It is entertaining looking at all the complaints about the playlist requirements. I think the only thing that hasn’t really been complained about is the Monthly Rival Clean Lap requirement (aside from maybe someone complained it was too easy and should have been expanded more). We can’t have something that takes time to complete or is challenging. If one person has trouble with it, then it must be broken… Lets take a walk down memory lane…
[Sarcasm]
The Trial - Too Hard. Can’t beat Unbeatable AI. AI Cars are too fast. My car is too slow. My teammates are ALWAYS bad (hmmm… what about the guy in the mirror, how did that guy do?).
Showcase Remix - Too Hard. Can’t beat the AI. I don’t like the car I have to drive. It’s impossible! (is that guy in the mirror still there?)
Seasonal Playground - Too Hard. I don’t like playing with actual human players. I am ALWAYS on the losing team. My team ALWAYS has less players. I NEVER win. Its broken! (wait a minute… there might be a common factor in these events…)
PR Stunts - Drift? I don’t know how! Broken! Speed Trap/ Speed Zone… I can’t beat the target. It’s impossible. (ever hear of a Mosler? The FREE car EVERYONE gets gifted at the start of the game because everyone cried that it was locked behind… The Trial event…) Danger Signs? But I’m scared of heights! Fix it.
Seasonal Championships - Expert difficulty? Its too hard. The AI cheats. The AI cars all drive like they are equipped with the invincibility star in Mario Kart. My car is too slow. Fix it.
Community Championships - The course was bad. I can’t read a mini map so the turns catch me off guard. The checkpoints are too small. The AI is too fast. I don’t like it. Fix it.
Qualify for Online Adventure - There are real people involved? Nope. Don’t like it. It’s only a participation requirement? Don’t care, still don’t like it.
Weekly Forzathon - I don’t like the car. The car is bad. Why do I have to do these things. I have to take this car into a Marathon Race?! I don’t know how to win a street race against New Driver AI… It’s too hard. Fix it.
Daily Challenges - Why do they appear daily? Thats too much. I don’t like it. Fix it.
Percentage Requirement dropped from 100% to 80%. Its too high still. I can’t get 80%. Make it lower.
NEW exclusive content is only tied to 50% completion or an individual event. I Don’t care. I still want everything that everyone else is getting, but I don’t want to do the same amount of stuff they are doing. Make it easier for ME.
Lets just change any event that requires a win, a participation event only. Just trigger the PR Stunt, just finish the race in any position, just join a playground game, just attempt a trial. Oh and that event that is already participation only, lets just remove it. And since you already dropped the completion requirement from 100% to 80% lets just take it a step further and go to… 6% so that I only need to attempt one thing and be done. Problem Solved!
[/Sarcasm]
I would hate to have seen how some people would have dealt with playing Battletoads on the NES in the 90s. If you haven’t played this… you don’t know what hard is… Did someone say Game Genie? Maybe someone needs to make a Game Genie for FH4.
This is easy to explain: Every human being plays the game of “trial and error”. There is a problem and our brain starts to throw solutions at it. If you succeed, this is saved and gets very high priority the next time a similar problem arises.
Sadly in our times, the solution to everything is complaining. We have become weak and whiny. If aliens would start to conquer our world, we would honestly just try to contact their government and make complaints for as along as it is needed till they leave gain. The worst thing is, we might really succeed, because the complaining is so bad and so whiny that noone can bear it for long enough to sit it out.
In the 90s, if a game was too hard, you just quit playing. My friend always used to say “the game does not continue after this point, so it becomes so hard that it looks like you fail”.
I remember playing “Everquest”, one of the first MMOs. It was super, super hard, dieing once lost you hours of experience points. On our pvp server, you needed to battle for hours to win the right to fight one of the non-instanced (!) spawns. Was it frustrating? Yes! Was it annoying? Yes! Did it take way too much playtime to get anywhere? Yes!
But it also was one of the most memorable experiences of my life. The guild was the best thing I ever experienced. If you needed help, everyone rushed to come to your aid. Because the game was so hard, everyone knew it is only a question of time till you are in a situation where you need help.
There were even player made rules which were followed on point. Because if you did not follow the rules and you wanted to apply one of the high level guilds, someone would remember your sins and this made it impossible to get into top level loot. There was no name-change feature or other nonsense: You were rude, you paid the price at one point. The only chance to redeem yourself was to roll a new character, go through the incredibly hard levelling process again, be nice and follow the rules and then apply again and hope that noone knew that you were that rude guy with the other character.
TL;DR: Games were super hard, but super rewarding as well.
Fast Forward to Forza 4 2019: Players are rude, the companies are too scared to punish anyone, people won’t stop complaining, evidently they put in 300 hours, but of course this must be the worst game they ever played, everything is too hard, it is a crime if a company offers 650 cars to play with, but the 651st car is locked behind a skill/grind wall. It is laughingly ridiculous and deeply sad at the same time. The new player generations are entitled princesses who want it all. “I am a casual player who only has time to play 5 minutes per year, yet I demand to have a shot at the super rare cars that are offered via contested events”.
What will happen next? Kids demanding gold medals from Olympia or a spot in the national soccer team? Hey, they neither have skill nor the time, but they surely deserve everything as well, don’t they?
Admittedly, I personally like the festival playlist with the 80% a lot more now. But I would have accepted the challenge at 100% as well or denied it, but complaining, because someone does not want to grant me the shiny, exclusive toy, that would have not come to my mind in a million years.
