Forzathon Live requirements should be according to amount of participants

you ever get more than 60FP for a live event?
I basically find these a waste of time for. So little points.
Why not reward points based on the amount of score you contribute to the event?

I thought I read somewhere before that the reason the prices in the Forzathon Shop went up was because a lot of players (like me) were hoarding Forzathon Points. I don’t hoard them just to hoard them, I do it because I know someday cars will be offered that I either really want, or really want to resell. (Apollo?)

I think PG should offer the Festival Prizes to be purchased with Forzathon Points in lieu of performing the Challenges. This would do two things; it would entice hoarders to spend their FP and, it would encourage more players to participate in the Forzathon Live Events.

I think this could be a win-win scenario for PG. For example: I won’t do multiplayer challenges at all. But I will do Forzathon Live Events. So, if the Trail Prize costs me 600 FP, I would have to do 10 Live Events or the Trail, either one I choose I would have to be on-line to do it… Which, I believe, is essentially what PG wants.

I predict if they did this, the participation levels in the Playground Games would drop to near-zero.

(With good reason!)

1 Like

That was said by one of the devs in some stream during spring, I didn’t watched that but it was discussed on Forza Reddit and here. In the end it amounted to nothing. They didn’t had enough cool items available in the shop to make it interesting at the time. You can’t fix economy by saying something like that and expect anything good would come from it. I mean what exactly was the point there “Grind Forzathon Points to buy stuff you don’t want or need.” What were they thinking?

How I see it, is that PG needs something to show for MS/Xbox subsidiary that they are actively marketing features that benefit those who have purchased Live Gold (double FP) and players doing features and using those points can be tracked and put on someone’s result sheet.

Supply and demand, that’s about it. To have more people to participate to events and use the shop, they need to have something available that players really want for grind work that doesn’t feel too daunting.

What comes to whole Forzathon Live events issue. There has been few times I have seen there has been players idling too much so the rest of us weren’t able to complete it for full points, but that has been very rare and for my experience stunt goals do scale depending of number of participants. Once it happened there were just two of us in session and we completed it all.

What comes to rewarding overachievers, I don’t think results would be what some people think, but very much like some who are not to game on long term, would like.

1 Like

The proper way to address this issue is to do what the OP suggested and to dynamically scale the Forzathon Live requirements to the number of active participants. That way earning FPs is attainable for new players entering an FLE on their own due to lack of participation. However, doing that would require a code revision, which at this point I’m sure that the devs would prefer to avoid since it could introduce other problems to the game. The quick and dirty way to deal with this is to try to manipulate the participation numbers by increasing the FPs offered, and to see if a better balance can be found there.

Unless PG has plans to monetize FPs, it’s really just a redundant currency in FH4 with little value to veteran players at this point. So it probably doesn’t matter to PG whether people participate in FLEs or not. If it were important, then they’d make Forzathon Live participation a requirement in the Festival Playlist. However, I think there’d be many people who’d be upset about having to complete additional requirements for Playlist completion. Imagine a Daily Forzathon Live Event challenge where a player needed to complete three of them per day just to get to 100% for the Playlist.

Any exclusive prize that can be attained through an alternative method will surely impact the quality of participation in the related online event. I’d totally skip the Seasonal Games for that reason.

That’s exactly it. It doesn’t matter how many FPs people hoard because there’s no open economy for FPs. PG can simply control FPs from the point of offering nothing of value to players.

Yep, for the most part the people I see at FLEs play with the intention of completing all three rounds. Once in a while I’ll take a look at the FLE from the map and see one or two noobs with really basic cars waiting in the lobby. If I have 15 minutes to spare, then I’ll usually jump in and try to help them earn some FPs. Generally speaking, I’m at a point where I’m feeling pretty ambivalent about earning them anymore.

1 Like

1st 2nd and 3rd places should be awarded the biggest share of the points, and then dwindle away to zero for the lazy no-doers.

Guys, jus try what I posted earlier. I have a 100% success rate on it except for when I mess up the switching. It is the only solution you need.

That doesn’t solve the people who don’t do anything.

I agree, but it does solve the annoyance over it as you always have enough people to get it done relatively quickly, even if some don’t actively participate.

I am all for participation, but the ‘solutions’ offered here are just going to ruin the character of the events. I like how everyone shows up in whatever car they want to drive and just bashes along. Let’s not turn this into yet another online event in which all people drive the same car with the same tune to be competitive.
So in this case I am all for curing the symptoms instead of the disease.

On the contrary, there have been some good suggestions offered by people here that would form the building blocks for an actual cure for the “disease” itself. Everything else are just band-aids for symptoms that actually fail to address an important component of the OP’s main complaint (after having a moment to review it again): off-hours play. So the real cure for the problem is a combination of what was already suggested by others and then some additions to it. Switching sessions is a nice hack for the time between heavy session activity and very low activity. During peak hours it’s unlikely to find low participation at Forzathon Live. However, during non-peak hours, switching sessions for better FLE activity is likely to be a futile effort. As an example, during an off-hours session activity check, I found that my original session had 26 people in it. After switching multiple times, my session populations consisted of; 14, 9, 11, 13, and 10 players respectively.

