Forza Horizon 4 (XSX|S/XB1/Win10/Steam) - A Game For All Seasons. Over 24m players. Out now on Steam.

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Trelliz
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PostRe: Forza Horizon 4 (XB1/Win10) - A Game For All Seasons.
by Trelliz » Thu Oct 18, 2018 12:22 am

I think i've realised what one of my major issues with this game is that's been just out of reach in my mind for a while.

The focus of this game is not really the racing itself - its about making the numbers around the racing go up. Each singleplayer event is an un-connected one off race that is important only in the broader context of how much your overall level, each discipline-specific number and your cash balance goes up by at the end and/or what you'll get from the next wheelspin, how many skill points you got to unlock skills for your car.

This is further exacerbated by a linear relationship between time and payout - longer events pay out more money. However this relationship doesn't change as you grow into bigger, faster and more expensive cars. Going back to the game which probably popularised the car collectathon sub-genre, Gran Turismo, in particularly GT3; Ignoring the championship payouts, the single event races don't get much longer but the payouts increase as you progress. For example, the first races in the Sunday Cip pay out 1000 for a 2-lap race but events later on like the Race of NA Sports pay out 5000 for a 2 lap race. This escalation of prizes with costs is better at keeping you in the sweet spot of focusing on the actual racing than where i often found myself which was planning how to maximise skillpoint grind to exploit the nissan fairlady cash doubling process for a measly 150k in the face of cars costing 10 million.

I was lucky enough to pull both the cash and xp-boosting forza edition Alfa Romeos out of wheelspins, but given the above the game may as well only have those two cars in it because they are the absolutely optimal choices for levelling or getting money faster to afford the really expensive cars or houses, outside the will of the wheelspin gods when they aren't showering you with patterned slip-on shoes and dabbing emotes. Any race NOT using either of them is a waste of optimal xp or cash, especially if you haven't grinded the skill points to activate the additional boost perks within their skill trees beforehand.

I'm trying to avoid being too tinfoil hat about this as I know it can cause consternation, but all these issues could be "solved" with spending real money on car tokens as a shortcut currency or buying wheelspins to brute force through either the car or money bottleneck. Given the fairly quick about-face with FM7's plans presumably well after Horizon 4 was in development, it wouldn't surprise me if such options were going to be there but were yanked after all the battlefront hullabaloo.

jawa2 wrote:Tl;dr Trelliz isn't a miserable git; he's right.
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Errkal
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PostRe: Forza Horizon 4 (XB1/Win10) - A Game For All Seasons.
by Errkal » Thu Oct 18, 2018 6:54 am

I'm beginning to get bored of this now.

There seems to be no incentive or reason to change cars which means I have found I haven't bothered.

I like games where you have to use a certain car type bit I can do what I want here which means I have no incentive to change or collect cars as I don't need them.

I'm going to see what spring is like as I only briefly did it to start and was plunged back to winter but I think I may not be playing much longer.

Maybe do online stuff we get some Forza Friday or something organised.

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PostRe: Forza Horizon 4 (XB1/Win10) - A Game For All Seasons.
by Trelliz » Thu Oct 18, 2018 7:11 am

Errkal wrote:There seems to be no incentive or reason to change cars which means I have found I haven't bothered.

I like games where you have to use a certain car type bit I can do what I want here which means I have no incentive to change or collect cars as I don't need them.


Try rivals mode, i've basically done with the main open world now apart from the seasonal race series. It has class/performance restrictions in the events that aren't locked to a particular given car and gives you a reason to explore your garage and keep expanding it with new options.

jawa2 wrote:Tl;dr Trelliz isn't a miserable git; he's right.
7256930752

PostRe: Forza Horizon 4 (XB1/Win10) - A Game For All Seasons.
by 7256930752 » Thu Oct 18, 2018 7:38 am

Trelliz wrote:I think i've realised what one of my major issues with this game is that's been just out of reach in my mind for a while.

The focus of this game is not really the racing itself - its about making the numbers around the racing go up. Each singleplayer event is an un-connected one off race that is important only in the broader context of how much your overall level, each discipline-specific number and your cash balance goes up by at the end and/or what you'll get from the next wheelspin, how many skill points you got to unlock skills for your car.

