I started with FM6, so I am a little late to the game, and I’m hoping someone can explain why some features were removed over the years, before I blindly ask that they be returned.
It seems like Forza has had a lot of amazing features over the years, but the most loved features seem to only last one edition of the game. For example, at one point we could lookup our driver stats online. There used to be car clubs and copious leaderboards. We used to be able to spectate races.
Why is it, when Forza gets a great quality of life feature, that people,actually like and use, it seems to never make it to the next edition?
PR-style response: Those features are no longer part of Turn 10’s vision for the Forza franchise, and in order for the series to evolve certain things will need to fade away.
Speculative response: All of those features require extra development time and post-release maintenance, and it’s often easier to drop them than to keep temporary staff on-board post-release to handle them.
In other words: Complacency in delivering a product with the least amount of features/content while increasing profit margin and creating a stream of back end revenue. We as consumers are to blame. If we want real change money talks. There seems to be a set of core features lost in the new generation of consoles. Paying developers up front for unfinished games and continually lining their pockets to update and polish the game we bought with add-ons/DLC is the reason why we are where we are today. IMO games of the last generation earned our sales, now they expect them. Too many gamers have turned into sheep.
While I do not find either of the following features useful to me, I can definitely see how spectator view (which has been removed) would be much more useful than the dolly dress up feature of driver gear that we got in Forza 7.
As a programmer myself, I also scratch my head at the inclusion of such things as the jets taking off, the helicopters hovering, birds flying, etc that add no value to the race itself and has to be impacting the performance of the game.
That stupid airplane the comes out of nowhere on Maple Valley needs to be shot down. I get it, the first time you see these things you’re impressed, then you never notice them again and it’s just using valuable processing power that could be spent elsewhere.
I’ve been a professional programmer and project manager and I’ve spent some time speculating what’s happening behind the scenes and why they make the decisions they do. A huge crowd pleaser was the old leaderboard system, and I have enough experience in databases feel that it shouldn’t have taken much effort to just add division based boards to the class based boards and given us more ways to compete for top times. Overhead in terms of manpower would probably be the same, just upgrade the hardware to accommodate the additional data.
I wish I could chat with one of the developers off the record so I can understand what they’re up against.
Here’s the thing, they already HAVE the data for this. If you go to any of the homologated leaderboard off the Free Play menu, you will notice that on every time the right half of a circle is filled in under the “File” category. This means that a ghost has been saved for that time. Turn 10 are currently storing the PB’s of every single player, on every single homologation division, with no way for the player to access the data. If Turn 10 don’t add a way for the players to access these ghosts, then they are literally wasting data storage. It is impossible to spin this in any other way.
Now, as for spectate mode, they are apparently under contract to host two more Forza RC’s with Gfinity, so how these guys plan on doing that without a spectate mode for audiences I honestly have no idea. I mean, even a basic one that we had in Forza 6 before the big eSport update would’ve been more than sufficient, and I fail to see how that feature would require extra staff to manage it, as it is not a feature that needs to be constantly managed. The omission of this feature with no explanation as to why is a complete insult to the top players, and the YMTV commentators, of which both of these groups have met T10 in person at both Le Mans and New York. T10 knows they exist, so this lack of communication is nothing short of stunning.
On an unrelated note, I noticed that there were job openings at T10. Hopefully the people that end up filling those positions are better able serve the community than their predecessors were.
Not only I agree… these type features are annoying for me… that darn helicopter at Dubai is horrible. Also, the birds, planes and [Mod Edit - Abbreviated profanity, profanity and profanity that is disguised but still alludes to the words are not permitted - D] moving TV camera’s. The exploding bombs every lap at Rio and Dubai are the worst… save that crap and for FH3 and get back to expanding what could be a great racing game… potentially… again.
Back to the OP question… IMHO T10 insist that everyone play the game as they intend it to be played. This means eliminating the fun… like selling cars on in the AH for millions… gift giving, and allowing online players the freedom they had in FM4.
T10 will not allow players to play the way they like and have fun… so play there way or don’t play.
That’s my opinion. I also do not believe that tracks developed in earlier games are to difficult to remake and they absolutely lie about laser scanning… Road Atlanta is a joke!
After 3 - 4 weeks of practicing the Perfect Pass and turned it into an artform, they removed it from the mod cards LOL. I have been getting good at the drafting too which is harder to trigger than the passing so I wonder how long that will last.
^^^ I agree with a lot of this and i would add that “Turn 10’s vision for Forza” is to appeal to the newer gamers to the franchise/gaming by offering gimmicky things like customiseable race suits, allowing an assist where it makes no difference whether you are on the black stuff or in the kitty litter etc. Sadly for the core fan base and league racers (like me), we are the minority so whilst we are in general more vocal on the forums,we also get widely ignored.
As T0kenut said, if people keep buying the game and lining Microsoft and T10’s pockets, that trend will likely continue.
What T10 need is a real competitor and whilst there are other great driving games out there, there are none that allow you to tune a car to a specific PI or make an awesome design for your car etc.
Never going to happen. Nobody on Xbox/PC has the licensing relationships, marketing clout or development resources on the level of Microsoft, and the only company that comes close produces titles exclusively for Sony platforms.
There are a wide range of racing games that have specific features/elements that are better than what Forza Motorsport does, but their audience reach will always be limited.
We just have to suck it up and play whatever Turn 10 provides us, as we’re too small a voice to make any impact on their future design directions.
The path Forza is taking is not good. Many of it’s well known for, and unique features are being stripped out of the game. The is just going to put it in the same category as some other racing games and unfortunately for Forza, most of those other games do things better. I keep wanting to pull the trigger on PC2 but that stiff looking chase cam is holding me back.
I don’t have an xbox (Use to play FM4 back in the day though.) but have watched many FM6 videos in the past and was so looking forward to FM7 on PC. All I can say is that it’s so disappointing what has happened to FM7 that I probably won’t even bother with FM8 if this trend continues. One of Forza’s big draws was the car classes and customization and it looks like they want to phase that out. So like I said, Forza will end up competing with games like PC2 and lets be honest, PC2 will win hands down. Let’s hope I’m wrong though.
Yea I came primarily from FM4 (played a little FH1 & FM3) and I was expecting like a better looking FM4 with more cars, features, etc. but I just feel hugely disappointed. A lot of great small and bigger features abandoned
Wins and podium stats were removed for overall tabulation for some unknown reason. You can however tabulate your total wins by looking up those stats for each car. The individual car history breaks down wins, podiums, and number of races.
It’ll take a few hours to get a final number though.
Data, they look at numbers from data and form decisions from there whilst ignoring why the numbers show the way they do. They then compound the problem by chasing wrong numbers.
For example. Breakout hoppers.
People say they want it, but then T10 give 1 hopper, do nothing about multiplayer problems (crashing/griefing/lap count, etc), then wonder why people didnt use the hopper. From here they look at numbers and say well, people didnt use it so they dont want it. Wrong conclusion. People dont want it because of all the other things you got wrong.
1: T10 has firm release dates, the game is coming out on xx.xx.xx and if something has to be cut, oh well. For Forza 7 they had to make a PC version and a X1X version and in 4k and it had to be done in September. I think thats a big reason why there was so little new-to-Forza content.
2: Most of those features are only used by a tiny minority of the population and they arent going to waste time ( see #1 ) on features that arent going to used by 80% of the people that buy the game. They need to focus on features that sell to the widest amount possible - graphics, car count, tracks, weather - stuff that people immediately notice.