Forza Rewards, VIP membership, and fun

Forza Horizon Legacy Horizon FH3 Discussion
#1

(My apologies if this topic should be posted elsewhere as it is a subject concerning the Forza franchise as a whole.)

With Forza Horizon 3 quickly approaching us, I find myself filled again with a sense of regret; I know exactly why I signed up for Forza Rewards, but as the years have gone on, I have grown a distaste for the easy flow of credits and automobiles that comes with having such a long history with the franchise.

The initial promise of Forza Rewards was enticing: a weekly stipend of credits as a carrot-on-the-stick for both individual games and the franchise, as well as a way of maintaining some tangible sense of accomplishment between games. Whereas one once began the latest installment of Forza with a barren garage save some mundane starting car, it was now possible to enjoy new features and experiences with the cars you loved – or, at the very least, with a very good start towards accomplishing that.

Starting Horizon 2 and FM6 with an awesome stable of cars was a great feeling, but I feel like this has diminished my long-term enjoyment of both games. Credits have lost all meaning to me; it did not take me very long to possess enough money to afford any car I wanted in either game, especially considering one is suckered into VIP membership if they want to access some of the most desirable cars in the game. This might not inherently be a bad thing to a person who has been playing these series for a long time. However, I personally felt as if my gaming experience had lost a sense of direction as a whole.

I’m reminded of the time I spent with Forza Motorsport 4. I felt such a sense of accomplisment when I could finally afford the Agera. In a sense, that car had more value to me, being a culmination of all the experience and work I had put into racing successfully in the game. I do not feel the same attachment to vehicles in these games any longer. The concept of owning a kitted-out hypercar doesn’t have the same appeal anymore, as I was given some of the most desirable outright, and assured the funds to purchase the rest in the future.

This problem is compunded for me by the post-FM5 economy, wherein everyone and their mother can afford a LaFerrari after playing the game for 5 minutes. And should a track-oriented version come out as DLC, they’ll have the luxury of getting it for free. The game feels like a giant sandbox with no sense of progress to me.

I know for some that Forza is purely about the experience of racing, and that many would argue that that is the way things should be. However, I very much enjoy the “career” aspect of the game, and feel like that experience has been eroded for me by the ease at which everything is achieved by the player in the more recent Forza installments.

As a curiosity, I started a new playthrough for Horizon 2 a couple of months ago on fresh account. I’ve been having an absolute blast, taking my time with each car and appreciating the subtle differences with which Turn 10 have so wonderfully modeled each vehicle. It is fulfilling to save up for a car that you really want, and to have to make choices between cars based on one’s budget. I know this all probably boils down to personal taste, but I am tempted to play Horizon 3 in this fashion.

How do you guys feel? Are there any changes you’d like to see in the in-game economy?

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#2

i understand where your coming from, it does seem now that when you start a new forza release your given 10+ cars and millions of credits, my FH2 savegame got corrupted due to there faulty save system and when i started again i had 23 million credits just waiting for me, same with fm6, i had 12+ cars and about 2.2 million before the game released, and right now according to my rewards i have 13 cars waiting, not including the warthog, the cars i get for VIP and the others as i bought the Ultimate edition, so yeah it has lost its sense of accomplishment when you finally earn enough to buy a supercar then your back to square one after bankrupting yourself just to buy that lamborghini or mclaren.

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#3

You almost make it sound like you have to redeem the forza rewards. If you feel it’s too easy, don’t redeem them.

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#4

As soon as you get gift cars, Remove them from your garage. Or put them on the Auction House (if gifted cars can be sold; that may not work) for a minimum price to help out others who have little time to play the game and aren’t bothered by quick progression. If you find yourself with “too many” credits, just look at it as a Stat like Miles Driven or Days Played. Burn them on cars you then sell for the minimum.

Game designers face a balancing act of trade offs: there are gamers who like the challenge of effort and skill to progress, and there are gamers who have family and work obligations with little time to play, so they need the fastest opportunity to progress in order to get enjoyment out of the game. After all, a game that is available to millions and features rare cars does exactly that: it bypasses the years of grind it would take to accumulate the wealth to have access to those cars in real life.

