Some of these things makes sense. But most of them are forgiving. I don’t really understand the pay to win arguement you mentioned before as I don’t really see where you have to pay to win other than the treasure map. As for the Auction House, I don’t really see an issue with people selling their cars for credits. It’s a useful feature for selling duplicates or cars that you don’t want. People have the right to sell the cars they own if they want. If that bothers you than don’t use the feature. Also I see alot of opportunities for dirt racing as there are plenty of dirt roads around the map with the one going mostly around the Derwent Water Lake to be my favorite for creating rally events. Yes there are some features that are frustrating like clothes only being earned through wheelspins causing you to miss out on a good chunk of credits. I believe playground would have benefited better to have most clothing items, horns and emotes to be purchased with ingame credits or obtained through special events rather than putting them in wheelspins. But even they are forgiving. As for multiplayer the trial and playground games events are frustrating as well but entertaining and fun to do in my opinion. I think that feeling of accomplishment when you win those events are rewarding to me and I like a bit of a challenge to keep things interesting. To me it would be boring if it was too easy. At least in my opinion. Great Britain may not be the best choice but it’s not the worst and there is plenty of diversity in the map that is both historical and beautiful. As for the cockpit view ot may seem a bit non-emersive especially with the steering not being fluent with the wheel and the fact that it doesn’t rotate a full 360 on tight cornering, but it never really bothered me too much. The handling isn’t meant to be realistic as this is more of an arcade title rather than an actual racing simulation. FH is meant to be arcade like as FM is more simulation. So yes I understand your frustration on some points. But most of them are forgiving and not really a real issue.
I still don’t understand the “clothes ruined my progression” standpoint, the game showers you with free cars and wheelspins, you earn literally dozens of free cars in your first couple play sessions and the amount of cosmetics you win drastically reduces after a couple weeks of gameplay.
for all the things i like about this game there are just as many things i dislike:
-the story misisons, i just find them boring and pointless, a waste of time
-seasonal playlist … when the objectives are annoying they become chores and i don’t like chores in video games.
-playground games championship…it drags on too long for what it is and it’s boring
-the ridiculous cheating AI
-the radio stations, very poor songs selection
-legos expansion… yeah just nope
how can these things be improved:
-firstly these story missions need to go and get replaced with something that actually has worth and replay value cause 10 scripted races is not doing anything for me or for this game…like if you’re gonna add taxi missions you should take a page from TDU2 cause that’s how you do taxi missions
-seasonal playlist, make this more about racing and less about stunts… these annoying jumps and speed traps need to be removed from the forza horizon franchise… open world doesn’t mean burnout paradise…again take a page from TDU2
-playground games, keep it at 3 events cause 5 events is too much and it’s boring
-the AI should never cheat, pretty self explanatory
-do a better job at selecting the radio songs
-keep all the expansions about the forza franchise not other franchises like legos and hot wheels… we play forza cause we want forza so give us forza stuff not other stuff.
With all the junk they put in Wheelspins, horns, emotes, phrases, whatever, it made the game feel far too Wheelspin centric. I didn’t like “Sims” items to begin with, but over time learned to live with them. Still they should have had bigger Forzathon shop which would have allowed more options for players to deplete Wheelspin feature from clothes. Also, they could distributed more clothes, emotes and horns, whatever in level ups.
I wonder how many work hours was spent to configure Drivatar positions in cars so that hats don’t stick out through roof, which would then result something hilarious anyway.
Credits to Reddit user: Jizuki
I guess PG wanted to do something different than TDU2. I felt Isha’s Taxis was one of the better missions in game, but overall it looks like PG was experimenting with creating things like this. For my take of it, I don’t necessarily feel Taxi missions like TDU2 would fit Festival vibe. Something could be worked out perhaps, but I think it would serve player base perhaps the best if Horizon had something more original.
Stunts are IMO really cool feature, but I miss bucket lists a bit from FH2/3. Businesses are sort of like old Bucket list missions put together to create Horizon story. Both styles have their advantages, but custom route creators don’t have access to PR Stunt Zones to have something crazy in their route, which IMO is a pity.
AI isn’t as bad as often claimed but I guess I also understand where impression that they cheat all the time comes from.
