Forza Horizon 5: General Discussion

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That said, most devs from indies to AAAs seem to be hilariously risk-averse: oh, Soulsborne games are huge, let's just imitate that. Everyone's doing battle royale? Work that into our multiplayer. The Kids demand Fortnite levels of personalization, we better give it to 'em. And one of the biggest risks, as NFS Unbound proved, is trying to create a sense of style, something beyond just super-photorealistic immersion that looks like a slightly cleaner version of reality. I'm too old to be in Unbound's supposed target demo of 12-year-olds and 20-something influencers who act like 12-year-olds, so I can see some of the transparent Skateboard Buscemi goofiness in its attempts to be trendy and up-to-date with youth culture. But at least they tried, and I'd at least like to see more devs actually try to lean more into a credible effort at capturing the weirdness and excitement and distinctive eclecticism of car culture as effectively as, say, the Tony Hawk games embodied skate culture or NBA Street did basketball.
THIS. RIGHT HERE. IS THE PROBLEM.

I can (mostly) buy that AAA is risk averse cuz of ridiculous development costs and late-stage capitalism - it doesn't excuse it, but I can accept it. What I cannot accept and never will is indie devs being risk averse and just hooking on supercar/JDM dorifto trends/online simracing. Like... you've got nothing to lose by doing things differently. It's like most if not all car game developers are not just creatively bankrupt but also have simply just given up trying to do things differently.

Heck, even in AAA world, GTA has gotten alot worse in this regard for seemingly no reason? Like they've had cars in the past that are obviously meant to emulate real cars (T20) but they did atleast try to make them look like their own thing. Now, especially with cars literally called Postlude?
Washington Wizards Bruhh GIF by NBC Sports Washington
 
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Way too harsh on modern games while not acknowledging the most important factors, ie nostalgia and context. The author of the video paints FH4 & 5 as unplayable buggy shovelware, while the "classic" games are basically faultless. Not sure how this can be construed as accurate or reasonable in any way. The classic games had all the faults he assigns to modern games (those had great online experiences and no bugs? ...really?), but somehow they don't count for those games. Modern games are basically better in every way, but what some people seem to feel is lacking isn't something that can be found within the game itself.

It becomes a bit of a moot discussion when people fail to realize that they were kids when playing those games. Your perspective and expectations will obviously change 15 years later. Of course games nowadays have issues, but people need to stop chasing this nebulous idea of "atmosphere/spirit/soul/personality" in games, which was mostly just experiencing games (and the world at large) as a child/teen.

I think Whitelight's video does a better job at criticising the game, without completely falling into the trap of nostalgia.

The context of racing games in general is important too. A lot of the kids that grew up on these GT, Forza, NFS games have now moved on to sim racing, which is doing better than ever now. But on the other hand, arcade racing seems to be doomed to forever live in the shadow of nostalgia tinged expectations. NFS Heat by all accounts ticks all the boxes for what a good NFS game should be, doesn't seem to be doing nearly as well as older games. The player base just doesn't seem to be there anymore.

That said, Horizon does need a slight shake up in the next iteration. There's nothing wrong with iterating a formula that works but I think it's fair to say that after 5 games it has run its course. Hopefully with the changes at Playground it'll mean the next game will evolve the formula somewhat.
Beautifully said!

Another thing I've seen more and more is the argument that there's not enough content, and the reference to old games in the same process. Any game will get stale after countless hours of play. When someone complains about the new generation of games being short-lived in terms of support and play time, when they have put 250+ hours into it and are getting cars 2 years after launch, this argument makes no sense.

Looking back at FH1, it took 15 hours to win every single event. After that it's just grinding for credits and searching the boards. The 100% completion time is 30 hours. https://howlongtobeat.com/game/3661

I think when people look back, they only remember the things older games had that never games have, rather than everything that has been added in between. FH2 had one of the most boring campaigns ever: win 3 events and move on to the next outpost. Do that 28 times and you have seen it all. I remember great championships where you drove a supercar on cross-country events. The game included cars that could not be used in a single race event...

I don't think the games have changed for the worse, but the communities around them have. YouTubers (who also put hundreds of hours into a game) and places like Reddit (and sometimes even here) are like an echo chamber. And negative things get amplified.
 
