There is no challenge in this game. Is this how the Horizon games always are?

So this is my first Forza game and after the demo I was completely sold. What I didn’t know is it seems designed more for kids because there is no challenge anywhere. Even if you complete an event in dead last you get a gold star trophy on the map. It doesn’t even record how well you did so I can go back and improve. I’d love to keep racing but I’m starting to loose interest because I don’t really see any point in fixing up a car to race better when I can just putt around in the slowest car and still get all gold medals.

Is this how Horizon games always have been? I’ve played a lot of racing games in the past and never seen any without actual racing like this one.

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Try with all in simulation mode ( no abs , no stability control etc …) and set the difficulty to medium… You will see challenge for sure.

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Perfectly said

Forza Horizon isn’t about winning it’s about casual racing,having fun,you don’t need to finish first to level up,This isn’t Forza Motorsports where you need to win the race to advance to next race.

The only thing i will admidt is they should have lot more championship races that is about it

All assists off, NO REWIND, crank the difficulty up to unbeatable. I

He isn’t complaining that the game is to easy, but that it doesn’t matter if you win or do really bad. If you want serious racing you should have bought Forza Motorsport 7, Horizon is what the name of the publisher suggests, a playground.

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If you want events where your performance matters, do the Horizon Story events.

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Just remember to ignore the leaderboards for the story events because you will see people getting scores like 3,529 km/h through a speed trap or 5 seconds for a total time on a 2-3 minute sprint.

But yeah, the story events are fun.

I was amazed to find out you get a gold star and trophy icon over any race you finish. I was restarting them and getting 1st place with no assists, rewind, etc from level 1 - 95 and only then did I realize that getting 1st is the same as getting last.

Very VERY glad I got the chance to try the game for free with game pass. $150 CAD is a hilariously high amount of money for this.

To answer the OP directly:

No, the FH series used to be about actual racing skill(s) and had various challenges called Bucket Lists, Rivals, Championships and other leader board related activities.

Forza Horizon 4 has been horribly dumbed down to appeal to the 12-year old, Fortnite crowd as evidenced by the stupid emotes, clothes, etc.

Remember when Call of Duty changed a lot of games for the worse due to its success? We’re seeing that, now, with Fortnite, where publishers and devs are trying to get money from 12-year olds (or their parents) instead of cater to video games actual (aging) demographic who are in their 30s, and beyond. Mature gamers want games that challenge them and hold their interest long-term. Not give out participation trophies and concentrate on non-game play related crap like skins, emotes, and other useless garbage.

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FH4 still has lots of leaderboards:

  • all PR stunts
  • all Horizon stories (just like the bucket lists in previous games)
  • all showcase rivals
  • race event rivals
  • monthly rivals

It seems to me there are plenty of leaderboards to keep people busy for the next two years if they were to try to optimise their performance for each one, which entails tuning lots of different cars to see what works best for each PR stunt, for example.

If anyone wants a challenge, try to beat Rayzer’s time in this month’s monthly rivals, I won’t hold my breath waiting for someone to come back and tell me how easy it was to do that.

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Truthbomb right here.

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Hogwash. Replace “mature” with “masochistic” and you might be closer to the truth. I’m old and tired and frustrating difficulty generally does the opposite of holding my interest long term. When I was a kid I’d happily continue to bash away at such games, but these days I’d drop a game like Battletoads pretty quick. I’ve already set aside the aforementioned Horizon Stories and I may not get back to them.

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Everyone is different, and it depends on the game.

What I don’t like as I get older (40s) are grind-heavy games like MMOs, and MMO-lites (Destiny, Warframe, etc). I just don’t have the time, nor patience to dedicate to digital rewards. I don’t want things handed to me, but at the same time, if the grind is not fun, it will demotivate me faster than having a fun, but longer grind than I can eventually work through. This is the other reason I don’t like FH4. It’s grind-heavy to get a lot of things that were available in previous Horizon games, but the actual grind to get them is beyond boring and monotonous, IMO.

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the funny thing is before arcade racing games targetting kids had challenges … in nfs hot pursuit, underground, or burnout … litteraly forced you to win to progress … and seems like kids like seems to like games with challenge … fortnite is a game where out of 100 players there is only 1 winner ^^

The vast majority of those who play Fortnite DON’T win, or ever make it to the top 10.

They play for the social aspect + skins and emotes. This is why Epic makes 300 million per month on microtransactions (V-Bucks) from very young kids (and their parents) who subconsciously know they aren’t going to win, but spend the money to look “cool” trying.

Daaaaammmnnnn! Did he just drop the truth in here?! I just said on another board its racing mixed with Fortnite. I mean its fine if thats what they wanna do to make money but those of us that have been around since 2007 know it can be a better product. I love the game I just think some things arent needed. I mean majority of the wheelspins are emotes and clothes. I’d prefer to get money or cars. Love the Forzathon Live and the season changes with new challenges BUT its obviously aimed at an 18 & under crowd

OP, If you want a challenge simply turn the difficulty up to Unbeatable and turn off all assists, and attempt to Three-Star all the Seasonal championships and exhibition races. Then Three-Star the Story Events. Boom, there’s your challenge. Not sure where this complaint is coming from honestly.

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I’m doing a post in a few min regarding some decals I need, because I feel the same way, and decided to add myself a layer extra to the game just to not make it boring.

You are welcome to try it out and let me know any improvements on it.

Here is an idea- Find an join a club that is serious about racing and keeping it clean, join them and then race exclusively with them. I usually only race online when my teammates are on also, that way it makes the game much better.

If you actually want a FH game with a respectable amount of challenge and much better progression, go take a look at FH1. Unfortunately it’s not on the Xbox store anymore (likely to due expiring licenses) but disk copies aren’t too hard to find and it will play on the xbox one.

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Still available in a few places digitally as well, and will still activate even though has been delisted.