I am a true, Forza fan.
I am a gear head, racing junkie, car nut and complete whack-job when it comes to cars and going fast. When I can’t run my Camaro at one of my local racetracks against my cousin’s Mustang, I play Forza as I have since I got my very first XBox back in 2002. I was hooked from the beginning. My cousin and I are also consistently in the top 1% of the leaderboards and spend hours tuning each A Class car for each track.
… I know we’re pathetic and our wives remind us this all the time.
Over the last 15 years I have supported Forza Motorsports and Turn10 by purchasing the Ultimate Edition every time one comes out for every game including Horizon. I always talk about Forza with other “real” drivers, I show clips of some of my more interesting overtakes and boo boo’s. I’ve had a great run over the last decade and a half and I have great memories with some carpal tunnel to show for it.
I’m giving you this back-story in the hopes that someone from Turn10 will read it without quickly dismissing it.
Forza Motorsports 7 was like a swift shot to the nuts with a large, half-inch drive torque wrench.
Here’s why.
- VIP mess-up. You guys know you messed up and already admitted it. Better late than never and thank you for taking action.
- Loot crates… this has been talked about to death by gamers and the media. This level of evil is usually reserved for bad tippers and people who talk at the theater.
- Homologation was a bad idea. Making Homologation a cornerstone when applying upgrades so that you can’t even see torque numbers anymore when applying engine parts??? Sure, it’s not like anyone trying to set up an engine for a car needs to be bothered by a pesky torque number anyway right? I understand what you were trying to do but you failed epically at it and because the homologation is so hopelessly woven into the game, I doubt you can do anything about it.
- Still haven’t solved the “crasher problem” in lobbies. After 10 years of multiplayer, I’m convinced that you guys simply don’t care about this one anymore.
- Glitches. The game on XBox One crashes every 4 or 5 races when playing online. After 3 or 4 races, the names of players no longer show up on the tags above the cars. The engine-revving audio glitch is BACK?? Wasn’t that fixed in Forza 5??? Car selection screen freezes and reloads.
- Test Driving option is gone from Tuning and Upgrades. Find the person that removed that feature that has been there for the last 4 Forza games and have them repeat “Tuning and Test Driving go Hand-in-Hand!!!” 100 times in the parking lot.
- Class leaderboards for each track removed??? Really?
- Truck racing and side-by-sides are funny. I get it. Don’t let them in the hoppers please! I know you can do this, you did it before with that troublesome limousine in FM6.
The Forza Motorsports franchise has always been about cars, speed, competition and engineering beauty. Now I have to watch a random dude in a race suit do the pee-pee dance while I wait for races to load. Last time I saw a human being move like that, a spark plug wire and remote starter switch were involved.
Don’t get me wrong though, the game has a lot going for it. More cars, Suzuka, Mugello, Maple Valley coming back, dynamic weather effects are ground breaking and the flawless FM physics engine is still perfect. I also think it’s great that you guys are trying to make the game more “accessible” to a wider audience. More people being into cars and racing is a good thing. But this is not Horizon.
Just please, please, please do not forget about us loyal, hardcore, crazy gear head racing fans that love what you have done over the years. I’m still going to keep playing FM7 because I love what is good in it. I just implore you to stop taking away features that are good and putting in features just because they look good on a quarterly-earnings spreadsheet.
Scott