Radio was a bit disappointment and then they went to censor songs because of LEGO or something, it’s been quite a mess, but I use Spotify App for Xbox and listen to what I like anyway, so not so much issue for me. I think it mostly concerns both players and developers when selection is what it is, it comes difficult to find good tunes to Horizon Story chapters. There are too few songs to have much freedom in there.
And here I will disagree with you. The stunts are my most favorite parts of Horizon 4. The Danger Zones are my most favorite of all acivities. If anything, I find there is too much organized racing in Horizon 4. Horizon 1 continues to be my most favorite of the 4 (and yes, I still play it on a regular basis) and that is because there is less emphasis on organized racing and more emphasis on stunts.
I do play other games and enjoy each for what it is. I would have no need to play other games if they were all the same. In this case, I prefer Horizon to be Horizon and TDU2 to do its thing. Personally, I’m not all that impressed with TDU2, fwiw.
Bro since it sounds like you only enjoying racing and want to completely skip anything fun or experimental… bro what if you played motorsport??? Insane revelation I know
Well, hey - it is what it is. They never set out to make the Horizon series as realistic as FM and I’m sure for a mighty good reason.
You can do what I myself have done and what others are doing too: go back and appreciate their older games.
And then, there’s always FM7 or past FM games which are also fantastic. Take your pick. There’s also PCARS2. So many options in this day and age.
Having started both FM7 and FH4 this year as a replacement for another racing game, I can relate to what you’re talking about as it’s still pretty fresh in my mind. I think the biggest obstacle I had with FH4 was to understand how to “play” it. In the beginning it really did seem boring to me despite the flashiness of the Festival. On the surface, none of it made sense to me in comparison to FM7. I think it was about level 62 when I started to “get” what the game was about and when I began to like the overall concept. I think when I finally reached a prestige level of 1 (or just before that), I had a very good understanding of how to play the game for me rather than for someone else (if that makes any sense). And to be honest, it’s not a good thing when it takes that long for a game to be “catchy” to a person.
I think if you took a little more time to figure out what you want out of the game, then you’ll have more fun with it. You just have to make it your game. For me it’s about S1/S2 road/street races. Being an open-world environment, FH4 isn’t built in the way of FM7 in terms of structure. So I just look for the things that interest me in the game and play it the way I want to, instead of doing every, little, thing the game has to offer. And PG won’t turn this game into another FM7 because the vast majority of people already like what they see.
I originally started with Motorsport 7 and I remember the switch to Horizon 4 being significant in terms of drivability with a controller. I’ve read about the subject of wheels being very good in FM7 but not recommended in FH4 discussed somewhere in the FM7 forum, as well as on some other websites. I don’t believe that the two games share the same steering algorithms for the simple reason that the steering assists between the two games for a controller are not identical. I can drive with “SIM Steering” in FH4, but in FM7 “SIM Steering” is something else. I think that “SIM Steering” in FH4 is more akin to “Normal Steering” in FM7, and that “SIM Steering” in FM7 is the reason why players prefer using a wheel in FM7 over FH4. In other words, FH4 needs a setting called, “Wheel” that is based on FM7’s “SIM Steering” algorithm, and FM7’s “SIM Steering” needs to be relabeled, “Wheel”.
Also, in regard to driving experience, I’d have to agree that FH4 is probably better for controller users because controller use in FM7 is pretty awful IMHO. Therefore, I can only assume that wheel users wouldn’t enjoy the driving experience in FH4 as much as they would in FM7. However, I think that some of the differences in drivability between the two games might also have to do with differences in the tire/grip physics, because FM7, to me, feels as though I’m driving a stationary hockey puck on a moving backdrop.
