I just want to say that limiting so many desirable cars in a video game is ruining it for lots of people. Why can’t we have a better way of obtaining cars? How about the temporary events that unlock/give you certain cars that you can’t buy at the autoshow are instead permanent (at least, during a certain season), and once you unlock the car, it becomes available for sale at the autoshow? I finished the main story of the Horizon 4 and only got like 6 million credits. Only 6 million, sounds funny doesn’t it? Well, I got super excited when I heard the new Shelby GT500 is coming to the game, however I somehow missed the limited time event that unlocks that car for you. I got really upset that I missed the chance to get the car I really wanted to drive in the game, but found out I could buy one at the auction house and got excited again. Until I found out they were going for 20 million credits. For one car!!! I got really upset I couldn’t drive the hot new car and really didn’t want to play the game anymore. I stopped playing for like 8 months. Why spend so much time on making every car in the game when only a (relatively) small percentage of players will get to enjoy them? I understand making a few cars rare and hard to obtain, but this is too much. I wish I could buy any car I want in the game for a reasonable amount of credits at the autoshow. I also hate how you unlock for example an R34 Skyline GT-R in Horizon 4 and can’t just buy another one after that at the autoshow. I want to have one that’s stock, and an extra one or two modified, but they go for millions of credits at auction house and once again, I can’t enjoy the game as much as I could have because of all these limitations and high prices. I really feel like there has to be a better way of obtaining cars in Forza games without “hurting” the people who pay real money to play it. If we can’t just buy any car we want at the autoshow, at least don’t limit us on when we have to do certain races/challenges to unlock them.
That’s not going to be better. The value of cars in the auction is based on their rarity, so to put all cars in the autoshow ruins the auction house. However having cars always available to win in races is OK if you make the races pretty hard. Also everyone has more than 20 Million if they play the game properly.
They could just put all the playlist cars in the same drop pool as the wheelspin exclusive cars we had in Horizon 4 (Aventador SV, Crown Vic, etc), or they could let you replay any series you want to catch up on old content, or when a game if walking into EOL status as Horizon 4 is they could introduce these cars into the dealership so no content is lost - but obviously they won’t change and do any of that, if anything it seems like they will double down with the amount of limited time content, because all of it drives the player engagement numbers up, and that is what matters in the end of the day, the investors or microsoft seeing the return. You either accept that (unfortunately) this is what Horizon has become, or just don’t play at all.
Actually, it would be way better because it would ensure that people can actually access the full selection of cars in the game as opposed to having to organize their time around the live-service schedule of a videogame or grind incessantly to pay the gaming-equivalent of a scalper just to have a car they like. Just an fyi, Forza Motorsport 2 and Forza Motorsport 3 were both virtually absent of ultra-rare “unicorn” cars and their auction houses worked just fine.
I made 20 million with in the first month. I buy and sell cars on the auction house once a week. Usually selling the cars for about the same amount i paid if its rare.
I have had most of the rare cars in my garage at one point and time and when i want somthing different i put a car up sell it use that money and buy another no point in keeping them all.
Lol, just play a some goliath with friends for 3-5 laps then you will get decent amount of money already. it’s easy to farm money in forza. Or you can wait for event to come again to get it free. It’s not a problem.
“just do a bunch of tedious grinding or wait potentially months for the devs to give you a limited window of time to get the car” isn’t really the counterargument you think it is
It’s been that way since FH1.
Tip-don’t sell barn finds or achievement cars, you can’t just buy those back.
In FPS you don’t get all the weapons. Don’t expect any different.
“It’s always been this way” isn’t really a valid argument. Bethesda’s action RPGs have always been really buggy and unpolished, but that fact wouldn’t really be a good defense if Elder Scrolls 6 turned out to be a glitch-filled broken mess at launch. Also, regarding in first person shooters, there are typically specific progression paths that are always available to allow for unlocking guns and camos, not some FOMO-based system designed to pressure online play. It’s so weird to me that people are jumping through hoops to defend a legitimate flaw in content delivery.
In Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2019 and some other games, in public match you need to unlock the weapons but… In private matches, all weapons, attachments, equipment and others are unlocked from the beginning. Don’t expect any different? Hahahaha
I agree with the OP on this, the Horizon economy is broken for many players.
Should you really have to grind for 10-20 hours depending on skill level to get a single car that’s priced at an inflated $20m just because the bidding system is so broken those with excess credits buy out the cars at the maximum. It’s a system that strongly favours players who spend a lot of time in the game and is a significant barrier to the more casual player.