I can (mostly) buy that AAA is risk averse cuz of ridiculous development costs and late-stage capitalism - it doesn't excuse it, but I can accept it. What I cannot accept and never will is indie devs being risk averse and just hooking on supercar/JDM dorifto trends/online simracing. Like... you've got nothing to lose by doing things differently. It's like most if not all car game developers are not just creatively bankrupt but also have simply just given up trying to do things differently.
I think I hit that level of disappointed realization when I found out about Rennsport. I'm always hoping that someday some dev will give us a sim that finally does everything Forza excels at (career progression, car eclecticism, customization, graphical achievements, good singleplayer structure, general vibe) while also doing everything the hardcore sims excel at (physics, FFB, realistic race strategy). Instead, we're getting what appears to be yet another GT3-specialist sim in a market that already has Assetto Corsa Competizione, with an eSports focus in a market that already has iRacing and GT Sport, and some super-vague nods towards a user-content marketplace and economy that the devs swear up and down isn't some NFT fiasco. I'm wondering if there's anything that even sets it apart from its competitors besides "our title is in German instead of Italian," and it's making the future of sim racing look pretty boring.
 
I think I hit that level of disappointed realization when I found out about Rennsport. I'm always hoping that someday some dev will give us a sim that finally does everything Forza excels at (career progression, car eclecticism, customization, graphical achievements, good singleplayer structure, general vibe) while also doing everything the hardcore sims excel at (physics, FFB, realistic race strategy). Instead, we're getting what appears to be yet another GT3-specialist sim in a market that already has Assetto Corsa Competizione, with an eSports focus in a market that already has iRacing and GT Sport, and some super-vague nods towards a user-content marketplace and economy that the devs swear up and down isn't some NFT fiasco. I'm wondering if there's anything that even sets it apart from its competitors besides "our title is in German instead of Italian," and it's making the future of sim racing look pretty boring.
Well... TIL Rennsport exists.
And I learned I could've easily just gone about my day not knowing about this game's existence to begin with, it's that uninteresting :lol:
On as serious note, that really does just highlight my problem with racing game devs as you said. I can accept rivalry and doing things a bit different, but Rennsport is literally just more of the same.

Which reminds me...
I saw this video recently:

Yes, culture, society and racing games/cars as a relatively niche hobby/genre are probably the main causes behind what the video highlights, but something tells me this lack of creativity in racing games isn't helping either.
 
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...lack of creativity in racing games isn't helping...
Gonna go ahead and emphasize this bit because its the distillation of every issue I have with FH and basically every other racing game on the market. Do racing games need to be as 1-dimensional as they all are? I argue no. I think developers took the wrong lesson from the massive success of the early GT games or at least they tried to quantify it the wrong way. The early GT games were fantastic not only because they had a lot of content and good (for the time) driving but because they made you feel immersed in the experience. To come out of nowhere with that much atmosphere in a circuit racer was very impressive. This is not to be confused with an explicit storyline/narrative (though I'm not against it) but racing games feel a lot more like software you use (think MS Excel) rather than worlds you get immersed in, and it's particularly glaring in a series like FH.

GT1 did this with a variety of things:
-The user interface "map" which, though simplistic, kind of put you in the world of the game. It wasn't just a menu for selecting options even though in practice that's what it was. It was spatial.
-The score was highly developed and curated to provide ambience all throughout the game (I contrast this to the outright lazy/careless implementation of Music in FH, which is ironic considering its set around a music festival)
-Progression
-Non-fungible feeling of cars. Want a new car in whatever color? You can do that. Want a used car? Well these are the ones available. Thats a subtle but distinct difference that makes the cars in GT1 feel a little bit more permanent and unique/non-fungible. Ultimately, it makes them feel special in a way that the simple list of cars in most titles doesn't. The Horizon barn finds actually gets this right. But buying a Porsche 930 from the car dealer in new condition with 0 miles on it in whatever color I want doesn't feel particularly special to me.

You could still make a compelling/immersive racing game with little of the above though. The TXR series were open world in the sense that all of the racing took place in a persistent environment...and it worked! Those games are awesome despite having poor user interfaces, not great music, and poor handling. The world and the racing are inseparable and as a result the open world doesn't just feel properly utilized, it feels completely necessary for the gameplay to even work. I know there are some modes in FH that make use of the persistent world (barn finds, impromptu races, online adventure[maybe, I don't play online]) but the core gameplay takes you out of that persistent world and puts you into a cutscene-bookended driving event that doesn't really use the open world at all. And then what else is there to do involving the world? Smash some boards? Hit some jumps? Find some beauty spots?

Again, I'm giving a genuine effort to explain why I think the FH series (and most racing games) I think are not as good as they could be.
 