FH4’s progression model is a lot better than what I’ve seen in other games. There is some truth that progress is somewhat hindered by not buying the VIP Pass or FH4 Ultimate version, but it’s up to the player to decide whether it’s worthwhile to pay for an easier route or not. For instance, without the VIP Pass or Ultimate version, I had to earn 5M credits to buy Lake Lodge in order to get double Forzathon points. As it turns out, that was not a very good use of credits as I have yet to find anything useful to purchase at the Forzathon Shop aside from (uh…) more clothes. IIRC, FH4 Ultimate players earn double credits, which makes it much easier to buy that castle with the barn find car than it would for an FH4 Standard player. After playing FH4 for +/- 8 months, I’ve saved up enough credits to get the castle, whereas I could’ve been onto other parts of the game by now had I opted for an easier path. Also, without buying Ultimate or the Expansions, I currently cannot complete the “Story Superstar” Star Card as there’s not enough chapters to meet the requirements. Even if there were, without buying Ultimate or the Expansions, the progression to reach “Story Superstar” would entail 3-starring every chapter, which makes for a more difficult progression than paying for an easier route.
Other than the “Story Superstar”, there really isn’t anything in the game that prevents anyone from progressing as far as a premium player. So I’m not against that as a business model if paying a little more only equates to an easier progression in the game. In contrast, that’s much, much better than the so-called “free-to-play” games that completely impede progress somewhere down the road with microtransaction paywall roadblocks. I’ve personally seen what “thirsty” companies look like; and to compare, Forza Horizon and Forza Motorsport are far from that example, and provide really good value for the money, IMHO.
Fair enough, but since you already paid for the game, it might serve you better to give it a few weeks and to revisit it again with some fresh eyes. Maybe you’ll find something in it that you didn’t see before?
Regarding this and your other post in Winter Playlist topic.
There really are many ways to play Horizon 4 and my experience is the same, it was important to learn to game for me. There are lot’s of features I use very little. I don’t play the Auction House game, I haven’t managed to get single livery done, I paint cars sometimes though. I really rarely go do Cross Country events if they are not on Playlist… lot’s of things I don’t do but I know are important, even the main attraction to many people in game’s player base.
I mostly enjoy Street scene, D- and C-class events, listen to music via Spotify. Have done runs in B-class recently and going to try things in A-class next and I prefer cars in their stock form. I like discovering things about cars that way.
I sure hope that people in Microsoft understand and value different strength of Motorsports and Horizon.
I played FM7 a year or so and then moved to Horizon 3. Back then almost all top leaderboard scores were achieved by gamepad. They changed Sim steering to be more friendly to wheel users later. As it is now though, I don’t know how competitive pad users are against wheel users in leagues. When I played FM7 a bit again couple of months ago, my experience was that Sim steering on pad wasn’t as easy on higher class cars as it used to be. Then the game is a lot about tuning, don’t know if anything has changed there which could also explain why it felt different.
FM7 cars feeling they do was I think, byproduct from homogulation. FM6 had more distinct features with different cars, but MP crowd hated it, so Turn 10 came up with homogulation method which resulted every car feeling like weird crossbreed between go-kart and Saab 99. Also FM7 feels like it relies much more to visual ques outside of car than other forms of feedback, which adds to issue and cherry on top was that some default tunes were way off.
For what it’s worth, I think I made a short visit in league 2 and my take of supposed realism is that both FM7 and FH4 are simcades. Horizon has tons of grip under any condition, no waterplaning like in FM7, which suits for me because it makes possible to use about any car on almost any event (excluding CC) and have quite a different experience, where FM7 have better weather mechanics but your classic racer Ferrari from the '50’s feels like Saab 99, which is rather strange considering Saab is FWD.
At some point when I was playing FH3 I just started ignoring wheelspin mechanic, same with FH2 (which I bought later). I have VIP, both expansions for FH3 and FH4, none for FH2 because they aren’t for sale anymore but I didn’t miss them.
I don’t know, for those who play game for car collector aspect credits are important, for those who race credits happen. VIP makes things happen faster but I have over 100 million credits and have had every car unobtainable from auto show for months (excluding new exclusives of course). I have LEGO Speed Championships cars in my garage and I don’t know what to do with them. I have no use for the whole LEGO expansion. Fortune Island has one good drift zone, Trailblazer PR stunts but mostly it was about Treasure hunt and throwing credits to player. As game expansion it’s trivial and I haven’t visited it for a month or so. I liked Blizzard Mountain expansion for FH3 a lot, Hot Wheels was sort of surreal. With FH4, to be frank about it, this time around standard edition users may have a better game experience overall without unnecessary clutter than Deluxe / Ultimate edition owners like me.