I do also agree that it shouldn’t be a free for all, if you want all the cars in the game, or even specific exclusive cars some work should be required rather than picking it up in the Showroom. Even adding it to Wheelspins is a challenge while this increases supply, it still doesn’t control pricing or significantly improve availability. Look at FH4 and all the credits people had from glitching, players were asking $50m+ credits just to list a rare car which you had little chance of actually getting in from the AH.
The best solution in my view would be an extension of the Backstage Pass.
If a car is listed as a weekly reward, it is added to Backstage pass after 2 months.
If a car is listed as monthly reward, it is added to Backstage Pass after 3 months.
Backstage Pass is a rare item, say one per month with the 80% equivalent completion, or even make it 90%
Backstage Pass could also be a community reward (Painting, Track Design etc.) or added to wheelspin at same rate as the £1m Legendary prize, be a reward for as yet undesigned events etc.
The player can chose any one of the released BackStage catalogue, and can have the same car every month if they want 20 versions of the same car.
Cap the number of Backstage Pass that can be retained/ held over to ~3. Use them or lose them. (Also minimise risk of unauthorised game exploitation)
This keeps exclusive cars rare but individual cars are available.
AH market is maintained, the most a player can unlock is ~1 car per month which should not significantly impact the overall market for exclusive cars especially once we are 6 months in.
Still requires a reasonable level of skill and high participation to obtain.
Supports those who want duplicates for tunes / paints and those who play regulary can flip the car for credits.
Retains the incentive to particpate in the weekly / monthly to get car at release, rather than have to wait for addition to Backstage Pass.
For perspective, I have all the cars except the last Hotwheels pack which I can’t decide if I should buy just for ‘completeness’ and I did make a crazy amount flipping cars in the AH.
Despite that, I still feel that this relatively minor change would significantly improve the inclusivity and access to rare cars for more casual players.
My idea.
We will first divide the cars added to the game into two types.
One is the models that already existed in the Forza series in the Xbox One era, and the other is the models that appear in Forza for the first time and the return of models from the Xbox 360 era and earlier.
The former will be the models that are added to the auto show with each season update, and will be the models that all players can immediately benefit from the update.
And the latter will be offered through playlists as before. However, these cars will also be added to the auto show or Forzathon shop/Backstage pass after a certain period of time.
It also loosens the restrictions on Backstage pass.
In FH4, there was a “one model, one time” limit, so skilled players had more and more backstage passes left over.
The “add everything to playlist” style has tremendous benefits for PG and MS, but being forced to play games is getting tiresome, even for a long-time fan of the series like me.
And the system has never been kind to beginners who, like my friend, don’t have sufficient play skills.
This system is also one of the reasons for the increase in RMTing, and from what I could find on eBay, the number of RMT-related listings in FH4 has clearly increased over that of the FH3 era.
While it may be important for PG to increase the number of user engagement, the current system needs to be modified to be a bit more user friendly.
Well, they may make this trend worse, but they will never improve it…
Exclusive cars should be available for challenges that aren’t time-gated. Maybe not the first time around, if you just can’t bring yourself to abandon the idea of forcing players to play on your schedule, but six months down the road, add them as rewards for some sort of permanent events/challenges/whatever.
Alternatively, you could at least add them to the autoshow when the game is no longer receiving updates/reaches EoL.
They only do this so “players stayed engaged and keep playing”. They hire employees that are “experts” on player retention for this exact reason and this is what they came up with, the live service model. It’s so stupid but it’ll probably never change as it’s such a central part of the game.
Sadly probably true - It’s just to manipulate players and create addictive feedback loops - pretty despicable, especially considering how many of the participants are children
I never use the auction house and race online very rarely. I have every car in the game except the pre-orders and the eliminator cougar and I have 200 million in the bank. I played at least one day each week to do the playlist for the season skipping the playground games and the trial. Does this mean there is grinding, yes but if you want every car then you have to put in some effort.
How much of the playlist are you able to complete? You need to get 80% to unlock some of the cars.
I have all the cars too, and only did the playlist for 1 day. There were not many 80% cars that were unique. Lets say there were 6 unique 80% cars. I bought those in the auction house.
EXACTLY! people saying thing like “it’s just a little bit of grinding” is like telling somebody struggling with money they should “just get a better job” - It’s just such a blatant and deliberate oversimplification of the problem used as a means of dismissing the valid viewpoints of people struggling with the frankly unreasonable amount of hoop-jumping the game expects of its players. So many of these cars expect player to bend their schedule and put aside large amounts of their own personal time just to access content in the game and it’s baffling that all the counterarguments depend on anecdotal arguments pretending that it’s not. I’m glad you feel the same way.
Weekly dedication spanning multiple years is more than “some effort.” I like Forza Horizon, but I don’t worship there no matter how much they want me to drink the Kool-Aid of engagement.