Why do we keep coming back?

Forza Horizon Forza Horizon 5 FH5 Discussion
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Being a member of this forum community, or FH5 in general, it doesn’t take long to ascertain the underlying negative sentiment when it comes to the game. Touted as the most successful cross platform game launch (in terms of the numbers), the game has supposedly amassed over 10 million players since launch, with as much as a 75% decrease in players since that time, according to some information related to Steam data. MS reported just over $16 billion USD in sales from their gaming sector for last year, with this game being one of the leading contributors. Yet, the player frustrations continue with no short supply of issues & exploits within the game.

Given the magnitude & complexity of the game, you have to at least appreciate some of the challenges the devs have to face, but it seems to have been made clear that fully addressing the concerns is not necessarily a top priority.

Considering all this, I’m sure I’m not the only one asking myself why I keep coming back each time I log into the game, hearing that familiar “Welcome back…” greeting as I set off on this round of frustrations lol.

For me, I guess the positives I experience outweigh the negatives & I enjoy the options of how I will spend my time, be it just driving, racing, designing, tuning, challenges etc. I still find the overall graphics & detail within the game to be amazing (XSX) (And who doesn’t stop to take a screenshot of that approaching sandstorm behind your favorite design? :grin:). Finding personal goals to achieve & working through the accolades just for…well, the simple enjoyment of it, right? Has to be because I don’t need the credits, cars (except new additions), etc & the overall leaderboard score isn’t really that important to me, particularly as broken as it seems to be.

Though many have left the game in frustration, vowing not to return, I’m afraid I must be somewhat “institutionalized” when it comes down to it :joy: because I keep coming back….day after day…year after year.

So here’s your opportunity to weigh in on some of the positives for a change.
*(As a preemptive disclaimer: the information quoted above was generalized by multiple sources across the web, so please forgive me if I’ve misinterpreted or mis-stated anything. The point of the thread is to discuss why you are a habitual FH5 resident :smile:).

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Why do we keep coming back? It passes time while I’m on my exercise bike. I’m an old car guy and I enjoy the building and larking about in the cars. I’m hoping Criterion studios will do a banger job on the next nfs.

FH5 isn’t really a racing game, it’s a driving larking about, having fun on the run car game.

It’s done what the developers and the marketers wanted it to accomplish. Hopefully they are working on a banger FH6 which will set a whole new level of play. I doubt it though. We’ll see if FM8hatever is any upgrade from FM7 or if it’s just another extension of the series.

What FM8 is will determine for me if I get a PS5 or an Xbox series x.

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the first 30 mins of this game is stunning, phenomenal, jaw dropping, how ever you wanna describe it. the airplane, the super cars, the camera angles, the visuals, etc. ppg knew what they were doing and created the first time experience for all game pass users to knock their socks off to help spread word of mouth buzz imo.

thats why i believe it had the most successful launch ever because that initial hook is better than most games ever released.

what i’d argue is it was almost impossible for them to keep that pace up for an entire playthrough, let alone months into the future, which is understandable to me why the popularity has dropped

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That’s a good point & I would have to agree.

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the question is why they don’t give back some of the love they got from the customers with a bunch of bugfixes?

the driving-physic is a hell lot of fun
best arcade/simcade-physics available
plus a very nice forcefeedback
and fh5 works fine with my “exotic” wheel pedal combination (no other arcade racinggame like TC2 and NFS can handle this) and Im sure the qol/UI issues with remebering the last used customwheel profile at gamestart will be fixed later or later

:wink:

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I keep playing because it has a large library of cars that I like, and I enjoy downloading really great liveries created by others out there.

Oddly enough I don’t really enjoy the racing anymore. I find I’m mostly doing chores and filling checklists before I turn the game off and do something else.

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Sorry, but I still prefer playing Horizon 1 and 2. I am not overly impressed with Horizon 5 and for the first time ever, I am now playing other games more often and for longer periods of time than I play Horizon 5. There was a time where over 90% (and more likely 95%) of my gaming time was with Forza games.

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The Eliminator is a disaster with insanely unbalanced cars (one of the slowest cars is Level 8, and what drugs do you have to take to feel like Camaro deserves to be level 8 and the sluggish Jeep level 9 which is easily outperformed by a level 2 Audi). The devs still haven’t fixed the issue with disappearing cars that’s in this mode since they introduced it to Forza more than 2 years ago.

