The original concept of Forza Horizon was “take the Forza DNA and bring it to the open road”. For Forza Horizon 4 I feel that the emphasis has been shifted too much towards nothing else but drifting, as if it was the only spectacular and exciting way to drive. The base game already features enough of it: lots of drift zones, a whole Horizon Story dedicated to drifting, Formula Drift cars, Ken Block / Hoonigan / Gymkhana 10 cars that are all geared towards drifting. The series has always been going this way (even Motorsport which is even more unfortunate in my opinion) but for this fourth installment I feel it has crossed a line that often feels too much. Both asphalt and dirt roads are littered with drift zones that, even after completed, cannot be turned off, and every single #Forzathon Live event also features at least one drift challenge (zones or tricks).
And now, with the first expansion “Fortune Island” we get even more. There will be mountain switchbacks which are extremely atmospheric to drive on, yet the game uses them only to create “the longest drift zone in history [of Forza]”. Again, a scenic route will be dedicated to the only layer of gamers who like drifting. The others will be stuck with these forced zones where the radio is muffled and the civilian traffic consists of ghost cars. What’s more, big part of the upcoming Car Pass vehicles will be more Gymhkana 10 cars and the new Horizon Story in the expansion will be… Drift Club again. Not a new one, not a new idea but drifting again.
I accept and agree that drifting has a place in Horizon since it’s part of car culture and can be spectacular and fun. But it’s not the only way to drive on open roads and I wish the series wouldn’t put so much emphasis on it. I’m longing for a “more normal” racing game where events revolve around the concept of real racing but with every new game it feels like bigger chunks of the experience is built around drift and its events and challenges and cars. I disagree that it’s the only (or the most) exciting way to drive or race or challenge the driver. In fact, it’s such a unique way that it often has its separate game modes or completely individual games dedicated to it. I believe Horizon 4 would be even better if it stuck (literally as well) more to the roads.
I second that. Very good post. I really like the diversity of Forza Horizon. Everyone seems to play the game in different ways and playstyles.
According to the last monthly stream - drift has a solid fan base, hence the marketing focus of fortune island towards drift.
I am a first time Forza Horizon buyer and I have done almost everything in the base game - except drifts. It is just not for me.
So naturally, I am getting a bit nervous regarding the first add on. Let’s hope for the best.
I agree did not even exist before 1996 and even now does not exist on dirt 'not even going to bother
with expansion even though actually preordered ultimate now if want add more danger signs that could get on board with hope the next expansion is stunt focused.
The past 7-9 Forza games have had little to no emphasis on drift. So I’d say it’s fair that the developers gave it more love in this game, considering that a growing number of the Forza playerbase are fans of drifting.
While I’m not against drifting being in the game, I don’t like that achievements are tied to it. This leaves one achievement (and a curennt seasonal PR stunt) to only those that can master drifting.
I couldn’t care less about the seasonal, and I’m not really concerned about the stunt hero achievement, although I’ll never attain it.
I thought this was a complaint for the last few daily forzathon challenges. When I saw “3 stars on any drift zone”, I thought to myself, “there goes 40 points this week (10 plus the 30 for the overall.”) Anyway, I tried the 3 star challenge, which, by the way, was the first time I ever did a drift zone in FH4, and I eventually got it after many attempts. Now the new daily challenge is drift taps. I’ve never, ever did a drift tap on purpose! So, yeah, I thought this was a complaint about the forzathon challenges being too drift emphasized.
I’m not a drift fans by any means but I like it more in this game due to the easy mode springs. I’ll just make a massive rally circuit that encompasses the winding hill road and the dirt track.
That whole horizon story took me maybe an hour to finish, there are only a few formula d cars, the hoonigan and gymkhana cars aren’t totally drift cars, and if anything people who like to drift were finally thrown a bone in this game. I agree that you should be able to disable zones and speed traps via a setting, as constant flashes and ghosted traffic is annoying for everyone not going for a score. But, I ‘finished’ all the drifting content in a few hours one day so I don’t think there really is an abundance of drifting content to the extent you say.
And for those who think three-starring a drift zone is too hard, I’d like to change your mindset:
Indulge me for a second, and think about speed traps and drift zones. Now mentally remove the glitch and exploit scores from the speed traps. What is the difference between the top scores and the minimum threshold for three stars? For speed traps and zones it’s maybe 5-10% higher difference in speed (which is score). This means you have to be within 5-10% of what is humanly and vehicularly possible to hit three stars. Now think about the drift zones. The margin between minimum three star scores and the top scores are 100%. You only need half of what is shown to be humanly possible to get three stars. Can you three star every speed zone or camera in a stock and untuned corvette? Can you three star certain speed zones or traps in a stock fwd volvo station wagon? I know drifting is hard, it took me hundreds of hours to be decent at it, but the people hitting good scores aren’t doing a zone once or twice, they are doing it hundreds of times back to back. Don’t get discouraged if it takes you a few tries to hit a three star run.
For some of them, it took me several tries to get one star. And it wasn’t fun. Mind you, while the speed zones are more likely within my reach, I’ll probably never three star all of those either because doing them over and over and falling 1 mph or less under the target is just needless frustration.
I hate drifting and im not even remotely close to passable at it, most the drift zones in FH4 are 1 star for me and im always the dead weight in any forza live drift zone (which really drives home the hopelessness of getting put in a 4 man group and expected to grind out 4 million drift points.)
