What would be the downside of universal car points?

Forza Motorsport Forza Motorsport (2023) Discussion
1

Assuming that the purpose of car points is to keep us “engaged” and putting in the hours, what would be the downside to a system where car points could be earned everywhere and used on any car you wanted? I’m genuinely curious if anyone can come up with one.

If car points applied to all cars, we could play any game mode in any car, and have fun while gaining parts for future builds we want to do, instead of just accumulating a huge mass of points on a car that has already been maxed out. It would also mean the career and open multiplayer wouldn’t seem so restrictive because we’d always be building towards something (i.e. more car points for future builds). We would still experience all the “curated experiences”, but they wouldn’t seem so disjointed and pointless.

It would also avoid having to drive around in rivals or free play just to build up points in a stock-ish car that would eventually not drive anything like the stock car anyway, so we could drive what we want for most of our gaming experience instead of just the little bit at the end after a lot of grinding.

I guess theoretically we could just get one huge pool and just switch them between cars rather than continue to accumulate them, but:

  1. At that stage we’re probably committed to the game anyway since we spent so much time building up all those points.
  2. The UI makes it a hassle to get rid of parts and switch to another car.

I’ve been playing featured multiplayer from day one and loving it. Yesterday was the first time I had to build anything, and it was such a lonely experience, driving around in rivals endlessly at a low PI because there were no open lobbies in the class that I was building. The whole time I was thinking how great it would be if I could just accumulate these points while doing something fun, as you might expect in a video game. And I thought if they really wanted to keep this mechanic to drive engagement, they could at least let us engage while doing something we want to.

I like this game a lot and want to play it, a lot. I want to join a bunch of leagues and race with a bunch of people. But if it’s going to take me 3 hours to get one car (that I’m not even sure I’m going to like) ready for a 30 minute race, I can’t do any of that. I can’t do the one thing they wanted me to do, which is to spend tons of time in the game.

This has probably been discussed to death but I haven’t had time to read through old posts. Because as I’ve said, I’ve been grinding car points just to get ready for one race. But I can’t think of a downside, even from the dev’s perspective (aside I guess, from having to do the work to change the system). Please let me know your thoughts.

4 Likes
2

There is no downside to your proposal because this system is already in place, and works just fine:

Forza Horizon 5.

You accumulate universal XP doing ANYTHING in the game e.g. racing, PR stunts, Drag racing, Head-to-Heads, the various MP modes like The Eliminator, MP racing, etc. You drive around doing it, you gain XP from it.

The only difference is car upgrades are not tied to XP. They’re just tied to money like previous Horizon and Motorsport games.

What would have to happen is the current FM system would have to increase ways to earn universal XP such as…

-Drafting
-Sling Shot (Overtaking in close proximety)
-Maintaining X amount of speed for Y seconds
-Driving in the rain/fog/low visibility/at night
-Driving with no assists
-Etc.

All of these things could easily apply to FM, to drastically reduce the grind and make the game feel rewarding… Especially, if they actually went back to the Driver Level milestone system of previous Motorsport games where you earned something (credits, car, cosmetic) whenever you leveled up your Driver Level. Right now, it’s just a hollow number based on hours behind the virtual wheel. Nothing more, nothing less.

Also, what about earning passive XP boosts and other perks OUTSIDE of racing that applies to your own profile… Just like Forza Horizon 5?

This would keep things equal for MP, but allow each person’s journey to be different as well.

After my own suggestions, I’m more convinced than ever, putting aside FM obvious development issues, T10 wanted to make FM the “Serious, E-Sports racer” to compete with GT7 and possibly the likes of iRacing (fat chance!), but they forgot to make it a fun, engaging and rewarding game first and foremost.

This is the crux of why this game feels so bland, boring and uninspired. It’s trying to be a full-time job and be “taken seriously!” when it’s a video game where people are supposed to have fun, even if fun is subjective.

2 Likes
3

I’ve been entirely in SP & Rivals in FM8 myself, but seems like a better system than what we have.

It’s seriously frustrating when you want to build out a new car but have to grind 10-20+ free play races/rivals before it’s tolerable to drive/competitive/eligible in any of the limited proper events/series that are available. This happens more often at the lower end of PI/class for me, but it’s also an issue at the higher end needing to run 5-10+ random grind activities before I can get off of tires that break loose if I even breath on the right trigger, much less try to apply gas through/past the apex of a turn (they could help this situation greatly by not having 0.15+ hp/lb cars come w/ all season commuter tires that are definitely not stock IRL, but I digress :slightly_smiling_face:).

The current system is doing more to discourage long term engagement than encourage it for me. Prior to Saturday I at least had the lame carrot of the Garage Royalty achievement helping to motivate me through the grind of new cars, now that it’s gone I’m having a much harder time enduring the suck grinding the few new cars I’ve started working on since to a minimal level of fun to drive.