This is further exacerbated by a linear relationship between time and payout - longer events pay out more money. However this relationship doesn't change as you grow into bigger, faster and more expensive cars. Going back to the game which probably popularised the car collectathon sub-genre, Gran Turismo, in particularly GT3; Ignoring the championship payouts, the single event races don't get much longer but the payouts increase as you progress. For example, the first races in the Sunday Cip pay out 1000 for a 2-lap race but events later on like the Race of NA Sports pay out 5000 for a 2 lap race. This escalation of prizes with costs is better at keeping you in the sweet spot of focusing on the actual racing than where i often found myself which was planning how to maximise skillpoint grind to exploit the nissan fairlady cash doubling process for a measly 150k in the face of cars costing 10 million.

I was lucky enough to pull both the cash and xp-boosting forza edition Alfa Romeos out of wheelspins, but given the above the game may as well only have those two cars in it because they are the absolutely optimal choices for levelling or getting money faster to afford the really expensive cars or houses, outside the will of the wheelspin gods when they aren't showering you with patterned slip-on shoes and dabbing emotes. Any race NOT using either of them is a waste of optimal xp or cash, especially if you haven't grinded the skill points to activate the additional boost perks within their skill trees beforehand.

I'm trying to avoid being too tinfoil hat about this as I know it can cause consternation, but all these issues could be "solved" with spending real money on car tokens as a shortcut currency or buying wheelspins to brute force through either the car or money bottleneck. Given the fairly quick about-face with FM7's plans presumably well after Horizon 4 was in development, it wouldn't surprise me if such options were going to be there but were yanked after all the battlefront hullabaloo.

Do you not think the fact there is a random chance element to the game means you're predisposed to thinking you're being conned somehow? Ignore the numbers and enjoy the racing.

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PostRe: Forza Horizon 4 (XB1/Win10) - A Game For All Seasons.
by Trelliz » Thu Oct 18, 2018 8:19 am

Hime wrote:Do you not think the fact there is a random chance element to the game means you're predisposed to thinking you're being conned somehow? Ignore the numbers and enjoy the racing.


Apart from grinding away to unlock the Goliath circuit I've shifted to Rivals because the actual races are so inconsequential. Sure the moment-to-moment racing is enjoyable but just completing a race marks it as "complete" regardless of finishing position and without multiple-event championships (bar the handful of seasonal ones) no event really matters outside the aforementioned numbers going up. A big part of what makes racing exciting (at least for me) is the fight for points in a series, knowing that there's one or two drivers you HAVE to beat this race to keep a chance at winning overall. That makes any particular event matter more than just ticking them off a list. Even then outside of keeping a spreadsheet of event finishing positions you don't have to win them to 'progress'.

So it's not that I think I'm being conned per se, I suppose it's more that, like all these games as a service platforms, I don't feel like the game respects your time and input - like all these 'games as as service' titles it doesn't place anywhere near as much importance on the actual racing as it does keeping you logging in to do daily challenges and making the numbers go up. That's why I suggested Errkal try rivals mode as that's where you can really explore the car roster and where every corner of every lap of every event really matters. I spent ages pushing up the leaderboards for the trucks-only dirt track rivals event (can't remember the name) and hitting number 6 in the world after all that was personally rewarding, far more so than any of the 'proper' races i'd done before.

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PostRe: Forza Horizon 4 (XB1/Win10) - A Game For All Seasons. 2 million players. Winter has arrived.
by BID0 » Thu Oct 18, 2018 8:21 am

Yeh this game gets boring quick. It's not designed to sit down playing it for long periods of time, just 15 minutes every 2-3 days.

