I don’t know, I think saying this game is a sinking ship is a worse take than the one in your post.
Reddit can be a pretty negative place but amazingly it’s users are generally more positive about the game than users on the games official forums.
Not wrong, but it is still much better than the comment section of that spurious corruption video from last month
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Theres been lots of negativity on reddit as well particularly the forza horizon subreddit. Some say the forza motorsport and horizon is better because theres less of it. But to me it seems theres simply less people that are using it than the other sub. So naturally theres less negative takes.
For example after the xbox showcase about forza motorsport: The forza motorsport and horizon sub was full of negativity surrounding the car models and the forza aero.
Its just that there are some folks who stir the pot against others with the “gotcha” memes. Like this one from my rant. People here which i’ll label as the “hardcore players” are constantly under their target.
You or someone else here will talk about how horizon needs progression or how the map is boring and how the games have gotten worse. And not just here on the forums but on the forza horizon sub as well. So then “the casuals” come in and start saying stuff like: " Theres no reason to complain about horizon 5", “I feel like people are being negatative for the sake of being negative”. They critisize you for wanting to have progression. They critisize you for saying old good , new bad.
Then someone posts a meme like this taken out of propotion. And who do you think is being targeted here? Again its you. And him. Like who is saying the roads are dumb? Nobody. Even if someone said it its not as if is a majority of people expressing this. Same deal with progression.
3 people ask to be able to refuel their cars in horizon and that gets turned into a meme. Where supposedly the player who wants progression(meaning you) also wants to be able to refuel cars and earn 1 credit per race event. Ok its supposed to be funny but who even wants this? Like geniuenly i want to ask the people that have been here the longest. Do you want to be able to refuel your cars and earn as little credits as possible? And then the cycle continues.
So its this ongoing theme in the horizon community. Casual Enjoyers vs Hardcore Complainers. The casual attacks the hardcore player and vise versa and we eat each other in the meantime. At least it shows the game is still alive. Someone said " If you stop hearing the complaints then theres definitely something wrong here"
There’s also those who want to see positives for the sake of it and can’t take seeing anything negative even if they have no argument against it.
Personally if someone is correct and not trying to spin it to suit an agenda I don’t care what they’re being, I find it amazing that there are players who would rather everyone have their head in the clouds fawning over the same old things FH has always got right than speak up about the many, many issues in the hope they might be addressed, you’re little more than a mindless follower if you just want to live in a bubble and try to shame people for saying anything that isn’t part of it.
Nothing anyone is truly attached to works like that, try saying your family, friends, favourite game or your sports team has never hacked you off or frustrated you and you should be nominated to be the visual representation of ‘liar’ and ‘denial’.
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Positive? More like completely delusional.
The game is amazing, Playground can do no wrong, and if you disagree, you get downvoted into oblivion.
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Yep and it goes further than this it seems
It seems its also the way xbox branding works nowadays. From edgy to everyone. Meaning from edgy to positivity no matter what. Horizon being a first party title seems to have adopted that contagious narritive that in more ways hurts us than helps. We’re doomed.
Perhaps the same people who havent yet learned how to use the left trigger to take a corner rather than going full speed into the far apex wall.
Thats the identical form to how politics is discussed on Reddit from what I’ve seen. Lumping groups and drawing your own Vin diagrams to be as uncharitable as possible in order to win petty “debates”
Its a very infantile way to discuss things and I’ve always had that perception of Reddit. Though I dont think its always been that way.
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People have poor reading comprehension sometimes or skim over things.
Maybe dropping the Kudosprime link to the car would have cleared it up for them, though there’s nothing inherently wrong with your solution.
Official forums always skew more negative as it’s where people feel they can vent towards the developers of the game, no matter how futile that may end up being. This place is no different.
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I’m guessing your experience on the Codies/EA Forum was similar
Depends on the game.
DiRT Rally 2.0 has a nice and constructive community, though that game was “complete” in early 2020 
As I think this game’s community would be if FH5 was as good at it’s aim as DR2.0 is, if your guys’ WRC is a combination of those physics + sounds and KT’s stages + career mode I think it will be an all time great in the racing genre.
I can’t remember anything about DR2.0 that made me sigh or go ‘why…?’ or ‘this is just poor’ while FH has given me countless instances of them in the past 2 entries, both franchises have superb core gameplay, unlike DR2.0 though FH consistently prods + pokes me outside of it with it’s many, many minor irritations that all add up.
Yet despite the fact certain people won’t be able/refuse to understand this I do still have more affinity towards FH.
I don’t feel that is necessarily a fair assessment, particularly of this forum. Whilst, of course, you are going to get some people who join to complain about something they don’t like, my impression is that most posters on this forum joined because they have a genuine interest/like the Forza games. There is a large community who have been around across several games. As such, I suspect a lot started with a positive impression of the games.
