Narrower roads

[garchompie]

A simple enough suggestion, whatever the devs have designed so far of the map I dont know, but to avoid the same problems seen in FH4, please make many of the roads significantly narrower, as they have been far far too wide for far too long in the series to the point it has become a running joke among many players.

(image sourcce: https://www.speedhunters.com/2023/11/sunday-drives-the-japanese-way/ )

Above is a nice example of the sort of road players are looking forward to in the next game - one lane fits exactly one car, in this case with a small centre divider sort of thing. Other roads are wider, others are narrower, but as a whole this is what people are looking forward to. Now lets look at a “tight and twisty road” from the rally expansion to FH5 -

(image source: Reddit - The heart of the internet )

This is a similarly sized car and as you can see you could easily fit 2 of them in a single lane with space to spare, one lane of this road is equivilent to BOTH lanes of the real road. In real life with the same lanes, this would be a 4 lane highway.

Here is a highway equivilent with a slightly wider but similar lane width:

(image source: Japanese Expressways )

Why is this a problem?

The width of the roads in game is clearly to cater to the wider audience alowing them to drive fast cars without getting frustrated; a wide road allows for a larger margin of error and more speed to be taken through corners which is somewhat needed when trying to drive things like the X class cars. The problem is, this completely steamrolls any ability for lower class cars to feel fun, especially in any sort of realistic way on these roads, and this will only be even more of an issue when talking about the japanese touge and the culture around it.

In real life you will see the equivilent of D class cars driving down these roads and theyll be as fast as any super car that tries to do the same. why? because the road is restrictive by nature, and finding the limits of the road happens far before the limits of the car.

These roads are exciting BECAUSE you can crash so easily, BECAUSE you can go there in a slow car and still really drive it. Its the saying “better to drive a slow car fast than a fast car slow”, you can take a stock fiat 500 from the 60s and hurl it down this mountain and feel like youre fighting for your life while going 35mph. If you can take these corners flat out in an S2 super car, youre going to take them flat out in everything else, thats boring and not fun at all, and yet many of the roads on the current volcano road in FH5 are like that.

Side effects of making many roads narrower:

+ Lower class racing will greatly be improved, you will actually be able to have fun driving stock kei cars on these roads.

- Some people may find it more challenging to drive the fastest cars in the game as fast as they can go

+ Rally driving will be improved both on and off road and realistic rally car builds with very close ratio gearing will be viable and fun compared to the current state of rally builds which require 1000hp and a top speed of 240mph

+ Driving fast cars fast will be rewarding

- Some races it may be hard to overtake or require alternative formats (famously on some roads, people racing down the mountains will use a kind of “follow the leader” race format where the person behind has to keep up with the one in front while the one ahead must pull some margin away, then the order is switched and they run again. Similarly they may race a time trial style against the clock where road position doesnt really matter)

+ Doing highway races around the highways in tokyo will require some amount of skill, weaving through traffic will be exciting, managing to brake properly for the tight corners that are found there. Also allowing lower horsepower cars to have a similar amount of fun doing it (people are known to race fairly low power honda civics on those roads and are seen as daredevils for it)

+ Driving will FEEL faster

Community fixes:

Currently with event lab creations, many players have addressed this road width problem themselves with some of the top “touge style” tracks will use props to literally block off entire lane(s) of road to recreate the narrowness expected, even cutting it down to a single car width that, in real life, would be a place where traffic must stop completely to give the other direction a moment to pass through, but in game creates a fun challenging and memorable part of the track that rewards precise driving and brave moves.

Variety is key:

Would it be a good idea for all roads to be that narrow?

no. Nor would I want that to be the case.

That being said, ALL roads should be narrower than their FH5 counterparts. Some amount of veriety is also important, some parts of these mountain roads are wider, some entire roads are wider, but some are also narrower or have narrower sections. This mix is what stops all roads feeling the same, what stops driving feeling repetative and boring, what encourages you to pick favourite roads that you regularly come back to to drive or take pictures or whatever else. Have some roads be as wide as those depicted in the Forza Motorsport track “Fujimi Kaido”, let some be single lane with dedicated passing zones, let others go between the two in different parts of the track, letting you strategise on the fly while racing to best manage your overtaking and defending.

