Just completed a lot of road races including the Goliath where I won the big prize - Road Race Champion. It was a lot of fun even with the avatar issues we all know about. The Goliath was very enjoyable and even sweated a bit. Then we came to the rewards. Some points, money, all good and then the big wheel spin. Guess what I won after all that work - a SILK SHIRT.
At that moment I just wanted the software/game developer that created these insulting, obnoxious, demeaning and incredibly frustrating prizes in my gaming room with me so I could express my anger in the most effective way possible if you get my meaning.
Same here. I don’t care about spins at all. The game is great and devs don’t need that psychic helper. It’s a bit sad not be happy about spins but that’s the reality.
IMHO, the devs made a huge mistake with the implementation of wheelspins in the game. I think I understand what they were trying to achieve (slow down game progression so power players don’t blast through all the content too quickly, which still ended up happening anyways due to the goliath glitch) and also provide opportunities for microtransactions if public opinion of them were to change, but the way it’s been implemented just feels wrong to me.
First off, the whole wheelspin system is lootboxes under a different name. These types of gambling systems are lazy, abusive game design IMHO that needlessly drag out the game and abuse psychology to keep players playing with minimal dev effort. Given the near complete lack of story/progression content in FH4, I can understand why they went this route even though I don’t agree with it and think it was a low move. I know that wheelspins have been in Forza for a long time, but in the past (before FH3) they weren’t the exclusive source of anything and were effectively completely optional. The big mistake in FH3 and to a much greater degree FH4 was putting far too much exclusive content in wheelspins (and in time-limited events).
Second, as the OP brought up, mixing the avatar customization items into the wheelspins was a bad idea. I personally don’t mind the avatar customization and think it’s a neat feature, but I know that not everyone cares about the avatar customization. By cluttering up the already annoying wheelspins with this junk it makes the system feel even more rigged to drag out the game by having an even lower chance to actually win something desirable. A much better solution that’s been mentioned many times would have been just to have an avatar store for players who want it, and those who don’t could just ignore it.
Lastly the whole duplicate worthless vehicle mess actually makes wheelspins in many cases have a negative value where the player is punished by being force-fed a worthless car with no option to sell like in FH3 (or even just refuse the reward), wasting the player’s time and a valuable garage slot where they have to tediously go through the garage and remove the offending vehicle.
Honestly, this whole system stinks of a combination of greedy corporate management who were enamored with EA’s successes with lootboxes and wanted something similar in Forza, and rushed game design that didn’t identify all the friction points with the system that’s been breeding resentment towards the devs and the franchise since launch.
When will it be removed like the loot boxes of motorsport 7? This was eventually a great move from t10. The game designers should concentrate what elements of a design are key to it’s element and nature of itself. This is a racing game. So elements like cosmetic and performance upgrade parts, photos on covers of tuning magazines (nfsu) which you can collect and get more fans, which gives you rewards would be far more suited then wheelspins. Why can’t we collect things one after another? Why must it be this spinning of the wheel, where you can see what you could have won. But you haven’t. This isnt a gambling simulator and I’m very concerned showing kids elements of gambling, where its just isnt justified why its even there. As a game designer you have some responsibilty what are you showing and teaching to kids. Gambling is a desease!
