Forza Horizon 4: General Discussion

[FerrariF1GT]

Despite owning the Ultimate edition of FH4 forever I've never really played it much as I felt I wasn't done with FH3... Anyway I played it yesterday but noticed that there are several car packs I don't have, seemingly I have to purchase them ?

Can anyone answer, is this right ?
Or should I already own everything ? I do have both expansions.

The High Performance, Any Terrain, Japanese Heroes, Icons, British Sports Cars, and Open Top packs all include cars that are in the car pass that you should have with the ultimate edition. You don’t need to buy those.

The Hot Wheels Legends pack is not in the car pass; neither is the Mitsubishi pack but that’s a free download.

 

[strela]

James Bond cars pack is also missing from the carpass but is a part of the Ultimate edition. So is the Formula Drift cars pack.

Only Hot Wheels are not included in Ultimate edition.

 

[MrCrynox]

@FerrariF1GT @strela thanks guys.

It's weird then that if I goto the store page and check add ons it's telling me I don't own them and displays the price. Misleading to say the least. Is it the same for you, ? I wonder if it would let me buy them ? Not good.

 

[strela]

It's weird then that if I goto the store page and check add ons it's telling me I don't own them and displays the price. Misleading to say the least. Is it the same for you, ? I wonder if it would let me buy them ? Not good.

Mine is showing as owned.
Do they show for you in the manage add-ons menu?

 

[skazz]

I've had a couple of hiccups on FH4 in recent months where it briefly forgot that I owned any DLC. Trying again later solved the issue. Perhaps this was the cause?

 

[INEEDNAWZZZ]

You mentioned you were going back to it after a long time, did you reinstall the game? Sometimes the Xbox servers will install any additional content you own after installation of the main game, but other times it doesn't and you have to go back in to the Games & Apps screen and manually do it.

 

[MrCrynox]

Despite telling that I have to pay for the packs, (and truly meaning it as I've clicked on them and it doesn't state that I own them, next step is to pay).. when I start the game and goto to car lists, all of these cars, (excluding hotwheels), are available to me without any mention of having to pay!! So confusing. And even though I'm convinced I bought the ultimate edition, when I goto manage game it states base game, yet I would have never purchased it this way as it's a waste of money and I'm too tight/ sensible to purchase DLC separately. All doesn't make a lot of sense but at least I have access to all the cars, all I need to purchase is the hotwheels ones if I wish.

 

[breeminator]

I already have the MS Store / Xbox version of FH4, but I've uninstalled all MS Store apps from my PC because it just won't stop auto-updating things even though I've set the option to not auto-update. I'm thinking of getting the Steam version, but was wondering:

1. When I link my Steam account to my Xbox account that has most of the cars and hundreds of millions of credits, will it definitely transfer all that stuff to be available to me when playing from Steam, rather than wiping my Xbox account to match the new Steam account?

2. Will it recognise me as owning the DLC due to my Xbox account owning it, or do I need the Ultimate edition on Steam as well?

 

[pez2k]

1. When I link my Steam account to my Xbox account that has most of the cars and hundreds of millions of credits, will it definitely transfer all that stuff to be available to me when playing from Steam, rather than wiping my Xbox account to match the new Steam account?

2. Will it recognise me as owning the DLC due to my Xbox account owning it, or do I need the Ultimate edition on Steam as well?

Steam saves are independent of MS Store saves, so you'll start with nothing and it won't affect your MS Store save at all. I think if you have setups or liveries shared from one you can download them on the other though.

Purchases are also independent, you'd need to buy all of the content on the Steam version to have access to it there.

 

[skazz]

i was thinking about Xbox App auto updates. I have auto update disabled on my PC too but sometimes that gets ignored. So I'm thinking that this is perhaps because the Windows Store app has a separate auto update setting. Xbox app games also appear in the store, so they are perhaps caught by two different auto update settings?

 

[breeminator]

Steam saves are independent of MS Store saves, so you'll start with nothing and it won't affect your MS Store save at all. I think if you have setups or liveries shared from one you can download them on the other though.