I will close off with this image from FH3 to hopefully hammer home the point, except unlike back then, this type of road actually should demand that roads be narrow for gameplay reasons.

(image source: Road scale wrong, too wide. )

Does anyone think otherwise? I would love to hear from people that think the games roads are a good width or not wide enough because I cannot understand how this trend has continued without being addressed given how big of a knock on effect it has on how the game feels.

[MarsTieger]

Overall I agree, but I think there should be a mix of both. Many roads in previous games were completely over the top when it comes to width, but I think making all the roads realistic size, could make the game frustrating for people who mostly drive fast cars and don’t wanna deal with traffic.

An easy fix that I personally wish for years now, is a simple traffic slider in the menu and also the ability to turn off drivatars in free roam. If they implement those two features, then I don’t see any issue with realistic sized roads.

[garchompie]

I can agree to wanting traffic control, especially when trying for PR stunts. for what is fundimentally a singleplayer experience, its bizarre how little control you have in that area. Like in races yea force traffic settings, but for me just driving about, even if im in a convoy, why not? even limit it to convoy leader settings if you want so everyone must run what the leader sets in that instance.

And yea, variety is key as I said, accross the board they all need wider, but there should be sections that allow cars to stretch their legs. The addition of some real or realistic race tracks might also help that balance, since if you wanna drive fast those areas would guarentee it. Parts of the tougue have very narrow lanes but also large non-lane sections between them to allow vehicles like busses to turn without crossing the dividing lines in the corners and I would love to see those sorts of roads represented in game because of the differences they bring, but oh boy we also need that range of narrow roads to balance out those sections, and we never really have gotten it.

[garchompie]

Im also just gonna take a moment to post some really narrow roads from the Japanese rally (either from the stages or promotional images taken by teams) because they really show the usecase well outside of this “togue drifting” niche.

(image source: WRC 2024 Rd.13 Day 2 | 2024 | PRESS RELEASE | WRC | TOYOTA GAZOO Racing )

(image source: Rally Japan: Five Škoda crews finish inside the WRC2 top 10 at the season’s finale - Škoda Motorsport )

(image source: FORUM8 Rally Japan reveals 2025 itinerary and ticket details )

(image source: DirtFish's Rally Japan 2024 driver ratings – DirtFish )

Something I also didnt really mention is that roads being narrow is also about their effective width, heres a pic from the japanese rally where you can see that there is no room for error, its all very well and good having a narrow road but if either side is flat and theres no penalty for driving on it, people will just use it as road, its important to actually enforce that narrowness at least sometimes:

(image source: https://www.facebook.com/motorsportskoda/posts/2-local-crews-will-enter-rally-japan-2024-with-fabias-osamu-fukunaga-pictured-in/953169033524186/ )

[MarsTieger]

Hell yeah, I would love to see some sections for Rallying. I’m not too much into JDM stuff, I always played Forza Horizon for the Offroading and Rallying, if they can deliver some roads like these I’m more than happy!

[TheWarmWind76]

@garchompie

Some races it may be hard to overtake or require alternative formats

I hate to say it, because I broadly and emphatically agree with you, but I think this is the hill that the idea dies on.

Forza Horizon’s multi-car competitions are so intrinsically tied to the series, I’m not sure they can remove them without severely damaging the brand image.

They did add the new touge race mode, which could take place on narrower roads. I also think that the number of cars per race could be reduced without ruining that Horizon feel, and that would allow for narrower roads, but that comes with AI issues, and we’re already beyond pushing the limits of the current AI issues.

[Scubadubba6524]

I made a long post about this but decided to scrap it because i realized it’s hard for me to 100% address this in the way i would want, without needing to spend at least an hour reading this thoroughly and really nailing down on all the arguments i have without contradicting myself. I think it’s just a lot of stuff to try and digest at once. I’d say overall you make some points i would agree with but they’re not without it’s flaws.