I look at it this way: imagine you sign up to a cable tv package of sports channel options, and they say “Tell us your preferred sports.” You say: “Formula 1 and NASCAR.” They say, “Great! We have channels that show those motorsports 24/7. But before you can watch that, you’ll have to watch 10 hours of Formula D and dirt track racing.” Meanwhile your neighbor signs up to the same tv package and picks Formula D and dirt track rating as his preferred sports. The provider says “Great! You can access those and all other motorsports immediately.” That’s effectively how it’s been with game economies matching real world prices: fans of more expensive cars have to grind longer to access them than is required for hatchback fans. I think a game should appeal to everyone’s interests equally. But that’s my opinion and yours is yours. It’s up to the developers to figure out how to incorporate conflicting opinions with their own vision of what makes a great game.

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#5

I’ve just thought. To please both sides, they should have an easy credits mode, and a grindy type mode.

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#6

I’ll take the grindy mode, I am a sucker for doing things the hard way! LOL Though I’ll have VIP, I may choose to refuse prize spins (if possible).

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#7

I never looked at money as anything of value in the Forza Franchise. I never thought “hey I’m earning these cars too fast” or “Why cant I have enough credits for this car” All I want to do when I play forza is build the car I want and drive it. And lucky me, I really like pre 2000 cars so they tend to be much cheaper which means I can have some of my favorite cars right off the bat. I could honestly care less if every car was free or every car was 1 million credits each though. I don’t find my enjoyment through progressing in Forza, I find it in driving my dream cars and being the best driver I can be.

Edit: Although, if you do have too much money, I would love to see them add in having to pay for Gas (When gas is turned on.) for each vehicle. It may not be much, but it would help reduce the credit flow and would make you have to work for the money to be able to simply go freeroam around. But I highly doubt this would be a thing, given we are the Horizon boss, we probably have a gas card to fill our tanks for the low low price of free :wink:

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#8

Il take whatever is free for me lol. Are we not getting Rewards this week from the Rewards Program? It still says New Rewards Coming Soon.

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#9

TerminalEntropy I agree with you 100% and I feel exactly the same. FM6 was horrible in this aspect with near 30 cars in your garage and up to 25 mill credits in the bank before you even started playing the game. Winning the Veyron or Lotus F1 car on a level 2 or 3 wheelspin just adds extra salt to the wound.

I think FH3 won’t be as bad as FM6 though, there are no credit rewards from previous games anymore and several cars cost 10,000,000 credits, mostly the oldtimers but a Veneno is 4,500,000 as well. Let’s just pray that the most expensive car you can ever win from a wheelspin costs around 200,000 or something with maybe 500,000 from the special spins (level 100, 200, …).

In FM6 I was swarming with cars, 2 weeks ago I started playing FH1 for the first time and I went at a speed of 300 mph through the game, finished about everything of interest to me in roughly 1 weekend. The only thing left to do there now is to grind mileage for the 9th barn find but I simply can’t be arsed with that.

I’m still thinking how exactly I want to start playing FH3 next friday, it’s not all 100% set into stone but I have some pretty good ideas. I’ll explain what I have in mind and there might be something useful for you in as well. Or if this sounds interesting to other players let me know, maybe we can start a club of like-minded players.

Here is my personal FH3 rulebook :slight_smile:

  1. I want as much driving immersion as I possibly can get. That means always driving from cockpit camera and then turning all assists off, except manual w/o clutch and normal steering for my controller. I want to play with sim damage on as well and driving line completely off. This all works great I’m just figuring out what drivatar difficulty level works best that way for me (it’s a bit lower than the usual chase cam playstyle since that is easier). But I’m going to settle with a difficulty level early on and them stick with that for the rest of my singleplayer career, if a showcase is too difficult then too bad, I’ll have a go at it another day again.

  2. I wanted to turn the HUD off completely as well (only spoken GPS voice) but with a controller its sometimes difficult to know in which gear I am then. Wouldn’t have that issue with my cockpit with H-shifter but I want to play FH3 on my main TV in my living room with a controller in the sofa. I tried it in FH2 a couple of weeks ago and it’s really thrilling in races to actually use the visual on-route indications of where the circuit is and to actually count cars to know in what place you are driving. :slight_smile: Still doubting what exactly I will do with the HUD next week.

  3. I am definitely going to prevent warping around over the map with these fast travel options. I’m going to hold off to ANY fast travel initially, I’ll just drive to my locations the old fashion way. Maybe to give myself some slack in the future I will either allow fast travel only between the festival hubs or else only if they cost completely 0 credits.

