Why do playground have an obsession with 60 second laps and 2 minute point to points?

Forza Horizon Forza Horizon 5 FH5 Discussion
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I love Horizon, but one thing that drives me nuts is the included course we have to work through.

There’s barely a circuit that takes more than 60 seconds to lap and some are as low as 40 seconds in the right car.

Goliath aside, if you want a 45 minute race, you’re going to have to Blueprint 45 laps of most courses.

Talk about taking something exciting and turning it into a coma inducing nightmare.

Why did Playground think this was the way to do what essentially is a racing game?

Am I a freak because a I love to race a complicated course with at least a 90 second and preferably a 3-5 minute lap?

In Horizon 4 I didn’t notice this so much, because I rushed through completing the included courses, then built my own with route creator and raced them for 18 months before moving onto other games.

It’s only since H5’s route creator failed to work in any meaningful way that I began amusing myself with the rivals challenges.

This led to the most amazing challenge I’ve ever done in a racing game, doing a fast CLEAN S1 lap on Gauntlet.

What an amazing experience that was. 20 minutes of trying to go as fast as I could but not touch a barrier.

What a glorious feeling when after 50 restarts I achieved it and got into the top 1%.

So, I got excited and started doing rivals on the other courses.

Well, that was disappointing to say the least.

Suddenly it’s 45 seconds laps, and maybe worse, 2 minute point to point, all seeming like a twisted joke.

Every tow minutes, a restart. I spent more time in the damn menus than actually racing!

I’ve had sneezes last longer than the included circuits!

And it’s not a lack of a map to do them on.

The map is MASSIVE.

They bragged about it before launch, the reviews went on about it, but what’s the point if they hardly use it in the included courses?

So, here’s my question.

What data gave Playground the impression that people who bought a racing game had only 3 minutes to actually race?

Because it most certainly wasn’t me.

Was it YOU?

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Multiplayer. Any game that has multiplayer, needs to be scalable to sessions that are around 5-15 mins or so. This is true of just about any game with an online multiplayer component by design, not only because players tend to prefer that length, but also because the Internet itself is not necessarily stable everywhere in the world, and somebody getting DC’d at the 25 min mark of an hour long session will have wasted that time. Even MMOs that are always online, tend to limit mission times.

I once got into an online Endurance race in Forza 7, that was some 30 mins long, and my garbage rural broadband couldn’t handle it, and I got DC’d late into the race. I was not amused.

A circuit that takes maybe a minute to lap, makes it easily scalable. A championship that has circuits with 3 laps of 1-3 min, and point to points of roughly 2-3 mins, is going to be done in 10-15 minutes.

If anybody wants to do longer races, they have the option. But most sessions are scaled to accommodate most use cases.

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Aside from battlefield lol.

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I feel the same way. I always did long race distance in FM7, and I hope they bring that option back. These short races while forcing you to start at the back of the field on higher difficulties just fosters a poor racing ethic where you have to drive stupidly aggressive to win by the end. The longer the race, the better the racing is if the AI doesn’t cheat.

After completing all the exhibition races I’ve found myself doing nothing but The Colossus and The Gauntlet since they’re the most fun. The Marathon and The Goliath are not much fun since they’re mostly all high speed sections with little in the way of turns that require any kind of planning. I’ve recently been looking through the Forza Horizon subreddit to find good blueprints, as well.

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The Gauntlet had way too much tarmac for my liking. There’s literally an eight minute long segment that is just tarmac.

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Sounds like you would hate rally, rallycross or folkracing.

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It’s not a racing game. It’s a social entertainment game that revolves around racing. The Motorsport series is for people who want pure racing games.

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Correct.

Racing is not the focus of this title and hasn’t been a focus in the series for the past 5+ years.

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I wonder if it ever was. TDU for example never sold itself as a racing game, and it built a large community based on social activities. I think that it’s better to label Horizon and similar games as driving games.