I watched Blackpanthaa make a good argument on this topic. So i’ll just share the clip, which will hopefully give some much needed context. I’ve time stamped it so it’s straight to the point.

Forza Horizon 6 - My Biggest Excitements & Worries...

[MarsTieger]

Totally agree on that, “looking realistic” is one thing, but it also needs to feel right. I think from what we’ve seen so far, there’s enough narrow roads, but also wide ones. It’s probably gonna be a good balance in the end. If it feels narrow enough for realism, but is wide enough for casual arcade driving, then everyone should be somewhat happy.

[garchompie]

I would argue that it DOESNT feel right though, at least with the “narrowness” of roads we have seen in promotional material so far (unless ive missed some? I dont have twitter and I know stuff got posted there too so idk).

Like, if youve ever driven in real life, you feel like youre going fast far below 60mph/100kmh on many roads, because those roads are only slightly wider than the car youre in, in fact in some roads in parts of the world, you might even find a 2-way road thats single lane with dedicated passing zones, meaning its literally not possible for 2 normal sized cars to exist side-by-side on these roads, these sorts wils prevent some cars like the lamborghini aventador from going down them because of how wide the car is.

Compare that with foza where the narrowest possible road is STILL 2-2.5 large cars wide per lane. This will mean that you wont have that sense of speed in slower cars, in fact theyll just feel extra slow. A D class car in real life can still feel “too fast”, and thats what the game is missing.

its okay to have a large sections of road that only some cars can access at all, and some roads that are only racable in slow cars, that makes those cars usable instead of just feeling like a slower choice than an A class or above alternative. I dont think you should be able to race hypercars down the MAJORITY of the mountain roads, have a few sure, but the vast majority of them they should struggle to turn sharp enough even at slow speeds to make the corners. Give me a reason to race a stock AE86 or lotus elan without needing 300hp in them to make them interesting.

Another thing is like, the entire thing with drifting in the touge is because the tight roads necessitate abusing slip angle to make the tight corners at speed, like the whole origin of it is arguably “man this corner is too tight to take, better spin the car so im facing the right way” lmao. make the roads wide and you lose the entire foundation of that

[Dacheeze177]

This is an exceptional post, and quite the case study for the development team if they do review it.
You have captured everything perfectly. Especially when you combine this with the more and more destructive obstacles/boundaries (like the snowy trees we now see you can just go straight through on Mount Fuji), there is way too much comfort on these roads. Even if you manage to slide off of them, you just have a whole forest of run off that you can plow through.

I recently replayed FH1 from start to end, and yes there are many valid criticisms about that map, but one thing it did well is it’s difficult to fully open up the top class vehicles on anything other than the highway. The final race can actually be difficult based on your car and settings because you have to roar down side roads in a massively over powered car. And if you miscalculate a turn? Then you knick an indestructible wall or tree and go spinning off.

I think there are some decent counter arguments here, but you have already addressed them in your main post. You are not saying all roads. You are not even saying most roads. You are just asking for variety, and some more realism, and I can’t see how any true fan, especially those who enjoy more simulation based games, can disagree here.
And in terms of this not being do-able because of game mode restriction, I also totally disagree there. I think if 25% of roads were small scale this would be no problem, only use these sections and areas as rally races (oppurtunity to introduce stages), touge races, low class car races, and even highly technical drift zones. This covers most of it no? I’m sorry if not every road can be an S1+ race track-- it doesn’t need to be, and it shouldn’t be.

Much appreciate the time you took to write out these posts, and hopefully they gain some recognition I think it’s too late now for the day 1 map, but if they have dynamic areas, add-on areas, or the DLC, maybe we can hope they implement this there. As you reference they did try to go this route a bit more with the Rally expansion, so hopefully they will again commit further as the rally expansion was fairly well received for it’s road layout in comparison to the main map.

Great stuff!