I think this is going to be highly controversial, but in my opinion, new players should be less of a focus for the new Motorsport game, and it should just cater mostly to the original Forza fans. I am one of them, and having played Forza since February 2010, I think its safe to say that original Forza fans at least started out on the 360 titles or earlier. If we bring in new players, particularly to this next Motorsport game, that it will be a bad idea. This is due to the fact that if new players’ first Forza game is the next Motorsport, they won’t know how to drive and will end up just ramming in multiplayer.
Turn 10, please focus on the veterans for Motorsport, and take the noobs who suck at driving over to Forza Horizon 4. Since FM5 the games have just been half-finished cash grabs with an emphasis on quantity over quality, and I’m hoping that the next Forza game reverses that current business strategy which has plagued Forza for years.
Pretty strange request. What exactly constitutes a “veteran” forza player, someone who played 1 past game or someone who’s played 7? Also considering the depth of features forza has endowed its games with which players count more, single player career players or freeplay, multi-player hopper players or drifters or drag racers or tag players, or the players who almost exclusively tuned cars or painted them but never really raced them other than to gain money to buy those cars.
If any developer didnt focus on gaining new players their game would never sell. There are certainly a few design decisions that didn’t really pan out in the last few games, most recently forza 7s focus on car and racing suit collecting rather than focusing on racing or at least improving the features I named above. The content and features in Forza are its biggest weakness as well as its biggest strength. They’ve painted themselves in a corner so to speak because what features do you choose to focus on without disappointing people who like the ones that they’re not.
Its easy to sit here and say as a “racer” that they shouldn’t bother with drifters or painters because I don’t like doing those things, but there’s thousands of players who do. Right now no one knows what direction they’re going to choose, nor will any of these posts sway that direction. Going by the trend other racing games are on right now with driver ratings and what not i could only assume turn 10 would be doing something similar, but who knows i thought forza 7 was supposed to have this and they ended up not implementing it.
I don’t think they should build a game around a model designed to retain old customers at the expense of building a larger player base. What they need to do IMO is make playing the game in a clean and responsible way rewarding. Maybe encourage clean racing by upping the credit rewards based on time spent driving cleanly and avoiding contact during the race. Institute a licensing system like in gran turismo to teach fundamentals before dropping players in powerful cars. Change how good passes are counted by space given (not by closeness to passed car) and not passing in the dive bomb zone before a corner.
There is no reason to shy away from bringing new players into the fold. If the game is built around rewarding good behavior, showing new players proper racing procedures, and penalizing glaring offenses then the community will be better for it. Even restructuring races so that coming in first is not the only goal can help. For instance, requiring a pit stop in every race or picking a player or AI in the grid that is slightly better than you and marking them as a rival (they might not be the fastest but if you beat them you get a reward) could resolve many issues. If the only reward given is for winning there can only be one winner.
I think efforts to keep players out of the game would run contrary to Alan Hartman’s work toward accessibility and inclusiveness. The history of Forza has shown an interest in layering assists so that all skill levels can find the game enjoyable and challenging.
Forza is a game that benefits from a broader player base because it provides a distribution of leaderboard times that makes incremental improvements in Rivals and multiplayer racing more fun. More players means more shared livery designs, tuning files, photos, replays, uploaded video content, and livestreams.
I don’t know how Game Pass affects Turn 10’s revenues, but from a business perspective I would expect that the larger the player base, the more resources the developers would have to devote to assets and features the player base wants, including elites and veterans.
All we need is a skill matching/sportsmanship system. It will really need it if it is going to be on gamepass with everyone under the sun trying it. Sounds like a disaster to me as well if not managed properly. Just look a the horrible attitude people have in Horizon lobbies that is worse than ever because of the gamepass. I have no problem bringing people in but it has to be done in a way so as not to be extremely disruptive.
In this case no. The main reason why turn10 is loosing ground is just that; they`re trying too hard to please everyone (=kids) instead of focusing on just cars, racing & tuning.
New Motorsport will be on Gamepass and they’re targeting new players. You can take some comfort that Horizon will always be #1 environment for casual players. I personally dislike idea of it going straight to gamepass, but understand and accept it…. In saying that, Turn10 absolutely MUST have a system in place to control the online experience. That may include;
Licencing System. Series of lessons and tests designed to educate players on Basics of Racing, Regulations, Etiquette, and establish their Ability relative to others. Tests must have levels of increasing difficulty. Players licence will help determine what lobbies (car class and weather scenarios) are available in multiplayer. Example;
a. A Class licence – Easy difficulty focusing on road cars, basics of car control, basic manoeuvres and etiquette, understanding regulations and penalties, can be completed with assists. Must reach X rank (establish experience and consistency) before gaining access to next licence.
b. R Class Licence – Moderate difficulty focusing on race cars, longer race distances, racing in wet, tire strategy, being fast and consistent, advanced race craft, limited assists. Must reach X rank to progress.
c. Super Licence – Hard difficulty focusing on Prototype and Formula cars, ultimate pace, aerodynamics and ERS, endurance and racing at night, sim damage & assists.