The main problem with Forzathon Live is that each event location has a different level of difficulty. That’s where PG needs to start first. So a true fix for FLE could be something as follows:

  • Determine an overall level of difficulty for one player to complete all three rounds of an FLE;
  • Use Item #1 to determine a “Single Player Points Requirement” for each round (For use in Item #6);
  • Attempt to maintain that same overall level of difficulty (determined in Step #1) for each FLE location (i.e. Some locations have more difficult drift zones than others and should require a lower number of points to clear than the easier ones. The Shepherd’s Crook Drift Zone mentioned by @DarkWolf907505 is one of the biggest offenders – especially during the winter.);
  • Dynamically scale the FLE points requirements based on the number of participants (Suggested by the OP, @Peregrine57, @DarkWolf907505);
  • Add an inactivity timer to boot idle players (Suggested by @TheGillesMueller);
  • Participants must contribute at least 25% of their “Single Player Points Requirement” per given round in order to be credited Forzathon Points for that round (To help address an issue brought up by @TRANCE101);
  • Readjust the points requirement per round based on the number of remaining players as necessary;
    Since there’s no way to judge “effort” because it’s subject to one’s own opinion, there’s no way to completely weed out those few who might dilly-dally through the rounds. Having a minimum level of participation reduces some of that problem, but still must be kept low enough for less experienced players to achieve for it to not become a deterrent to their participation.

Like ‘The Trial’ and Seasonal Games, Forzathon Live is a team-inspired event. That being said, distributing FPs to players based on the number of points that they each contributed would effectively convert it into a competitive, individualized event, which would put those with less experience in the game at a disadvantage. However, I do like the idea posed by @TheGillesMueller and @tsujen about adding a leaderboard per round and for the overall event in order to liven things up with some friendly competition.

If PG just tweaked the event itself, then there’d be no need to adjust the Forzathon Points awarded or even the contents at the Forzathon Shop. It keeps all of that intact just like the original release; including the entire FP pseudo-economy. It lets individuals decide for themselves whether an FLE is worth the hassle for 10-60 FPs, given the items offered at the Forzathon Shop. It allows individuals to enter an FLE without being concerned about player count. In effect, it takes the participation of others out of the equation and places everything on one’s own desire and effort to do the event at all – at whatever hours of the day or night.

Did you also do FLEs in those sessions? You might have relatively high FLE participation in new sessions as I am pretty sure a lot of people switch.
Having said that, there might indeed be hours of the day that I have not played, so I cannot tell you if it works during all hours of the day.
It is currently the best ‘hack’ to get a decent player count though.

You are right, the point thing is a good suggestion. I was mostly referring to the participation ideas that forces this into yet another competition.

I am sometimes curious as to how I did compared to the rest. A leaderboard would be fun. I doubt I will make a difference for the people who don’t wish to actively participate though.

If they can make it so you have a chance of completing FLE with any number of players and they take out the inactive players correctly (which becomes more of an issue then than it is now) I am all for this of course. Better is always better :smiley:

I would tweak this even further and say that Drift Zones only appear in teams of at least three or four, because if you’re not a drifter and you get one of those on your own, regardless of points total requirement, you’re going to struggle. All the others are much more ‘doable’ than the drifts, imo.

Kind regards,
Dude Who Only Drives AWD :wink:

[/quote]

AWD Drift really well, I am in the top 1% using AWD.

[/quote]

[/quote]

I would like to see a “leaderboard” in forzathons. I think it would get people to do more and try to be on top more, more competition. There’s always those few players who do the speed trap, danger sign etc… one two times than just wait until it’s over.

No matter what, the store is what’s killing it. The store hasn’t been as good as of late and it’s showing in the hourly events. What to do with 10k points when you already have everything? Make those cars what are “rare” come back in the shop, the ones what are hard to get in the auction house. Games been out over a year and we only had one chance to get the 812 (except star card) the 2nd week the game was out, where other cars Apollo, GT3RS 19’ have been in there multiple times.

I agree with a lot of the suggestions here; however, I fear for a game being over a year old, PG may not want to spend the resources to re-vamp the entire process. Great suggestions for FH5 though…

Since, I believe, the OPs primary concern was the lack of participants, I think incentivizing is the solution; give players a solid reason to participate.

Allowing players to spend Forzathon Points on more than just the Forzation Shop items could help. I’m not sold on the concept that increasing Forzathon Shop prices is the solution. I would rather go to the Auction House; since CR is easier to obtain than FP.

Usually though the programming only takes a day, FH4 is just programmed in a weird way.

