The pros and cons of freeroam rush being part of ranked team adventure

Forza Horizon Legacy Horizon FH4 Discussion
1

There’s a recent thread that has, understandably, been locked due to how the poster expressed their opinion. However, I think this is actually an important and interesting element to discuss in isolation from other aspects of online gaming, so I thought I’d create a thread where we can all share our thoughts on this one element.

First of all, I suck at freeroam rush. I’m not good enough at holding a detailed map of the entire world in my brain, so I often make sub-optimal choices about the route to take. Some people seem to have an uncanny ability to know that 200m to the side of where I’m going is much better, and they go flying through while I hit something and stop dead. So I think there is a huge amount of skill in freeroam rush, otherwise it wouldn’t be possible for me to be consistently bad at it.

A pro is arguably that the mix creates interesting strategic problems to solve. You can optimise a car for road racing, but as 40% of the competition is freeroam rush, it makes sense to trade some road performance for off-road performance, e.g. maybe use a higher ride height than you would for pure road use. Or it can work the other way, and if it’s a cross country adventure, maybe you want to sacrifice a bit of cross country performance to do better on road sections of the freeroam rush. Having to think about these things gives the game extra depth.

A con is the opposite of the above, that it doesn’t allow people to enjoy the purity of a single type of racing. So an alternative structure would be to have an adventure that is 5 x road races, and another adventure that is 5 x freeroam rush. That way you’d satisfy the people who want the purity of road racing, but would also have adventures where you need a more balanced vehicle between road and off-road use. However, that would be no good if you were just randomly dumped into one or the other, the game would need to allow people to choose between the “pure” adventures and the rush adventures.

Another con is that a lot of people hate it, presumably because, like me, they suck at it.

But another pro would be that I guess some people love it, if they’re better at it than the races along a defined route.

Please keep posts constructive so the thread is a useful source of feedback for PG.

2

Well my first impression when drive freeroam was “is this stupid thing really part of the online” and i even won that race and still i feel it was really stupid and need zero skill to win that event. Like you say you will do well just by remembering what is best route it’s far less skilfull than actual racing part.

And what’s come in car tuning it’s make tuning car acutally more boring because i would pic even in road racing car that is tuned for rally it’s lose so little in asphalt and have huge advantage in offroad and it’s also limits option how to tune your road racing car, do you like high grip/handling car or rwd car too bad because those are not competive and this game made good balancing between power and grip tunes on circuit but then there is freeroam rush in online what make power tunes mutch better. Cross country vehicles get easily high enough top speed that dont need to make compromise there to get more speed.

I have say earlier but i say it again that freeroam rush would fit in cross country series just fine but in dirt racing and espicially in road racing that shouldnt be part, espicially if you cant choose do you wanna race adventures where is freeroam rush or not have. In fh2 i didint like that almost every adventure there was at least one cross country event and even less i like when there is two.

For me personaly if ramming and wallriding problem get solved i could try to team adventure (even tho i hate that concept in car game) but so long when freeroam rush is part of the road racing series i wont play it.

3

I personally lean in favor of keeping it in, even in road racing events. There have been a lot of strong arguments in favor of canning it and I don’t really find any fault or argument with them, its just a personal preference. As the OP mentioned, I do think there is a fair bit of skill involved… reading map ahead of the race, reading the the terrain during the run and knowing when to let off the throttle because a lot of times being a bit ‘slow’ is actually a lot faster, these are actual skills just like knowing your braking points and being able to read the racing line around a track are.

However, to one of V12’s points, yeah if you want to tune a capable all-rounder you are going to sacrifice peak road performance and peak off-road performance… definitely a tricky line to toe. But I’d offer the counter point that with the online system randomly switching seasons between adventures, you’re already disadvantaged in a way since there are tuning tweaks that need to be made between the seasons to get that optimum performance. So to me at least, I just embrace it and try to build a podium capable car that may not win every event, but is still competitive in the majority of the events, including the Freeroams.

That said, RWD does put you at a disadvantage in pretty much every respect, they just like to spin around too much the minute they hit dirt… power tunes, I’ve gradually come around to the conclusion that you pretty much need to err on the side of more power in general in this game. While I love my handling focused tunes and have been fairly successful with them, with the exception of Ambleside Village circuit and a handful of other tracks with technical sections, I’ve found they mostly rely on the fact that 3/4 of the other players are going to bin it in a wall or ram one another to death. So I’d suggest that AWD and more power are kinda baked into the meta of even street racing right now, and a cheap trade for some PI room is to run rally tires with a racing suspension, which also tend to come in handy on winter events and in freeroam… and you can definitely win a freeroam in a car tuned this way, even against off-road focused cars. I’ve started working on a freeroam tips series and here’s an example of exactly that happening: Forza Horizon 4 - Freeroam Rush Routes 2 - YouTube - I’m not claiming to be a freeroam expert, just saw a gap a lot of people seem to have and thought I’d share what’s worked for me so far.

