Turn 10, I highly recommend not trying to bring in new fans for Motorsport

Forza Motorsport Forza Motorsport (2023) Discussion
21

IMO Forza Motorsport has two main “opponents”: Horizon itself, and Gran Turismo. Can’t see FM venturing too deep in realism in order to challenge actual sims, whose audience is much smaller anyway.

The direct competition is Gran Turismo. However, there are people who would play Forza Motorsport in the past, but now find themselves more interested in the friendlier physics of Forza Horizon, which means it’s very difficult for Forza Motorsport to defeat Gran Turismo on sales alone, even with PC support.

T10 needs to target Gran Turismo, which is the only rival that matters in their genre, and do their own thing. No point in trying to outsell or even match Forza Horizon. It won’t happen. Also, the last couple games showed very clearly there’s a gap between the player base of both games, which is demonstrated by FM7 failing to bridge it with its more casual tone.

22

Yes, I agree - I honestly want them to go back to the good ol’ days of Forza on the X360 and improve the next game based on factors that made those games great. E.g. superb car sound effects, nuanced physics, and generally more focus on just track driving and motorsports rather than silly nonsense like driver outfits, crates or bowling games. Also non race cars or track driving cars like three-wheelers, jeeps and wagons - please, who needs them?

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23

In a sence I see only one thing that’s been truly lacking in FM5, 6, and 7,

Now I concider myself as a veteran, at least sort of. I found the game bit late, as I got 360 late. it came with FM2 when 3 was allready out.
Eventually I found multiplayer as there wasn’t enough challenge in single player or I would have had to drive cars that I find uninteresting.
I created lobbys, I found couple friends to play with, and we had fun.

FM4 came out, and I started playing that. couple old friends followed me, I found a group of new friends, and couple months later we had created a lobby that was open 8 huors a day, with clean racers.
We tried to cater to everyone races ranging from F class to R1, Sim damage, collisions allways on.
Sure we had couple rammers every now and then, which we could kick from the lobby for obvious reasons. The would be welcome next day, assuming they learned their lesson, and of course accidnets do happen so no-one was removed without a proof that he actually is a rammer. which usually happened so that one of the main 3 took an actually fast car, but didnt try to win, He was there just observing the suspected. If it was lack of experience, We called him in and tried to improve him as a racer.
At this time I allso joined the youtuber "Failrace"s crew, and pretty swiftly became a race marshall for his “VS community” races. but even with that we kept that 4 man squad organizing the 8h random lobby every day. This was the peak of my forza experience.

Genration changed FM5 came out, I got it as soon as I could afford it.

We got our crew together soon after that, and went to create that massively successfull lobby again. Except nobody was joining, as nobody could find us, even after I did some advertizing on forums.
One of us passed away, so there was only 3 of us, nobody wanted to go in the multiplayer hoppers, where one guy was beating everyone else 5 sec/lap and at least 5 other drivers who… to put it kindly, didn’t know up from down wrecking everyone else.
But at least I still had Failrace, being race marshall there, and racing 1 or 2 races in a week.

Forza 6 came along I stuck with it, 1 race a week, and being a race marshall, quite frankly it wasn’t worth the XBL time anymore.

FM7 came along. I bought it, hoping that things would have improved, I did half of the single player, and some online wreckfest, but it simply wasnt worth the XBL time. I knew some guys on PC gaming and started playing wreckfest with them, despite the name it’s still a lot cleaner than FM7 online multiplayer.

Right now I see FM series sitting in awkward position. It’s a great game, IF you have friends who are playing at the same time as you, and there is more than 5 of them. You can have fun with the game.
If you dont care about multiplayer, you can have fun with the game.
If you want to play multiplayer, but dont have 5+ friends available at roughly the time you want to play, it’s less painful to crawl on broken glass. in other words, not worth it.
Some of you say “go to multiplayer hopper and find friends.” But honestly the atmosphere on the hoppers is either toxic, or everyone has allready muted everyone else, or are in XBL party, so you never get to talk to anyone.

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24

What selfish, narrow-minded thing to suggest. Yuck. I guess lucky for you there wasn’t some toad advocating same against you when you were a new player starting out.

And for whatever it’s worth, I know I’m just one player and we all have different experiences to draw from, but out of all my multiplayer experiences across FM3-FM7 and FH3-FH4, I found multiplayer in FM7 to be the absolute worst…far, FAR more obnoxious and toxic than anything I’ve ever encountered in any other Forza titles. The ramming and pile-ups were ridiculous; seldom did I witness anything close to clean driving. The only title that came remotely close was H3’s Hot Wheels/Islandtopia expansion online adventures.

25

I partially agree with the OP in the sense that Motorsport should be focused on being a great driving first and foremost (i.e. appealing to the series veterans) rather than trying to dumb things down to attract new players.