Pro's
  • Traffic on the road ghosts when you do speed zone or drift challenges
  • You can swap vehicles whenever you like penalty free
Con's
  • The tutorial is way too long. Like 4.5 hours too long. It's always been one of the annoying things in Forza for me having an unskippable opening race telling you how to change the camera and RT accelerates etc when you just want to race with friends online, now they've multiplied the annoyance by a factor of 30. That 10 minute opening race that changes between the four seasons would have been fine.
  • Clubs feel meaningless. I can't see a way of seeing other players scores etc unless for example you do a speed camera and it will briefly show you who is placed above you on that specific leaderboard. No shared garage? No club tiers for members? etc
  • Online play is pretty broken. Being disconnected gets you temp bans on ranked races. You get disconnected A LOT :lol:
  • The game seems to struggle balancing team games, often it's 4v2 etc. I think because there is no way to quit your game session until a new race/game has started?! So you have to wait for all of the loading, picking a car and a race to start before you can pause and quit the session... which means the team you're on is a player down
  • Connection issues not joining games or taking your convoy in to different games
  • Having online modes locked behind others means some parts of online are a ghost town and you can't start games. Even worse when people can join your game in the convoy which cancels certain games you might be searching for at the time if they aren't allowed to play them yet
  • Rivals being separated out from the rest of the game means there's no times to beat
  • Forzathon's get boring pretty quick as they're just a repetition of the drift/speed zone and jump challenges. Also the sets of challenges don't seem to change so every 3 sets are the same and you could get them again in a few Forzathon's time
  • Feels like a free to play microtransaction game, but without the microtransactions
  • No sense of progression. Have only had to buy one car. Constantly rewarded for absolutely everything like it's a school sports day, it ends up making it feel less rewarding as a result "good job lil buddy"
  • They've removed the photograph every car mini game from previous games
  • Bucket lists have been removed too
  • Clothes - why do we really need so many. Just unlock "Chinos" and let the player pick the colour. There's no need for blue, red, green, pink, black, grey zebra print etc etc to pad out the unlockables
  • Despite being given stuff constantly, the game feels empty. Partly because they've taken the Championships out of the main game so they can put one out each month (the first month requiring a DLC car was also insulting - they could have at least got through the first year of the game before forcing people to buy DLC).
  • No Mitsubishi's. Some people will call that a nit-pick but the Evo 7 and 8's are my go to cars. Doing that first off road race in a Cosworth felt weird
  • They've almost got it right with the destruction. It's been a problem since the first Horizon where some small bushes on the track side you could pass through and others would literally stop you dead despite looking similar. The 3rd game had the same issue with trees which this game has solved, but now we have the cobblestone walls instead... most can be driven through (weirdly?!) while others stop you dead

1 > 3 > 4 >>>>> 2

I can see why people like this, but it isn't for me. I'm probably the only one on this forum who plays a single game at a time. I know all of you have 5+ games on the go :slol: so when a game gates off a bunch of stuff to keep players subscribed to a service and coming back over years, it means I don't have anything to play. I like to sit down and plug away at a game as and when I have free time before I move on to the next one, not wait each week for the next 15 minutes of races to show up on the map or having to find time to play a game when I am busy so I don't miss out on an event or content.

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PostRe: Forza Horizon 4 (XB1/Win10) - A Game For All Seasons. 2 million players. Winter has arrived.
by Trelliz » Thu Oct 18, 2018 8:33 am

BID0 wrote:Rivals being separated out from the rest of the game means there's no times to beat


Exactly - Horizon 3 pulled everyone's race times into rivals mode and suggested a rival near your time to challenge at the end of each main race. Sure most of them were 'sub-optimal' because they started at the back of and dodged through a now invisible grid of other cars, but at least they were there. Some of the rivals boards only have a couple of hundred times on them which is ludicrous given the millions of players who are apparently playing.

I suppose I shouldn't complain too much, it gives me more of a chance of getting higher ranks in the less popular boards, but in a way I'd rather that wasn't the case.

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PostRe: Forza Horizon 4 (XB1/Win10) - A Game For All Seasons. 2 million players. Winter has arrived.
by BID0 » Thu Oct 18, 2018 8:39 am

Trelliz wrote:
BID0 wrote:Rivals being separated out from the rest of the game means there's no times to beat


Exactly - Horizon 3 pulled everyone's race times into rivals mode and suggested a rival near your time to challenge at the end of each main race. Sure most of them were 'sub-optimal' because they started at the back of and dodged through a now invisible grid of other cars, but at least they were there. Some of the rivals boards only have a couple of hundred times on them which is ludicrous given the millions of players who are apparently playing.

