Forza Motorsport Single-Player Mode Revealed: Car Leveling, Car Points, Online Saves, & More

  • Thread starter Famine
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So, you can't save your progress unless you're connected to the Internet?

No thanks. I'll save my $70.

Kind of pathetic how this wasn't a problem back in 1998 yet now suddenly needs such a tyrannical mechanic for a solution.

It didn't work for Diablo 3, GT7, or SimCity. Developers never learn sometimes.

You guys don't have to take this. How about not pre-ordering or buying the game as long as they do this?

It worked when they tried to make the Xbox One spy on you in 2013; they'll reverse course if you actually SHOW them you don't like this.
 
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Cloud Saves are awesome. I can switch between PC and Xbox at will and keep my save across both (cross-play digital copies of Forza means you only need to buy it once for both platforms).

Besides, I've played FH3, 4, 5 permanently online for years. Even on vacation with terribly awful wifi. Even in this situation, the number of times I've had server connection issues is approximately 1 time per year. Not a big deal.

Now if you are talking Steam Deck, then it's a fair point. I wonder how they will handle that.
 
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This has gone from sounding interesting to sounding like a hard pass very quickly and not because of the always online, I prefer games that aren't, but that alone is not a deal breaker for me. The gameplay loop and car points, car levels and event structure seems completely uninspired and uninteresting.

What is wrong with developers ditching tried and tested formulas just because they can. Sure, if you come up with something better, go for it. If your new idea is worse than what's come before, leave it in the unused ideas bin. Gran Turismo has suffered from PD losing a grip on what made earlier titles engaging and fun, it seems since Forza Motorsport 4, Turn 10 have lost their mojo too.
 
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Dave A
This has gone from sounding interesting to sounding like a hard pass very quickly and not because of the always online, I prefer games that aren't, but that alone is not a deal breaker for me. The gameplay loop and car points, car levels and event structure seems completely uninspired and uninteresting.

What is wrong with developers ditching tried and tested formulas just because they can. Sure, if you come up with something better, go for it. If your new idea is worse than what's come before, leave it in the unused ideas bin. Gran Turismo has suffered from PD losing a grip on what made ealrier titles engaging and fun, it seems since Forza Motorsport 4, Turn 10 have lost their mojo too.
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Catch 22 for the Devs. Do what came before and you just get criticised for not doing anything new.

Personally I love the idea they're going with here. A game that has some actual progression and purpose.
 
MagpieRacer
Catch 22 for the Devs. Do what came before and you just get criticised for not doing anything new.

Personally I love the idea they're going with here. A game that has some actual progression and purpose.
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That's true to some degree, but they're taking away specifically what made Forza Motorsport 4 the highlight of the series as regarded by many. Choice.

You now have at least 2 currencies, one for buying cars, another for buying parts. Parts that unlock in a specific order as you level up your car (the same order for every car), meaning you'll tune cars in a specific order as you need to make your car faster progressing through each tour. And you unlock each event after completing the previous one, so no going your own way there either.

It's massively dumbed down IMO. I have no interest in this right now.

IMO (and granted it won't be everyones), if you can't come up with something better than Forza Motorsport 4, replicate Forza Motorsport 4. If you can come up with something better, do that. Don't do crap for the sake of it.
 
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skazz
Cloud Saves are awesome. I can switch between PC and Xbox at will and keep my save across both (cross-play digital copies of Forza means you only need to buy it once for both platforms).

Besides, I've played FH3, 4, 5 permanently online for years. Even on vacation with terribly awful wifi. Even in this situation, the number of times I've had server connection issues is approximately 1 time per year. Not a big deal.

Now if you are talking Steam Deck, then it's a fair point. I wonder how they will handle that.
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Is any of that really worth not being guaranteed the ability to play a game you paid $70 for whenever you want?

And do you really want them forced on you?

I really think supporters of the forced DRM are being taken advantage of.

This was not a problem in the early 2010s.
 
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skazz
Cloud Saves are awesome. I can switch between PC and Xbox at will and keep my save across both (cross-play digital copies of Forza means you only need to buy it once for both platforms).

Besides, I've played FH3, 4, 5 permanently online for years. Even on vacation with terribly awful wifi. Even in this situation, the number of times I've had server connection issues is approximately 1 time per year. Not a big deal.

Now if you are talking Steam Deck, then it's a fair point. I wonder how they will handle that.
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Literally every single offline game supports cloud saves on console, though. That's not a reason to make it online-only.
 
Artremis
Literally every single offline game supports cloud saves on console, though. That's not a reason to make it online-only.
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All the forced connectivity does is make it harder for honest customers to play the game.

The exact people the forced DRM is trying to deter are probably already working on bypassing it as we speak. If it's supposed to prevent cheating, this is not the answer.

That's why I wish we could boycott any racing game that forces players to play online even if they do not play any of the multiplayer modes.

