Non-angry analysis of the game

Forza Horizon Legacy Horizon FH4 Discussion
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I have not given up on the devs yet and I very much hope that they follow healthy discussions. I have played FH 4 far more than 100 hours now and I think it is about time to make a little review and hopefully spark a discussion.

First of all let me tell you, that I love the game. I really do, but there are of course some things which could have been done better. I will start to write from the top of my head in no particular order.

  • Collecting cars is fun. I like that not everyone has every car after 2 weeks of playing. Some cars are hard to get. I did not glitch and so I “only” have a total of 80 Mio in winnings and I am lacking a lot of very cool cars. At the moment I am working on the F1 GT from McLaren. And it will be a proud moment once I can actually drive the car. I am sure that not everyone is agreeing, but making it harder to buy cars and earn credits is actually a lot of fun for me. But maybe you should put more weight towards racing then earning credits via wheelspins.

  • The UI and its ergonomy: Horrible… auction house is hard to use. For example, why are my search parameters always reset after I “B”? Why can’t I filter on my own. I want to see the legendary cars that are for sale. I maybe want to look for 2 or 3 cars in the auction house at once and not look for one, look for next, look for next. If I am looking for 3 Ferraris, I need to re-enter Ferrari every single time which is a lot of hassle. Same for other areas.
    Speaking of UI, why does it take 5 minutes to buy one car?

  • tuning, which has also to do with UI: I have some awesome tuners as friends and I follow them. Why are they not prioritized when looking for tunes? I don’t want to see if XYZ has mindlessly tuned his car to 911 PI, I want to see my friends tunes. Now I always have to write down the “creators name”, which is really not very interesting if you do it for the 100th time, just to see if he has a tune. I could write a lot more, but this is the part of the game that needs a lot of work.

  • Forzthon live event: I love this actually, It is fun to meet with other drivers and work towards a goal together. But the tasks itself are without any skill requirement and sometimes quite boring. If I work on a speedtrap e.g., it is much more efficient to not go for highest speed, but just for 200 and turn often. Additionally, the tasks are so different that they require different cars, yet changing cars is clunky and takes too long. At teh end of the event, I would like to know who had the highest score and overall has added most to the success of the event. This would be very cool. It would also solve the problem of drivers not participating in the event and just leeching points.
    How cool would it be to add more events, maybe races/coop races where we all hunt down and tag drivatars before they reach their destination?
    This kind of activity has lots of potential and I hope that you guys explore it in the future.

  • Seasons! I LOOOOVE seasons. I am always super excited when it is season change day and cannot wait to login after it changed. New championships, Forzathon shop has cool additions, but honestly, it is not enough. Because after 2 hours of driving the season is basically over and everything is done. Can’t you add events that let us grind? Maybe you guys promote a route done by us and let us race 50 laps or something like the endurance races in Forza 7. Give those guys who play a lot something to look for. Please more of this feature, it is amazing.

  • Wheelspins: I think you guys cooked this feature a bit too hot. With all the clothes, horns and 1000 credit fields, it can be very, very frustrating. Yesterday I had a super wheelspin with 400.000, a legendary car and 180.000… right under my picks. I actually won 1000, 5000 and gloves. It is still fun, but chance to win something valuable are too low. And with valuable I don’t mean cars, but something other than warm mitts. In all my wheelspins I only won 2 legendary cars and I think it could be a bit more.

  • Hot wheels and hot wheels cars: Yeah, I think a lot of guys will hate me for this, but “fun cars” and the hot wheel expansion in FH3 killed my immersion. Forza Horizon is a fun racer, but do not add to much very, very unrealistic things, because it breaks the game for some of us. Maybe release another game that promotes fun, unrealistic racetracks like Hot Wheels or Micro Machines, but do not mix it too much. I am already scared that one expansion will be hot wheels again, which means one expansion less to play for me. If your metrics say that this fun for a lot of people, by all means let them play it and go for it, but I hope there won’t be too much of it in the future.

  • Physics, cars , graphics engine, map: Nothing short of Amazing. Great Britain is my favorite horizon map up to this point. Thanks a lot for releasing drivable drift cars. This opened up a sport that I never explored before.

