Need basic help on how multiplayer works

Forza Horizon Forza Horizon 4 FH4 Discussion
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Hey I’m new to this kind of game, I have played an hour or so and went to a race, got a basic introduction to making ‘blueprints’ for a race and made a blueprint, 1 person joined the race with me and we raced. After this I went to the next race and tried multiplayer again but it just runs out of time and kicks me out for not enough players every time.

I’m a little confused how multiplayer works in the game, for example how would I join a race with somebody else either on their ‘blueprint’ or even just a standard race? Also how do people join my races? Do they have to just happen to turn up at the same location in the game as me at the exact 40 second interval I want to race at or is there some menu that shows a list of all the people wanting to race where you can easily join or invite? I can see a lot of these blueprints that other people have made but again there is nobody participating in these it seems.
The game can’t honestly expect me to wait at a location for ages until somebody else just happens to want to race me can it? That seems kind of broken.

Maybe I have it all wrong, Am I just very early in the game and it opens up and is a lot easier to find opponents later on? Am I approaching it the wrong way completely? Should I be playing solo and then some end game opens up where people are all racing each other or is the multiplayer just a bit dead (I can’t see that happening so close to release of a pretty big title)?

To cut it all short, I don;t care if I am joining other peoples races they have set up or them joining events I create, I just want to do some multiplayer racing. So early in the game with it throwing new mechanics at me every few minutes I’ve got quite confused by it all and would love a bit of help.

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First of all you need to be online to play with others. When online, you can choose between Solo,Co-op and PvP Races (except for Showcase Events where PvP is out) once you drive to the race.

After this decision, you can pick which blueprint you want to play or create your own. After that you pick your car and then the game tries to find people. Simple as that.

Now the big problem for this game: It only searches in your current Horizon Life lobby and not throughout the whole game. That’s why many people have problems finding online races.

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[Mod Edit - Abbreviated profanity, profanity and profanity that is disguised but still alludes to the words are not permitted - D]

Just play the single player, do what you can and then stop playing, the game isnt worth your time playing online

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The online multiplayer is a bit hit and miss atm. Conceptually it’s a good idea, they’ve taken an mmo approach but the explanation and execution isn’t their atm.

In joining other people, you’ll get a little green icon above your mini map, when someone is starting an event, you then need to hit LB from the main map to open it up and join. This feature isn’t explained at all in the game and is part of the reason why it’s so hard to find a match not many people know about it. On top of that their is 70 different locations that an event can be started from with only a maximum of 72 people per server, and usually more like 30-40. So huge selection and a small population to respond. This would only really work if you have mmo sized servers with thousands of people.

The seasonal events do use matchmaking for PvP, but they are a bit temperamental atm, it has a habit of matching you to a different one than what you selected. Their is also casual and ranked team adventures as well, but the ranked system is pretty broken atm as well

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So if I happen to see this green icon, that means someone somewhere on the map wants a multiplayer race? And I assume everyone else sees the same green icon too if I try and start one?

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Yes but the problem is the icon is very small and most people don’t even notice it.

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So there is a separate mode entirely to the story mode? Because yes it seems like I’m basically having a multiplayer race at an event and it’s progressing the story.
As I said I’m still early in the game and still a bit thrown off by all the different menus it keeps throwing at me.

I’m happy to play through a story mode with occasional multiplayer thrown in there if there is some way afterwards to play more reliable on demand multiplayer. Is that how it works?
Still, while I’m progressing the story it would be nice to play more multiplayer in doing so but as I said before it times out 99% of the time so i just have to race the missions on my own.

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I’ll be on Sunday if you wanna hook up ill talk you through the menu etc.

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Basically from what I have played, I will try to give a quick summary…I should say I am very pleased with how online works because there is a lot of variety and different ways to play online.

-You can Freeroam online(72 players max I think per server) and this is called being in a “Horizon Life” Session. Other people will be ghosted. You can quickly check if you are online by pressing Start/Menu, and if you see the message on the right side “Play Online”, you know that you are not yet in an online session. Usually it will join a server by default after a few moments, so you don’t really need to do anything. If you approach a ghosted player, you can interact with them and challenge them to a head to head race, invite them to your convoy.

-Whether you are online or offline, you can always press Start/Menu, and select Team Adventure, then choose Quickplay Adventure……this is unranked play, best 3 out of 5 events wins(team play), does game-wide matchmaking……usually very quick to get into one of those. In this mode, the seasons may change in between Matches(Same thing with ranked I think). Otherwise, most of the other modes are dependant on what season it is now in the servers, now it is Winter.

-From Team Adventure, you can also play Ranked at any time. You have to go through 10 matches first(qualifiers) before getting your ranking. It takes longer to get into this, but what I do is play around the map while it keeps trying to find a match and until everyone accepts…usually I get in a match within 10 min…best 3 out of 5 wins(team play)

-While Online In a Horizon Life session, you can stop at any of the colored event icons on the map(road racing, dirt racing, etc). From there, you can choose to play Co-op or PVP. Co-op is against Drivatars(team play). PVP is against other players and follows the traditional scoring method, not team play basically…whoever makes it 1st wins. Choosing one of those will initiate a 45 second timer and make a new icon appear on the left side of the screen of every other player who is in that server with you, the number 1 will be displayed and below it a prompt to press the A button(edit: may be different button for you depending on controller scheme). This will bring up the menu where the player can see the type of game you are hosting, and they can join you. For this method to work best, it helps to be in a server with a lot of players, like 40 or more. Usually I get 2-3 people joining my games.

-Seasonal Events: They change every Thursday. You can view those by going into your map and only show their icons in the filter. Also the welcome page has the Seasonal map info there as well. Usually, you have several regular icons that look similar(with the flag, or the road, etc) and one that looks different(Lion face). The regular ones can be played co-op or PVP. If you choose Co-op, it will work the same way I described above. If you choose PVP, it works differently, it will initiate game-wide matchmaking(after the current race ends) and will look for players in FH4 who are looking to race there, not just people in your current map server. This will initiate a championship of several events, and you race online against others with the traditional scoring method of getting points as you finish in higher positions.

The Seasonal Icon with the Lion Face works differently as far as its co-op is concerned, choosing that will initiate game-wide matchmaking as well, and it will be you and a bunch of other players against a team of highly skilled Drivatars. I quite like this mode, and as far as I know it is the only one that does matchmaking like that. Team play (Best 2 out of 3 )

Anyways, hope that helps some people, and I wrote this from memory a little quickly so apologies if there are mistakes and feel free to correct me there, but that is based on my experiences so far, I still have not tried many other features. Loving this game keep up the good work PG!

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I haven’t tried this seasonal races but the previous one I tried to do the muscle class-B racing pvp but everytime I selected the pvp I got thrown in an offroad series. I couldn’t figure out to see if there is a rotation or a specific series specially for pvp or whatever. Am I blind or is it just random? It’s hard to prepare a vehicle for a championship this way.