I have alot less issue doing speed zones and speed traps because those require more “racing line” style of driving which I seem to have a better grasp of. I just hope that new mountain road can be turned into a circuit road race.
Though would be a bit sad if drift club is the only new addition of that variety, surely theres more than that?
I don’t care that there’s drift stuff for those that like it. I dislike it being required for Achievements and completion. I haven’t touched the drift content and never will.
I like to use the DiRT series as an illustration. I love rally and the DiRT series. However, as the series progressed from 1 to 2 to 3, it gradually deviated away from rally or other traditional dirt/off-road racing towards more modern millennial nonsense, first with X Games feeling stuff and then Gymkhana. Again, I don’t care that they have events that let players woop like monkeys smacking their bare bottoms hanging out the car window while doing donuts around flag poles, but I don’t want to be required to do it to progress in the core game. DiRT 3 fortunately didn’t require me to do much of it to work through the main career, but it did require some. I told Codemasters that I didn’t approve and I wasn’t alone. I suggested at least segregating it as its own mode, or ideally as its own game altogether, and that if they continued to emphasize Gymkhana nonsense then players like me are done with DiRT. Their next DiRT game was Showdown, which evidently was the millennial nonsense game, and of course I avoided it. Then came DiRT Rally, which was the exact opposite and a proper rally game. Then DiRT 4, which was a proper sequel to 1 through 3. They did right. No Gymkhana in sight, and games that felt more like a serious dirt racing game rather than silly junk.
I agree completely. I voiced a similar concern on the Forza Facebook group and a power trippy admin started insulting me in comments then once he got it right back he pulled the I’m a admin here’s your warning crap…
Some people are so defensive over people not liking the things they like to do… but I do feel that three has a lot and now 4 has it even more… at least here you can choose to not do them… except during forzathons. I do my best but I’m lucky to get 6-8k points in the drift zones… at least it’s something.
I understand where you’re going with this, but I kinda disagree with you. I must say that FH4, in terms of racing gameplay, there is less emphasis on drifting than any other Horizon iterations. If you attempt to drift during a race, you’ll lose a lot of lap time. Anyways, yes, there have been loads of drifting content thrown at us since launch, but we should not forget that the Forza’s drifting community is huge and important. I believe that Drifting, and Dirt, Cross Country and Road racing contents are well balanced in my opinion: there is a nice equity and, in fact, actual road racing has more emphasis than any other ways of playing. What Turn 10 and Playground games did delivered, like the FM7 drift update, seemed to please a lot of people. Both drifting and racing are extremely important for this franchise and I hope it stays that way.
I dont feel that there is mutch emphasis of any kinda stuff. Im not that good in drifting on myself but it feels that base game lack of good drifting routes and there is not even any good car park where drifters could meet up. Racers dont get that mutch emphasis either, career racers are pretty meaningless, if you try to make pvp racers there is never more than 3 peoples and if you want do online racing you cant even do that in solo because online is forced in team play. Hot lappers dont get that mutch emphasis either because rivals are worst than it’s ever have, and if somebody beat your time game not give you any notification. Tuners dont get much emphasis either, no rivals mode to test cars and have no way test to cars in circuits without ai drivers. Dragsters get bit more emphasis, have mutch better rival section than racing and have different drag tracks even tho festival one should be bit longer. Painters have been very dissapointing in some parts of the game, and even tho they get new toy, it also seems to break some old stuff they have made. I think there is most emphasis for casual players.
Other than the annoyance of several of the weekly Forzathon challenges requiring drifting, I don’t see a huge amount of emphasis on drift over the other forms of racing.
However, with drifting if you’re not good at it, it pretty much locks you out of that content completely. The other events and PR stunts can be cheesed to some degree with the appropriate vehicles and upgrades, but drift demands a specific skill set that is completely different than the smooth, fast lines that works for everything else.
I think it would be fair to say that we would like to see less drift challenges come up in the Forzathons simply because they’re much less accessible to most players.
Ultimately what Forza desperately needs is some sort of in-game driving school to help teach players race driving and drifting instead of taking the lazy shortcut of assuming players will look it up online.
For drifting specifically, have a couple of demo drift zones where a ghost car does a good run, and shows the wheel angle and throttle/brake inputs onscreen. When the player runs the event, it shows them their inputs next to the ghost so they can match what it’s doing and get a feel for what it takes to do a controlled drift.
As #fozathons are currently not player count aware, with speed zones/traps/danger signs even with only a few players you might be able to get through 2 stages ok, when there’s a big drift zone and less comfy players, you’re pretty much stuffed.
This seems like a bit of a silly criticism to me. I’ve played a lot of FH4, and it’s not all that common for me to be driving around and accidentally enter a drift zone. There’s a lot of drift zones, but they’re not literally everywhere or anything. And if you don’t want to do drift zones, all it is is an extremely minor annoyance by turning down other sounds for like 30 seconds at most. It’s really not very different from speed zones. And honestly, while I don’t really seek out drift zones or speed zones, they can be a fun little detour when I come across them. The drift zones are also helped by the fact that drifting is substantially easier in this game than in FH3 (or at least it is for me)
The ‘issue’ you list with Drift Zones applies to all Zones in the game since once you’ve done them in your fastest car, what’s the point in trying for a high score? This thread just sounds like you have a beef with drifters for some reason.