I suppose I shouldn't complain too much, it gives me more of a chance of getting higher ranks in the less popular boards, but in a way I'd rather that wasn't the case.

It's also quite nice because those 'sub-optimal' gave players a sense they were doing better than they were even after their 1st attempt and it sent a message out to the 'sub-optimal' player that "someone beat your time, you better go beat them now!" and so on and so forth

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PostRe: Forza Horizon 4 (XB1/Win10) - A Game For All Seasons.
by 7256930752 » Thu Oct 18, 2018 8:49 am

Trelliz wrote:
Hime wrote:Do you not think the fact there is a random chance element to the game means you're predisposed to thinking you're being conned somehow? Ignore the numbers and enjoy the racing.


Apart from grinding away to unlock the Goliath circuit I've shifted to Rivals because the actual races are so inconsequential. Sure the moment-to-moment racing is enjoyable but just completing a race marks it as "complete" regardless of finishing position and without multiple-event championships (bar the handful of seasonal ones) no event really matters outside the aforementioned numbers going up. A big part of what makes racing exciting (at least for me) is the fight for points in a series, knowing that there's one or two drivers you HAVE to beat this race to keep a chance at winning overall. That makes any particular event matter more than just ticking them off a list. Even then outside of keeping a spreadsheet of event finishing positions you don't have to win them to 'progress'.

So it's not that I think I'm being conned per se, I suppose it's more that, like all these games as a service platforms, I don't feel like the game respects your time and input - like all these 'games as as service' titles it doesn't place anywhere near as much importance on the actual racing as it does keeping you logging in to do daily challenges and making the numbers go up. That's why I suggested Errkal try rivals mode as that's where you can really explore the car roster and where every corner of every lap of every event really matters. I spent ages pushing up the leaderboards for the trucks-only dirt track rivals event (can't remember the name) and hitting number 6 in the world after all that was personally rewarding, far more so than any of the 'proper' races i'd done before.

Yeah I can see why the would be an issue for you, I like this because it's a real car Mario Kart in that I can just dip in and out without having to invest a load of time. The game as a service style play for a few minutes works perfectly for me with driving games but I get why you'd be disappointed if you're looking for something more involved.

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PostRe: Forza Horizon 4 (XB1/Win10) - A Game For All Seasons. Spring is in the air.
by Peter Crisp » Fri Oct 19, 2018 7:55 pm

The racing community in this is a bunch of banana splits.
I freely admit I'm not very good but the number of times I get punted off the road to miss a checkpoint in team adventure just makes racing pretty much pointless. I also really wish you could specify racing on actual roads during the bloody daytime and not do so stupid freeroam rush bollocks at night :fp: .

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PostRe: Forza Horizon 4 (XB1/Win10) - A Game For All Seasons. Spring is in the air.
by Trelliz » Fri Oct 19, 2018 8:08 pm

Peter Crisp wrote:The racing community in this is a bunch of banana splits.
I freely admit I'm not very good but the number of times I get punted off the road to miss a checkpoint in team adventure just makes racing pretty much pointless. I also really wish you could specify racing on actual roads during the bloody daytime and not do so stupid freeroam rush bollocks at night :fp: .


I cancelled my live sub a while ago as Forza was the only thing I really had it for. It is an exercise in futility and makes Mario Kart look like iRacing.

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PostRe: Forza Horizon 4 (XB1/Win10) - A Game For All Seasons. Spring is in the air.
by BID0 » Fri Oct 19, 2018 10:43 pm

The online really is trash. By far the worst in the series. It gets worse with each game in the series :fp:

You can’t even reset your car if you get stuck online. And the UI is the strawberry floating worst and you can’t disable it

The map is too zoomed out and not possible to adjust it. In team games you literally can’t see the objectives because everything’s bunched on top of each other

The game text is so huge. It’s easily half the width of the screen and placed exactly on the horizon so you can’t see where you’re actually driving which is really useful. Games usually suffer from tiny text but this game goes too far in the other direction :lol: paging frank to the thread

And as if screen estate wasn’t valuable enough, they’ve used the entire top right two thirds on everyone’s names that are in the game

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PostRe: Forza Horizon 4 (XB1/Win10) - A Game For All Seasons. Spring is in the air.
by Photek » Sat Oct 20, 2018 1:57 am

I’ve heard about a game called Forza Motorsport 7. I believe it has tracks and rules etc.