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This kind of reminds me of when my 15-year old nephew came to visit and didn't see the point of Horizon. "It's like GTA without the killing", he said. I thought to myself that the driving feel was the point of the game and the open world was kind of secondary. If I wanted to shoot other people's characters down and make them feel bad I'd be playing a shooter instead.

Conversely Bizarre Creations' Blur didn't really appeal to me as it seemed a bit like Mario Kart with grown up looking cars. I'm sure it's fun with a bunch of friends but I thought you could play MK for that kind of gameplay.

Horizon Stories like Isha's Taxis and the cockney delivery boy firm struck me as kind of an attempt to make the world seem more real and give you a focus on slightly different tasks but for me the arcade racing is the main focus and the part of the playlist I look forward to the most while I find the Fortnitey team games and battle royale mode are more of a chore to complete each week.

To an extent Horizon 5 has brought back the spreadsheet completion of FM4 with its extensive list of accolades but maybe the game needs more of an overall long term goal to keep it compelling. I don't know as I can't really speak for the majority of gamers. I think it's hard to wall off content Horizon 1-style over a whole year's worth of play without some people getting frustrated with not being able to fully experience the game they paid for.

Perhaps the racing genre could do with being more diverse with different franchises catering for diffent sub-markets but I'm not sure how many of those sub-markets still exist. Would people's ideal Horizon game contain a variety of wildly different modes in the style of say Burnout's crash mode or should the emphasis remain on straight racing? How should the franchise evolve? I don't know. I'm just glad it feels better to drive.
 
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I haven't had time to watch it yet outside of the Modern Forza section but how many of the games that he says were great were still fun to play for hours a year after release? I guess if I were playing on PC his remarks about poor optimisation and server glitches would hit harder for me but I don't think I had as much of a problem with the game as he seems to have. As it was I didn't even recognise the game he was describing most of the time.

From what I understand (and remember), it's only the Forza games, and that's extrapolating from his hour count on PC for 4 and 5. As a PC player, I feel the problems he's described with connectivity - there isn't a damn thursday without at least 2 D/Cs. But even that hasn't stopped me from continuing to play.

I haven't watched that video (yet), but I'll say this: there's a difference between "racing games aren't as good as they used to be" and "racing games aren't as good as they could be."

I'm amused at people saying -today- how amazing Gran Turismo 4 is or how excellent Forza Horizon 1 is because they have the benefit of hindsight. When GT4 came out, I still distinctly remember the criticisms aimed at that game. "It's good, but still no Ferrari or Lamborghini? No damage system? No day/night cycle in endurance? Still 6-car races? No weather?/Why is rain only available on one track?" These criticisms had varying levels of justification, but they were there. They were definitely along the lines of "Not as good as it could be." When the games that followed were, overall, received more poorly, it doesn't mean GT4 is suddenly the GOAT and we don't make games as well as we used to. It means that game was the best of what we've got, not that nothing has improved on it since. Many of the criticisms I mentioned were addressed in later games - the overall package just suffered. Other things gave. Only nostalgia transforms the top of a curve into the top of a mountain. And that's in spite of the fact I still adore GT4 to bits and genuinely think it is excellent in its own right.

I suspect the same thing is going on with Forza. Depending on who you ask, the best one is either 1 or 3, and it either has to do with a better sense of direction, or the relatable story and characters that, so far, only 1 seems to have provided. Like the video said, that doesn't make it wrong to enjoy yourself or have fun with the newer stuff, but claiming "not as good as it used to be" sometimes comes from people who forget that FH1 wasn't without its share of criticisms, many of which HAVE been addressed in sequels. Could FH5 be better? Yeah, of course. Does it have to include the FH1 elements everyone says they miss to be better? No, not really. There are other ways to do a sense of progression that feels meaningful than to just do the FH1 story and system but better.

Given the sheer loads of cars in Forza and the atmosphere of celebrating car culture, there's plenty of ways to build an interesting progression system that doesn't limit you or hamper freedom.
I'll be honest, they were on to something with the Hot Wheels DLC - progressing through the class system and get increasingly faster cars and races is along the lines of what the series needs. As Forza doesn't have a GT-style license system, making players progress using the classes is simple but effective. As it stands, this is the thing that made me complete everything in Hot Wheels - the progression system was more compelling than the base game. I just wish it applied game-wide. Maybe it'd help curb the donkey driving I see in Horizon Open, for starters. :D

Also, D- and C-class need more love. Slow car fast is fun.