Anyhow, I digress… at the end of the day, I kinda like freeroam as-is but I wouldn’t shed any tears if it went away or lost the points value, or whatever.

4

One of my favorite things about freeroam is the ability to escape the wreckers and bangers. I think that’s why a lot of people don’t like it, they can’t smash you off a checkpoint for the win.
I hit everything on the map, sometimes intentionally.
If I got a pack of the other team chasing me and trying to wreck me,I go to the mountains then enjoy the show as they try and get that low slung lambo out of the trouble they chased me into.
I rarely ever use street racing tires anymore as well. Plain and simply, it rains far too much to bother with racing slicks.
The other advantage is not losing control when they try and push you off a check point. Got grip on that dirt shoulder, something they most likely won’t have due to race slicks.
Get this a lot in dirt racing, racing slicks on dirt is not fun.
Not only does it prevent you from controlling your own car, 90% of the time you will also take out your team mates in the process. Only time I struggle in dirt races is when 90% of it is on paved roads. And then I am stuck that last ten percent trying to navigate around the pile up in the first turn of the dirt section.
Offroad, got a nice selection of OR vehicles, yet 90% of the players are in cars on racing slicks.
Very few in this game actually understands the importance of tuning, tires, road surfaces and how they all work together.
Team Adventure Offroad races often consist of cars on racing slicks. Easy win for me, but I still lose because my team is still trying to get out of turn one.
Just to see what kind of driving experience they have, I entered an offroad event in a stock vw van. I did manage to complete two laps in all three races, did fairly well in the rush, a couple 7th place finishes.
Also tried this in the Peel 50 tuned to S class. A lot of fun as far as stunt driving goes, not too shabby if you keep it straight either. Best I managed was 1 and a half laps.
Now my Toyota Baja can make first place finishes against some of the top drivers in the game. Some of ya ride on rails and I can’t compete with that so I just let you roll by, I’m not so jealous or need a win so bad I gotta screw up your game.
But the Baja is not good with tight cornering, but they always show up in street races for some reason, probably the designated wrecking ball.
Anyway, learn about tires, road surfaces, different weather and then even the rush will be a fun part of your game.

By the way, I test every tune in an offroad environment even if it’s for street racing. This is extremely helpful in deciding if it’s worth the win to go offroad or just stick to the road and hope for the best. Sometimes, last place is the most pleasant race. Certainly better than trying to get out of first gear in wet grass.

5

No freeroam rush is not even then fun part of the game for me. There is not any kinda fun for me drive s2 class hypercar on offroad when i enjoy drive on asphalt where that kinda cars belong.

6

Pro:

  • test of your map knowledge
    -“diversity”?

Con:
Free roam involves offroad mostly, so AWD are at a big advantage. If the other races are tarmac, freeroam won’t be very fun especially with RWD.
You can go for risk vs. reward and try your luck through a forest shortcut. That’s clearly more about luck than skill and probably isn’t everbody’s idea of racing.

7

KEEP IT! I can win regular events but highly likely to win freeroam. I know the map! Its not my fault that some people study the map and others dont. You need to know the layout. I still try to find the road along my off road journey because obviously you cant hit top speed going off road. Thats 165 vs 265. Trailblazer is gonna reward folks can find the quickest route from point to point

8

I don’t like it simply because I really like the actual courses in the game, and want to race on them. It’s fun to learn every course and what needs to be done on each of them to improve your time. Thanks to Freeroam Rush, you’re lucky if you get in two races out of a three-race series. Back in FH3, you’d get four races in a series, which was AWESOME. I can recite to you from memory different tactics to take on different FH3 courses – including how to avoid corner bombers and getting pushed out of a checkpoint.

Here you have to go through all of the bother to get into a lobby and then you’re done after two lousy races and a couple of cross-country bomb fests. BLECH.

9

I was tempted to lock this due to there already being a thread here regarding online. However, the points are interesting & I can see a purpose of keeping this topic separate.

Just informing you all incase this starts leading towards online in general and not freeroam rush specifically, I may have to move this to the thread above.

10

I need to side with freeroam… On both sides. Not having walls, or checkpoints and advantages to track knowledge is a good thing.

