For me I really missed gear shift sound from Forza horizon 2, shift sound. in FH5 is really boring and we want new cars new models car
The only thing I miss is the progression from the first game.
5 Likes
How much more fun the first 3 games were as well as the better soundtracks of 2 and 3.
5 Likes
Atmosphere - This game felt like an actual car and music festival. Sponsorships and advertisements were relevant in sanctioned races without being intrusive. Posters and radio DJs actually mentioned songs and artists by name. It was also way more lude without going over the line. That’s what makes Playground’s excessive censorship of lyrics and overly positive characters so grating. There’s no way a festival this large would have attendees this clean in both attitude and consumption. That, and there would definitely be a hoard of Horizon babies by the end of the festival, if you catch my drift.
Progression - Many, including myself, have gone on about this before, so I won’t spend too long on it. In short, it just gave the game a lot more purpose. You wanted to be the Horizon Champion and beat Darius Flynt, and the game did this perfectly by setting up mini-bosses and letting you move up the performance classes in an escalating manner.
Map - Probably a very unpopular opinion, but I actually prefer how closed off the original map was, and for a lot of reasons. For the most part, it actually increased the importance of driving lines, both in races and in free roam, since the amount of runoff was minimal. It also encouraged players to take their time in free roam by driving to each destination instead of blazing in a straight line towards their destinations. As a result of this, areas where you were let off the leash more felt way more earned and liberating. In addition, the fact that you couldn’t break through guard rails meant that Playground could heavily pack the sanctioned races with spectators, making each event seem way more alive and exciting. And I don’t know about other players, but since there were no checkpoints in sanctioned races in Horizon 1, I found it way easier to pick up lost ground rather than relying on rewind every single time I fowled up.
AI - Drivatars are a concept that neither Turn 10 nor Playground realize should hit the road and never return (unless its like the Drivatar system in the very first Forza Motorsport). The AI are way more balanced in Horizon 1 as they don’t pull the same awful stunts they pull in a later games. They actually make mistakes, they make efforts to pass each other, they don’t have unlimited grip on dirt, they don’t have speed boosts or modifications unobtainable to the players, and most importantly, they have proper names. No stupid gamer tags. Actual recurring names that you can remember.
Music - Most subjective bit, as despite my young age, I find popular music as a whole is lowering in quality more and more every year, but this was easily the best soundtrack in the whole series. Its dated, but in a good way. Excluding the Lostprophets songs. Why those were never removed in an update, I’ll never know.
Cars - Though this game suffered a lot from “Hey, we already had that in the previous games” syndrome, this was still a very solid car list, and is actually full of gems that either have not appeared in Forza games since the Xbox 360 era, or never appeared outside of Horizon 1 at all. A lot of these need to come back. BMW M135i, or Alfa Romeo TZ3 Stradale anyone?
14 Likes
Custom championships
Lancia
Alfa Romeo
Custom adventures
Expansions that have turns (and other things that appeal to drivers)
Rocket bunny
Better balanced tires (3)
Custom radio station with full integration with the game/open world
Various random cars (Datsun 2000 Roadster, Subaru Brat, Porsche 928, Volvo Iron Knight… The list is as varied as it is long) along with Fiat
The AI that cheated less
In that order. I’m sure given enough time I could think of more to add to the list.
As much as PGG deserves to get criticized for taking some of this stuff away (obviously licensing issues play a large part and are likely responsible for a lot of the missing cars + rocket bunny), it’s not a one way street. There are things I miss from the newer games when I go back and play the older ones too.
Custom championships though… Just why? And why isn’t it a priority to put back in? I just can’t wrap my head around the logic of removing such an essential feature.
2 Likes
Atmosphere of a music festival. (Forza Horizon 1)
I think even PGG has forgotten that Horizon Festival is a celebration for cars and music anymore.
Look at the FH1 launch trailer. This is an accurate representation of what the Horizon Festival was originally about.
The music festival aspect does not directly make this game better, but it does have the effect of immersing the player more into the game world.
A story with proper progression system and a unique antagonist. (Forza Horizon 1)
In terms of narrative, the Forza Horizon series has been regressing ever since FH1.
But FH1’s story isn’t as epic as Skyrim or Final Fantasy; it’s exactly the same mundane stuff as many street racing games like NFS.
Start as a rookie and beat the antagonists to reach the top. It’s that simple.
But since FH2, players have become greater and greater, and the storytelling has been lost in proportion.
And the characters: no more unique antagonists like Darius Flynt or Ramona Cravache.
In FH5. Rami is… Mexican, and the rest of the characters no longer even have memorable names.
Starting with the lower class events, the contestants will aim to become the #1 racers of the festival by defeating the professionals of each race.
I hope these stories will return in FH6.
Business (Forza Horizon 4)
A system that gave us a constant income and a few fun challenges.
Why was this system removed in FH5?
AI with a more modest rubber banding.
The FH series AI always used rubber banding. However, the AI for titles up to FH4 was more modest.
The FH5 AI’s rubber banding seems to be more powerful than that of earlier titles.
There is nothing wrong with fast AI. But a more bogus AI is not fun. I would enjoy a more fair race.
A gaming experience without the hassle of playlists.
A gaming experience we will probably never get back again.
We are no longer allowed to play games whenever we want. It is now mandatory to buy the game on release day and commit to a certain amount of hours of gameplay each week.