  • meaningful Content: For guys who play a lot, there is not enough content. You have cut out championships and pushed them to Season events, which I like, but we need more Season events (described in detail at some other place in this posting). I have done all races multiple times, nearly all achievements, I have put up rival times for a lot of Rival events, driven like 50 Goliath laps and nowadays when I log in, I ask myself: What can I do? I was putting a lot of hope into the route creator, but it is a gimmick, not a tool. Imagine what a good race creator (with fixable driving lines) could do? Promote 5-10 “Turn 10 pick” races per week and add meaningful rewards to drive like 50-100 miles on each of the tracks.

  • Multiplayer Team Adventures: I think I might be the only one, but I like the team aspect of Team Adventures. It motivates me to always give everything, even if I did a huge mistake and fell back to the end, I want to get the one car before me to add a few points for my team. 'What I dislike is the “beeline roam” aka “freerush” or whatever it is called :D. This is purely about luck and it is very unfun. I am bad at it, too.
    The ranked Adventures seem to be broken for me, because I never get a team running. It always says 11/12, not enough players, trying to find other session. Just give us even numbers and let us race, even if it is only 1v1. Being dependent on some players to hit the ready button in time is frustrating. And I have the idea that players just queue and not ready to spite the other online racers.

  • Driving! Hell, [Mod Edit - Abbreviated profanity, profanity and profanity that is disguised but still alludes to the words are not permitted - D]… please, for the love of racing cars, please punish rammers and make it impossible to use the guard railings as a crutch to go through corners faster. I see why they are there and missing a checkpoint is frustrating, but it is more frustrating to lose to guy who is faster than me because he uses the guard railing.

Let me close here, before I write so much that your harddrive is full :slight_smile:

Thanks for an amazing game and please think about the things that I said.

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I do agree pretty much with everything you said.

When talking about immersion, don’t forget that there are clowns in skeleton costumes with golden hats doing the dab emote 24/7. x_X

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It’s not what is offered that upsets people it is what was taken away. When all you want are open rivals, online CHOICE and blueprint championships it doesn’t matter if a bunch of stuff you are indifferent to is there or not. The core and soul of past Horizons has been taken away.

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Thank you!

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It was really weird that they are doing their mistakes twice. In FM 7, they took away the class based rivals and gave them back after a patch. What made them think that ripping them out of FH4 is a great idea?
My theory is that they are afraid of balancing. class based leaderboards show the dominance of some cars very clearly. And my gut feeling is that they want to avoid this.

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[quote=DunkelheitVZ;1002913It was really weird that they are doing their mistakes twice. In FM 7, they took away the class based rivals and gave them back after a patch. What made them think that ripping them out of FH4 is a great idea?
My theory is that they are afraid of balancing. class based leaderboards show the dominance of some cars very clearly. And my gut feeling is that they want to avoid this.
[/quote]

I think you’re onto something, because now I remember something the devs said on a stream about it before the launch of FM7 to explain homologation etc.

But really do they not understand that a significant minority of the loyal playerbase of their racing game are competitive people? We’re always going to want to find out what is best in any particular category, and then want to show off our discovery and achievement.

That’s why so many of us are baffled and perplexed and disappointed that class-based rivals has gone.

And btw check out DJS’s new video “top 10 cars you need to own”. He think the Ford Transit van might be the best handling S1 asphalt grip car in the game. Obviously we don’t have leaderboard to prove it, but think about that for a second……

I’m back in FM7 now where I can sit down for a couple of hours, find an interesting oddball, pick a track, build and tune the car, post my best time, and then go to bed happy. Like I used to with Horizon.

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I agree with all but the multiplayer aspect.

There is no teamplay in FH4, most of the time. Just do a tally chart of the leavers over the rounds… the sad thing is there are no alternatives - not one. Then again, your own performance has zero impact on your ranking if you’re in the losing team… not good at all.

The cheer randomness of the races doesn’t help either. I’m certain some guys really try to drive clean despite driving cars they’re not accustomed to… to some threshold point of being pushed around too much, then they give a four-letter word about it, too.

I’m experiencing the same problem with ranked games too, it took 100+ attempts to get the 10 qualifying sessions for the achievement.