(Edited to fix some mistakes, I typed this a bit too fast)
 
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I can (mostly) buy that AAA is risk averse cuz of ridiculous development costs and late-stage capitalism - it doesn't excuse it, but I can accept it. What I cannot accept and never will is indie devs being risk averse and just hooking on supercar/JDM dorifto trends/online simracing. Like... you've got nothing to lose by doing things differently. It's like most if not all car game developers are not just creatively bankrupt but also have simply just given up trying to do things differently.

I get you, I really do. I agree with this to a heartfelt degree and I sincerely wish publishers took more of a risk and tried more things, more radically.

But I will tell you why they are risk-averse. What they have to lose is a little bit of money, and as someone smarter than me once said, they don't just want SOME money, they want ALL of the money. So they will only do things that bring them the most money. Yes, it's the capitalism argument, but is it wrong?
 
From what I understand (and remember), it's only the Forza games, and that's extrapolating from his hour count on PC for 4 and 5. As a PC player, I feel the problems he's described with connectivity - there isn't a damn thursday without at least 2 D/Cs. But even that hasn't stopped me from continuing to play.
I hope I'm not talking at cross purposes here but that's why I don't understand why classic games like Ridge Racer and Burnout: Takedown are supposed to have something this game needs. It's difficult to make their progression model work over the time periods this game has remained playable for me. Also, I'm kinda glad my gaming PC broke and I was forced onto XSX now if that's the kind of thing PC gamers have to put up with. Lord only knows what XCloud is like.

Perhaps the best thing they could do is beef up the user content and highlight EventLab content so that more people play it but given the technical issues you're talking about I doubt it's a stable enough platform for the innovation he wants. If they made it more like FH3 I would have stopped playing months ago.
I get you, I really do. I agree with this to a heartfelt degree and I sincerely wish publishers took more of a risk and tried more things, more radically.

But I will tell you why they are risk-averse. What they have to lose is a little bit of money, and as someone smarter than me once said, they don't just want SOME money, they want ALL of the money. So they will only do things that bring them the most money. Yes, it's the capitalism argument, but is it wrong?
I'm reminded of Nintendo's blue oceans and red oceans argument around the time they decided to walk away from trying to compete with Sony and MS's war over a dwindling market and decided to try and target non-traditional gamers with Wii and Switch. I don't know whether their engagement is as intense as hardcore fans but they still managed to carve out a niche for themselves. Not sure how this would apply to a more specialist hobbyist genre like racing but they seem to have done okay with the risk they took.
 
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Perhaps the best thing they could do is beef up the user content and highlight EventLab content so that more people play it but given the technical issues you're talking about I doubt it's a stable enough platform for the innovation he wants. If they made it more like FH3 I would have stopped playing months ago.

So here's the weird thing about connectivity problems in Forza Horizon 5. When it's about loading leaderboards, Rivals ghosts, or pulling user-created content? No problem at all.

When it involves actually connecting with other players? I play roulette every day. Sometimes I have no problems for 7 hours in a row and I just randomly disconnect while I'm busy tuning. Other times I get thrown out of Horizon Open or the Trial at the worst possible time. Granted... Lately it's been a little more stable, but I've just gotten used to seeing "Disconnected" pop in the top-center of my screen. I have no explanation for this. I don't know if my local servers are crap or if I'm just astoundingly unlucky.

Online content with Forza Horizon seems to rely on this two-speed thing where I can be in this weird, "kind of online, but actually playing with others is iffy" state. It was like that in 4 as well.
 
Main problem of late Horizon is bad design. Systems doesn't work as intended, map designed poorly for what it should do, economy is non existent. And developers don't want to do anything about it. Series need good game designer who could fine-tune all its systems.
 
I saw this video recently:

This video makes me want to cry so badly. It really does. And yes, I watched the entire video. I feel that guy and what he's saying because it also happened to me too. You see, I LOVE racing games and fighting games to death and some platformers too. When I used to have "friends" shall we say and I invite them over to my home (keep in mind I'm from Spain), what that guy showed clips of casual gamers see racing games, is exactly the same here such as "OMG why do you love this crap? You're like a loser and an idiot for liking racing games and cars. Why don't you play soccer like FIFA or FPS like Call of Duty, Halo, etc.... Those are way fun!"

BECAUSE I DON'T CARE ABOUT THAT AND IT'S A WASTE OF MY TIME. I hate FPS, soccer games, etc to death, but do I go around the net saying I hate them and blah blah blah? No. You can hate racing games and cars as much as you want, but don't go around bringing people down JUST BECAUSE SOMEONE likes racing games and cars. Don't be rude.