Fortune Island story is Drift Club 2.0 which is more of the same as in mainland, but I’m pretty sure PG will release additional business in coming updates so standard edition owners can finish “Story Superstar” star card.
FH4 is better game in some aspects that it’s given credit but it fails to keep players engaged long enough for them to discover their thing in game. There were stories added later but they don’t really bridge the gap. Lot’s of things could be done with Playlist but… perhaps someone has a hammer and lives in a world full of nails.
It was designed to look pretty, have lot of first reaction appeal to gaming press to get good reviews, like any game, it’s business. But it looks like somehow someone inside forgot that new physics, environments, seasons and cars make actually really good gaming experience and sell that to audience. Front loaded design doesn’t create connection for players to stick around and start testing their own limits, that going on four wheel slide in middle of Edinburgh can be manageable and fun and experience itself has it’s own reward and things like that.
I don’t believe customer championing a commercial product is necessarily a good idea, but some things in this game, some people made effort to make all that happen. It’s a pity that it came out feeling like uneven experience, because of quite superficial things IMO, than what game actually has to offer.
Exactly! There was a time when I just drove around the map for no reason because I thought that’s what I was supposed to do since I was earning “influence” (whatever that meant). It wasn’t until months later that I even realized there was a playlist with weekly events. Lol
When I got accustomed to the Motorsport format, I just as well assumed that a lot of people also felt the same way as I did about Horizon. While I don’t care for cross country events either, I was quite surprised to learn how many did like it, or how many people liked doing activities which were completely tangential to racing. Likewise, that there were people out there who actually hated road racing! So, nothing today surprises me about the Horizon player base because FH4 has got to be doing a lot of things right for so many people to feel strongly about it in different ways.
Since Motorsport and Horizon are both mature product lines, I can’t think of a good reason why Microsoft would want to merge the games together when they can make twice the amount of money selling two separate products. In fact, I find it amusing when I see players, who are strongly committed to one camp or the other, vehemently express their disdain for the other side when the two games really aren’t even stepping on each other’s turf!
When I see the “Forza” name on a game, my initial expectation is that the driving experience should feel “seamless” when switching between games. Since the two games are built under different roofs, I’d hope that at some point there’d be some standardization as to what the overall controller/wheel “behavior” should be like for future versions of each product. As of now, going between the two games for me is a bit of a distraction. While both games are probably influenced by their respective versions of ForzaTech, I think that the devs could hammer out proper algorithms for things like “turn rate” that will be more uniform between the two games. From there, things like tuning become a lot more intuitive after understanding the base line behavior of the physical controls themselves.
Yeah, I wasn’t expecting to like FH4 so I didn’t bother buying the Ultimate edition. I think there are some useful DLC cars for MP in it, IIRC. For me the game isn’t about collecting; but rather, to find a car in each class that I enjoy driving in MP. So I’m not as credits- or car- focused as some other players might be. That said, credits do seem to find their way to you when you’re not paying too much attention to it! 
TBH, I’m not even sure how I’d advertise this product as it is because it’s so many things. If you tell someone it’s about racing, then somebody else will say otherwise. I think there are a lot of excellent ingredients for something great to come of it in maybe another two or three versions from now. At times it does sort of feel like a concept for something else down the road. However, it’s easy to take for granted what’s here-and-now because such technological achievements do seem to get quickly lost at the hands of the latest innovations. But as you say, a game has to be more than just that. I mean, there was time when something as simple as “Flappy Bird” was all the rage!
It feels like there were microtransactions based things planned to game economy, but perhaps legal situation and PR side of things didn’t support going towards that direction anymore. It’s a sandbox game, but Route Creator was introduced after release, no custom bucket list challenges like in FH3, Horizon stories were introduced later. No way to create custom championships, because there weren’t championships anymore. I didn’t bought FH4 but months after it was released, but for what I have read about how it was in release, players became disillusioned because after initial rush to unlock events, get stuff, cars, houses etc. it started feeling like empty sandbox, and I get it. Players do stuff, some number goes up, but that doesn’t feel like real progression, because there is very little of it. Sure unlocking clothes, horns whatever there is when player levels up in different event categories, but in the end it’s also much about Wheelspins, about chance getting something worthwhile and I suppose lots of players started to feel like they were just spinning wheels instead of getting anywhere.