Although I’m not too fond of the emphasis on avatar customization, I try to let my avatar (the lady with the afro, looking the most human to me - the others have weird eyes) look half-way decent and set to the season just for immersion. It’s a shame you can’t disable the freak show you get from 70% of the other drivers (I call em protesters). While we’re plastered with hundreds of clothes we don’t use, the execution of the idea feels half-hearted, really.

So for now, FH4 is but a very beautiful if ultimately boring cruising simulator. The devs still have all the means to turn it into the gem it deserves to be, and with little effort too (they just have to reimplement some old concepts). In the meantime I spend more time in the forum than in the game…

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Agree with most things you said!

My two cents are:

I think devs should realize who are the people they make the game for? People who love to race or people who just want to have fun with cars and don’t care about really racing. This are two groups with completely different interests.

For the “new school” players this is ok to ram each other and have hot wheels cars and DLCs because it’s just a way to have fun, without bothering about racing clean or keeping it real. They use assists and love S2 cars and team racing…

Old school people like me we love racing, we want race clean and love competition, we want multiplayer to be like in FH3 where everyone was separate and it was a challenge a battle of skill! And it’s pure fun for us - good clean with skilled opponents and with respect to each other. We love cars from D to S and want to ride it too, not only A+ cars. Because we love cars, we want to feel their character not swap v12 in it and ram others.

And I listen very carefully where forza wants to go - for what audience, because changes from FH3 to FH4 in terms of multiplayer, wheelspins and cosmetics are going the way I’m not happy with… And I’m really scared of the idea that we (oldschool players) can lost such title as Horizon because it will go NFS way all the way…

I’m upset that I can’t race alone with no team in multiplayer and my skill now means nothing because even if I took the first place my team can loose and it’s nothing to do with me personally and after that I have my rank go down.

And this team racing bringing not only and not so much team spirit as it brings all the bad qualities of the people. They ram you because they don’t want a fair competition - they want to win any cost! They push you out of checkpoints or ram into the wall in L turn when you try to race clean and take it through the apex. They break with you help and never break themself using walls to turn. It’s a hell for us - oldschool players.

There should be an option to race in team or alone and there should be an option to ghost races in both of this modes.

Freeroam Rush is a wheelspin) - it doesn’t depend on you skill! It’s a joke! In FH3 you was able to make skillchains or go faster and it was an option. In FH4 freeroam rush should be changed to FH3 style or be removed completely. I want to test my skill not my luck!)

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Is there not a tab for ‘Friends and Followed’ in tuning like there is in other sections?

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Great post with some great ideas. I just checked my stats and think I’m qualified to add to your 100+ hours with my 231 hours (If you say it fast it’s not that bad considering I work full time)

I’ll go through my thoughts as I read yours…

Collecting cars, love it though mid wheelspins today got a notification that my garage was full… (apparently multiple double/triple/quad cars adds up before you know it). I too am looking fwd to the F1GT to complete my McCollection.

Auction house, I have to say I’m also not a big fan. Not just UI related but I find it boring and loaded with unrealistic values. Yeah I get that if you have something special it should maybe fetch a higher price than the autoshow (I dont care if the person selling it has upgraded it to 9000hp either, that just locks it so I have to retune it and I don’t believe I get the value of those parts when i do). Devs this is how clunky the auction house is in agreement with OP…today making space in my garage I put 8 or so higher value cars up for auction and deleted anything under 25k (probably 15 or more cars that just aren’t worth the time it takes to list and not sell anyway). Why cant I just sell my “doubled up” cars at the wheelspin phase ie. FH3 “you already own this car, do you want to sell it”

UI related searching for anyone’s anything is just hard in general, I agree my friends should be first up. When it comes to Blueprinted events if I go to “friends and followed” I may get one of their latest but its rare.

