Stock Car Racing in Forza Horizon 4

Forza Horizon Legacy Horizon FH4 Discussion
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I might be in the minority here but hear me out. I have played FH2, FH3 and FH4 for a reasonable amount of time now, I have tried everything the games offer and enjoyed them thoroughly. They’re great and there’s nothing like the Horizon series. One could even call me a Forza fanboy or something of that nature. And no, that doesn’t mean I consider myself any good at the Forza games, perhaps my driving skills are about average or below that.

Regardless, like the title says, I do miss stock (no upgrades, no tuning) online car competition, or at least racing where no racer has distinctly faster wheels (for example, every racer has an identically upgraded/tuned vehicle). At this point I just wanna race and have fun, not having to worry about finding that perfect tune just to have any chance of actually winning a darn race. Since switching from FH3 to FH4 I have stopped working on cars completely and consider that a waste of my time. I used to spend time in the Garage in FH2 and FH3 but that’s just not what I’m looking for in racing games at this point and I believe there are more people who would like to actually compete for wins without tinkering with their vehicles at all. Cause, you know, some people have limited spare time and want to extract as much fun from racing cars as possible, not spend hours polishing their vehicle lineup for each car class, event type and season.

So I think the game would benefit of stock (or identically upgraded/tuned) car competition of some kind. Currently the Eliminator mode is something I enjoy since it provides players with stock leveled cars without having to deal with buying/upgrading/tuning one vehicle. And maybe the level system is something that could be introduced to online adventure as well. FH2 players may remember the Showdown races that were available at Car Meet points - slower cars were given a head start in those which allowed fun racing regardless of the vehicle each participant chose. Obviously, owners of overpowered or perfectly tuned cars still came out on top most times. But - back to FH4 now - it could be a lot of fun if every racer was given a random stock vehicle and depending on its level (1-10 just like in Eliminator) was allowed a head start ahead of level 10 cars. Call it Stock Adventure maybe, I don’t really care. What I do care about is fair online racing that everyone can jump into and expect to win if they perform well.

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GT Sport is almost all stock racing, but you still do better in races by spending huge amounts of time playing the game. When the car is the same for everyone, the difference between being good or mediocre at your rank is just a few tenths, so you spend hours practising to improve by those few tenths, but then your rating goes up, so you have to spend even more time practising to win. The thing with ranked racing is you’ll always end up competing against people who are at your standard. So if you have badly tuned cars and are slow as a result, you’ll have a ranking to reflect that and will be competing against other people who do similar times.

If you join us in the rivals thread, people always disclose what tune they used, so you can compete against everyone using the same tune.

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Switched to Wreckfest. I think they have nailed down the fun racing formula very well.

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Wreckfest is good, but you will complete everything in a couple of weeks, and then there’s nothing to do. The physics aren’t as good as Forza Horizon anyway.

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Perhaps but online play does seem to be loads of fun. Just check this:

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I race stock almost exclusive in single player and I think pre-tuned car works in Eliminator but what comes to rest of it, I don’t know.

Reflecting to Forza Motorsport 7, with stock there would be less complexity without tuning but despite tuning being important factor, racing line, knowing how to take advantage from car momentum, knowing braking points and things like just being good with controller contribute a lot. While not needing to spend time to learning cars and tuning game meta would save a lot of time, in practice it might not be as fun or easy or guarantee faster advancement in leagues like Breeminator explained.

Monthly Rivals is what you might be looking for in FH4.

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Actually I downloaded some tunes shared by Don Joewon Song in FH4 and managed to win some online races. But the thing is, I feel like in Forza online races are won in the garage, not on the track. And that’s not how an arcade-ish game should work, in my opinion.

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The build/tune is crucial in FH4, I agree, but there are some very good tunes shared, it’s just a case of knowing which cars and tunes to use. YouTube is a good place to look for advice on the meta, but not so much DJS IMO. IsuckAtDriving does a very good job of highlighting some of the meta options, as has Johnson in the past, though he’s not making videos at the moment. And some very good car choices and tunes get highlighted in our rivals thread on this forum. Jezza is close to Grandmaster rating, so you won’t go far wrong copying his choices.

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Well, that’s the problem - unless you’re willing to put in the work (grinding in the garage for many hours), you have to use someone else’s tunes (if they have chosen to share them, of course). In general, I think it’s much more rewarding to beat a game on your own, not by downloading something made by a stranger that allows you to reach the top. This makes me feel like the YouTuber (DJS in my case) wins the races for me basically.

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I don’t disagree, in many ways, but I’ll just note that most games these days are sufficiently complex that you’ll either have to invest a lot of time, or receive advice from those who have invested a lot of time, or both, to do well.

For example, in GT Sport, even though the cars are stock, when you have a choice of car there are many to choose from, and it would take a lot of time to try them all yourself for a particular race. And you have strategy choices, so youtubers spend time testing different strategies to help their viewers know what to do in the race. So you’ll still end up finding out from someone else that for this particular race you need to use the Nissan GT-R Gr.3 car, shift it at x rpm to make the fuel last the race, do 2 laps on hards, then 3 laps on mediums, then 5 laps on softs, or whatever.

In iRacing, people actually pay for tunes, and they are kept secret, people are required to use an overlay to hide the settings from viewers.

In a completely different genre, I’ve also been playing AoE II DE, and it’s very complex in terms of what units are good against other units, what actions to perform at each point in time, and so on. Again, if you want to work it all out yourself, you’re in for a huge amount of work, and there are youtubers who do the work and produce videos to teach people. The best player in the world has been playing it professionally for 10 years, I think.

If you think about it, if you could be really good without having to invest time, it would just be a talent contest. The ultimate example of a talent contest, to me, is a height contest. The competitors just turn up and have their height measured, the tallest person wins. The same person wins every time, and no amount of time you can invest will make you any better at it. The only way to move away from that is to create something where you can improve your performance by spending time, and the trend is for games to try to make the skill ceiling extremely high, so there is almost no limit to the possibility of improving with more time investment.

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There was one Trial with bone stock cars, featuring the Caterham. One. It was brilliant. But it never came back.

I’m not that interested in online play, especially because in FM7 the level of competition is higher and the production lobby has the regulations. FH4’s only advantage is the new cars. I wish it was possible to force stock upgrades with blueprints. Even sent a ticket for it. Unfortunately it doesn’t seem to be the devs’ priority.

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What’s your opinion on this concept?

…How could this model be technically possible sustainable? (weak technical barrier)

What if one purchased (or somehow attained) a sufficient number of such “pro tunes” and published them for reverse engineering?..

Technically it’s very simple, but it’s not the point.

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I don’t know how the tunes are passed from seller to buyer, but if they saw you sharing their settings in a video I imagine they’d stop selling to you. I don’t know how people put the overlay on, or if it’s manual or automatic, but people seem to be successful in not showing the settings on screen.

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If this ever happened to Forza I would never, ever criticize them again! Completely custom grids is insane!

In Forza 7 for example you could almost make a Group A legends grid. Add custom tunes to the mix and you have fantastic races.

Online racing is intense and a great way to test your driving, but it’s just not immersive enough. The escapist in me desires something more.

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Main reason:

But the cheating AI won’t make your solo experience too good either…

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That trial got pretty negative reviews because people found it too difficult. I agree, it’s a shame as it was an excellent change up. It would be good if they could try something similar but it might need to be AWD to cater for the majority of players.