Hey DWOD AWD! :joy:

I think that if PG established a consistent level of difficulty for FLEs, then all three rounds would be scaled back enough so that there’d be more time available to tackle any individual round that you might find more challenging than others. And if you’re still finding a round to be too difficult, then you can always lean on your teammate(s) for help. After all, that’s what friends are for! So keep smiling, keep shining knowing you can always count on them. . . :joy:

I’m not particularly good at drifting or care to learn anything more about it. I only started to look into it a few months ago because I wanted to three-star all the drift zones. I also used AWD for them because it’s easier to control the slide than with RWD. Technically-speaking I’m actually powersliding but the game don’t care, so neither do I! LOL Anyway, I’ve seen some people online who do nothing but drift and can drift an entire zone sideways. I’ve also seen some pretty incredible synchronized-drifting as well. So it’s pretty cool that there are people out there who are really into it and have found something in the game for them. It’s just not for me however.

Anyway, there’s nothing wrong with AWD. Actually, the advantages of driving AWD outweigh its one disadvantage versus RWD. Likewise, RWD is even more atrocious in FM7 than FH4, if you can believe that. That said, I usually see a few people online who’ll insist that everyone learn how to drive RWD for the sake of humanity. If you’re really into learning everything about the game, then that’s fine. However, the differences between AWD and RWD really point to an issue with the physics engine itself. So if it ever gets adjusted in FH5, then it’s kind of meaningless to put yourself at a disadvantage now when your opponents are taking every measure to ensure that they have an easier path to beating you in a race!

If you must expend 75% more energy and focus to keep an RWD hypercar on the road instead of using that energy and focus toward strategizing a way to outmaneuver your rivals, then why go through the hassle? It just makes the game that much less enjoyable to play. Again, I remember seeing some other person boasting about how great it was to learn how to use “SIM Steering” in Motorsport 7 with a controller. Granted, I mentioned in other posts how bad that steering mode is in Motorsport 7 versus Horizon 4. Anyway, I think that person spent weeks getting accustomed to it after all the frustrations of trying to keep his 1200 BHP “shopping cart” from spinning out. So what’s the point of going through all that when it has no transferrable purpose in the real world? It boggles my mind why anyone would choose to make a game less fun for themselves in order for it to be a rewarding experience? God forbid that I ever need to press A+B+Up+Down+A+B+Left+Right to ever get anything done IRL.

About 5 months ago I used to do exactly what you described in this thread. I stopped doing that after about seven times because I noticed that I’d be placed into smaller sized sessions. My original session would usually have about 2-3 people in the FLE lobby, and after switching I’d usually find between 0-2 people. This was all during non-peak hours.

There might be two things going on here which could explain why we’re having a different experience with changing sessions. The first might be that the Horizon servers are regionally-based, and that there are more people in your area playing it in general. The second is that the servers could have been programmed that way because the devs were thinking that someone switching sessions often might be looking for one that was large enough to bring in a convoy. IMO, the best course of action for an off-hours FLE is to get to the event early and to stay in the lobby so that others can see you are there.

A leaderboard won’t do anything to motivate those players that just want an easy path to some FPs. However, bragging rights might be enough for most competitive players to not really care that a few players aren’t being very helpful.

Yeah, the more that I think about this, the FLE was created quite haphazardly. Maybe it was because of the devs were rushing to have the game ready for the release date. Anyway, if you are only playing FLEs at a specific time of day, then you’ll probably notice that you’re playing at the same event locations as previous days. There’s the likelihood that those FLEs have a fairly moderate level of difficulty, and also a reason why players are showing up for them. Ironically, some FLEs that require 8-10 players to comfortably complete happen during non-peak hours when there are fewer people around to play them – probably during those times when the OP wants to play them! So if you remember how difficult a particular FLE location was yesterday, then you’re likely to not show up for it today or tomorrow or ever again.

So when I think about this event, it really does look like something that was whipped up rather fast without thorough testing. I think when customers buy a finished product, they just as well assume that the developers did their due diligence to ensure that what is purchased is exactly what was intended by the publisher. I think that after a year, people unwittingly accepted all the flaws of FLE as being a normal part of the game. The “one-size-fits-all” FLE doesn’t make any sense. I did an FLE yesterday where a drift zone required 1.3M points. It was easy to do with 6 people at the event. A week earlier I did the same FLE with one other person and we didn’t get past that same round because 1.3M points was too far out of reach for two players. This is some of the reason why players go “idle” or just leave an event. People are just being smart to not show up for the difficult FLEs – their motivations are reflected by the saying, “Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me.”

At a minimum, Forzathon Live needs to be reworked so that it can be completed by a single player playing solo, and then scaled upward for additional participants. I say this because there’s going to be a time when FH5 gets released that some players will still be playing FH4 (or will want to go back to play it again). The further FH5 moves along post-release, the fewer the number of people will be available for FH4 FLEs. It will end up becoming a pointless piece of code running in the background. The Forzathon Live blimp will just continue to pop up all over the map with no one choosing to do it because it will be a very difficult chore to do alone.

Exactly my suspicion as well. A codebase for something as massive as FH4 would’ve required an experienced architect from the initial design stage. If planned with efficiency in mind, then modifications post-release shouldn’t take more than a day or two to implement. When I hear about the amount of effort to do such-and-such, it makes me fear that under the hood we’d find a giant bowl of spaghetti.

I agree. I can get stuck in a “#FORZATHON Live” alone. I’d like to be able to finish it.