Sorry about this nonsensical rant, but I just HATE IT when people diss you just because you like cars. What is the problem that there are people out there that see cars as something else instead of just a thing that takes you to point A to point B? Leave me and other people alone that love cars. Take a hike.
 
Online content with Forza Horizon seems to rely on this two-speed thing where I can be in this weird, "kind of online, but actually playing with others is iffy" state. It was like that in 4 as well.

On FH4 PC at least, the connections to other players are funnelled through Teredo, which is MS' service to wrap IPv6 into IPv4. This means there's a reliance on MS' Teredo servers, and if there's any issue connecting to them you suddenly drop out of sessions. I know this because it took me a month after buying FH4 to be able to join an online session for more than a minute, while any content from the actual Forza servers like liveries worked fine. Despite having a native IPv6 connection, the game still resolutely uses Teredo instead, introducing a new point of failure that it doesn't actually need. In the end, I had to mess with Windows configuration to get it to connect to a non-MS Teredo server as I couldn't connect reliably to any of theirs.

In short, yeah, there are two different types of connection going on!

Also, some of the content that you'd expect to be online actually isn't - I suspect that the seasonal playlists are actually part of the game files hence why it's impossible for PG to hotfix broken challenges without a whole new title update. Liveries, tunes, leaderboards, Eventlab, and the Auction House are probably the only areas that rely on an internet connection.
 
On FH4 PC at least, the connections to other players are funnelled through Teredo, which is MS' service to wrap IPv6 into IPv4. This means there's a reliance on MS' Teredo servers, and if there's any issue connecting to them you suddenly drop out of sessions. I know this because it took me a month after buying FH4 to be able to join an online session for more than a minute, while any content from the actual Forza servers like liveries worked fine. Despite having a native IPv6 connection, the game still resolutely uses Teredo instead, introducing a new point of failure that it doesn't actually need. In the end, I had to mess with Windows configuration to get it to connect to a non-MS Teredo server as I couldn't connect reliably to any of theirs.

In short, yeah, there are two different types of connection going on!

Also, some of the content that you'd expect to be online actually isn't - I suspect that the seasonal playlists are actually part of the game files hence why it's impossible for PG to hotfix broken challenges without a whole new title update. Liveries, tunes, leaderboards, Eventlab, and the Auction House are probably the only areas that rely on an internet connection.
Yeah FH4 Teredo thing is quite finicky, they fix that on FH5. No more disconnecting during race loading
 
So here's the weird thing about connectivity problems in Forza Horizon 5. When it's about loading leaderboards, Rivals ghosts, or pulling user-created content? No problem at all.

When it involves actually connecting with other players? I play roulette every day. Sometimes I have no problems for 7 hours in a row and I just randomly disconnect while I'm busy tuning. Other times I get thrown out of Horizon Open or the Trial at the worst possible time. Granted... Lately it's been a little more stable, but I've just gotten used to seeing "Disconnected" pop in the top-center of my screen. I have no explanation for this. I don't know if my local servers are crap or if I'm just astoundingly unlucky.

Online content with Forza Horizon seems to rely on this two-speed thing where I can be in this weird, "kind of online, but actually playing with others is iffy" state. It was like that in 4 as well.

This 100%. For the last 3 to 4 weeks I'm getting kicked out of the game back to the Xbox dashboard something rotten. For me it seems to be after the first event I play after logging on. It can be a random race, playlist event etc, it doesn't seem to matter. I'll finish the event and within a minute usually the game will crash. I've reported it.

As for making the game last longer I'm trying to do the following.

1, Get to 999,999,999 credits. I'm currently just past 500 million.

2, Climb the Superstar Leaderboard as far as possible. I'm in the top 600 right now. I won't make number 1 I know that, but top 100 is my goal.
 
"OMG why do you love this crap? You're like a loser and an idiot for liking racing games and cars. Why don't you play soccer like FIFA or FPS like Call of Duty, Halo, etc.... Those are way fun!"
You know what's funny about this sentence? Assuming they equate car fan/"loser" with being a nerd, these same people tend to be quite nerdy themselves regarding FIFA and CoD, and similarly tend to be the same people who criticize lack of innovation in FIFA and CoD yet buy every single one. Racing games are no different except it's not as widely popular - perhaps that's the reason why people pick on racing games in the first place.