Purchases are also independent, you'd need to buy all of the content on the Steam version to have access to it there.

Thanks, I hadn't considered that they might be completely independent. I guess the linking must purely be for the display name / unique identifier from the Xbox account for player ID purposes. It's not worth me getting it on Steam if I can't carry across what I have on the Xbox account.

i was thinking about Xbox App auto updates. I have auto update disabled on my PC too but sometimes that gets ignored. So I'm thinking that this is perhaps because the Windows Store app has a separate auto update setting. Xbox app games also appear in the store, so they are perhaps caught by two different auto update settings?

Yes, it's the MS Store that does the auto updating, and it happens even if I don't have either the Xbox app or MS Store app running, it's like Windows always has something running in the background that detects and performs these updates without any visible indication that it's happening, other than the fact I can see something is maxing out my internet connection. I've set every option I could find to tell it to never auto update anything, but it still takes it upon itself to download updates without asking me. I'm basically never again buying anything from the MS / Xbox Store, and will never play again anything I already own on them.

Edit: After a bit more time to think about it, I'm wondering if the auto-update is intentionally only turning off the actual updating, but is intended to still automatically download updates, i.e. they don't realise that maxing out an internet connection without permission could be a problem. I decided to buy FH4 on Steam anyway, as it's quite cheap for the Ultimate Edition at the moment. From searching, it seems a lot of people would like the ability to transfer their Xbox game save to Steam.

 

[breeminator]

So, having now played FH4 on my new Steam copy, having linked it to an Xbox account that had a lot of progress, I can list the ways in which the existing Xbox account affected the experience.

Credits, cars, skill points, forzathon points are all not carried across.

Unspent backstage passes from an Xbox account are available to spend on a linked Steam account. I assume that spending them makes them unavailable in the Xbox account.

Unclaimed ranked season rewards from the Xbox account were able to be claimed on the Steam account. However, while I got the ranked rewards, the rank itself hasn't carried across, so I need to complete the process of getting ranked from the start again, including doing unranked racing first, to be able to get the playlist % for online adventure.

Anything that is communicated in messages that hasn't been claimed on the Xbox account can be claimed on the Steam account, such as gift cars, payouts from tunes etc.

For leaderboards, it recognises the Xbox performances as being mine, but gives a PB message when I beat the best I've done on the Steam account. E.g. I did 303m for a danger sign and it said it was a PB, but then the thing it pops up where it shows the nearest friend's score against yours, it showed my Xbox performance of 311m. A similar thing happens with discovery of areas and roads. It will say I've now discovered e.g. 30 roads on the Steam account, but then show 531 roads discovered in the popup thing that compares against friends.

So it's a bit of a mix of some things working as you'd want everything to work, e.g. the backstage passes, where it looks like the number you have is shared between the two accounts, and spending on either account removes it from both accounts, and other things such as credits not working that way.

Edit: I'll add any more information that crops up below:

Re ranked racing, my rank has actually carried across. It lost the fact that I had qualified for ranked, so I had to repeat the unranked racing to get to tier 3. But having done that, I only had to do a single ranked adventure to complete the playlist item, and my rating carried over from where it was on the Xbox version.

Tunes are interesting. Tunes that I've favourited are still listed in my favourites. Tunes that I had only downloaded are no longer listed in "my tunes". Tunes that I had shared have to be found by searching for my own name as the creator, but when I download and install them, it knows they're mine, and allows me to edit the settings.

 

[sirjim73]

BIG NEWS on FH4.

Introducing Xbox Game Pass Core, Coming This September - Xbox Wire

Today, we’re continuing our commitment to give players more choice and value by introducing Xbox Game Pass Core, launching on September 14. Game Pass Core is the evolution of Xbox Live Gold. Game Pass Core will give players access to our advanced multiplayer network, a select collection of over...

news.xbox.com

Two things I've picked up from the news below:

1.