I’m not about to criticize someone sharing their good experience with the game but at the same time, what ever happened in Playground Games, it’s their responsibility to engage people interested of their products. I’m torn myself. I mean some work they have done with cars in game is really excellent. Say '82 Porsche 911 Turbo, lots of people know spring suspension and leaf suspension, but how many know about torsion bar suspension? Porsche wasn’t only manufacturer using it, but they used it on all points 'till late '80s. So there is more than having weight on rear axle that makes it feel like it does. I could point out many cars having distinct features that match actual history. And that’s great! I mean really awesome, because that makes game work for me, something older guy like me can play.
But game doesn’t encourage that sort of discovery, it encourages AWD swapping. No point blaming players for that. It’s PG’s job to connect players to what all sort of discoveries there are to be found in their game. Like you wrote in other topic, as it is this is great game and lot’s of value for money, but perhaps most to the outliers.
Yes, I felt that way too. If I didn’t figure out what I liked doing in the game itself, then I’d be rather annoyed with all the horns, emotes and clothes; because they aren’t adding anything relevant to my enjoyment of the game. After setting up my character with an outfit that I’ve gotten used to seeing, I really have no desire to get more clothes now other than to improve my odds of winning vehicles from wheelspins. Also, I really only like one of the horns and two of the available emotes, all of which I have. So a lot of effort was put into those things and does sort of feel like a bit of wasted energy, because it’s all rather ‘meh’ to me in light of the things that I do like about the game. Actually, I’d be interested to know if there are those out there that are really into the character dress-up and emotes, because I’ve really only seen a lukewarm reception to that.
That’s one of the reasons why I like Motorsport, and really had to keep an open mind about Horizon. There’s more depth to Motorsport because it teaches players about the history of the cars and tracks. There’s something meaningful in that because it’s based on reality, despite being a game. I think one of the most fascinating things about Motorsport was when I saw a video of a real driver on Circuit de Spa-Francorchamps. I ran that circuit many times before and got very familiar with things such as when I’d need to let up on the throttle to maintain control and what areas of the course were the most challenging for my car. I think what surprised me about seeing that IRL video was how similar the challenges were for a real driver in those same areas of the course that I found to be tricky, and how similar his approach was for dealing with them. That immediately made FM7 feel very rewarding to me as a game, and I think that might be why the OP could also be having some trouble warming up to the idea of Horizon after playing the Motorsport series.
Horizon really had an up-hill battle to try to get my attention because it’s based in a fictional world. In Motorsport, I learned about real tracks like Nürburgring, Silverstone and Watkins Glen, for instance. Those circuits will still be around for FM8, FM9, and other reality-based racing titles; and well after those games are all retired. So FM7 wasn’t just good preparation for FM8 and beyond, but a pretty useful tool for learning about the history of cars, races and tracks that can’t be expressed through words alone. That, to me, is a valuable product that goes well beyond the gaming aspect of it. And that’s another one of the reasons why I could never imagine Motorsport being merged with Horizon.
I think what Horizon brought to the table for me were the dynamically-changing environmental conditions, an unfamiliar landscape and traffic as an obstacle for street races. But if it were ever going to win me over, it still had to be about the racing. The difference for me between the two games is that Horizon races are more adrenaline-inducing because I never feel as though I could race the same race, in the same way and expect the exact same result each time. Whereas for Motorsport, there’s a certain consistency to driving a particular course, and understanding that nothing unexpected would happen along the way so long as you stuck to the plan. I think that’s the charm of Horizon and the reality of Motorsport: they’re just different in the experience that they each present to the player. So maybe there’s some truth to what Toyota was saying about Horizon? But then again, sometimes it’s just fun to see what sort of crazy things you can do while driving in a chicken suit.
IMO whatever happened with their plans with game economy, in the end it became way too Wheelspin centric. Say if monthly Forzahon shop had more items available, that would allowed players alternative method to deplete Wheelspins from irrelevant junk, which had formed motivation to do Forzathon live! events, weekly playlist things etc.