In any case, such people are not worth being around with. Your interests, the things YOU find fun, should matter before any of your friends, provided ofc it doesn't harm anyone, which racing games have no chance of ever doing :lol:
 
You know what's funny about this sentence? Assuming they equate car fan/"loser" with being a nerd, these same people tend to be quite nerdy themselves regarding FIFA and CoD, and similarly tend to be the same people who criticize lack of innovation in FIFA and CoD yet buy every single one.
That's where I fail to understand, if they criticize FIFA, CoD, etc.... For lack of innovation and stuff, why in the end buy the latest version? That's very silly if you ask me.

perhaps that's the reason why people pick on racing games in the first place.
But why? I still don't understand why pick on them? I mean, is it a crime that SOMEONE loves racing games and cars? Calling them a loser/freak/weirdo etc.... Just because someone loves cars. Absolutely laughable.
In any case, such people are not worth being around with. Your interests, the things YOU find fun, should matter before any of your friends, provided ofc it doesn't harm anyone, which racing games have no chance of ever doing :lol:
I totally agree with you! But it's still annoying when you have friends that mock you for something you like. It's always the "you have to like what I like" crap.
 
That's where I fail to understand, if they criticize FIFA, CoD, etc.... For lack of innovation and stuff, why in the end buy the latest version? That's very silly if you ask me.
That's the thing though - these people don't make sense, any more than they think people like you and me do. One could make the joke that the reason why racing games and sports games have been a single award category for a while is precisely cuz in many people's minds, either kind of game doesn't make sense to be obsessed over.
But why? I still don't understand why pick on them? I mean, is it a crime that SOMEONE loves racing games and cars? Calling them a loser/freak/weirdo etc.... Just because someone loves cars. Absolutely laughable.
Because if it isn't as widely popular then it's "different", and some people have huge problems with "different", simple as that. In fact, you answered the question yourself with:
It's always the "you have to like what I like" crap.
Then why they have such problems... that's a different story all together. Also, as I said earlier, there's probably some social and cultural influence as well (beyond personality) in terms of how cars are viewed, so there's that too.
 
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The best way to beat nostalgia is to actually go and re-experience the old thing. Which is actually possible for gamers, unlike many old experiences.

Personally I've been playing FH3, FH4 and FH5 in parallel over the last year, and I can tell you for sure that the clunky driving physics and lack of surface texture differentiation on dirt in FH3 ruin the experience for me compared to especially FH5. Sure, it probably does have a more interesting map, but it doesn't matter when the driving is clearly worse.

I wouldn't even think about trying FH1 today. Back when I played it on Xbox 360 I already struggled with the physics and hated the barriers everywhere ruining the open world experience. Maybe I'm not American enough to enjoy the story, but I just didn't click with it at all...
 
The best way to beat nostalgia is to actually go and re-experience the old thing. Which is actually possible for gamers, unlike many old experiences.
*Long-term playing. When you are only putting 5 hours into it it will feel fresh, but after 25-50 hours the "shinyness" wears off and flaws will be more apparent...
 
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Here's another thing: this is the fifth iteration of a game we're talking about here. When was the last time the fifth version of something ever felt as thrilling and full of promise and potential as the first? And what can you even do to keep that novelty going with a franchise -- any franchise -- where the creators are constantly trying to negotiate future plans while trying to balance the two loudest, most incompatible negative feedback loops of they changed it, now it's bad and they didn't change anything, now I'm bored?
 
The best way to beat nostalgia is to actually go and re-experience the old thing. Which is actually possible for gamers, unlike many old experiences.

Personally I've been playing FH3, FH4 and FH5 in parallel over the last year, and I can tell you for sure that the clunky driving physics and lack of surface texture differentiation on dirt in FH3 ruin the experience for me compared to especially FH5. Sure, it probably does have a more interesting map, but it doesn't matter when the driving is clearly worse.

I wouldn't even think about trying FH1 today. Back when I played it on Xbox 360 I already struggled with the physics and hated the barriers everywhere ruining the open world experience. Maybe I'm not American enough to enjoy the story, but I just didn't click with it at all...
I do think racing games often get looked at with rose tinted glasses and don't hold up too well, particularly ones that make some effort to be somewhat realistic. Back when we just had Gran Turismo 2 or whatever I think a lot of used some imagination/creativity in our brains to pretend it was more realistic so I feel like we often forget how poorly some of the driving mechanics age. Instead we focus on how cool it was to learn about cars we had never seen before because they weren't available in our country or whatever, or learning cool racetracks from around the world we had never seen before, and so on.

Of course, with the internet and everything being on YouTube to experience and stuff, some of that "magic" is inevitably lost a bit as we grow older and technology advances further. The wonder of discovery is harder to find.