Of course, we all have our own ideas as to how the game should develop and not all of those opinions are realistic and, indeed, some are contradictory (see views over increased nighttime in game!). However, the main cause of the “negativity” in my view is because the forum generally consists of people who are engaged with the game and there is a disconnect between that group of people (who want to see more development of the game, whether by way of better interface options, increased game modes etc) and the dev team, who seem more focussed on making the game as low effort as possible, with a definite focus towards a more child-like and basic approach.
My view is that the forum’s negativity is probably representative of a general irritation with the devs across the core game players, who have been with Forza for some time across one game or other. The question is whether that group is of sufficient concern to the devs or not.
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All good points.
The reason I feel unofficial forums tend to be more neutral/positive on the macro scale is because the segment of the player base that is “trying to talk to the devs” isn’t there in any meaningful way, they’re all here. The “here’s a post about a thing I enjoyed in the game” talk isn’t getting drowned out by the “this thing is broken and I want it fixed” discussion as much.
If I have a problem with the game and I want to report it in the hopes that it’ll get fixed, I won’t go to GTPlanet, I’ll come here. If I just want to shoot the breeze, that may differ depending on which community is more appealing/welcoming at the time.
This place isn’t 100% negative either, that’s obvious, but at the same time, you’ll see many threads and posters attempting to shape the vision of the current/next game, under the assumption that some game designer or creative director in Redmond or Leamington Spa is ready to spring into action upon reading it. While many of these posts are written in good faith, some will inevitably give off “I want to speak to the manager” vibes or rub people up the wrong way as the community as a whole is not aligned on what the perfect game is, and never will be.
I’m guilty of it myself; while I try to be constructive where possible, search far enough back through my post history and you’ll see me discuss the failings of multiplayer in Forza Motorsport games at length. I had particular visions about how I wanted “my” perfect Forza to be, and had that misunderstanding about how impactful an official forum can be. Ironically, most of the features I was seeking ended up being served by GT Sport, and I enjoyed that game very much.
Ultimately, forums are but a minuscule portion of the feedback the studios get as a whole, and while it’s nice to be able to write whatever you want here, it’s nothing more than a one-way suggestion box (and it’s clear that it’s going to remain a one-way conversation, which I can understand from “living on the other side of the curtain”). Sales data, in-game analytics, sentiment analysis tools and other forms of “big data” far outweigh any of our words here.
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Well I’ll be honest I have never came here believing anything I say will be listened to by the devs, watching a company that built itself on SP basically turn around and give SP people the middle finger with GTA V cemented the fact to me that these studios will do whatever they want regardless, the quickest and easiest buck takes priority for the most part now.
But I like talking about the game and I like the people on here, you can probably count on 1 hand how many proper + prolonged arguments I’ve had with fellow regulars in the 4 or so years I’ve been coming on here, but when someone turns up and starts trying to shame + belittle people for saying something perfectly reasonable against the game I will start on them every time, I cannot stand people who think a positive opinion equals a licence to talk down to others who don’t share it, despite those people that are supposedly wrong often being miles more experienced + clearly more knowledgeable about the subject than them.
I think this forum is very simple, you get what you give, let people have their opinion and try to see it from their POV and they’ll return the favour.
But come here chucking ‘whiny’ ‘entitled’ ‘just stop playing then’ ‘you don’t have to do it’ or any other of those usual buzz words/lines, being obviously biased to the point you’ll try and excuse, divert or instantly dismiss any problems away and this forum will be unwelcoming, like anywhere else should be to people like that.
But in terms of communication with the devs I don’t think this place holds any weight, lots of good ideas + improvements are suggested but ultimately it would be a 99.999% chance of it just being coincidence if someone’s suggestions in a standard thread were to become a reality in-game.
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But I think the clear distinction here, is that this is the “official Forza forum”, so there is a presumed expectation of more direct engagement from those supporting entities closest to the core of the game. The problem becomes how diluted the content can become based on many of the points previously highlighted with regard to unrealistic requests or exaggerated complaints.
Within this myriad of communications are those dedicated, core players who are passionate about the game, which drives their intent of accountability (within reason) to see it be successful & at the level of quality expected based on previous performance.
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And that’s a shame, frankly, especially considering how strictly it’s regulated and governed. The official forums should be the place where the void talks back. It should be where you can go to engage directly with the developers (not community manager proxies) because it’s far more organized and secure compared to the likes of Reddit, Instagram and Twitter. It shouldn’t be a glorified suggestion box.
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Indeed, that’s a challenge for @T10ManteoMax and his team to face.
The Hubs are one way of going about that, but looking in from the outside I can’t tell how useful they are. They seem like a good idea on the surface though.
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I’d say they’re better than the old method of “People post wishlists in Text Format”, because the amount of Duplicates is much lower → lower overhead to actually compile said Data into Community Wants