I have been playing Forza Horizon games since the first one. It was, and still is the best open world racer out there. However, there are some aspects that irritate me to no end. Chief of these is the inability to purchase all base content regardless of progression. I am a “Hall of Fame” member, and have finished every imperative story mission, and yet, I am completely unable to purchase vehicles like the 2015 M-B AMG GTS, the 2021 Audi RS-7. It wouldn’t matter if I had 999,999,999cr to spend, I can’t have 'em. It does NOT keep me hopefully coming back, it just frustrates me and causes me to not want to play the game. The Auction House economy has packed its bags and left PGG’s HQ. There are now entire subreddits and the like catered just to getting people the content they already paid for. Some people, even then, after a coordinated effort with other real people wind up empty handed due to bots/others sniping the car from them in under 2 seconds. Is that immersion? I call that a wild inconvenience. I call that PGG should gift those people 100m cr because their UI is broken. It has gotten completely out of control - I have to go do research, register for and join a separate 3rd party community just to have a CHANCE to purchase a $100,000 car for $20,000,000. I completely understand making some content hardER to acquire, otherwise you don’t really have a game… However, it shouldn’t be bordering impossible. The Auction House, as it stands, is just gambling… Gambling some are literally addicted to. It needs a total rebalance and more structure.
As far as a solution, I can think of a couple of simple ones - Easiest would certainly be to stop featuring cars that are available in the Autoshow in the Festival Playlists. It would force you to set rare cars as prizes every week instead of at random, in turn bringing the prices down and putting a smile on everyones face except those who are addicted to the auction house. Another solution could be gifting MZR518 an AMG GTS for my months of fruitless A-spamming suffering (just kidding - kind of). Another real solution could be to simply be to somehow prevent the bot sniping - lets just call it that… even if it’s real people. It’s not my job to polish that solution, that’s on you. However, my solution would be to make it possible to privately sell vehicles (SELL, not gift) to avoid sniping. Still involves leaving FH5 and coordinating elsewhere, but I have no problem paying another player max-buyout as long as I can just have the car and not worry about a lose-lose. Cap daily transactions to avoid exploitation. Before ending, I want to make my intentions clear once more - Make it POSSIBLE to acquire every car in the game (less the Oreo car etc, I totally get those being unobtainable) at all times. I play video games because I can’t afford 700 cars IRL… Let me buy them all.
I agree that the time limited content is very scummy. When the game is much later in its lifespan, they’re probably going to make the Backstage Pass from FH4 return, so if that does happen it would be an okay bandage solution.
The exclusive time locked cars are just abusive, exploitative game design. It’s not fun having to do the weekly chores, it’s fear of missing out on the car if you don’t.
The easiest solution I can think of is to simply allow previous weekly playlists to be accessible from a menu. There’s still some player action required to “earn” the cars, but everyone gets a chance. This will crash the auction house market for artificially rare cars, but that’s fine. The AH needs to die in a fire anyways.
If I could play this game 100% offline and not miss any cars I would be very happy, I hate the forced persistent online economy.
at the very very least, just let the rare cars be purchasable for 20 million