However, that does not mean that the game shouldn’t continue to improve and identify ways to make the game more approachable for new players without compromising what makes the game great to begin with. Things like an in-game racing school and better driving assists and even a tuning assistant would be invaluable for new players while not affecting the core game.

Ultimately the game should try to attract new players by being the best it can be (players tend to recognize quality in a game and are drawn to it) rather than chasing the latest trends in an attempt to boost player engagement (locked exclusive cars, wheelspins, outfits to name a few in FM7).

26

It is up to Turn 10 to make this a better space. They can have better matchmaking with skill and sportsmanship meaning something. It isn’t fair to the veteran or the new player to be in the same lobby together. They have the tools, it works in GT Sport pretty well, not perfect but decent. If they don’t do this, I promise nothing will change. The same guys cutting in Pinnacle are still the same guys cutting in Pinnacle from 2+ years ago. What really irks me is the time wasted cutting. These guys show up every day like clockwork and if they had raced clean all this time instead of cutting they would be a lot better by now but they don’t get it and never will. I don’t cut and am significantly faster than I was when I first started F7. Imagine that, clean racing makes you faster.

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27

Bingo. I don’t understand why they can’t have both though. Configurable sessions for kids , newbies or players that like that whole crash derby, road warrior type racing. And a sessions/path for those that want actual racing rules enforced. Where part of the fun is working your way up the ranks by not only getting faster but also having a clean record i.e. less incidents will allow you to rank up faster. And if too many incidents you are forced back down again.

The constant bad and irresponsible aggressive racing is a major frustration of the Forza Franchise. It would also be nice to improve the physics/force feedback to allow for more consistent lap times using a wheel.

28

Personally I think catering to to veteran players and car enthusiasts rather than casual players will make for a much better game while preserving Forza’s reputation. Horizon is a better game for casuals anyway. Both games have their niche, and like in evolution, if they both feed on the same limited resource both will die out.

29

Of course car enthusiasts should be catered to; it’s a racing game. But a good racing game that caters to enthusiasts, especially in a series with a profile as high as Forza’s, that is going to attract lots and lots and lots of new players regardless. Personally, I love the idea of a driving school and always thought that should be worked into the career mode somehow, but even using that as a bar to prevent new/casual players that purchased the game (even buying into it more with preordering, ult ed., etc) from multiplayer or any part of that game for that matter strikes me as a real :poop: move. I don’t know what the best solution is, but from a consumer-business standpoint I don’t think that’s the way.

And let’s be honest – ‘new’ players really aren’t the big problem in multiplayer as experienced veterans should have little problem outmaneuvering level 2 players (if they haven’t already started eating the concrete on the first corner); the problem rammers/griefers/jerks/whatever players are almost always more experienced players, ones that know how to handle a car offensively and just don’t give two :poop:’s. This is actually more of a cultural problem, rather than one strictly of experience.

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30

While I share the concern of others, that Forza Motorsport on the XBox Series X will attempt to simplify aspects of the physics and race strategy even more to cater to a more casual, driving vs racing fanbase, I have chosen just now to have a glimmer of hope because of the same reason that others are worried: GamePass.

GamePass means that you don’t have to buy the game. GamePass means that increasing sales is somewhat irrelevant, because there are no sales. GamePass means that the actual need is to hook players into continuing their subscription so that they can continue playing, not so that they will feel good in the first month or two and then move on to the next thing. GamePass means that, if a casual player downloads the game and doesn’t like how difficult it is, that it prevents them from participating in many of the online races because their safety and/or skill ratings are too low, or that to be truly competitive you need a wheel, they haven’t wasted a purchase. They can play one of the number of other racing games that come with GamePass, like Forza Horizon or Need 4 Speed.

I have decided to have the incredibly unrealistic thought that GamePass gives Forza Motorsport the opportunity grow up. They could decide that the way to build up long lasting communities is by giving them the tools to create races, classes, teams, and championships that can be moderated in game. Make these championships public, searchable, shareable, with optional restrictions on minimum safety rating to join. Let the championship moderators create and distribute car builds, selecting what parts and settings ranges are allowed. Bring in proper support for timed endurance races, including day-night transitions, changing weather, and driver changes.

They could build the kind of track racing platform that people will gladly pay to keep coming back to for years, because there is no console parallel.

People think that the desire for more PC-like sims is just about “realism”, but a lot of it is about freedom. Freedom to create, to share, to experience, to feel like you are a series organizer or team owner or factory driver. Freedom is what builds thriving communities, as people get to create and share their idea of what makes a balanced class, a good championship, a good race.

But like I said, this is all unrealistic. I’m very scared that we’re going to get the Project CARS 3 version of Forza Motorsport, with freedom reduced in favor of curated content that tells us what they think we want in an attempt to garner the most possible positive week one reactions, rather than sparking the passion and creativity that feeds long term playability.

