I was wondering why monthly rivals started rewarding one single piddling point instead of four. Apparently it was never even supposed to award four, but why? Why make it only one useless point? You might as well not even have monthly on the playlist at all anymore.
Oh right, silly me. It’s obviously because as I’ve said many times before, they literally only care about driving “player engagement” metrics up. Everything they do now, literally everything, is in service to that goal. It certainly isn’t done to improve the game or make it more fun. The proof is laid bare before us time and time again, every time they patch out anything that even slightly decreases the “player engagement” grind; prioritizing increasing the grind over actually fixing the million things that are actually still wrong with the game.
All I can is that this is absolutely abhorrent behavior on the part of Playground Games. They’ve completely burned all past good will as far as I’m concerned. They’ve shown yet again that they don’t care about making a game or a fun product, so much as just milking us like cows; taking our money and time for their own capitalistic gain.
For now though, I won’t be a part of it anymore. I haven’t played in a couple weeks and it feels refreshing not having to worry about doing my weekly videogame chores. I’ve also just uninstalled this trash from my XSX. That said, this isn’t necessarily an “I quit!” post; I’ll probably reinstall it when the expansion comes out, assuming that it isn’t also broken garbage, and only because it’s already paid for.
All in all though, I’ll put my money where my mouth is this time. There won’t be any more “engagement” from me for base FH5. In fact, I won’t trust any Playground Games title or even a T10 FM game enough to even bother with trying them anymore. It’s gotten absolutely ridiculous what they think they can get away with. I sincerely hope other people start seeing it this way as well and that there’s a mass exodus from the game. Probably unrealistic to hope for, but you never know.
I too feel that they focus too much on player metrics opposed to fun and replayable gameplay.
I disagree with you that the game is trash as I do appreciate it for what it is sometimes… However I do feel they do themselves a deservice by not listening to the community and actioning key issues such as leaderboards.
In my opinion this game could be consideraby more fun and engaging if they simply tweak, fix and polish a few things here and there.
I’ll grant, trash might be a bit excessive. The basic gameplay at it’s core is fine. Of course it is, considering it’s basically been the same game since at least FH3. It’s more the spirit of the game that’s become trash, courtesy of PGG. I do stand by everything I said either way though.
I mean, if there was a similar game, done better, I’d jump ship in an instant.
I still like the basic idea of the series. Free roam environment, interesting series of locations, lots of cars of many types, old and new. Love the option to create (and download, which is what I do) creative and complex liveries. I like the racing festival atmosphere, though I wish they did more with it. It’s also nice to mix in non-racing activities to break up the racing a bit. PR stunts are fun… to a point. I like the Horizon stories, and wish they’d bring back the businesses.
But the list of stuff I don’t like is depressingly long.
-radio stations get real repetitive, real fast. They need more songs.
-the seasonal grind sucks. I hate feeling like I have to do ‘homework’ every week to make sure I don’t miss out on newly released cars. I’d feel way better if ‘exclusive’ cars got added to the autoshow after a 2-3 month exclusivity period. Then I could take breaks from the game, safe in knowing that I can pick up stuff I missed later on, at a time of my choosing. But of course, they don’t want us to take breaks…
-the amount of bugs and lazily handled stuff is just nuts. The cockpit view lighting issues people are having, the convertibles that don’t work even though others do, the wheels spinning on cars that aren’t moving… plus some other things I haven’t seen discussed elsewhere.
-sometimes when I exit an online mode, my car spawns 6 feet above the ground and then falls to the ground.
-sometimes when I’m on a loading screen while fast traveling, the landscape starts breaking up and looking full of artifacts
Issues like this shouldn’t be in a AAA game like this…
The sad thing is if you asked a large group of players why do you login, many of them will answer to do the weekly chore list. Which is problem number 1 IMO.
The weekly chore list should be something in the background but for some reason has become a key focus of the game where “new” content is added weekly. I believe this is the issue. I believe endgame replayable content such as online racing, drifting and the eliminator should be brought to the forefront and that these modes should be refined and expanded upon to make players want to come back for more.
They also need to keep existing replayable content fresh. Take the eliminator for example which is a BR mode. Someone name me one game where their BR isn’t updated every 6 or 12 months to keep it fresh. Now although I can’t see into the future I can easily see eliminator being exactly the same in 12 months time which is very sad.
As stated above, the spirit of the game that’s the problem, and how your desire to play is now only matched by your willingness to want to run through a checklist every time you come on.
The FH2/FH3 era again as previously stated; online adventure, rivals etc was the “forefront” of the game (you know actual racing). I wasn’t spoon-fed all this irrelevant stuff to do with developers holding my hand to be a completionist and feel “special” for doing so. You can be skilled at a particular aspect of this game but in the end it doesn’t matter because it’s no longer about actual passion and fun, it’s a looting system. Players also now invariably get more fun out of seeing someone fail at the game than they do at actually having a good race and becoming more knowledgeable about certain things. Maybe that’s just been the Horizon way all along, but I know for a fact that open lobbies and the racing portion of the game was a much more desirable thing pre FH4.