On a sort of related note: barring universal car points being a thing, I’d love making it so subsequent purchases of a car model you’ve already leveled to 50 came as level 50 w/ max car points. We already know the model, getting a new example of it shouldn’t require grinding it from scratch…

2 Likes
4

I appreciate your thoughts on this. I agree that Horizon has a great system and would love to see it here. That way everyone gets to play the game they want and still make progress.

Unfortunately, the track record on updates and improvements on this game isn’t great so far. That’s why I was thinking of a way to massively improve the game that would could be done with the minimum of effort. That’s why I was thinking just make it universal. Still earn it the way we earn it here, only let it apply to all cars (just to be clear I don’t mean make the points easier to get, I mean allow me to use them where I want).

Personally I like racing in featured multiplayer. I like trying out the new cars each week and racing with others without having to tune a bunch. But usually a couple of days in I’ve maxed out the car I’m driving in terms of level and I’ve gained a ton of car points. And that’s all pointless because I’m never going to modify that car because I got it just to play in featured multiplayer. But if I could use those points then I might go to open class multiplayer with another car. I would actually play the game way more if I could use the points from one car on another car.

I’m sure they had good intentions at the beginning with this CARpg system but it doesn’t seem thought out all the way. I was already prepared to make this game my main racing game. But now after building just one car I’ve basically decided I’m only going to play featured multiplayer and look elsewhere (like Horizon) for building cars and racing with friends. Which is a terrible shame because the game drives pretty good and racing on track is a whole different experience from racing point to point or on open road.

We come to car games to do things we can’t do in real life. Somehow this levelling system is more restrictive than real life. Surely not a way to create a game that people want to keep coming back to.

2 Likes
5

That’s the “downside” - it would reduce the grind.
The grind is by design.
This “bUiLt NoT bOuGhT caRPG” is their “ViSiOn” - it’s a core part of what they believe is essential to the experience of “bonding” with cars “to feel more of a sense of pride of ownership and accomplishment.”
Players’ reactions to it have been largely unfavorable, but T10 doesn’t seem too concerned about that.

6

Yeah good point. But I mean changing it to universal wouldn’t obviate the need for the points, so we’d still be playing their game, just in a way that we actually like. When they make their case to Microsoft for funding they could still show the numbers of us playing.

Or do they get some sort of suffering bonus if we play the game but hate it?

(I understand your post probably contains some level of sarcasm but I really want to say I don’t think changing it to universal would decrease player engagement. I think the place they screwed up in CARPG is they made the car the focus rather than the player. When we play RPG games we level ourselves up. In this game the car is the focus and the player is just the mechanism by which the car levels up. But since the car itself has no purpose it’s just left to wither, stuffed full of car points, never to be driven again).

7

It looks like attempting to ensure player engagement as a KPI instead of a true metric of enjoyment. Hours played != to game good.

Forza Horizon has the weekly grind which is ~2hours max to achieve everything. That’s on the cusp of acceptable when if it’s just new cars you can get away with 30 mins.

The grind in FM may produce initial good engagement but it blocks entry of new players down the track as well as annoying the die hards (who do engage).

With Horizon a new player can quickly get credits and upgrade cars and download tunes to compete in multiplayer.

A new player in Motorsport in 3 months won’t be able to compete without the endless grind just for 1 class. It will put them off an engender the feeling of ‘too late to the game’ to compete.

It is stupid beyond belief and even worse has not been addressed once other than an initial patch which weakened the concept slightly.

Not the first thread I’ve said this but as always… COMMUNICATION!

1 Like
8

Or do they get some sort of suffering bonus if we play the game but hate it?

LOL, unfortunately I’m becoming more & more suspect this just might be the case.

I like your read on the car focused progression being the issue. I’ve felt like that car levelling rather than driver levelling focus combined w/ the limited number & mostly pretty make/model restricted nature of events available make it feel much grindier to me to level & drive the cars I actually want to drive.

There are certainly still moments of joy when I’m driving a car I like but they’re starting to get closer to being out weighed by the negatives of dealing w/ grinding other less fortunate new cars I decide to drive & all the other general frustrations that come w/ the current game.

1 Like
9

Yeah but if we were building car points all the time towards whatever we wanted we would still play a lot. And we would still get points. It seems like if they wanted us to focus on a specific car like this they should have made it so that we could take one car through our whole career (or at least as far as we choose). Otherwise we just half upgrade cars and leave them by the wayside.