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31

They’re moving up to a Ryzen 5 equivalent. Physics should get better, not worse.

When it comes to Project CARS, I think you’re missing the point here. Project CARS 3 is a bad game not because it’s simcade, but because of two things mainly:

  • It does everything badly, from graphics to gameplay and features
  • It marked a change in genre (from simulation to simcade), which upset the fans

When people think of Forza Motorsport they expect simcade with gigantic career mode and online multiplayer based on short but intense races. That’s pretty much the same formula of Project CARS 3, NFS Shift, Gran Turismo 7, GRID (to a lesser extent) and every Forza Motorsport game. Gran Turismo Sport has a solid community, but wasn’t well-received by most of the fanbase, since it focused too much on the online competition.

I definitely think Forza Motorsport would benefit from sim features, but I think what people really expect from the game is closer to FM4 than to Project CARS 2 or even Assetto Corsa.

32

Casual gamers are not part of a fanbase. Players who log in once to twice a month only to putter around in freeplay are not part of the fanbase. Noobs who bought the game during the first month of release and gave up on it after a few days are not part of the fanbase. The fanbase consists of players who are dedicated to the series and log in on a regular basis, and actually try to enjoy game in it’s entirety.

Games like Forza and Gran Turismo have very large sales numbers, but relatively small fanbases, like all racing games do. But Gran Turismo’s fanbase is much, much larger compared to Forza’s, and they loved Sport. It was so well received that it has one of the largest and most successful esports leagues of any racing game franchise. Compared to Forza’s pathetic FRC, it’s no contest. GTS is the prime example of what Forza Motorsport ought to be, and it would absolutely be well-received by the fanbase, by the players who actually matter. But what matters to T10 isn’t their fanbase, it’s sales, and it’s pleasing daddy Microsoft so they can continue to get funding.

33

That’s not true. Gran Turismo was part of many people’s childhoods, as was NFS Underground. Originally, Gran Turismo was never about professional PvP competition, but car collecting and upgrading, and overcoming challenges, not unlike any other racing game.

What Polyphony Digital did in Gran Turismo was taking mechanics from the arcade racers of the time and add them to a game with reasonably realistic physics and licensed content. Gran Turismo Sport is far detached from those games, because it’s first and foremost an e-sports game.

I share your view that Forza Motorsport needs to be more professional at the highest level, but I also believe that elitism will take us nowhere. Nobody is born a good racer and even the pros make stupid mistakes from time to time. It’s up to the game to show players that excessive aggression does not result in success.

Most people who play Forza enjoy cars but don’t have the skill to compete professionally. The game should scale to their skill level if necessary, by providing the necessary assists and matching them up against people of similar skill if they wish to race online. Esaki’s speech on making the “most accessible simulation” some time ago hints at this line of thought.

One only needs to look at Flight Simulator to realize that you can have a top tier simulation that’s still enjoyable for people who aren’t much invested in the genre.

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34

It isn’t elitism to say that someone who hardly plays the game doesn’t have enough experience to form an opinion on what the series needs moving forwards.

Nobody needs to have professional skills to play Forza Motorsport, but the concept of racing at its core is fueled by competition. There are two types of driving game players: those who want to cruise around in a casual style and enjoy the simple act of driving, and those who want to race and push themselves to improve their pace. The former have TONS of games to cater to them, such as Horizon and NFS and Drive Club, and heck even GTA V seems to have turned into a driving game with how many cars they add in every month. The latter have really nothing on console that serves them besides GTS, and that’s exclusively on Playstation. We had Project Cars until they decided to sell out, and we’ve watched Forza Motorsport go the same way for the past 10 years. I’m tired of competitive players being ignored and treated like they’re aliens, like they aren’t a legitimate part of the community. It’d be really nice to see Turn 10 actually acknowledge the hardcore players, not with some stupid FRC that is invite only and barely draws over 100 views per stream, but with actual game features that encourage competition and clean racing.

35

Very well written!

I also have concerns over how much Gamepass will influence the development.

My Ideal is a Motorsport that’s an evolution of previous Motorsports, developed to the standard expected of their diehard fans… I can accept it being available on Gamepass, but being available on and making it for Gamepass are very different things. That market is what Horizon does and does well.

If Motorsport goes the direction of Project Cars 3 as you describe, it would be at cost of I and majority of forum / discord members I talk to …. Which would be a real shame given passion we all have for the Franchise…

PC3 is so disappointing, I pray that is not where Turn10 are heading…

36

Whats wrong with the GamePass? Never played “RacingGames” since NFS became crap (except TDU2) and my first “RacingGame” was TestDrive on the C64. One Day some Email from MS was in my inbox with “Bla GamePass for 1€” no idea why, never signed up to some Newsletter or whatever. Was looking what GamePass is and saw Horizon 4 there. Never knew there is a Version for PC too.
Subscribed GamePass downloaded Horizon (wich was the slowest GameDownload ever) played some hours and bought Horizon4Ultimate+Horizon3Ultimate. Thats what u want, paying Users (for additional Content/Cars whatever) there is no new Forza when there are only xx tousands paying “veteranplayers”. There is no Button wich brings in some new Car or other Content, a lot of ppl is doing hours of work and thats not for free.