FH4 will now be part of Game Pass Core from September and won't require Ultimate membership to play

2.
I don't think we've heard anything before that confirmed FH4 will be going into a 6th year, just a vague "we've no plans to stop"?

Remember this is uncharted territory for ANY Forza game. Personally I was expecting it to reach end of life this September. I can't imagine it would make sense to add it to Core for what 3 weeks though?

Perhaps they'll make an official announcement about it. It seems weird not to?

 

[INEEDNAWZZZ]

FWIW they gave FH3 away with those discless Xbox One S models they did for a while, before having to hastily swap it out with something else when it got delisted about four months later. I think they want to avoid that situation happening again so they've made a more conscious investment going forward with games being in GP on day one to ensure that they stay on the service along with the rest of the first party titles.

 

[breeminator]

I don't think we've heard anything before that confirmed FH4 will be going into a 6th year, just a vague "we've no plans to stop"?

Remember this is uncharted territory for ANY Forza game. Personally I was expecting it to reach end of life this September. I can't imagine it would make sense to add it to Core for what 3 weeks though?

Perhaps they'll make an official announcement about it. It seems weird not to?

To me, FH4 and FH5 are sufficiently different games that they should co-exist. Just like Age of Empires 4 doesn't replace AoE 2, for example, they're different games and an individual player might prefer one or the other. I'd like to see continued development on FH4, e.g. to add DLAA, and bring in some of the small QoL improvements from FH5 such as the much faster navigation of the mastery tree and the ability to unlock all masteries at once. I think the Age of Empires model of continued development on all of the games would be a good one for the FH series to adopt from here, as each environment is quite different, so there's really no reason for each new game to be seen as a replacement, rather it should just be an extra option for an environment to play in.

 

[skazz]

In my opinion FH4 stands as a great game by itself. Realistically FH5 will have a larger player base than FH4 by now just due to age.
However both games still have their weekly seasonal playlists and online races, so FH4 isn't less supported, just less fully populated.

The core gameplay in both games is extremely similar. You have the same race classes, similar car lists, similar experience both on road and off road. But because of the totally different map there's really no problem with playing the two of them alongside each other (and I still do, I play the FH4 and FH5 seasonal playlists every week).

Both of them are miles above all other modern "semi-arcade" racers when it comes to offering realistic but slightly forgiving handling. The cars behave as you'd expect, just with a little more grip than they should have (particularly front tyre grip). This means that you don't have to worry about stupid arcade "drifting through corners is fastest" crap, and the physics has way way more nuance than you'd expect from a non-sim racer.

Both of them also have superb console controller support, with great use of the Xbox impulse trigger rumble.


FH4 wins against FH5 in my opinion with:

• Slightly larger and quite interesting car list (but missing 2021+ cars of course)
• 4 seasons are considerably more impactful than in FH5. Particularly Autumn and Winter make a huge difference to the entire game experience (winter racing is ...challenging...)
• I prefer the Northern European scenery in FH4 to the cacti and jungle in FH5, since it feels more like home
• graphically FH4 looks almost as good as FH5. Where it just loses out is density of objects on the ground, lighting and shadow model. But you can enjoy FH4 in 4k+HDR on the Series X and it still looks great
• I think that FH4 does cross country racing the best of any Forza Horizon. It has great cross country layouts and I can race them for hours and hours (especially in SUVs, yeah sue me!)
• I prefer FH4's stories to FH5's ones overall. Especially the excellent stories in FH4 like the Top Gear one.

Where FH5 wins:

• The driving physics are just slightly better on FH5. It's small but particularly road cars feel better enough that the game becomes more enjoyable for it. I basically ignore S2 class in FH4 but I find it more playable on FH5 - however for me B, A and low S1 class is the most enjoyable in both FH4 and FH5
• Graphically FH5 is slightly better in all kinds of ways. Most importantly is the dense ground cover which lets the world feel more realistic than FH4. But it's not a huge deal.
• FH5 map is noticeably larger than FH4, and especially the volcano adds some interesting gameplay (the hill climb is excellent)
• I prefer FH5's tarmac circuits to FH4: They just have nicer layouts and are a little more fun to drive due to the physics. Whereas I dislike FH5's cross country layouts and prefer that disciple in FH4.