Gran Turismo is a bit of a weird one, because it falls under the racing game category but feels a lot like a digital magazine at times, being the only modern franchise that still recaptures some of the magic of the original The Need For Speed.

Among arcade games with licensed real cars, the only one that still sells itself as a racing game is NFS, and it shows. Offline racing in NFS is much more intense, especially night racing in Heat. But, when it comes to the social part, the game is useless next to Horizon.

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@jakeymate, I see what you did there.

Thanks for breaking it up.

The Fh5 route creator has been working alright for me at least.

There’s just no way to edit the route after a test drive.

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I’m ok with creating a route first time when it’s just a racing route with no ramps or anything else, but how do you find the speed of the Drivatars?

I’ve done tests and even on Unbeatable the Drivatars on custom tracks have the speed of Average in the included tracks.

Their straight line speed is acceptable but they corner so slowly, as if something is slowing them down.

I can get to P1 in 20-40 seconds and then I drive into the distance.

This never happened in H4. The Drivatars speed was the same in included tracks and custom tracks.

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Yeah, same but I’ve only done a couple of dirt routes. I’m still learning them so a mistake can put me back but it’s pretty easy to regain the lead with the margin. I’ll take your word on the road courses.

In FH4 I had mixed results. Dirt was pretty easy to leave the drivatars behind. I’m pretty sure this was on unbeatable. Some road courses were more challenging but some I pulled quite a lead. it’s been a while though so maybe I had difficulty turned down.

It seems like there’s a lot of space on the map to add some races that are longer that could be excluded from online competition. The map is already so annoyingly full so what’s afew more.

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More laps or longer races could be added without requiring any additional time from players simply by reducing the time it takes to “fast” travel other players.

However at this stage 3 laps is enough imo because in non ranked races the lead rarely changes. So additional laps would just drag out the inevitable.

If they add back ranked then I think it’s necessary to increase laps from 3 to 5 for short circuits as they are really too short and gives little time for players starting at the back to take the lead.

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yeah, lap times are quick

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Races are definitely to short. 3 laps on circuits are about half as long as it should be IMO. 5 laps would be a much better number of laps. Sprints would benefit from being double the length but I don’t know how you would fix that without redoing all the sprint runs.

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drive d100 and everything will take twice longer, also ai doesn’t cheat much even on unbeatable when you limit it like that, maybe 1 or 2 cars but you can catch them in the corners if you half descent

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there are no D class online mp.

S1 S2 are really too short
Loading screen are longer than gameplay

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Especially with cross-plattform in multiplayer, and that is a big reason for wanting longer races in general.

The Crew had some 3-4 hour races around its map, and the 45-50 minute coast to coast race was really fun as it felt epic, going on and off the interstates, getting the right exit, and actually feeling like you were going -somewhere-. Yes the map was hundreds of times bigger than Horizon’s, but things like Gauntlet and Collosus show that this map has potential, if those were coerced into circuits.

Sure, route creator is there from the start now, and that’s great, but still very limiting. I made a backwards Goliath and quite like how it plays going clockwise around the map, but the hassle of putting in checkpoints plus the fact that at the start, everyone has to turn around to start the race, plus the fact that it still creates the driving line from your own racing … all make it less appealing, PLUS the fact that no one is ever going to see what I make. Like with the mad accolades for tune and photo downloads, there are a handful of people that will get those organically, and the other 12 million of us are going to have to beg something chronic on the forums!

It would be really cool if Playground would take some of the highest rated new routes, polish them, and add them to the actual game, even just one every month or so … and not just ones that are there to help us grind accolades, of course :). REALLY evolve that world.

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Sad but true

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Another thing to point out is that this game is designed to be (as Mike Brown puts it) “snackable”. If somebody wanted to, they could pop on, do a race for 5 minutes, and then log off again.

This works well with the kind of player that wants a quick race during lunch, or anyone playing on Cloud during their commute.

If any of us want longer races, the (admittedly cumbersome) Blueprint feature is there to tack on more laps.