  4. I will prevent ANY cheating or spoilers about barn finds or smashing board info. Not getting any info from the internet, not buying any treasure map like I did in FH2. I’m even going to disallow using the drone mode camera to find a barn find.

  5. I will start the game with 26 cars in my garage. Here is another fun thing. I am not going to buy any car initially. I want to appreciate the cars I have more and I want to look forward to getting new cars as well. I firmly believe that this will make getting cars feel more rewarding. I’m sure that barn finds, wheel spins and showcase rewards on top of those 26 starter cars will give me at least 1 car in each car division. If I end up at an event at some point where I don’t have a car for that division yet I will just have to wait until I get one from a wheelspin.

  6. I’m not even going to upgrade any of my cars initially. I love cars in stock form so I will drive them that way.

  7. As you might have noticed, I’m actually not spending any credits at all. What I am going to do with all these saved credits I don’t know yet. At some point I will start buying cars of course and I think a fun way is already to start buying them from most expensive one towards cheapest one. That means the first 5 or more cars you buy will all be 10,000,000 cars so that is a lot of saving to do. And meanwhile you keep playing and keep winning cars from wheelspins.

  8. Now 2 things for which I don’t know yet what do to is multiplayer and the AH. For multiplayer my cockpit view with stock cars is not competitive of course. Now I want to play mostly singleplayer in the beginning anyway, at some point when I feel like I have completed the singleplayer game I might feel like I accomplished what I wanted out of the singleplayer fase of the game and start with a new ruleset for multiplayer. As far as the AH goes, a part of me wants to ignore that completely but a part of me is also curious to see what will be on offer there. Just in case a rare gem turns up (unicorn car or more likely Horizon Edition car) I might still buy it.

I firmly believe all these things together will make me enjoy the game a lot more. No silly assists like driving lines or even worse : rewind buttons. No warping all over the map with fast travel. No easy mode chase cam but immersive cockpit view. Not simply buying each car I want but eagerly awaiting what I will get from the next barn find, show case or wheelspin. Not upgrading cars to the top of their class but keeping them in stock form and appreciate the way they are instead of tuning out all their disadvantages and thus losing their personality.

Of course I still gotta see how it will all work out in the final game but I think I’m up to something fun.

All this comes from past experience in FH2, FM6 and recently FH1. I don’t want to fast-forward through content, I want to take my time to enjoy it all in full.

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#10

I can definitely appreciate your gameplay philosophy. I would say I agree with most of your propositions, though I’m surprised you prefer to play with simulation damage on. I found it doable for most of the circuit-type/road courses in FH1/2 but with the advent of off-roading it is a little difficult for me to finish those courses without sustaining some serious damage to my suspension, among other things. The HUD restriction is also particularly interesting to me. I like the idea of using the gauges in cockpit view – for a few vehicles it’s actually easier to use the car’s speedometer as it’s directly below the center of the screen rather than in the bottom-right corner – but I doubt I could dispense with the mini-map until I get the lay of the land, at the very least. I definitely race in cockpit view in single player for immersion. I’ve been using that view since it was introduced to the series, so it’s a little difficult for me to use anything else :stuck_out_tongue: I always upgrade a vehicle to the top of its native PI class to remain competitive in rivals, but I always try to take time to spend some time behind the wheel with stock configurations to appreciate a car.

I’ll be playing on Friday as well. Feel free to add me, it would even be nice to have a clubmate!

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#11

No one realizing they can get rid of vehicles? or go into the game with the mindset that you will only accept cars that you buy with your own money. You realize you have the full option to do that?

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#12

I also miss the grinding and the sense of accomplishment from earning the nice cars. But… I’m going to be in charge of the festival. It makes sense that the head-honcho-in-charge has some nice cars to use even at the start. So I plan on keeping the VIP and Allstars cars.

I’ll use manteomax’s idea and get rid of my money by selling expensive cars for cheap. (I’ll say I spent all my money to start the festival)
Leave all the cars stock and upgrade them as I go. Sounds like a good compromise to me.

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#13

honestly it doesn’t bother me. I always drive every car the game has to offer and it wont be any different with this game. this gives me a lot of time to just sit on the hundereds of million of credits in my bank and when I get to the next car on my list I know ill have enough credits to purchase it.

I know I am in the minority and the majority of players use less than 50 cars, but I really love these kind of games and don’t look a gift horse in the mouth.

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#14

If you don’t want any of the rewards associated with your profile, sign in to FH3 with a new profile yeah?

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