I’m like Hime, I don’t take racing too seriously and mates and I have a riot online, it’s hilarious! Free Form Rush is mental but you get used to the short cuts after a few races.

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PostRe: Forza Horizon 4 (XB1/Win10) - A Game For All Seasons. Spring is in the air.
by Trelliz » Sat Oct 20, 2018 7:21 am

Photek wrote:I’ve heard about a game called Forza Motorsport 7. I believe it has tracks and rules etc.


It's worse in FM7:


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PostRe: Forza Horizon 4 (XB1/Win10) - A Game For All Seasons. Spring is in the air.
by KjGarly » Sat Oct 20, 2018 8:55 am

Booted it up on the X after having it installed since release for the first time last night. Never bothered with Forza games (haven't done much in 7) but the quick whizz through the 4 seasons at the start just looked stunning. Had it set to quality rather than 60fps and it still feels so smooth to play.

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PostRe: Forza Horizon 4 (XB1/Win10) - A Game For All Seasons. Spring is in the air.
by Peter Crisp » Sat Oct 20, 2018 6:22 pm

My new favourite car is a lime yellow Limo with bright red bonnet, wing mirrors and wing.

It's fully pimped out with a maxed out F1 engine and can go about 220mph :slol: .

It's totally bitchin!

Vermilion wrote:I'd rather live in Luton.
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PostRe: Forza Horizon 4 (XB1/Win10) - A Game For All Seasons. Spring is in the air.
by mcjihge2 » Sat Oct 20, 2018 7:33 pm

Peter Crisp wrote:My new favourite car is a lime yellow Limo with bright red bonnet, wing mirrors and wing.

It's fully pimped out with a maxed out F1 engine and can go about 220mph :slol: .

It's totally bitchin!


Please post a picture of it in a romantic setting.

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Peter Crisp
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PostRe: Forza Horizon 4 (XB1/Win10) - A Game For All Seasons. Spring is in the air.
by Peter Crisp » Sat Oct 20, 2018 7:46 pm

If I had any idea at all about how I'd go about doing that I would but I honestly don't because I'm gooseberry fool at the internets.

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PostRe: Forza Horizon 4 (XB1/Win10) - A Game For All Seasons. Spring is in the air.
by Manwell Pablo » Sat Oct 20, 2018 8:37 pm

BID0 wrote:The online really is trash. By far the worst in the series. It gets worse with each game in the series :fp:

You can’t even reset your car if you get stuck online. And the UI is the strawberry floating worst and you can’t disable it

The map is too zoomed out and not possible to adjust it. In team games you literally can’t see the objectives because everything’s bunched on top of each other

The game text is so huge. It’s easily half the width of the screen and placed exactly on the horizon so you can’t see where you’re actually driving which is really useful. Games usually suffer from tiny text but this game goes too far in the other direction :lol: paging frank to the thread

And as if screen estate wasn’t valuable enough, they’ve used the entire top right two thirds on everyone’s names that are in the game


On the whole really like a lot of things they’ve implemented and the games great, but have to agree with you on trelliz on a few things, the game is full of “why have they done/removed that” moments and the online stuff is terrible it’s exactly like you say they’ve some how managed to male things worse with every iteration of the game. Think it took 30 minutes to find a ranked adventure last night, if you try a pvp event you end up racing three other people max.

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PostRe: Forza Horizon 4 (XB1/Win10) - A Game For All Seasons. Spring is in the air.
by mcjihge2 » Sat Oct 20, 2018 8:57 pm

Peter Crisp wrote:If I had any idea at all about how I'd go about doing that I would but I honestly don't because I'm gooseberry fool at the internets.


Press up in game to activate phot mode. Save and share.
Goto the forza website https://www.forzamotorsport.net/en-us/ login and goto the community then gallery tab.
You might have to wait time for the pic to upload, but it should be there.
Download it to your your computer.
Goto an image upload site, somewhere like https://imgur.com/, then upload (new post on imgur) and get share links.

I believe in you Peter.

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