A Matchmaking system that ranks players according to Pace (finishing position) and Sportsmanship (no. of contacts and penalties). FRR also effects finishing position, therefore ranking will bias clean and consistent racing which I think is a good thing.
More specifically to OP concerns, maybe experience (reward tier) gives a proportionate boost into your starting rank. However, you still must pass licences which will hopefully prove challenging even for returning players, but you can do them alot quicker than a totally new player
Edit. If implementing a strict system as above, We absolutely must have custom lobbies back, to provide a place where players can just do whatever they want, with whoever they want!
If this happens my forza career will stop soon. Played them all but i need to stop at some point.
Forza motorsport games are preaty bad(5,6,7) with or without new players.
I really hope the new one will be better because if they fail will not be good for them.
I preaty much agree…we need regulations and a good rating system.
Ironically I agree with you when it comes to the new fans. If Forza Motorsport tries too hard to cater to the biggest possible demographic, it will die. We already have people in the community who only play Forza Horizon, because Motorsport is “too hard”. Like, seriously? The physics is the same. Motorsport feels heavier, stiffer, more like a real car, but that’s it. I truly believe Forza Motorsport should be like Flight Simulator: a product that shows what you can do with your resources. Leave the fancy colors to Horizon.
On the other hand, nope, accessiblity won’t have a negative impact on the game’s quality. Look at Flight Simulator, 90+ score, best flight sim to date… and everyone can play it. You, your friends, your grandma. People keep falling for vitriol spewed by Assetto Corsa fanboys, that AC is hard with a controller because it’s “realistic”. No f-ing way, it’s hard because Kunos sucks! Can’t even make a decent console port. Thus, Forza Motorsport being more “accessible” should help people get into it, which helps the game, without hurting the game’s quality.
In fact, you keep going on about “let’s bring back the 360 days”, when Forza Motorsport has never been known for being a difficult game. Forza Motorsport is the green side of the force’s Gran Turismo. It’s not built to be difficult. Can it be more sim-like? Hell yes! Codemasters is here to prove you can have pit stops, fuel and tire management and simulation damage in a simcade. But it’s not intended to be hard, and in this scenario it might even be more realistic than full-blown sims, which go for difficulty over realism. I don’t like being in the company of Ian Bell in this argument but it is what it is.
If you’re this concerned about the quality of online blood that you make a thread on the forum asking the studio to make theirgame not as successful, you should be requesting Turn 10 to add a proper driving school and license ratings to the game, like iRacing has (and Gran Turismo is just a copy of iRacing). Without regulations and some form of control, rammers are gonna ram, no two ways about it. If not even the economy can manage itself through self-regulation, I can’t expect a bunch of gamers to do so.
Nobody likes rammers either, so sending them over to Forza Horizon will just make them a Forza Horizon problem. Besides, by virtue of being the more popular game, Forza Horizon is already more targeted by rammers, trolls and cheaters.
To top it all, the studio that makes Halo did a trailer “for the fans”. The old Halo artstyle and gameplay is there. There were lots of long time fans who enjoyed it. But the graphics suck. So they got laughed at (I hate you, Craig).
360 days are over, you need new fans to survive. Whether with sprint or accessibility. Microsoft won’t expand the Game Pass by catering to a dwindling amount of people too attached to their plastic box to see the big picture.
I suspect the second law of thermodynamics might apply here, if you think of the Forza community as a closed system. Without new people, ideas and growth, it will die more rapidly. (The second law of thermodynamics states that the entropy of any isolated system always increases.)
I don’t think the players crashed less in Forza Motorsport 4. It’s not about new players, it’s about creating a multiplayer environment with emphasis on rules and match making systems that differentiate based on skills and attitude.
I think Turn10 is making the right choice to focus more on Motorsport and that’s new for the franchise in some ways, because before FM always was a Pokemon type game with a focus on track days. I’m glad the new direction will bring us closer to Motorsport than ever and obviously you will find new players with this strategy. Players, who may be disappointed by the direction taken of pCars 3 compared to 2 for example.
Poor analogy, a supermarket has some of everything as it’s designed that way, Forza never was.
To put OP’s opinion a bit better they’re basically saying FM should be for those with an interest in racing, ergo those who will actually try and drive properly regardless of their skill level.
Making the game for it’s core fanbase above all else would result in a higher quality game and only bring in new fans worth having.
Money talks though for most companies nowadays.
Off the top of my head I would say look at the Souls series, that hasn’t ever done anything to appeal to the casual gamer and it’s done just fine, became a benchmark in it’s genre and even created 1 of it’s own.
Isn’t the relative success of Horizon attributed to its casual nature and wide ranging appeal? I don’t see Motorsport gaining sales with a blurb on the back of the box that says ‘Now more complicated than ever! - long time fan’
What most people don’t want are rammers and clueless noobs which I think can be dealt with, without trying to make the game unfriendly to new players which we all were at one time.
All games need an influx of new blood if the are to survive, Forza needs to be appealing, it just needs to do a better job of showing people the way.