Two weeks later cancelled GamePass and bought FM7Ultimate too. So i’m one of the new Players paying for the “old” Game wich allows you to have new Content and keeps the Game/Titles alive. (Im not a GameTester or BugHunter but never played a Game with the Bugs seen in all 3 Titles by simply playing but who is fixing these Bugs when they are out of Business.)

On the other side, we need the “VeteranPlayers” to learn from. You’ve started once playing these Forza Titles and your driving was bad for sure. There is nothing wrong with diff Licenses wich allows experienced Players to play without “new drivers” but when all these players are hidden from the “new drivers” who is teaching them how to drive. And one Day u wake up your GameServer is down or you are playing with the same 10 other “veteran players” alone over and over again because the “new drivers” are still “not so new but not veteran enough for me drivers”.
The “noob who suck at driving” wants to win the Race also (thats why he/she is there, not to ram you) and to keep up he has to improve wich means he learns how to drive and noone knows probably u can later learn something from them.

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37

What i don’t get is Turn 10/Mircosoft shortsightedness in moving games into “End of Life”. They would still be making sales in FM4 DLC if they still sold it. Just look at the numbers. Xbox360 outsold XboxOne 10 to 1. The uptake of next gen just hasn’t happened the way they hoped.

Here’s an idea. Relaunch FM4 for XboxOne. Player customised lobbies there. Just tweek it so you so you can use 911 or 430 most problems solved.

38

Ratio 360 to One is actually less than 2:1. If it was 10:1, there would’ve been half a billion Xbox 360s!

The thing is… FM4, as it was, would never be competitive today. I’d love it if Microsoft still sold the old Forza games, but your post is nearly delusional.

How many people still play NFSMW from 2005, which is in the same situation as the “definitive” game from NFS? Not many. And it’s not because EA doesn’t sell it anymore, because you can get the game quite easily. It’s because it’s old and it lacks the cars people want to drive. Simple.

The newest car in FM4 is the Aventador IIRC. Graphically, the game doesn’t hold up. And the 360 era didn’t have haptic triggers, which make a HUGE difference in how the car feels. I’d even say a large part of what makes Forza great today is the haptic triggers.

If you re-release FM4 you get something like the Halo MCC release on Steam: it booms during the first week and falls flat afterwards, since the only people who buy it are those who missed it and don’t care about the game’s age. They had sales spikes with each beloved Halo game they added, but Halo 3, despite having been a huge success and one of the most important games of the Xbox 360, will never attract as many players as the newest COD.

Your best bet is for them to make a modernized clone of FM4. Or maybe to just, you know, move on. The Xbox One is hardly trash.

39

I think the easiest way to put it is for a lot of people including myself FM4 had a magic that didn’t come from anything you can put your finger on, in fact all 3 360 era games + the 1st Horizon for me gave me a feeling that the Xbox One era games just haven’t, FM6 had sprinklings but never quite got there for me.

The 3 games after I can best describe as something similar to how Clarkson described a car on Top Gear once, very good, clean, little wrong with them but there’s just no…zing, or when they compared the 4-12C to the 458, the 12C was better in every measurable way and yet they’d still choose the 458 (only just realised how ironic that comparison is).

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40

New players means more rammers. More rammers means more rage. More rage means more ragequitting. More ragequitting means more angrily negative reviews. More negative reviews generally means less sales overall. All that, unless you’re a decent driver and hit a lobby with other decent drivers. From my experience in FM6 and 7, that’s not all too common of an occurrence.

I kind of agree with the SBMM proposal to some extent, but that turned Warzone into a dumpster fire outside of a poop show (for lack of the ability to better word that). SBMM at first thought would match decent drivers with decent drivers. But what happens if some rando no mic squirms his way in? (As has been proven possible with many other SBMM systems ahem, cough, aforementioned for example regardless of whether or not the developers claim it’s bulletproof.) Ramming happens, that’s what. I don’t think the ramming problem will ever be solved completely. Some dude might just be having a bad day where as on his normal day he’s a decent racer. You never know but that doesn’t make it less annoying to end up in a dogpile alongside turn one let alone turn ten.

Meh, we’ll just have to wait and see what card the wheel lands on after MS spins it. Unlikely to be a single card on the wheel with a proposition anyone in the fan base has mentioned, but who knows? Actually, maybe the choice gets drawn out of a hat…