The career/multiplayer they set up are incredibly prescriptive about what car to use so we always have to half build cars. It seems like they need to pick a lane: Either make the whole game open so we can build and use each car to death or make the events prescriptive but allow us to use the car points toward any car we want rather than the one that “earned” them. Right now it’s the worst of both worlds.

1 Like
10

Since I haven’t yet thought of any good reasons for a number of the decisions they made for this game, I can only imagine bad reasons.

I think CarXP was put in simply to pad a relatively hollow game with something to artificially inflate play-time (but that backfires when people soon decide to give up entirely on such a grindy game).

Another theory is that maybe Game Pass titles compete with each other for their share of Game Pass subscription revenues (to compensate for selling fewer retail copies), and maybe GP games that get more play-time also get a bigger piece of the Game Pa$$ pie - incentivizing them to inflate play-time.

Maybe the player data they’ve collected over the years indicates that lots of cars are largely neglected when most players primarily stick to popular favorites.
When players can avoid most cars except for the bare minimum of using them only when they’re mandatory for one event’s entry requirements, then there’s little point in the studio putting so much work into developing what effectively amounts to a bunch of single-use cars.
So maybe they want/need to justify the resources invested in licensing & developing those cars by forcing players to grind them all out.

Just some guesses - not claims or accusations.

11

This is well thought out and kind of a depressing read at the same time.

The thing I just can’t get is how it changes thing if we keep carxp but detach its accumulation and spend on a particular car. If anything that’ll make us try more different cars. The way it’s worked out everyone is in a Miata and the other cars are even more neglected.

I know the answer to this, which is (in theory) not only did they maybe have bad reasons they also had bad execution. But it seems like even random chance would do better than what has happened here. It’s like every aspect of this system is the worst of all worlds. Like if they had open lobbies we could at least skill up our cars with our friends and others. But they did both, they locked us to one car at a time and they made us drive them by ourselves in endless repetition.

12

Exactly - which is why I’m inclined to think they must have some (bad) reason(s) for doing it the way they did.

13

Just thought of another one: Force people to drive stock cars for an unnecessarily long time but make some stock cars almost undrivably skittish.

And another: Require you to level a car up a lot to get points but don’t make the career events long enough to do so.

It seems weird because we as a fanbase are so enthusiastic about having a racing title like this on XBOX. All we would need is the most basic functionality and we would play it endlessly. Give us cars, tracks, performance parts, and the ability to play with our friends and we’d never stop playing. Sell us DLC, even. But they couldn’t do that, they had to come up with this convoluted system that discourages hardcore players and turns away casuals. Why?

14

It doesn’t pay to be a fan when this is how they reward fan loyalty.

The series has been in sharp decline over the last 4 installments, and the studio seems to have moved on long ago toward some other purpose unrelated to making great motorsport games that players will love.

15

The thing is, this game is so fun underneath. I’ve had more close fun races in this than in ACC on console. But the way they tied car points to individual cars means I can’t do what this game is best at, mod cars and have races. I end up driving around in stock cars for hours until I just shut it off or go play another game.

That’s the worst irony of all. They made a game that I want to drive but put a bunch of busy work in front of it so I can’t. It’s like an NBA video game that first makes you fill out and submit the team’s taxes and travel requisitions before you can play a game.

1 Like
16

Yeah, I feel that.
For me, the one or two things a game does well is not enough to make up for it simultaneously doing lots of other things very poorly.
I wouldn’t want to eat a huge pile of manure just to bite into that one shiny undigested peanut buried somewhere in it - and the flavor of so much dung would spoil the taste of the peanut anyway.
Nothing is perfect, but the bare minimum goal should at least be for the good to outweigh the bad - and I don’t feel like that’s the case here.

2 Likes
17

You mean like credits? There are no downsides, besides maybe it being used for decades

18

Yeah I would agree, use credits. Money can be exchanged for goods and services. It doesn’t have to be earned separately for each thing you want to buy.

But my question is not about going back to credits. It is: What’s the harm of allowing us to earn car points exactly as they are right now (by grinding the game), but instead of tying them to one car (which discourages risk taking and forces us into offline play), let them be used for all cars. It’s still a CARPG, there’s still leveling up, the only difference would be we get to choose what we do to level up. The question is, what’s the downside of that?

19

The idea of the levelling system now is that at level 50 all upgrades can be applied to a car. If we had to grind for them, we could have a level 50 car but not enough cp to add (all) upgrades.

20

Good point! But when we sell parts we get car points back. So we could stop a build on one car and use the points on another. Or just continue doing it the way it works now, it would still work for those who wanted to only use the points they earned from one car on that specific car. The game wouldn’t change at all, except for those who don’t want to work on a particular car anymore and wanted to use those points for something else.

And it would allow us to earn points through gameplay other than single player free race or rivals. We could earn during featured multiplayer, or open multiplayer.