This is just my opinion, but not only would the gaming world be better off, but the entire world would be better off without participation trophies. It is pretty evident what has happened to society as a whole ever since participation trophies started getting handed out (and more so just the path that parenting has taken in recent decades). It isn’t the fault of those in the latter half of the Generation Y / Millennial Generation that they are the way they are. It is their parents and the current parents that continue to “helicopter” parent or worse, “bulldozer” parent their children. Society as a whole has provided a huge disservice to kids by trying to shield and protect them from failure and mistakes. Sure, no parent likes to see their child fail or be sad, but by telling kids they are all special and they are all winners regardless of the outcome of their efforts/performance leads them to believe that they are entitled to some kind of reward just for effort and participation. When kids learn at a young age that there is such a thing as failure and not everyone is a winner, they learn that sometimes even their best effort is not enough and that just because they tried their best, does not mean they have accomplished a goal or deserve a reward. This in turn prepared them for the real world. Not only did having winners and losers in competition teach kids to be humble as a winner and gracious in defeat, but it taught them that success is not just based on level of effort exerted, but the quality of that effort compared to others or the challenge presented that determined whether they achieved a goal or not. Before the time of participation trophies, kids were tougher, teenagers were more resilient and “adults” acted like actual adults. Bullying was rarely a topic that had to be dealt with on the level it is now because kids/teenagers had the tools/experience to handle it themselves and the phrase “sticks and stones may break my bones, but words can never hurt me.” actually worked in response to a little brat teasing another kid, because said kid was tough enough to know that it didn’t matter what some other kid said about them because they were confident and tough enough to know their own self worth without needing some adult hovering over them telling them that they were special. I can tell you that my son (5yo) knows the difference between winning and losing. He knows that he can’t win at everything, but he also knows that if he puts his best effort forth that I as a father will be proud no matter what the outcome and he doesn’t need a participation trophy to tell him that. In fact, he knows that a participation trophy, that everyone receives has no value and doesn’t belong on a shelf or mantle, but in the trash bin next to the driveway (he won’t even bring that thing in the house).
This pretty much sums up the demise of our society. Awesome job on what you all said, but unfortunately it’s not going change. Those of us who are aware of this are going to helplessly stand by watching the future generations get worse. I know this isn’t the forum for psychology and how to properly raise a kid. But I wanted to praise this quote.
I remember the first TOCA Touring Cars, and Colin McRae Rally I played on the PS1. When you started the game you had 2, that’s TWO, cars to choose from, and 2 tracks (in TOCA, only ONE in Rally iirc) and everything else was locked behind progression, and boy were those games punishing. Talk about 1st corner carnage lol 2nd place going into turn 1, 12th coming out the other side having been punted onto the grass… and CM Rally? Crash your car, you’re out of the stage, unless you can afford to fix it, if not, then game over. Damage your car during a stage? Can’t afford to fix it? Start the next stage with a damaged car.
You have put into words what I’ve been muttering to myself silently while reading the posts here for the past many months. You’re absolutely dead on. Here’s what I’m curious about… How many people in the FIX IT crowd where even around to partake in gaming in late 80s to the early 90s? I’m going to guess very few.
Now this is funny! They should make a Battletoads Showcase where you have to maintain 200+MPH in a suped up Peel P50 down the freeway and random walls pop up out of the ground and there is 3x more civilian traffic. If you have a collision, you lose. Oh and make it a two person Co-op event where if even one of you has a collision you both lose! This made my day. Love it.
It’s the participation mentality that has led to people quiting after one loss. There’s zero sportsmanship anymore because everyone has it drilled in their head that even if you lose, you’re just as good a player as the winner…
Dont like them
Dont do them
Easy fix
There is no need to do 100% anymore
I dont bother doing them because i dont like it either…so i get 94%
Go on quit playing the whole game because of something you dont even need to do… makes sense
It’s your loss talby! You miss out on 5k a season. That’s 20k a series you’ll never be able to recoup. You’re never going to be able to get enough credits to win in this game😉
I think it’s pretty narrow-minded to tell someone to “get over” a concern they have. I understand where he is coming from. People don’t want to spend 20 -30 minutes getting beaten up on in any game. It’s frustrating to see something promoted that causes division in the game. Playing 6 vs 2 by the second round doesn’t encourage you to try again, which is the exact opposite I think Playground Studios is trying to cultivate. I think it couldn’t hurt changing the seasonal event to completing a session rather than winning. If you’re trying to get people to spend time doing something they won’t normally want to do, give them a good reason.
(sigh)… I wonder what the next demands-for-removal will be?
“Remove all vehicles that aren’t Subaru’s or Lamborghini’s!”
“Remove AWD from the game entirely! Keep FWD, but nobody can use it!”
“Remove all cross country and dirt trail icons from the map entirely so the S2/RWD/Asphalt-ONLY crew won’t have to be burdened with remembering that off-road even exists; off-road courses only visible when in D-class!”
“Replace all playground games with drifting games, but locations limited to traffic circles, one-way streets, and parking lots ONLY.”
“Remove Great Britain entirely and replace with either Japan or Australia, and without any hills, mountains, valleys, slopes, inclines, declines, grades, bumps, humps, rain, sleet, snow, ice, mud, sand, NPC’s/drivatars, other players, and/or anything else that may impede S2/RWD/Asphalt/Drifting gameplay whatsoever.”