So yeah, if you only have access to FH4 then by all means jump in. There's a huge amount to do, and racing is just great fun.

 

[sirjim73]

To me, FH4 and FH5 are sufficiently different games that they should co-exist. Just like Age of Empires 4 doesn't replace AoE 2, for example, they're different games and an individual player might prefer one or the other. I'd like to see continued development on FH4, e.g. to add DLAA, and bring in some of the small QoL improvements from FH5 such as the much faster navigation of the mastery tree and the ability to unlock all masteries at once. I think the Age of Empires model of continued development on all of the games would be a good one for the FH series to adopt from here, as each environment is quite different, so there's really no reason for each new game to be seen as a replacement, rather it should just be an extra option for an environment to play in.

With Forza, the reason for delisting was always given as licences running out though. A different situation to other games, where it's the developers/publishers decision. They literally HAD to delist FM7 in 2021 because there were licences running out in 2022. As they had to do with all prior Forza games.

This was the point I was trying to make, but obviously didn't convey.

Something changed between FM7 in 2017 and FH4 in 2018. Either the licences were no longer 4/5 years, or they've found a way to renew them and fund that renewal - for some reason this now became both feasible and worth the extra investment involved.

For an equivalent example, Dirt 1.0 was delisted recently for the same reason. Car licences don't run forever.

 

[breeminator]

I prefer FH5's tarmac circuits to FH4

For me, it's the other way round, I think the FH4 tracks are fantastic with so much identity. The tracks in FH5 all feel so anonymous to me. The only tracks in games that are of a similar standard to FH4, for my preferences, are some of the fictitious tracks in Gran Turismo, which are also fantastic and have so much individual identity.

 

[UKMikey]

I'd play FH4 again if they updated it with FH5's driving physics. So much of that game went unplayed for me, notably the drift zones or anything in S2 class.

 

[skazz]

I'd play FH4 again if they updated it with FH5's driving physics. So much of that game went unplayed for me, notably the drift zones or anything in S2 class.

You get used to the physics difference quickly enough. It's a much smaller difference than moving to FM7 or a proper race sim.

So don't let the physics change put you off from spending the odd few hours on FH4...

 

[UKMikey]

You get used to the physics difference quickly enough. It's a much smaller difference than moving to FM7 or a proper race sim.

So don't let the physics change put you off from spending the odd few hours on FH4...

I played FH4 for years when it came out but I'm not going back. The improvement in FH5's driving was significant for me. At least I can drift in that game and control fast cars.

 

[skazz]

I played FH4 for years when it came out but I'm not going back. The improvement in FH5's driving was significant for me. At least I can drift in that game and control fast cars.

Yeah, that's true.
I've completed 100% of the events and stunts in FH3 and FH5, but in FH4 I never managed to 3-star all of the drift events. For some reason I just can't drift well in that game.

And I agree on the S2 cars - doing seasonal playlists with S2 cars was never pleasant. Just not under control enough due to issues with the physics.

 

[breeminator]

I've completed 100% of the events and stunts in FH3 and FH5, but in FH4 I never managed to 3-star all of the drift events. For some reason I just can't drift well in that game.

And I agree on the S2 cars - doing seasonal playlists with S2 cars was never pleasant. Just not under control enough due to issues with the physics.

For drifting, the best tune I've found in FH4 is "Drift Zone King" by Tiptronik for the #43 Viper. I hadn't found anything close to that in FH5, but doing the seasonal drift zone this week I managed to make my own tune for the #34 Supra that is working for me (got the 2nd highest score in GTP club, top 1% global).

For S2 cars, I've generally found cars in FH5 to feel more disconnected from the road, more floaty/slidey and less realistic than FH4, but again it depends a lot on the car and tune, there are nice handling car and tune combinations in both games.