I don't know about you, but I refuse to accept a game treating me like a criminal over the actions of a few bad actors.
 
paddyshift
I don't know about you, but I refuse to accept a game treating me like a criminal over the actions of a few bad actors.
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In this day and age, I don't think I've encountered much issues with it. Does it have the possibility to become annoying? Sure. I don't think it's as serious as you're trying to portray though, I'd hardly call that being treated like a criminal.
 
Watched the gameplay footage or whatever it was. Pretty disappointing. I figured with this major break from the last entry, they were really revamping the whole thing.

IMO, it looks pretty much exactly the same as the last few games. Visually not impressive when compared to GT7 or even the PC sims, and the whole style, vibe, and UI etc is super dry like.. Windows Metro or whatever it was called aesthetic Microsoft was trying to push back then. The car customization stuff looks like it still uses the same menu elements they've been using since Forza 2.

I'm sure it'll drive fine, but so do most driving/racing games. Its the way it goes about it that matters to me. Probably also have a more varied selection of vehicles (trucks, race trucks, off-road trucks, random race cars, etc) if thats what you're into. I am not.

I know I'll buy it and probably only play it for a couple days like FM7. If I want what Forza has always offered, I can just go back and play 2 or 4. They've pretty much been pumping out the same game forever now.
 
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ImaRobot
In this day and age, I don't think I've encountered much issues with it. Does it have the possibility to become annoying? Sure. I don't think it's as serious as you're trying to portray though, I'd hardly call that being treated like a criminal.
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This is what you say now, but will you still feel this way if developers lock even more of a game behind DRM or paywalls?

Would you buy a game that won't even start at all if you weren't online?

That's the direction this industry's headed in, and I think it's a net negative in the long run.
 
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skazz
Cloud Saves are awesome. I can switch between PC and Xbox at will and keep my save across both (cross-play digital copies of Forza means you only need to buy it once for both platforms).

Besides, I've played FH3, 4, 5 permanently online for years. Even on vacation with terribly awful wifi. Even in this situation, the number of times I've had server connection issues is approximately 1 time per year. Not a big deal.

Now if you are talking Steam Deck, then it's a fair point. I wonder how they will handle that.
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As an option, cloud saving is great. Mandatory cloud saving is not.
 
Wow. I'm...not sure what to say, or think, or feel but I'll try my best. 12 ish minutes of stuff and I am left with more questions than answers...again!

I don't understand where they are going with the builders cup. In wanting us to care about the cars we race, it instead feels like they are telling us that we MUST care about this particular car for x number of races because...you clicked this card? I don't get it.

With what they showed, it's a choice between a few cars, do a bunch of practice laps, fiddle with the grid system, do a race, unlock specific upgrade parts for that car based on how much you "level" it up, done?

It just looks and feels off, I don't quite know why it is, maybe because everything covered feels like a lot to cover in such a short amount of time but something is telling me is just does look, feel, or sound exciting. It feels artificially gated, yet another different type of currency that absolutely won't have MTX at some point no absolutely not and the career must always be online all the time. Why? To stop leader board tampering? To stop people from modding the game? To stop people from got forbid...using cheats?

Maybe It's just me, maybe I'm being super negative but to me it's like use a car for a bit...then discard it and use something else rather than here is a selection of 10 cars to start with, now, race it, build it up, tune it up over times, upgrades it more and more and finally compete with it at a works/race spec level and see if your car that you've honed it, tuned up, modded to within an inch of it's like can compete against GT4 or GT3 class cars.

Or like with FM4 just freedom of choice, freedom to earn and unlock and mod cars to compete at whatever level you chose to race it in, and slowly unlock and "earn" more powerful stuff as you progress.

I dunno...I need to sleep on it, maybe it's just me and this will feel and play awesome and it will make you CARE about the cars for much much longer but, I don't see it. I don't think it looked that good either? It almost looked like the cars shadowing and depth was really making it look and feel disconnected from the track.

Bah...I need to see a F ton more than 11 mins of gameplay. It's probably just me but a fair few people have concerns. Although not the YouTube comments and like/dislike ratio. That's wildly into the positive so shrugs wonder what I'm missing.
 
Hmmmm, the gameplay is less impressive than previous trailers. I didn't find anything particularly interesting about the structure of the game, but hey, it looks like the career mode has real races (standing starts and bigger grid).
 
I like the idea of car levelling, but I'm not sure if this interpretation of it will work well. If you're very late in the game, you have millions of credits and you feel like some crazy WRX builds, it sounds as though you may have to grind for 5 hours in your stock car before you can make it into an S2.

Very glad there's still rent-a-car free play, every FM has done that well, and GT has sadly only tried it once (GT4).
 
The only thing that really turns me off from buying it is the car leveling.

Why can't I just buy what ever car I want and buy/install any parts I want, like it has been for the last 30 years in racing games?

