I’ve been driving in FH since Colorado & also found the Ranked Lobbies in FH4 to be semi-toxic.
The one redeeming quality, IMO, of Ranked Racing was the majority of the Meta Car drivers, Checkpoint Pushers & the Horizon Link spammers that would just repeat “I Like Racing” 400 times during a race all seemed to flock to Ranked Racing. I know it’s an anecdotal observation but I found the majority of public lobbies in FH4 much more enjoyable after the implementation of the Ranked Lobbies. It’s the only reason I wouldn’t mind seeing them return to FH5.
So, they removed it to keep peoples “feelings” from getting hurt? Then why have racing at all? By including racing of any kind, the competitive mindset (whether in the forefront or subliminal) immediately starts to think “win”.
It was mentioned pre-release that one could complete the “main campaign” of the game (ie: get to Hall of Fame) without doing a single race at all. That could be through photos, liveries, PR stunts etc.
I like competitive racing and battling against skilled players and while that’s possible in Forza Horizon 5 (if you find/make the right community) it’s not something the game was explicitly built for, hence the lack of features/modes.
I don’t see Forza Horizon 5 as a “racing game”, but rather a car-based MMO that happens to have races in it. Racing is essentially an excuse to drive a car, and not much else.
…the very fact that they support 3 different controller types, one of which gets an actual set of physics to contend with that no one else deals with makes trying to rank players pointless… they would need more and better aggregation of settings and control types to really sort us out and make it worth while to participate.
Maybe if I could sort by and run with only other wheel users in online lobbies, I would personally like online racing more and think it was worth my investment to get better at.
What I get today is: other players simply don’t have to contend with the same forces I do, and I can see it while I’m racing with them, and that is what bothers me about it. The crew without physics and can run any old unconventional tune, and just ram-tap their way through everything lah-tee-dah, with no consequences - I actually have to drive the car correctly and have it semi set up realistically. Which is not the ‘meta’ that owns this game’s upper echelons of the leader boards.
I don’t mourn at all the lack of emphasis on “Competitive Online Races” and “ranking”…
I’m aware of Mike Browns comments. I do not agree with him. Nor does his comments make any sense.
Ranked racing is not about determing who’s the best and who sucks. Ranked racing is about matching equally skilled players together in a competitive environment which is extremely fun for players who like a bit of competition.
The alternative which is what we have right now is that many players have simply quit this game as a result. For those that remain it’s often the case that newbies are matched with experienced players in online racing where newbies cannot finish the race within 30 seconds of first place. What an anoying experience that must be for a new player and how boring would it be for the experienced player.
Now I’ve seen Mike Brown play FH5 many times and the guy can barely drive a car in a straight line. Which tells me he has no experience what so ever when it comes to any form of racing. My comments are reinforced by the fact that this game lacks proper match making and decisions by him to remove optional race modes like ranked because players don’t like coming second? Ignoring the fact that players can come second or last in basically every aspect of this game from the trial, online racing, online drifting, eliminator, head to heads, championshipa etc.
This game has catered to a wide variety of players in the past from casuals to designers to competitive players to people who just like to tune and cruise around in their favorite cars. PGG should continue to cater to these players and not force players to do things they don’t want to do. They should also not ruin the experience for those players. If you don’t like competitive racing and just want to paint your car that’s cool. But don’t remove it for those of us who want it.
Well, it’s not me you have to convince, it’s him. I’m just a random guy on the internet, he’s the Creative Director of the game you’re not happy with.
Like I said before I like competitive play and good racing with decent opponents (and find the game’s multiplayer aspects lacking in other areas), however this isn’t the game that has been designed here, and no amount of forum discourse is going to change that.
What you describe is how a good ranking system should would, but it’s not what FH4 had by any stretch. Part of the reason I feel they got rid of it… because all that system did was encourage poor play as the topped ranked players would do anything to keep their ranks from falling, and low ranked players would do anything they could to beat higher ranked players to pump their own ranks.
You even seem to agree it wasn’t an ideal system but think they should have just ported it over like every other broken crappy thing you constantly complain they ported over?
Anyway, Why they haven’t put in something new is speculation at best, but mostly hyperbole looking through this thread.
Mike Brown made it quite clear in one of his interviews that Ranked Racing in FH4 had become extremely toxic & PG didn’t want that element in FH5 so they purposefully excluded the mode.
Personally, I thought Ranked Racing sucked as an experience. I’ve been playing since FH1. The one thing Ranked Racing did quite well was suck most of the toxic players into it and as a result the regular multiplayer lobbies were relatively clean. Not perfect by any means but cleaner than the Horizon Open lobbies of FH5.
Frankly, my preferred system was FH3 where you were awarded in the final tally based on how many skill points you got during the race which meant racing clean. You weren’t gaining any skill chains wall riding or ramming.
Way to example what a bunch of jerks most people are who are overly concerned with their ego and rankings - come into a game forum and insult the dev team over it… Brilliant way to make your point.
OP: you’re exactly why they got rid of this.
Gee typical, the hurt ego crew brigade report posts because they don’t like the truth.
Ranked racing was an extremely popular feature for many players in FH4. But it clearly wasn’t popular for all and there lies the issue. The problem isn’t that ranked racing was toxic as Mike has claimed, but rather that ranked racing was forced on players via the weekly chorelist (another “great” feature by Mike). Put simply, ranked racing should be an optional game mode.
Was ranked racing popular? Yes
Was ranked racing perfect? No.
Should players be forced to do it? Absolutely not
Should it have been removed? No
Could this feature have been improved? Absolutely
The problem has never been ranked racing. The problem has always been and will continue to be PGGs approach to improving or fixing key aspects of this game. Removing things is not the solution.
So where are we today? Where are we 10 years into a game series that is purely focused on cars and racing? Well we have no proper match making system. Online racing consists of champions which players are entered into at any point including at the end of the championship (yet still forced to wait). Leaderboards have been added which rank players based on time played (technically the most toxic thing you could do as it promotes extremely unhealthy habbits in players). There’s not much else to say really. It’s all a bit lackluster.
Food for thought. Tell me what new improvements or features do you like about FH5 over FH4? Do you like the creative direction Mike has taken with FH5? Are you happy with the state of FH5 1 year post release?
Hopefully they don’t add ranked because there’s nothing worse than salty elitists. Their attitude is that if someone isn’t as good as them that person shouldn’t be playing the game. Elitists in games like LoL, CS:GO, Overwatch and Rocket League are best examples of that.
