I don't really understand the constant need to respond to/argue with people who are unhappy with something. If you don't agree move on or discuss the specific issue mentioned from another side, but just these posts calling people whiners, complainers, entitled, children, etc, or that imply they are stupid/wrong by accusing them of being stubborn or "haters" or too nostalgic or whatever creates far more toxicity than a couple of posters who aren't happy with a glitch or new car or whatever and express it in a not-so-tactful way.
It just turns grumbling about a massive company that doesn't care about any of us or what we say about them, into grumbling at each other and tension in the community.
Not like FH5's GaaS is particularly exciting either. It's a few cars (mostly returning cut content), a few short races, and some other challenges for the week. Repeat forever, as if it wasn't getting old back in FH4. And don't you dare miss out, that new (old) exclusive car might not come back for months, if ever. I don't think we'll see all of those Extreme E cars return, for example. There's just too many of them.
But I need to give up hope of Horizon ever releasing with a good race list ever again. It's just blueprints now. Make the fun yourself and watch as the race you finished is forever forgotten, a race against AI with names that will also be forgotten. It all feels like it's for nothing. A pure sandbox, where once you're done playing, the wind comes and blows the sand back into nothing, just a pile of sand again. This is especially true once you've finished the small amount of curated content and you enter the Hall of Fame in your first couple hours of playing.
Very much agree the playlist stuff is beyond old.
I think the freedom of the "Blueprints" system was a good thing as it certainly helped my enjoyment of the series. I remember in FH2 when I saved up for an F40 I was excited to go race it for my next championship or whatever they called them then, and my first race was... driving through the vineyards cross country. Not at all what I was looking for. The ability to customize the races so I can use my road cars just for road races and off road trucks just for off road races really helped me tolerate the tedious single player "career" or whatever you want to call it. It also helped dealing with the terrible AI, as I could make lap races a bit longer so I could catch the lead AI more organically, rather than the "no-brake your way into the lead at turn 2 or restart" kind of thing these games can have with shorter races.
I think they have leaned a bit too hard into it though. Of course it's easier for them to just dump the toybox out on the floor and go "I dunno do whatever, have fun I guess" and walk off so I guess that's why they have done it that way, but it sorta feels like they think by allowing us the opportunity to be creative they are off the hook for being creative themselves... Which means we don't really get anything more than a few cars and a new checklist of arbitrary tasks each month, along with some championships that feel like they were picked with RNG. I guess we do get the occasional "story" here and there and those surely take longer to make since it can't be easy to come up with such terribly cringey dialogue for the unskippable cutscenes.
One of the things I felt got really stale in FH4 was that there were no new routes added, so doing the weekly championships/Trial every week ended up feeling really samey after basically a month as it didn't take long before you were running the same routes over and over again. I really hoped with FH5 they would actually put out some new routes here and there and I guess they kinda do with the EventLabs thing, but most of them are whacky and don't feel anywhere near as polished as the main game content does, and they are all one-time things where you often drive by yourself. It would be cool to see them add some new routes, or even just add reverse versions of routes so that every week wasn't just "oh yeah this one again" in a different division and PI range drawn out of a hat.
There are some ideas they could steal from other games or forums like this around the internet. For example, GTA did a thing a month ago or whatever, where you chose a side between two in-game cola companies and the winning one gave themed prizes for the community. They could do something like that with manufacturers or rival models. I guess they have done some things like WRX vs Evo in the past so they have kinda tried, but they were just weekly championships at tracks we had run a thousand times before... And besides, as someone who has been playing racing games for 20 something years that particularly rivalry stopped feeling unique or fresh in like... Gran Turismo 3.
I'd also like to see some more carefully selected car lists for events that provide some interesting manufacturer rivalry things that are more restrictive or stock car showdowns where you have to choose a car based on its strengths and weaknesses instead of just AWD and V8 swap everything or whatever. I think it would be cool to see carefully selected stock cars and routes that balance out, where you have say 2 dirt races and 2 road races, and you have to choose between a truck or a car. Obviously the truck will be better off road and the car better on road, so you can't win everything and have to maximize your position in your chosen vehicle's weakest environment. Or choose 3 stock cars, one leaned towards speed, one towards handling, and one balanced, and have the championship take place across 3 races with one speed route, one handling route and one balanced so you can't win everything... But I suppose those would get away from their "you have to win everything" push, and it would be tricky with how cheaty their AI is as well and how it sometimes ignores physics and so on.
I dunno at this point I'm just rambling into another wall of text, sorry everyone.
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This one was a refreshing change from the other Horizon Stories in FH5, and hope PG continues with it.