Say I finish the campaign, and I want to splurge on some nice car and deck it out, first I gotta level it to 50 so all parts are available before I can fully kit it out? Sounds gatey keepy-ish to me and pointless.

If they want to have cars leveling up, make the leveling not impact the gaming aspect. Instead let it unlock colors, cosmetics, things related to the visuals of your car.
 
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The greatly improved graphics compared to FM7 look good. The better physics sounds good, it would be interesting to me to see how it feels. The more realistic AI sounds good, too. Ranked racing with driver rating and safety rating, great. If it were FM7, but with those changes, I'd buy it. But the car levelling sounds incredibly tedious, having to take each car and level it up rather than just being able to grab a tune and try it. With the absence of ranked racing from FH5, I had expected that FM would be more of a pure esports title, but now they're calling it a "carpg", and it seems to not be what I'm looking for at all. I ditched GT7 and TC2 due to the focus on grinding, I'm not going to buy another game focused on grinding.

GZombie
Why can't I just buy what ever car I want and buy/install any parts I want, like it has been for the last 30 years in racing games?
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The simple answer is it's not a racing game, it's a car RPG. It seems if we want an actual racing game we need to set aside the space for a wheel rig and play iRacing or ACC.
 
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Progress system looks interesting for me. It's better than installing ECU and softer tires in GT7 after buying a new car to beat a lazy cruising AIs in catch-a-rabbit races.
Possibility to compete in many events with one car is good too, so I hope that we'll not grind car levels and points in only 1-3 races in career tour
 
paddyshift
This is what you say now, but will you still feel this way if developers lock even more of a game behind DRM or paywalls?

Would you buy a game that won't even start at all if you weren't online?

That's the direction this industry's headed in, and I think it's a net negative in the long run.
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I say that now and I've been saying that for as long as I've been gaming, and for as long as everyone seems to cry wolf about that for the last 5-10 years. You're reaching pretty far to drive a point, but again, it's not even remotely as severe as you're making it out to be. It's unfortunate, but that's about it.
 
Xbox Series X was supposed to be the most powerful console yet, but PS5 with PSVR2 appears next-gen compared to this. Maybe I’d understand if the game was merely a direct successor to FM7, but this reboot has been in development since forever.
 
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paddyshift
All the forced connectivity does is make it harder for honest customers to play the game.

The exact people the forced DRM is trying to deter are probably already working on bypassing it as we speak. If it's supposed to prevent cheating, this is not the answer.

That's why I wish we could boycott any racing game that forces players to play online even if they do not play any of the multiplayer modes.

I don't know about you, but I refuse to accept a game treating me like a criminal over the actions of a few bad actors.
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I actually like the online saves. When my PS5 bricked I was able to immediately jump to my PS4 to play GT7 with all my saved content. Got a new hard drive on my PS5 installed and retain all the data. It's convenient. You can also jump to friend's PS5 and load up your account easily.
 
I must say i like what whas showcased, career mode looked really promising very much a huge step up from horrible career mode in fm7, i dont see an problem with car levling either seems like they go with progression, begin with slow car and progress from there is what i like i will preorder it, visually its decent not as impressive as gt7 in terms of car details.
 
It's interesting to me how people in this thread are perfectly okay with trading their privacy and freedom for "convenience".

I'll just say this:

Whenever the servers inevitably crash one day under all the bandwidth or due to some sort of a technical hiccup either at launch or later down the road, don't complain when you lose all your progress or can't play the game at all because you can't connect to the server.

This is what comes with an all digital future: you give up full accessibility and control of an item you paid for.

It's one thing to put DRM in a free to play MMO of some kind, it's another to force it into the single player mode of a $70 game.

You had the chance to fight such a draconian practice when GT Sport, GT7, and Ghost's first 2 NFS games forced you online even if you didn't intend to play multiplayer. All you had to do was not buy or pre-order the games from developers trying to control and short-change you.

Now, almost every racing game forces you online. And this is because you told the developers with your wallets that you're okay with being controlled and sold glorified demos with less features than games from decades ago as long as they sell you "graphics" and "physics".

If you still choose to buy this game knowing there is no guarantee you'll be able to play it when you want and that say, 10 years from now, you'll no longer be able to play it at all when the servers are permanently closed; with all due respect, you're part of the problem.

It's also why games like Madden don't get better: people know those games are copy/paste roster updates, but they keep getting that kind of product because they keep buying it.

Remember when you complain that this game or that game either feels incomplete or restrictive: you get what you pay for.
 
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Firestone
I actually like the online saves. When my PS5 bricked I was able to immediately jump to my PS4 to play GT7 with all my saved content. Got a new hard drive on my PS5 installed and retain all the data. It's convenient. You can also jump to friend's PS5 and load up your account easily.
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Nobody is complaining about the online saves. What people are complaining about is the online only saves. The only benefit of such a system is that it makes it more difficult to cheat by modifying your save file.
 

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