Other possibility, what is really worthwhile? Time… Skill Points (for unlocking car perks) and Forzathon Points are the only meaningful currency in mid-term. Both require grinding to acquire. So there’s no way to show in auction house if someone has grinded Skill Points to unlock all perks, and that’s why it might be good idea to pay 100.000 cr for it in auction, even if car’s not that uncommon. It’s about time. To make it worse, there are perks that unlock other cars or huge credit reward, so it would be valuable information to show in auction house that this car has unlock other car or 300.000 credits perks unlocked and so paying x00.000 cr. for it might be a good deal.
In FH3 we could upgrade our Festival sites. We don’t have mechanics exactly like that in FH4, which might unlock, not only cars but unnecessary junk, clothes! Gifts from happy sponsors. etc.
IMO whatever happened with their plans with game economy, in the end it became way too Wheelspin centric. Say if monthly Forzahon shop had more items available, that would allowed players alternative method to deplete Wheelspins from irrelevant junk, which had formed motivation to do Forzathon live! events, weekly playlist things etc.
Other possibility, what is really worthwhile? Time… Skill Points (for unlocking car perks) and Forzathon Points are the only meaningful currency in mid-term. Both require grinding to acquire. So there’s no way to show in auction house if someone has grinded Skill Points to unlock all perks, and that’s why it might be good idea to pay 100.000 cr for it in auction, even if car’s not that uncommon. It’s about time. To make it worse, there are perks that unlock other cars or huge credit reward, so it would be valuable information to show in auction house that this car has unlock other car or 300.000 credits perks unlocked and so paying x00.000 cr. for it might be a good deal.
In FH3 we could upgrade our Festival sites. We don’t have mechanics exactly like that in FH4, which might unlock, not only cars but unnecessary junk, clothes! Gifts from happy sponsors. etc.
I have had a thing for racing games for a long while. I think the first one I got really seriously was Geoff Crammond’s Grand Prix 2. It’s weird to think it now that I and countless of others were playing it on keyboard but that game really was something else back then. I also followed F1 and I sort of know what you mean, era where there were two drivers in the world who could make F1 do 4 wheel slide, which wasn’t even supposed to be possible on that era F1 cars, yet maintained speed while doing so, Michael Schumacher and Mika Hakkinen. So few years passed, many games and there was Gran Turismo series (I had Motorsports 1 and X-Box for while for a one game! But went back to Gran Turismo) doing that final run on Nordschleife in Gran Turismo 4 and then there was a video, recording of boss of Polyphon Digital or something driving on real Nordschleife. Took years of playing to get there LOL. Yet I think my best gaming experiences after that on those classic circuits have been in Motorsports series, but not on FM7 but FM6 (which I got later). Homogulation isn’t so aggressive on FM6 and I felt much more connected to vehicles and tracks. In FM7 I guess it might be possible to get there but practically I had most fun when doing rivals with old non homogulated stock Porsche 356.
There is no doubt lot of weight on history in FM series, but it all sort lost it’s appeal in multiplayer. I have literally seen several cars flying at once in first turns ramming fests. Sometimes it was kids but to be honest, I heard too many times, despite not always understanding the language, adults sometimes obviously drunk, being aggressive towards anything that moved. One of my great Forza memories is winning in Long Beach though, never liked that circuit so it was sort of special.
The Brains behind Horizon series got the idea from Music festivals and wanted to do something like that but with car culture. I haven’t played FH1 but I have all the other games in series.
Horizon has been about that fantasy, about fun, escapism, certain expression to the point of surreal and adrenaline filled racing. FH4 is quite a bit different to previous ones. It’s not on some sunny location, the whole festival angle has been muted. It doesn’t give the same vibes than previous games in series. Yet is has no doubt the best physics, somewhere between FM6 and FM7 without weirdness of FM7. If you drive stock, cars feel much more like their historical counterparts and match what was printed by the press, than homogulated FM7 versions.