They’ll update and expand on the masses expectations and what keeps you playing and then take away what your not playing, everything else is irrelevant.
Are you really under the mistaken impression that this was just about that one thing? Did you read any of my lengthy post past the first couple sentences? The rivals thing was merely the straw that broke the camel’s back for me. And I explained why already.
That isn’t the point though. On that basis it has been “too much” since the inception of the playlist in FH4 but I don’t recall anyone ever complaining about it. Why would we - either you like Rivals and happily spend some time on it or, if you don’t, then, as you say, you can happily have your cat do it.
The problem is that, rather than being honest and saying they are making a change because they want people to spend longer on the playlist, they have classified it as a bug fix. At the same time, many issues which genuinely need fixing have been ignored.
Unsurprisingly, “fixes” which are not intended to benefit the playing community in any way do not go down well and the OP’s position is perfectly understandable.
FH4 leaves the store this year if the trend continues. FH5 is stopgap release because Microsoft needs a Forza Horizon on Game Pass and it’s the only relevant AAA they have (that’s not a Bethesda/Activision game). There wasn’t much care when making this game.
Even in light of that, FH5 has been handled quite badly. PG has sat on the laurels of the casuals and the journalists (who are, themselves, casuals) and has made a meal out of this game’s support. The cars they added between April-June are to prevent losing casuals to Gran Turismo, which, despite all the issues, sold very well and has shown to be a game with very long legs. The greatest irony is that the SF90 sucks! lol
PG is allowed to get away with this because The Crew is a Ubisoft clone of FH and NFS is barely alive. But the arcade racing genre has never been worse. Maybe Hot Wheels Unleashed is a good game, but it doesn’t have real cars in it, so it doesn’t really count.
Honestly, my view on PG and all of the studios that joined Xbox Game Studios is they were desperate for the “hands off” approach Phil Spencer promised them so they could keep fooling around doing the bare minimum while shielding themselves from the players and enjoying the financial security Microsoft gave them. There’s studios which have been acquired 4 years ago and haven’t announced their projects yet, which is bizarre when thinking about it.
So no, OP, this won’t change. PG is one of the luckier ones with major public support. They can get away with whatever they want.
I agree, but some people get so obsessed with how others choose to play the game, they must be so lucky if they have so little to worry about in their lives that they can be so concerned with how others play a game which is really none of their concern whatsoever.
I’m here for the road racing, mostly, with a lesser interest in dirt and off-road, and almost no interest in street racing. So that’s what I spend most of my time doing. But in FH5, way more than FH4, like the OP I’ve been noticing the festival playlist events seem to be oriented toward activities and engagements rather than the bread-and-butter racing. I don’t mind doing the challenges, if I can win one of the cars that I couldn’t otherwise get easily, but it seems to be straying pretty far away from what I think of as a racing game.
FH5 is my last FH game. These games arent what they used to be. FH3 was the end of an era for the Forza series. That game was quality. A great map, great car list, and the stuff in the game was fun and engaging (Bucket lists and Forzathons). But that has died off. Now we have FH4/FH5s “weekly chores list”, a bunch of grindy challenges that you have to do if you want the new cars, rather than something fun and engaging. And now the devs do nothing more than just recycle content from older games. I’m willing to bet that the first expansion will likely be recycling an expansion from an older FH game, likely Blizzard mountain, but with less quality and fun. I have a feeling this is going to only get much worse. At this point, drifting and Eliminator are the only things I can really enjoy in this game. I sure as hell won’t be buying a copy of FH6, FM8, or anything from these lazy devs. This is not the Forza Horizon I once knew
I dont care what the location is, I’m not coming back because of jApAn MaP and I know I’m not alone. They’ll get millions of players, but they’ll be clowns from gamepass who blindly follow PGG no matter what. Loyal fans are done with their bs
lol, what is it matter if its Japan or Madagascar. By now people should know (at least smart ones) that the location is meaningless, fanbs and kids will still buy the game no matter what. That is the main problem of videogaming industry these days. Gamers are used to unpolished, half-baked recycled content and they will still keep buying. Its all they know. Gamers of this generation are pure comformists. I mean, seriously people expect things to change? at this point?
But ok, if its true, then i really hope that people learned the lesson and avoid buying FH6 or any ppg/microsoft (the real ones to blame if, because people keep blaming PPGs but Microsoft are the ones pulling the strings and pushing). But again, thats not going to happen, not in this reality. There is a reason companies do things the way they are, its a long-term study. They know people will keep buying.
Wait patiently. As others said, FH3 was the last “good” of the series.
