FH5’s online activities are being ruined by cheaters at an even faster rate than 4 was.
The new gifting system has ironically legalized “car laundering”. That is, you hack a car into the game with a throwaway account, then gift it to a random player. Then there’s people unloading tons of hacked cars in the AH.
As if it wasn’t enough, teleport and speed cheats are back in full force, with many PC players attempting to teleport in front of you at the finish line because they’re butthurt when a “console peasant” outdrives them fair and square. Even in co-op racing.
The only real fix is the ability to disable crossplay with different platforms. Allow people to disable by platform. I want to choose whether I play with PC, cloud or Xbox-only. Microsoft is trying to bring together people who don’t want to be together.
I would go one step farther and request an option to launch the game with all online features disabled including the auction house and leaderboards and no prompt asking me every time if I want to go online without having to resort to using a firewall to totally block the game’s internet access.
Bonus points for reworking the game to remove the persistent online economy and artificial car scarcity entirely which causes these car hacks to be a big deal in the first place.
I want to be able to enjoy the game and cars and at my own pace without worrying about what other players are doing or being dependent on them to get rare cars through things like the auction house.
I was in a what’s it called… The 3 race online play one required as a challenge. Not Tour. Anyway, A800 cross-country and one player finishes extremely fast before anyone can get to the third lap. Stayed in the whole time I was there so I bailed after a couple of full rounds of 3. So pointless. The only reason to do that is to show off or deliberately prevent others from enjoying the game. Yet I’ve never heard of a single ban to these types of players. Not one.
Yeah, the reason why I haven’t disabled it is because it disables crossplay by network, not platform. So, if it’s a game published by Xbox, there’s no way to disable it, because you need an Xbox Live account even if you bought the game on Steam.
That being said, I think the car spawning in front of you at the finish line could be a bug, as I’ve seen it in footage from other players and there was no mention of cheating. On the other hand, the AH and gift thing is very real and something that will eventually ruin the game IMO.
The only right answer is Nope.
They have shown over and over again they don’t care about us or what we want. This game ain’t even 5 months old and we get 2 year old bugs from fh4 in it, speaks volumes if ya open your ears.
Were PC speed hacks a thing on FH4? I never recall ever witnessing it nor reading about it here, but I could be wrong. Seems like I’ve been seeing posts here and on Reddit from day one of the 5 release.
Oddest one i’ve seen recently was in a tour 3 race series. Most were in various a800 vehicles but were getting beaten by an a710ish rated Quattro, by a few seconds in 1st 2 races. Didn’t think too much of it as i hadn’t been close enough to front in either race to see him.3rd race was a circuit around one of the ruin sites,passed him each lap as he was parked up crashed into a bridge halfway round lap, results came up and he’d won again
We don’t need an option to disable crossplay. PC cheaters are the minority not the majority from that platform, I don’t feel lowering the player base is a fair and correct move. What I would say is that what we need is a more efficient anti cheat built into the game.
How many millions of people are playing this game? We’ll be fine. This idea the splitting the player base somehow makes it difficult to find someone to play with is false in a game like this. What it does is allow people that avoid certain parts of the game to be able to play them knowing their opponents have the same limitations.
Fix the root problems or split the dwindling player base in half?
Always always fix the root problem. If not you’re just showing you don’t care about one platform. Remember FH5 is a car “racing” game where arguably no platform has an overall advantage. It’s not a FPS game which requires pin point accuracy and blazing fast reaction speeds.
Also in 3 or 6 months from now the player base of “10 million” will naturally drop off significantly. Naturally in the sense that the hype around any new game dies off after launch. Now couple this with the issues currently plaguing the game and it’s potential impact to force more players to drop off if these issues aren’t addressed soon. Well you end up having a dwindling player base.
Now take who’s remaining and split them in half, assuming you force cross play and also assuming the player bases are equal. You now have a small faction remaining of the original “10 million”.
Based on FH4 you could expect queue times for eliminator to take up to 5 minutes to join a lobby of 20 or so players.
Online race queues would remain the same but you would be matched constantly against the same players or you will be placed in the short lobby with only 3 other players.
Open world driving would feel like a single player game.
I may have exaggerated slightly but for these reasons I don’t think disabling cross play is healthy for the longevity of the game, or necessary as per the previous posted comments.