As for FH1, I tried it not too long ago and yeah it didn't feel great, but not miles worse than FM6/FH3 and you could certainly feel the DNA. The main thing I missed about the game was the roads, which I felt were the most engaging in the series so far, even if we couldn't go off road and stuff.

The road up Red Rock Canyon is almost as good as I remembered it, and my favorite in the whole series by a clear margin.
Here's another thing: this is the fifth iteration of a game we're talking about here. When was the last time the fifth version of something ever felt as thrilling and full of promise and potential as the first? And what can you even do to keep that novelty going with a franchise -- any franchise -- where the creators are constantly trying to negotiate future plans while trying to balance the two loudest, most incompatible negative feedback loops of they changed it, now it's bad and they didn't change anything, now I'm bored?
It is certainly a challenge, and one that is kinda unique to racing games. Racing isn't really something that can be totally revolutionized before it becomes too much of a departure, so the key is in the subtle details and how things are leveraged, content and so on... which to be fair is kinda tough to do, but I know I've seen good ideas here and elsewhere for the series that would spice things up without requiring a whole revolution.

I see a lot about the racing genre becoming stale or dying or whatever, but it depends a bit on what you want. As you said, we are so far into things that it's tough for much to feel exciting or "new" or whatever so that's tough to find in any genre, but of course there are areas that are going well. For example, if you want competitive races then it is at a really good point right now, because of high speed internet and multiplayer being easier to use... unless you want competitive single player races, then you really feel the lack of AI development as it feels like we are still racing AI from the early 2000s. Then you look at progression and it's mixed up a lot with some stuff stuck behind grinds and others given out to the point they have no value, Career/story progression in racing games is also weird, with many losing any sense of progression with an over-reliance on freedom of choice, and some forcing you into a "anything other than a win is a loss" mindset while others completely throw results out and just give you money and prizes regardless of how bad you do. Even within Forza Horizon you see a bit of both sides to that.

I feel like we might be coming to a bit of an end for games that try to straddle the middle line as people become more divided on issues, which is something we see in the racing genre a bit. In the Forza part of things, we see it constantly with both series, where the broad playerbase they have brought together are all pulling in opposite directions.

"More multiplayer modes!"
"No, multiplayer is stupid! We need a story for career mode!"
"A story would be predictable and cheesy, we just need more character customization!"
"No the game needs more drifting!"
"No one cares about the story, we just want the new Koenigsegg CC850!"
"No, hypercars are boring we need the new Civic Type-R!"
"You are both wrong, we need a minivan! Quirky cars are the best!"

Unfortunately the racing genre is likely to become even more niche as time goes on, so it's unlikely we have new franchises popping up to focus on individual sub-cultures at the quality level of titles like Forza and GT.
 
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On FH4 PC at least, the connections to other players are funnelled through Teredo, which is MS' service to wrap IPv6 into IPv4. This means there's a reliance on MS' Teredo servers, and if there's any issue connecting to them you suddenly drop out of sessions. I know this because it took me a month after buying FH4 to be able to join an online session for more than a minute, while any content from the actual Forza servers like liveries worked fine. Despite having a native IPv6 connection, the game still resolutely uses Teredo instead, introducing a new point of failure that it doesn't actually need. In the end, I had to mess with Windows configuration to get it to connect to a non-MS Teredo server as I couldn't connect reliably to any of theirs.

In short, yeah, there are two different types of connection going on!

Also, some of the content that you'd expect to be online actually isn't - I suspect that the seasonal playlists are actually part of the game files hence why it's impossible for PG to hotfix broken challenges without a whole new title update. Liveries, tunes, leaderboards, Eventlab, and the Auction House are probably the only areas that rely on an internet connection.

Tetsuooooo! Teredooooo!

No matter what, it seems it always comes back to Teredo. Had all kinds of Teredo connectivity issues back in FH4 as well. Thank you for explaining that, though. What a confusing choice on their part.
 
Way too harsh on modern games while not acknowledging the most important factors, ie nostalgia and context. The author of the video paints FH4 & 5 as unplayable buggy shovelware, while the "classic" games are basically faultless.
When I saw the video on my recommended feed, I very much assumed that the vibe of the video was going to go down that route. Guess I'm glad I didn't bother watching it.

