Am I the only one who genuinely enjoys Horizon Arcade?

One of my favourite activities from Horizon 4 was forzathon live. I played over 1000 of them! Occasionally I’d even boot the game up at the top of the hour just to mess around with a bunch of players. But this spark is missing with 5’s arcade.
I very rarely find other players waiting for an arcade to begin. I’ve heard a lot of reasons why it’s so sparsely populated, like there’s no countdown to them like forzathon live, there’s to many at once so it splits the playerbase.
Because of the dedicated drift events, I’ve even gotten half-way decent at drifting. It’s the most I’ve been into drifting compared to any horizon game previously.

I’ve submitted several tickets asking for this to be altered in some way. My preferred method would be to add it to horizon open/custom adventure. Then I might be able to reliably find other players that want to engage with this mode. I’m not into competitive racing, I just want to play fun, cooperative game modes. But I’ve never heard a single mention of it in patch notes or in the forza streams.
I rarely see this kind of sentiment among the community, so I’m guessing I’m in the minority in wanting this feature.
Early in the life of FH5, I would sometimes find 10 or 15 people playing arcades, and they’re still some of my best memories of the game. I want those types of player numbers to return!
I can see that Arcade is still mentioned in the known issues list; “Horizon Arcade - Doesn’t correctly pull groups of players in for full sessions.” So all I can do is hope that this is still an issue they’re working on.
Matchmaking for arcade is #1 on my personal wishlist.

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I quite like em when there’s a bunch of people but I rarely find people taking part, and it ends up with “press your horn a bunch of times” until I get some points.

I usually only do it when a playlist requires it, and then only if I actually need the points.

I’ve only done the drift one, and it’s OK… 4/10.

Haven’t done it for ages but it’s ok as a one off. There isn’t sufficient repeatability in my view to justify adding it to the Open menu.

Totally understand that it’s not everyone’s cup of tea.
To Dave’s point, that could also be a reason why it’s not very populated. Forzathon points are easier than ever to accumulate in 5, since arcades happen every 15 minutes, you could potentially earn 240 points per hour, compared to just the 60 from forzathon live.
Personally I’m not doing it for the points, I do them for fun.

I do them lots. It’s especially nice to get a nice bunch of drifters forming a train or ripping a town to bits in my Cossie. Air is good too. I only don’t like the mini missions. Otherwise it’s a laugh.

It isn’t just you but I agree with the impression that we are in the minority, I enjoy most of the arcade modes and will happily spend an afternoon just moving from one to the next, gets harder the more players there are which adds a bit of a challenge if you can find any like minded souls which does happen from time to time.

Doesn’t help that some of the modes are still bugged. Chaos is not my favourite anyways and is made even worse by the fact that the ‘reach xmph’ rarely if ever works be it forwards or reverse. Air is good fun but if there is more than one player and we both jump at the same time FH5 crashes (I’m on PC) so I tend to avoid if there are other players.

Some of the player number drop offs tie in with the removal of wheelspins/super wheelspins from the mastery trees+the reduction in rewards from spins. It used to be a fun way of racking up skill points to get spins, without that incentive it really does have to be just for the fun of it.

I do think they need to change the way that if you pass through an arcade event you deemed to be taking part or you leave a house and are immediately in a arcade event, they could implement a system like they do for matchmaking for a online race you have to press a button if you want to take part.

5 Likes

I enjoy it whenever I can get in one with 3 or more people that are actually participating. Seems to be happening more and more lately which is positive I guess lol. Definitely not the same vibe as in FH4 though.

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I enjoy them, but they’re just not as fun when it’s you and one other random person. When/if they finally fix this, I’ll be doing them a lot more, but not at the moment.

Yep, I quite liked them early on when there were several people actively engaged :slight_smile:

Now I typically do them solo, rarely, for a lot of the reasons mentioned. Few seem to do them. Freeloaders are annoying at times. And chiefly the stupid “participation” setup where you can blunder into one unintentionally. Like yesterday, minding my own business, painting a car in my house, and suddenly “It’s the only run you’re going to like ! It’s drift run ! BEGIN !” or whatever the annoying announcer says.

STOP PUTTING THE STUPID ZONES ON HOUSES AND FESTIVALS !

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I’ll do one on the odd occasion. Once a week I’d say, even if it’s not on the playlist. Maybe twice.

I actually prefer to do them solo, since every single time I’ve had other people to do them with, there is at least one of them who tries to get points without doing anything.

I wouldn’t hold out hope for PGG to fix the online. There were issues with online that persisted throughout the entirety of FH4 (launch to FH5 launch). Besides, Microsoft has netoriously terrible servers, at least for PC players (which I am). I played games on spotty dial up internet in 2006 which were a smoother, more reliable experience then playing on the modern day Halo Infinite servers with my fiber optic cable line directly into my condo.

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I wish you could double up somehow or gamble the points to keep it interesting. A better version of “High stakes”.

I like Arcade, sure its relatively easy, and you don’t necessarily need people to join you, but its a decent mode and sufficient time killer.

I use the FP to buy the weekly cars in the shop, tune em, throw on a livery, and then auction or gift away.

Lately, I’ve been getting events where multiple people join in, so thats been a nice change… last night we had 4 people that stuck together for probably 7-8 events.

Wish that happened more frequently as it makes the group activity more engaging.

2 Likes

Its meh. If you could actually see other players, as it should be, maybe it will be a fun thing to do. But we are still six months after the release and we cant even see other players when doing horizon arcade. If i want/need forzathon points i will do one maybe per day. If i dont, i dont even bother. There are already many places to do stunts. I dont need arcade the way it is now.

I thought of you as I bought mine :smile:

Yeah. Hospital FM and forzathon lives are two of my biggest misses from FH4. Enjoyed those much more.

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I can see the other players.

Same here. I can see other players. Sounds like he has a network/router configuration problem.

I enjoyed them in fh4 when there were enough people. They just increased the reqs for the drift arcades in fh5 so I’m probably only going to participate when I need points and they put something worthwhile in the shop. I enjoyed them at times but it seems that is over.