Failure to do so will leave us no choice but to pay 20 million cr to scalpers on the AH. Or we can wait a few months and hope PGG will re-release those cars on a whim.
Era of live service. Welcome to a more nonfree gaming experience.
Terradyne Gurkha
First of all, let me start by saying that I am not a rammer.
I just like tough cars like military vehicles.
This car may be ineligible for Motorsport, but it was one of the fun cars in Horizon. And its armored car-like body was a great canvas for livery.
I don’t know if they have temporarily removed this car from the game as “bait” for future playlists, or if it will never return to the game again due to licensing issues. But I miss this car very much.
10 Likes
Everything, but for context
- Progression
- Custom Radio
- Functioning Leaderboards
- Functioning Clubs
- All maps from FH3 and prior (FH2, FH1)
- Immersive player cutscenes with no cringe voice dialog
- Tyres that functioned as intended (not rallies for road etc)
- Wristbands
- Drive to Event prior in Online Adventures
- Voice/Microphone functionality in Online Adventures
- The “true” car festival experience
- Wider spacing on tracks
- No live service
- No festival playlists
- Beginner friendly physics with no janky braking (it’s Horizon, not Motorsport)
- FH1 no tuning (closer races)
- Ranked Adventure (even though it still sucked)
- The old FH team with Ralph Fiennes as Creative Lead
- Non Collision Racing
- The emphasis on racing and not arbitrary useless activities
- Better cities (Surfers Para etc…)
- Online Free Roam
- No coercion to always be online
- Smaller niche communities without appealing to the masses
- Race intro and finishes (FH2 especially)
- Realistic AI
- Realistic credit payouts
- Horizon without avatar customisation
- Horizon without cult added DLC cars that drive meta orientated gameplay (Ford Roadster, Bone Shaker,
- Horizon without drag tyres in a racing environment
- Old intro trailers
Could continue, but I’m tired from writing.
8 Likes
Like “bosses” you just praised?
Have you even played Forza Horizon?
If they make game for small niche community like “JDM touche” game would not sell well and it would die fast because car selection would be tiny because according to that community JDM means only left hand drive japanese cars with Bucket Ron body kit, giant 2 meters high spoiler, engine spacers, carbon fiber hood.
I played through it twice and didn’t have any problems with the bosses cheating.
1 Like
There was never really that much in the first place. FH1 had the best but it’s still nothing compared to MCLA or NFS:H
Car Meets, the airport in FH3 & the Parking Garage in FH2, where you could check out other players cars/liveries & challange them to Drag Races. Still don’t understand why they removed that in FH4 & FH5.
6 Likes
Pretty much all my sentiments have been echoed already, all I can add is I miss that feeling that PG genuinely cared about + loved what they were doing.
I’m not going to go on another waffle about it but changing to live service in FH4 has made them sloppy and careless, but in the interests of fairness I think that’s down to MS more than PG as it can’t be coincidence that the other big first-party titles have adopted live service as well in recent years.
6 Likes
FH1,2,3, I played online every day of the year and year after year. Still play FH2 and 3.
FH4, I ended up playing 2 or 3 days a week.
FH5, I play each Thursday, long enough to collect the new exclusive vehicles! Still have almost half the events on my map showing “new”.
Pretty much sums up how much I miss the old Horizons!!
3 Likes
IMO, the general “spirit” of the player base seems to continue to degrade overall. Previous free-roam casual play for such things like festival drags is turning into more of chance for some of the newer players to show how they can mock the game.
Recent examples: watching the same player going back & forth destroying the drag lane rails continuously. Pairs of players entering the drag lanes for a race, revving, sounding the starting 3 horn blast, then just sitting there. The continued open race ramming, etc, etc.
What? When did I ever praise bosses? When did I ever ask for niche stuff?
This response makes no sense.
Say hello to ArcticInsanity, how most of the forum hasn’t cottoned on to them yet I don’t know, they post nonsense + plain wrong things all the time yet few seem to notice.
1 Like
I played Fh4 for a year, and right around 500 hours - never broke 100m CR.
I’ve played FH5 since pre, have about 350 hrs, and have over 112m CR.
I didn’t exploit the willies wheel spins either… I just play the game - series/seasonal stuff, I don’t play Online at all… I auction duplicates I win that are high-value (sell the rest back as I win them).
I basically play the two games identically, and have an easier time earning CR
in this game than I did in FH4 even with the spin nerf, and how much easier everyone
claims earning CR is in FH4 compared to FH5. And no, even then, a majority of my earnings are from seasonal/series rewards, I do not “play the AH” or “farm wheel spins” or any of that stuff that so many people obsess over trying to top off their CR.
e.g.: those things didn’t help as much as you think, and people with tons of CR didn’t get it because of things like businesses, and higher payouts on wheel spins.
IMHO, earning CR is a lot easier in FH5, than FH4.
1 Like
Bro, the days where opening up Horizon was excitement.
Sheesh.
AI has always cheated. For example in FH1 I didn’t even see last “boss” for most of the race. I only caught up because he had crashed kilometer from finish line so badly that I didn’t have any problems winning.
I miss AI that isn’t absurdly broken with rubber banding. Really kills it for me. My weekly FH5 playing time is about 1/4th of FH4.
Even with Tourist AI, they will rocket past until the algorithm decides the AI is too fast for Tourist and slows them down to a turtle’s pace. Rubber banding to the extreme.