when tire/fuel/damage is on “simulation” then one would think with the implemented weather system, that Turn 10 would allow for a change of tires from drys to wets. That pit strategy is a huge part of motorsport when the weather is an issue.
Damage system – It is still just awful in my opinion. Damage goes from 0% to 100% with no in between. If damage is on simulation, I think things like tire punctures, especially in open wheeled cars is a must. The visual side of it is also not great. All your car does is receive scratches and dents, what happened to the days where bumpers would come completely off?
Maple Valley – One of the best fictional tracks ever made, if not THE BEST. And what do you do? Change it? Maple Valley is now wider and more like the Alps in my mind. It was better off being a tighter track with more technically challenging layouts.
FFB is still not quite there – As a wheel user since Forza 4, I think the FFB is an improvement over 6, but it still has a long way to go when compared to PCARS and Asetto.
Time and weather – The weather system is freaking awesome, but I think a time system would put it over the edge. I think the setting should be just like the one in PCARS, with a x0, x2, x5, x10, blah blah blah. I love the idea of putting the race on X60 time and starting in the middle of the night and racing till mid day. Forza would benefit from this.
All and all I think the game is a work in progress, and still has not found my final verdict quite yet. Will be playing the crap out of it and I am very much hoping that Turn 10 gets their stuff in order. They have the chance to make the greatest racing title of all time, but I feel like their are other forces at work and disconnect with the community that is really making Forza take a turn for the worse.