Fantasy can enable great things. Absurd stunts are fun just because they are so absurd, it was perhaps most obvious in FM2 but having race route through some small palaces backyard was really hilarious, or in FM4 imagining some farmers living in all peace and quiet going on with their daily routines, till someone put 10.000 XP board in their shed. 40 million visitors…
Roads are wide and in about perfect condition which allows players to see what their Hypercars are worth. Street scene events happen in all this weird universe, where it’s normal that Drivatar or player cars crash with traffic, but keep going. That would be very difficult to get to work in more realistic setting. Chaos of Street scene is only scene in single player that give any hope to prepare for multiplayer, being that PvP racing or cooperative Trial on playlist. Well, CC is it’s own thing.
So to create great fantasy, perhaps it takes to embrace reality and FH4 does that, but fails to utilise and sell what it really has under it’s hood. Sometimes they get it right though. In the UK they didn’t had races like Le Mans, Mille Miglia, Nurburing because of legislation didnt’ allow that kind of racing. Most Race circuits were build after WW2 on abandoned airfields. Yet we had Classic Racers event featuring the Goliath, which matches actual racing history of mainland Europe where common roads were used. Fantasy makes re-creation of something like that possible in Horizon.
My only real issue with the in-game “currency” is that Forzathon Points can only really be obtained one way - the hourly Live events. Yes, you can get a small amount with the weekly challenge completion, but not enough to really make a difference.
But ultimately the FL aspect is frustrating - not because of the mechanics of it (it’s quite fun, and I have developed a genuine love for the way everyone parks up alongside one another while we wait), but because of the timing. Once an hour, on the hour, feels too infrequent and too fixed. For those who have lots of time to spare, I’m sure it’s awesome, but the older I get, the less time I have to game, and I love the pick-up-and-play element of Forza, but if I want to save up for something in the shop it’s nigh-on impossible for me to fit around my life most of the time. There’s nothing more frustrating than either waiting for the hour mark and then having my online game drop out (and the FL be gone by the time it finds another session), or - as has happened on a few occasions - being the only person taking part in one, failing as a result, and then having to wait another hour for the next go.
Any of the following could be a suggestion for potential improvement:
- Have some FP available in wheelspins. Varying amounts - from 30 to 300, say.
- Allow cars (maybe only those that are rare?) to be sold in the AH for FP as well as CR. The buyer still has to have sufficient, of course; so you couldn’t buy a 300FP auction car with 1,000,000CR, for instance.
- Stagger the times of Forzathon Live. Either make it completely random (but still once an hour) or have multiple per hour (maybe every 15 minutes). If you want to limit players’ accumulation of points, maybe make it that they can only enter a maximum of two per hour?
I want to be constructive about this, so it doesn’t just come across as me going “WAH! It’s so unfair!!” hence the suggestions above. I just envy all those who can devote more time to this than I can.
It’s great news if leagues are better now. Stuff still happens though, this was posted on Forza Reddit a while ago: My Multiplayer experience summed in 30 seconds.
I don’t really know current state of MP in FM7, I did encounter couple of ramming fests and one dedicated rammer while doing some races in leagues for old times sake, but I have experienced worse. I don’t know, there were also players whom you could tell that game was really big thing for them. Hope it’s better environment now.
It’s like they have ton of things they could do and sometimes we see them getting it right, like “The Pink Pig” Trial (which was the event). Main audience for Horizon is kids and young adults I guess. History can be fun, it doesn’t need bombastic music, narrators, which are fine in FM7 context.
I don’t know I just watched Forza Monthly but one of the upcoming Trials is Classic Racers event, Porsche vs. Ferrari vs. Ford and if you know about racing history, Porsche had mission to win Le Mans, they must win Ferrari they thought, and they did but overall winner was Ford with their GT! There is another story there, head of Ford not understanding how Enzo Ferrari thought at all and getting pissed at him after Enzo got upset after he learned that Ford wanted Ferrari Scuderia (the racing division) as well in the deal and didn’t agree to anything. If they get route selection right this might be awesome event.
I’m lucky in sense that I don’t recall there being but one car I really wanted from Forzathon shop, don’t recall what it was anymore though. I usually go with D- and C-class vehicles and I ended getting lots of cars from playlist events, so over time points just cumulated. I can see it can be frustrating for players with limited time budget who are interested about some store exclusives.
There is a workaround to unlock money perks, play auction house feature, takes time but in the end, what car you can’t buy with 20 million from auction house?
