Where we are at IMO is that Horizon 4 is almost like two different games what comes to single- and multiplayer content, having same world map and routes in common.
In single player new physics of FH4 makes it the best Horizon ever, one of the greatest car games ever, especially delicious to us who like to drive them stock for discovery, learn about the cars. We can really feel differences when taking different cars on road. Old stock car legend behaves like one in the past, we can try out different cars from the 80’s, Honda, Porsche, Ferrari, Lamborghini… all trying to solve the same problem, with quite different methods and experience practical effects of these different approaches in game. We can take some old Drift legend and understand where that reputation came just by trying it in game and so on. It’s outstanding achievement and aspect that even still keeps me sometimes coming back to this game.
What comes to multiplayer, tuning aspect is important there. We don’t have only the best drivers but also best tuners in there as both are important aspects. I do count Rivals as multiplayer event even we race just against ghosts of other players. PvP is important feature with its own audience and sometimes it’s fun to see what’s happening in there but practically requires learning whole new skillset which then leads to opposite gaming experience, we can get fast but it’s not necessarily fun. Spent hours in meta-game, or trying tunes which makes cars we love something we hate LOL. Then we need to do this with several cars in classes, with different cars for event types. It starts to become huge time investment.
And IMO it’s like that by design. More convoluted the process is, more time it requires to master (Freeroam Rush), more Xbox Gold is sold to competitive console audience. While there aren’t microtransactions in game, that doesn’t mean there isn’t monetisation mechanics. Playlist with its rewards is one, multiplayer, especially leagues is one.
So to get single- and multiplayer aspects have better synergy it comes down to selling the idea on monetisation strategy first before any tactical (game features) moves could be really discussed.
In general, pitfalls in context of Horizon, IMO are that FM7 like homogulation that puts cars in similar performance bracket but in the process making most cars feel quite similar, which some players didn’t like, but which was response to feedback from FM6 where lot of cars weren’t really competitive with each others even when homogulated. So Turn 10 faced “damned if you do, damned if you don’t” situation. Neither works well with what players expect from Horizon which is fun and whole franchise success is based on it being sort of antithesis to serious sims. It could be perhaps argued that in FH4 multiplayer doesn’t follow that successful recipe anymore.
I think this is important topic and was glad to read what was said but I also find this a very difficult topic.