Forzathon Live, yeah I enjoy it but find that with over 2000 pts accumulated I haven’t been doing them as much recently. On that I agree, in the forzathon shop I want the unobtainable, the illusive, the pot of gold…I want that to be in the thousands of points. I really am not interested in Tshirts and biker boots…I have enough clothes that what I really need is another business in game so I can sell them. The events themselves could be harder too, the only time I have not finished round 3 was when there was only me and one other player. On the subject of people not contributing…In the beginning it really annoyed me but now I’m thinking that maybe it was somehow patched. As I said I have not been doing them as often but twice recently when one has come up I have somehow found myself in the event (voiceover and gps directions would suggest)…not purposely avoiding contributing but doing other stuff, when it has come to the end of the event the notification says “Congratulations, you have won 0 points” LOL.

As my 231 hours would suggest, I have actually seen a few live season changes, so good!! Seasons are great, I did say in another post that the realism of winter may have been more than the Devs had counted on given I’m sick of driving after 2 days and would rather just paint cars. I think promoting one of our routes is an amazing idea and not just 'RobbieRankTenMillion’s" either…Im rank 3 and if you like endurance races I challenge anyone to do my “The UK 1000”. It’s 45 laps of a 22.3 mile circuit of fast flowing and tight technical dirt and asphalt. I nearly died lol, just under 10 hours race time with a somewhat disappointing payout of 3.9mil, 40 levels and 88 wheelspins. The satisfaction of completing a 1000 mile race I designed was awesome!! I love endurance races, one of my favourites on FM7 is grinding a Daytona 500 with all the scary mods equipped. I will one day attempt the full 161 at Mt Panorama.

I think I’ve already touched on w’spins, what I am waiting for most is getting 3 pairs of golden flats in a row on one spin, triggering an epic jackpot meltdown that wins me every clothing item in game and the notification “you own every item and will no longer receive clothing anymore”.

Please NO hotwheels, it was fun for about a month in campaign mode, only went back after a year to finish achievements. How about an IoM expansion or London, even back to South of France FH2 style.

Meaningful content: Im getting that from route creator, I love it and I love the challenges friends set in their routes (if they were easier to find to start with would be good). What would make route creator the best thing since sliced bread would be class leaderboards on each creation…It then becomes an insane version of FH3 rivals!!

Team Adventure aka Troll Adventure: No (that is it) I refuse to play it until they fix getting into it (thankfully they fixed getting out of it).

What I might add: I am competitive, no apologies there it’s a racing game. TA does not do it for me because my level is high the teams always get balanced so I’m with lower level players. Not enough players ranked so ranked is basically unranked without the “un”. Bring back individual online racing…leave Treeroam Crash, thats kinda entertaining and much more fun than doing donuts in the banana plantations.
Adding to my competitive side, I really want an internal club ladder. Apart from my competitiveness as a club leader/owner how do I know who in my club is the best and who is bored and now playing RDR/FN/PUBG. I have 1999 members and I want them all active, I dont care how active but playing it 3 weeks ago doesn’t count.

On that note I too hope Devs take some notice of those that have invested in multiple renditions of what is the best driving game ever made.

Race hard, race fair :slight_smile: TIME’s UP

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My ultimate problem bar freezing in situe every 5 minutes is the team adventure. 2 hours of searching for a ram match where you place 1st but the rest of your team can’t find the accelerator (or brakes) and the ones that can’t tell the difference between blue and red. Annoying to say the least.

A single player adventure is a must. Winning and rating based on luck of the draw is infuriating. Doing an S1 street race where I turn up in a mono only to meet my team driving vw campers…
I also completely agree with the OP comment about a leaderboard in every Forzathon live event. This would add clean competitive fun that many would enjoy.

Speaking of clean competitive fun add ghosted racing here or there. Not all the time because a little rubbing is racing but just to separate the drivers from the riders if you know what I mean.

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I was really bummed out when I saw a Team Adventure was the only option. One thing I really liked in the older Forzas were options, but it seems like they pulled an FM7. No classic class rivals, a whole lot of clothing, etc.

Otherwise everything else I like. One thing that would be a good addition is a customizeable tab in the pause menu so I could easily access things like the tuning menu without having to scroll 5 or 6 tabs every time I pause. The auction house I’m currently fine with, but the loading times could be a little faster and maybe add a tab that easily shows the cheapest cars currently on sale like FH3 did.

The campaign really does need to be longer. I’d rather have a campaign that’s too long than one that’s too short.

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