Sounds like good advice. I’ll definitely try to compare them apples-to-apples where possible. However, I suspect that I might prefer FM6 if arcade-like physics is somehow related to better controller (gamepad) play. I know that there’s a lot of demand for Motorsport to move in the direction of SIM, but with a lot of SIM racing titles out there, I wonder how important that is for T10. I’ve seen some people online who have spent a lot of money on expensive wheel and pedal sets to maximize their in-game immersion. As a console player I don’t necessarily expect a racing game to replicate a SIM experience from the point of controller use; so I have a reasonable expectation that some arcade physics will seep-in as a consequence of that.
I do wonder how much of one’s perception of FM7’s game physics is influenced by a wheel set. Are you primarily using a wheel or a controller? If you’re primarily using a wheel, then do you still find FM7 better than FH4 when using a controller? I mean, it could just be that FH4’s tire physics is exaggerated; but something like that might be necessary to the point of being able to race with any amount of competency on a controller. An example would be the difficulty of controlling high-torque RWD cars, and why many rely on AWD swaps to be able to race competitively. If RWD physics in Forza is meant to be an accurate representation of car response in the real world, then it’s that sort of scenario that I think a game like Forza should employ “arcade” physics where necessary, for better playability.
Wow, I personally haven’t seen anything like that in FM7. That’s pretty crazy. I think I heard that FM7 now has appointed “race marshals” (basically moderators) that can boot/ban people from lobbies for aggressive driving. I haven’t been in FM7 MP since the summer so maybe it’s changed back to its old ways. That’d be a shame if it did.
“The Grand Tour” covered the Enzo Ferrari story really well in one of their episodes. If anyone is interested in seeing it, someone posted a clip of it on Youtube at: The Grand Tour. Anyway, I really like the “manufacturer rivals” theme that PG chose for Series 15. I know that for one of the Trials I’m already picking the Porsche Spyder because I remember the nightmare I had with the LaFerrari during the Apollo I.E. Trial. Again, it goes back to the issue of RWD physics as something that isn’t being well-represented in Forza. Coincidentally, one of the recommended videos after that Youtube video was one about a guy whose friend let him borrow a LaFerrari. (The LaFerrari video is available at: An Average Joe Driving a LaFerrari). And why am I not surprised that an average person can drive a LaFerrari without difficulty in real life? So it really isn’t about having to learn how to adapt to the RWD physics of Forza, but for Forza to adapt to the RWD physics of the real world. I guess you can add that thought as my contribution to the, “Why I Don’t Like FH4”.
Thanks for the links! I used to just read stuff. Definitely going to watch these!
I see this mentioned a lot and I always wondered what the big fuss was all about. It wasn’t until I got the McLaren 600LT that I realized how much easier it was to drive than other cars because the engine audio closely matches the full range of the tachometer. Typically when I upgrade a car I just slap on a racing V12 (if available) without thinking too much about it. The problem with doing that to an unfamiliar car is that the engine audio for the racing V12 just sounds “fast” along the entire RPM range, IMO. So there were many cases where I’d make inefficient gear changes during technical portions of a course simply because I wasn’t hearing the engine right.
The McLaren 600LT is currently my overall favorite car in the game because it’s so intuitive for me to drive based on the way it sounds. Even though it’s not the most competitive car in its class, it’s just more enjoyable to drive because of how the engine audio is representing its relative performance. I ran into a similar case with the Lamborghini Reventón where I decided against the racing V12 engine swap just because the stock engine audio sounded very good to me. I essentially decided to sacrifice some car performance for a better in-game experience. So I get where people are coming from with regard to this matter. If the uniqueness of car audio has decreased since the first Horizon, for the same cross-section of cars, then it makes me wonder if iPG were originally licensing the engine audio clips from a 3rd party. If so, then I’m guessing that the sheer number of cars in FH4 makes it quite unpractical from a financial standpoint for PG to track them all down in the real world and to put them on a dynamometer. 
Albeit some of their best work was on “Top Gear”, “The Grand Tour” is still very entertaining even though they couldn’t bring the Stig with them. If you have Amazon Prime Video, another good series is “The Gymkhana Files” with Ken Block. It gives a nice backstory to some of the Hoonigan cars that we see in the game.