I really get the ever increasing sense that what people ultimately want in a racing game (specifically, simcade/arcade) is completely incompatible with what the industry is increasingly trending towards (sims being the only real route for long term popularity, arcade racers being increasingly being designed for all instead of a somewhat specific group)

It sure seems like more people expect indie devs to pick up the slack from what they feel is a failure and abdication from AAA developers and to basically become the A and AA market, when by my estimation of things, indie developers can barely keep up. Most indie fair in the racing genre seems to boil down to Outrun inspired pixel art stuff that was overplayed five years ago and is a joke now, and A/AA projects from big names striking out and doing their own thing, and very clearly overestimating how much it takes to make a good racing game with anything larger then a budget of a Subway $5 Footlong. People want realistic cars, they want fun but somewhat realistic physics, they want large, free-roamable environments, they want the works, and don't seem to realize that sort of thing increases costs dramatically, and most indie developers can't really give that. So people latch hope onto the next big indie racing game, then when it bombs they move onto the next one. Endlessly repeat.

It doesn't help that attitudes like the video in the quoted post perpetuate the (frankly, fatalistic and stupid) idea that all AAA games are the devil's spawn and are all garbage. Even the examples given in the video are only true in one case. Forza Horizon's problem is that the change people want is only really able to be given in the next Horizon game when PG get their hands on Forzatech 3. Even I could tell FH5 was a stopgap measure. And NFS as a series has been grappling, for a decade plus, from two groups of fans that can't at all decide what direction to take the franchise, so EA just ping pongs off cops and exotics, and street racing for all eternity. And when an actually unique and interesting game comes along (Prostreet, The Run) both sides quickly whine about how it isn't exactly what they wanted, and EA never goes back. They also forget that, for what it's worth, Unbound finally feels like a positive, continued step in the right direction and not simply just a fluke coming off Heat.

Like...I get it. It's kosher to bash AAA games and think that everything coming out is complete dog water. But it's honestly way too dishonest to do it in the racing space when people want to ignore the factors as to why things are supposedly so bad, and posit that the old games are better in every single way when that's just viewing everything in a rose tinted haze.
 
Main problem of late Horizon is bad design. Systems doesn't work as intended, map designed poorly for what it should do, economy is non existent. And developers don't want to do anything about it. Series need good game designer who could fine-tune all its systems.

Disagree in ALL points. Not true at all in my universe :P

And if you think you can make better open world racing then pls go and do so i'm waiting for a demo :D


Tbh i often feel like reading peoples comments from games from alternative universes. Its sooo off and weird how some people see things it's just WHAT is going on 😂
 
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Disagree in ALL points. Not true at all in my universe :P

And if you think you can make better open world racing then pls go and do so i'm waiting for a demo :D


Tbh i often feel like reading peoples comments from games from alternative universes. Its sooo off and weird how some people see things it's just WHAT is going on 😂
Lots of things being broken isn't opinion, you can't really disagree on that. Unless you just want to ignore objective reality? Things have improved sure, but did you ever try using the multiplayer open world when the game was new? It didn't work. Even now it's mostly empty outside of small groupings in popular areas (the mountain, the festival, etc) and the occasional car you might pass on the road. I haven't played in a few months but I doubt Horizon Arcade has improved either, you still end up doing it alone most of the time. Accolades, the core progression system, still has broken accolades to this day. The Hot Wheels expansion released with a guaranteed crash on PC: if your environment texture quality was High or better, a certain area of the map would crash the game every time. This was part of the introduction to the expansion. Personally I lost all excitement for the expansion around the third or fourth time I had to watch the intro cutscene trying to get it to even work. Unless something changed recently, the PC version still has heavy memory leak issues that deteriorate performance until eventually leading to corrupted textures, where the only fix is to relaunch the game. Many had/are having issues with the menus being slow since the Series 14 update.

For more, see: https://support.forzamotorsport.net/hc/en-us/articles/4409616884883-FH5-Known-Issues

Or if you want to feel insulted, see: https://support.forzamotorsport.net/hc/en-us/articles/4418580167315-FH5-Won-t-Fix-or-By-Design

Note that there are some "by design" things listed in the latter, which i think most can understand. However, many are genuine issues that Playground have simply declared they will not fix. For example, "Graphics - Vegetation shows low detail on higher spec devices.(Date Updated:02.18.22)" or "Wheelspins - Player may not get both cars when two are shown in wheelspins. (Date Updated: 05.05.22)". Things that certainly should be fixed, but simply will not be, because they have decided against it.

Give me a Microsoft budget, a creative director position, and a good dev team. Then maybe I can do better. Or not. It doesn't matter. "You do it better" is the weakest argument, especially when targeted at one person who is criticizing a large many-person project.
 
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