But like others say, it needs to somehow match up with the types of racing for that event. Ideally, the road and rally freeroams could set up area checkpoints negating the need to bomb cross country. Also more offroad part of offroading would be good.

For forzathons, I have a rally built hyuara or however that pagani is spelled. Going anywhere is always faster offroad straight line unless it is along one of the high speed routes. Over 200km/h offroad? Hahaha. Not bad in racing either. But still not as good as it in rwd road tune. So if in team adventure, I probably would do something similar. Sacrifice a slight bit of handling for a better overall average final position. But if there was more advantage to sticking to the road, or a necessity to, I would.

11

I like the free roams as well, for reasons well-stated above. It does mean I usually use rally tires and suspension, even on road racing sets, but that’s only because of the variability of the routes.
My favorite free roams are those where sticking roughly to the road is fastest. There’s a risk/reward trade for cutting corners, but no benefit to taking the Baja and just going straight.
Minor adjustments of race starting points (there’s plenty of load time already, it couldn’t possibly hurt) to optimize existing routes to align more with their race series (ie, on-road near-optimal route for road/Street) would probably be easy to implement and solve many of the issues.
I think map knowledge still gives a benefit in this case to anticipation, but I don’t think it’s appropriate for map knowledge to be worth the 30+ second difference in a 2 or 3 minute race that it often provides currently.

12

As someone who used this feature for the first time this past weekend I can understand the disappointment expressed by earlier posters. My first reaction was: What is this race about!? I obviously finished the race dead last. I realized what was going after the second race started and I noticed the lack of checkpoints. I ended up winning that race. My vote goes to “keep it”.

13

Free roam rush and lack of car class choice in online is what keeps me playing fm7 instead of fh4. I dont find the racing in fh4 remotely competitive at all. I regret i wasted $100 on fh4. Ive learned my lesson and wont pre order or buy another horizon game until the multiplayer isn’t wack af. Which means an option for class specific pure road/dirt racing WITHOUT FREE ROAM RUSH.(and wall riding nerfed)

14

Just remove free-roam rush from Road and dirt racing. That’s it

15

I think Freeroam Rush should keep its place in cross-country races because the used cars are fitting for it and it brings some other requirements to the table. Map knowledge being more important than driving skills. It’s also way less affected by rammers and wallriders.
For road, street and dirt racing I would like to see it gone because it limits car choice even more and just doesn’t fit the theme of the racing series. I love to use RWD cars in road races and there are many Freeroam Rush routes that are basically impossible to win with a RWD car.

16

For Road Racing Team Adventures, I think the route selection plays a part in the potential enjoyment of Freeroam Rush.

As we all know, Freeroam Rush requires people to race from the end point of one race to the beginning point of the next.

If the right Road Racing routes are chosen, the optimal routes in Freeroam Rush would end up being the roads themselves, therefore giving road-based cars a better chance of competing. People could still go offroad if they wish to take a cheeky shortcut, but with the right routebuilding Freeroam Rush can be “fair” for more car types.

A quick example here would be at the bottom of the map. Take the Road Racing route on the South East of the map (by the roundabout (for this example let’s assume it’s a Circuit race, therefore the finish point is the same)) and have the next route be The Colossus (bottom center). The optimal route between these 2 for Freeroam Rush would be the road (top speeds on tarmac are higher than those on grass), but it would still allow those who think they can drive quickly on grass to take a beeline route instead.

Another example would be to take any of the Road racing routes in the Festival Hub and have the next one be the one by the Railyard. Navigating through the first is dangerous even for Cross-Country cars, thus making the roads the optimal route. You would need to go West from the hub, up past the Marathon start point and it’s a pretty simple road sprint from there.

Overall I think part of the issue with Freeroam Rush in Road Racing Team Adventures is that the optimal paths between 2 events currently take you offroad, when a better Adventure lineup would incentivise on-road driving.

For Cross Country this isn’t an issue.

17

Should keep it in but remove the fact you score points, like they had in FH3. That way it removes the advantage some have and keeps the points scoring for the races alone.

18

Why even keep it at all? You do a pointless “race” and then sit at the loading screen again.. So damn stupid i cant understand who thought this was a good idea.. Its like the devs have never played online and think to themselves: damn if i was a customer i would be pissed

19

Although I hate freeroam rush (and everyone i play with too), i can also see why others like it. So i guess the best solution would be to keep it, but give ppl who dont like it an online mode without it. Sound reasonable?

20

Way it reads, sounds like it isnt the freeroam part, just the offroad. So once more, area checkpoints on anything not post cross country.