Forza Horizon 6 - General Discussion

[ScottPuss20]

If you don't like the Festival Playlist, why wouldn't you just buy the cars instead? I know I would, if I had the credits for it .
I'd much rather spend the time actually having fun in freeroam, taking pictures of my cars or trying out some custom routes. The Playlist is just so incredibly repetitive, and has changed very little over the years.

Because the cars are overpriced and the auction house can be an absolute disaster sometimes. Look man, spending several million on a car that's only worth a few thousand is totally stupid and by no means an efficient use of money. Don't we like free stuff? I think the promise of a free car is very tantalising, and the fact that it has washed off on people is sad.

 

[Populuxe]

Because the cars are overpriced and the auction house can be an absolute disaster sometimes. Look man, spending several million on a car that's only worth a few thousand is totally stupid and by no means an efficient use of money. Don't we like free stuff? I think the promise of a free car is very tantalising, and the fact that it has washed off on people is sad.

 

[LumpiestFish]

Maybe I'm being optimistic, but I'm thinking, or more so hoping, that this season will be current street car culture related. It'd make the most sense, with the 7 Eleven Car Meet culture being so connected with street cars and modified cars. The response online to the 7 Eleven collab already wasn't great really, and although I didn't agree with it, I'm hoping the content is good enough, and fitting enough, that it gets the online audience on their side.

In the current gaming world, online discourse and word of mouth is more powerful than ever to affect a games success I feel. It used to feel like online communities were a vocal minority of a games audience, but now with how constant and in your face the algorithmic systems of Instagram and TikTok, I'm finding the negative discourse towards FH6 just keeps trends further and further south. Forza comes and goes from my feeds, and its a pretty minuscule part of the content I consume (typing that phrase felt gross, but anyway), but I know for certain that there's a major portion of particular younger gamers who receive a lot of it, much of it currently negative.


It's only anecdotal, but friends in my life who are casual gamers in the truest sense of the term, felt quite unsatisfied with FH6 and didn't find the enjoyment that they did with 4 or 5. These are people who aren't 'car people' in the slightest, but they're the exact type of people that Playground are trying to cater to as well. Their opinions individually were practically all the same, they felt the game was bland and characterless and cringey, to point of it being a genuine slight on the enjoyability of the game, and felt that they looked past what was pretty much the same in FH4 and 5, because the gameplay itself to them was still fresh and exciting.They quite quickly became bored by the grind of the same exact same game dynamics, fairly plain racing, and extremely plain 'missions', and the total lack of evolution from the previous two. Their view of the game is very different to those online who lament the lack of meaningful customisation, or the game not including a very specific model of JDM car or whatever, their view of the game is one that is after a fun and exciting modern driving game. It feels like the game, while trying to sit so perfectly on a fence between the types of players the game has, isn't really catching either.


I can't help but feel like Playground, quite possibly under the directions of the higher ups at Microsoft, became complacent. Was there a mentality of not messing with the formula? A thought that maybe 'It's Forza, but in Japan' would do all the heavy lifting? It's risk averse and makes sense, but games that with release cycles very rarely maintain their success with that mentality, and eventually the audience grow tired.

In the era of Forza Horizon being an out and out 'mainstream' game, Playground have never really had to deal with major criticisms. Forza Motorsport copped it heavily with FM5, bounced back with FM6, then fumbled greatly with FM7, and then even further to the point of extinction with FM. Obviously there some outside forces that the developers have to contend with. Personally since the release I have felt like the game was rushed, quality of life features that went missing, attention to detail that wasn't as strong as had been. GTA 6 put the whole of 2026 in state of chaos in the gaming world, and I feel that final delay until the current November release affected many other games, I do wonder how much it affected the timeline of FH6.

I'm extremely interested in seeing how PG get the momentum back on the their side, although in the short term, my hopes are pretty subdued. While the critical acclaim is still positive, that's a narrative that they have a relative amount of control over, there's only so much they can do in how the general public see what's on their feeds (Astroturfing exists in other online spheres, but I don't know how successfully it would work in this case)

Frankly, my current experiences of the game are log on when the season changes, check the new Car Pass car, not even bother to do same old grind for a returning Seasonal car, and log off again. I do still sometimes find the moments of glory that my memories of this series are built on, but they're just few and far between now.

Apologies for the ramble, lol

 

[Stupornaut]

My guess is that PGG's #1 priority was creating the map -- finding a way to include a scaled-down but still impressive Tokyo and its highway system while also figuring out how to incorporate touge routes, rally/off-road racing, and a diverse series of biomes and regions -- and, most importantly, making sure it was a lot more dynamic and exciting than the Mexico map. They succeeded in that spectacularly as far as I'm concerned. But I get the feeling it was such a time-consuming undertaking that it didn't leave a lot of room for other advancements; we got some improvements to paint/livery tools (particularly the long-awaited window decals), the garage/estate features, the time attacks, and not much else that felt strikingly "new." The story didn't make me cringe too much, and the novelty's going to take a long time to wear off for me just because I'm so into its handling model and the (relative) versatility of custom races, but I can tell there were some ideas -- car meets, spec races, integration of custom/player-created events (or lack thereof) -- that needed more time in the oven. I'm sure it's even worse if you're more of a hardcore competitive online player than I am, and the meta car problem seems like the real downer there, as well as the reduction of socialization options.

That said, it's nowhere near as big a fumble as FM2023 was; that game promised plenty it wasn't able to deliver, and its attempts to shake up the familiar formula (especially with its own botched live service plan and the unlock-based upgrade system) were a lot more damaging than FH6's reluctance to do the same. Assuming PGG has enough leeway to expand FH6 as much as they had for FH5 -- reintroducing cut gameplay modes, adding more races and routes, throwing in a few new gameplay adjustments (like, say, variable traffic density for custom events), and bringing in some additional bodykit parts and upgrade features -- it'll hopefully sustain its core userbase. I also have a hunch that a lot of content creators were depending on constant novelty to keep them having new things to stream and/or post about the game, and since it's just more of the same their fatigue is more personally driven and bottom-line-focused than those of us who are just logging in for an hour on Thursday to try out some new cars and hit the Playlist and are more or less fine casually riding it out until we get more interesting DLC. I remember the disappointing depths of Fordzathon and the first Donut Media update, and we're not that low from where I stand.