Exactly that! As great as some custom races are, it always annoys me when the creator tries to place walls. There are usually parts sticking out. A collision is usually fatal: nothing budges, all your speed is gone in an instant…
Yes, there are fantastic custom races. But they never have the flair of an official race. They usually feel like an illegal street race. The proper barriers and props are missing and there are no spectators on the grandstands or behind barriers…
None of those reasons hold up to scrutiny considering my quote.
I think that goes back to my first point, the studio is prioritising Stories and Showcase Remixes because they believe those “move the needle” more than adding extra base game routes.
They’re probably right too. More routes are nice for us veteran players but a newbie isn’t going to tell which ones are new and which ones aren’t, whereas a new story (as “lame” as they are) is something big and shiny.
I would like more routes, I would also like custom routes to be better integrated across the game, but I don’t think we’ll see either happen because Playground have their service plan mapped out already and are sticking to it.
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I mean, new routes would probably have “new” labels attached to the icon until the route is raced on. Even casual players aren’t blind enough to miss something as noticable as a “new” label.
Also, in regards to new players, exactly how many new players is this game getting these days? I can assure you any casual players at launch are long gone, many veteran players have been scared off or given up, and the only new players I see this game getting is every time it goes on sale.
In other words, there’s no need to cater to new players at this point. Only people left are those in it for the long haul, and you may as well give veterans and long haulers more of what they want if you want them to stick around.
Funny that you mentioned new players, I’ve played with quite a few over the past 9 months and if anything I’d say that FH5 is less friendly to new players than previous titles. Anyone who’s getting into the game this late wasn’t really passionate about playing the game in the first place, and, of the 5 new players I’ve played with in those 9 months, every single one of them didn’t understand how to unlock content. They all reached a sort of “fail state” where they weren’t unlocking content and instead of figuring out how they usually just leave and never play again (we’ll see how the latest new players go).
They basically need a veteran to handhold them through the game. PGG’s efforts are completely wasted.
I’m getting off point though. My point was that PGG is that there is a mountain of evidence that shows that PGG is perfectly capable of adding new races. They just don’t. They’re chasing some marketing dragon as opposed to serving the foundation of the game. Heck some of the stuff they pursue is to the detriment of the foundation of the game. There is no excuse for the current state of the game and the franchise beyond incompetence.
Where that incompetence stems from is up for some debate, and could possibly be over with the departure of Mike Brown (though his influence on the game will continue on for some time yet), and I do not envy the position the employees left to right the ship, but the company as a single entity deserves no pity and all of the vitriol at this point. It’s been years, and two iterations of the game.
Yeah, pretty much where I’m at and agree completely. Who knows where the overall decisions come from at this point.
I know intermediate players (semi-new but have played horizon games consistently) that have expressed a feeling of being “lost” after completing the main expeditions. The festival playlist has given them plenty of auto show cars but they’re certainly not going to waste time chasing auction house rare cars, even if they really like one.
The accolade leaderboards somewhat indicate new players are still coming but that’s only one source. I think showing a “new” icon for new players would be more than enough (as others have said), when it comes to “new” player engagement.
Eventlab has been an avenue to create new races but no option to add a rivals leaderboard (TDU 1 had this feature albeit a little on the poorly implemented side). It does take a long time to create a gem of a race, however.
As Jezza mentioned, statements were made indicating that adding new tracks to the game would be easier with the current system. They did add the midnight battles. Even adding one of those once a month can’t be that hard.
If only we could use the festival plane as a warp point. Boom. One label.
What’s going on with these players? Is it the smartphone generation? Kids with an attenttion span not longer than a tweet ???
How can this game be to difficult to understand? Apart from fine tuning, everything is easy to understand and accessible. And if there should be questions, there’s Google… Okay, open worlds can be overwhelming, but everybody should be used to that by now… There are many other games that are much more complex, like RPGs or especially strategy games. Do these people really need the game to hold their hand and tell them what to do in which order? Maybe they should stick to some action shooters with totally linear gameplay…
The Donut Media story treats veteran players like they don’t know how to upgrade a car. I still think community mods are the way to go. Then we can use more of the map and even add cities. Most of the team have left now, but dedicated creators are out there ready to do their work for them.
I don’t mind that they tried to put a tuning tutorial in a story - even 10 months after release of the game. But they did not do a good job at that. I doubt that new players really learnt much. Moreover, I (and probably 95% of the players) did not realized that I was supposed to use the “test track” and possibly make new adjustments. I drove directly to the next waypoint, which ended that chapter…
They even had actors imitate how the Donut Media guys move and motion captured that for the game. I just whished that an equal effort would have gone into developing the story…
Based on my experience trying to help new players, I’d say it’s more about what I mentioned earlier. People who are getting into the game this late aren’t really passionate about it. They don’t listen when the game spews info at them, they don’t hunt through the menus trying to figure out how to unlock stuff, they just want to drive cars.
Really it’s just clicking through things going “yeah yeah” without really paying attention. They don’t care to figure out or remember to jump through the game’s hoops, and quite frankly, I don’t blame them. If they’re getting the game months or even a year plus after launch, after it’s second or third sale, they obviously didn’t care that much about the game to begin with, and as soon as the game starts being restrictive and putting up roadblocks, I don’t blame people for bouncing off of it before they give the game a chance to really get it’s hooks in them.
I see one another very simple way to keep the game somewhat fresh for at least a bit longer: mixed seasonal championships that combine courses from street, road and dirt racing (I’d prefer if PGG kept cross country out of the mix 
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As for game’s complexity: this is something I can praise Gran Turismo 7 for when compared to Forza. This game has a very thorough manual that explains every part of the game to newbies.
I liked the idea of explaining how upgrading cars works in FH5 through the Donut Media story but the execution of it was very poor IMHO.
EDIT: I’ve created a suggestion for mixed championships 
Wouldn’t custom championships be better? You know, as opposed to waiting for them to grace us with mixed surface events, we can make our own.
Both would be even better still, but if I had to pick one, I’d rather be able to do mixed surface events (and any other event that tickles my fancy) at my leisure as opposed to when they finally allow us to experience it on the playlist.
Well, I’m not interested in creating championships on my own - if I have to do racing on Festival Playlist to gain new cars, I’d just like to see it more varied
But I agree, having both these things would be better
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