Sometimes when I claim a car drop it spawns me stuck in the middle of the scenery with no option to reset the car and every so and so I encounter a cheater with flying cars or they just fast travel to the finish line…

It’s so chaotic, random and broken that I actually find it funny so I play it here and there :smiley:

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I think many of us keep coming back so that we don’t miss out on anything i.e. new cars etc. For several years all I played was Horizon 4 then 5. I’ve now cut down my Horizon 5 time to just doing the playlist. I’m then playing other games like Need for Speed Heat, Burnout Paradise City remastered and Need For Speed Hot Pursuit remastered. Horizon 5 has become boring very quickly.

I bough a second hand XBox last year and bought Horizon 1, 2 and 3 and have been working my way through them. The maps in all of those were better than Horizon 5. What Horizon 5 needs is a big city for some proper street racing rather than the town it has with narrow and tight streets. After playing Need for Speed Heat I realised what a crap job they did with the Horizon 5 map.

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I have not played in over a month and the sad thing is I truly am not missing it has much has I thought I would, more then likely I will pop in once the dlc drops but it might just be a see how it is and then bye once more.

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everything you said i cant disagree with. its just that feeling of winning that cannot be beat. its crazy addictive

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Larking about - quote of the week. :smiling_face_with_tear:
It’s all you can really do in this.

FM7 has so far been a complete waste of time for me. Seems most of it’s been forgotten about - same old rehashes. Guess they’re too busy with their online racing events and don’t even bother to look back at the base game even for a second.
You just have to look at all the last few months ( years ) of Forza Monthly to see that all they bother with now is the online championships.

Can’t beieve the new FM8 / Forza Motorsport or whatever it’s going to be called has been in development for so many years now.
It better be good. Problem is the amount of time and money spent so far will mean it will no doubt be Very Pricey.

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Got bored of it after the first month. Still play daily but often just sit there thinking - what do I want to do now ? answer - nothing.

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100%

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Same here.

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Blockquote
Larking about - quote of the week. :smiling_face_with_tear:
It’s all you can really do in this.
FM7 has so far been a complete waste of time for me. Seems most of it’s been forgotten about - same old rehashes. Guess they’re too busy with their online racing events and don’t even bother to look back at the base game even for a second.
You just have to look at all the last few months ( years ) of Forza Monthly to see that all they bother with now is the online championships.
Can’t beieve the new FM8 / Forza Motorsport or whatever it’s going to be called has been in development for so many years now.

It better be good. Problem is the amount of time and money spent so far will mean it will no doubt be Very Pricey.

Get your wallets out as well as your Mother and fathers…

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I have to admit (at great personal peril :smile:) that I’ve never played any of the other racing games so often mentioned like NFS or even FM. Other than MotoGP, I really didn’t get into FH until 4 (have also never played the previous versions). As far as racing games, the only other one I have been playing is F1 2021, which is pretty amazing itself if you haven’t had a chance to check it out.
But like many of you, the frustrations & lack of anything “new” to do, tends to push me to other games, but I always come back :smile:

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I started Forza games with FH3 as it was a birthday present. Got hooked instantly. Went back and got FH2 and FH1 - still on Xbox one S playable - Also great games. Then came FH4. bought the Ultimate Edition - was sadly underwhelmed but kept at it with FH5 with the Premium Edition thinking surely they must have learnt from their mistakes - Even worse…
Still playing the older ones over the newer incarnations in between doing the weeklies just for OCD factors though that’s also been ruined now down to the recent bugs that prevent full completion even when fully completed.
Also went to FM5, 6 & 7 - even FM4 as I hear it’s the best of the lot but could only get a 360 version and it still hasn’t been released to Xbox One version playable.

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Wallet not coming out until after startup over. No new box either. Never bought fm7, had 5-6, loved them. FH2-4 were fun, 3 best imo.
Wasn’t going to buy fh5, hype got me. No more.
My business was theirs to lose.

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Agreed - got FM5 & 6 on free downloads on Gold. Bought FM7 as standard on disc just to see then upgraded to Ultimate as a download when it was going cheap just to save me switching discs. How sad is that.

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