I've been lucky enough to be invited to Playground Games' studio for an In-Person Study

Forza Horizon Forza Horizon 4 FH4 Discussion
21

The story goes that:

If you want to involve “hardcore fans”, I for one believe the best way is to discuss the locations of maps (i.e.: Where is Forza Horizon 5’s “mainland”?) and their expansions with them. Where are we going next? What do you have in mind? How do you select them? Is it set in stone?

Ask them:

  • Is there any possibility of a third expansion for Forza Horizon 4?
  • Will Forza Motorsport and Forza Horizon continue to be separate games?
  • What lessons did you learn from competitor games? Yes, you do have a competitition, give players reasons (plural) not to defect.
  • What is the new content going to be for THIS game, as in Forza Horizon 4, and during THIS year, as in the months after August 2019?

In this game and in the next, I want:

  • the option to mute all music from any and all parts of the game, all of it
  • single player championships
  • custom championships with custom routes
  • to preview the course of custom routes before I drive in them
  • to filter cars that are “New” in my garage
  • to see which cars have Offroad tires in my car selection menus in all seasons, not just Winter
  • a driving school to teach the young and the inexperienced how to drive, you could make it a story or something
  • something to be done with leaderboard cars like Boneshaker and Track-tor which obviously combine high power and high grip even in lower classes, unlike other cars that can be optimized for one but not the other, for example using data from Rivals to rebalance the cars
  • more items to be sold on the #Forzathon Shop each week
  • character customization items divorced from Wheelspins and their randomness, as in giving people the ability to buy what they want with credits or at least #Forzathon Points, directly in the character customization menu
    …and the obligatory “better engine sounds” request.
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22

This was excellent feedback. If you think of anything else, please give me a shout. Thanks

23

Longstanding outright bugs:

  • Rewind sometimes not working
  • Checkpoint flags sometimes not being displayed when doing rivals, causing you to miss a checkpoint because it wasn’t actually drawn on the screen
  • Game crashing
  • Scenery not being drawn, sections of the screen appearing blank
  • Convoys not working, e.g. often you’ll be in a convoy but not in the same session, and it doesn’t work if someone who isn’t the leader tells the game to join the leader’s session
  • (recently introduced rather than longstanding) Rivals leaderboards often appear empty when they aren’t. You have to keep going out and back in to get it to successfully retrieve the leaderboard data.

Longstanding glaring weaknesses in functionality:

  • Terrible rivals workflow, e.g. no way to see the leaderboard while in a rivals event
  • No way to see if a car can be bought from the autoshow or not when looking at duplicates to delete
  • Snow tyre icon should be extended to always show if a car has dirt/snow tyres or not
  • No indicator of perks that are applied to cars, again this would be helpful when deleting duplicates

Higher level issues:

  • As discussed above, the broken PI system, where some changes make a vehicle faster while reducing PI and vice versa
  • I hate the entire “economy” element of the game, the fact that there are cars only available by doing specific activities during specific time periods, other currencies such as forzathon points etc, the legendary status that incentivises people to spam worthless content (I saw an essentially unchanged stock livery with over 17k downloads, for example). I expect there is zero prospect of this ever changing, so I don’t anticipate ever buying another Forza game. Playing GTS has made me realise just how much I hate all this rubbish in Forza, and I now very much regret ever buying an Xbox. I mistakenly thought Forza was Xbox’s equivalent of GT, but it’s just not at all comparable.
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24

Already been. It was a good day and my thoughts on accessibility were taken on board with the dev i talked to taking notes and asking of other games that did it well. It was all very informative and you’ll get out as much as you put in.
Try and focus on a couple of things you would like to see improved, and really drill down on them. For example i spoke about having accessibility issues with certain aspects of control and i was asked how i’d do it. So i told them how it should work and how it could be translated to software in a way that makes sense.
If you have an idea for them game, you should provide as much detail as you can about how it affects you and what you’d like done to make it better.
They are all very nice and you will get to speak to some amazingly talented people! Make the most of it by asking those talented people the pertinent questions.
Try not to go in with a million questions as you won’t have time to address them all. If necessary take a list of issues and what you’d like addressed, and then talk about 2 or 3 of the most important ones with the devs, and then leave the list with them. Trust me, the time flies by and before you know it you’re leaving wishing you had said this or that!
And above all ENJOY!
It was a good day and i attended the same day as ForzaLiveryGuy, so it was good to put a face to his name!
I spoke mostly to “Dave” the dev, and he was just the nicest guy. Explaining why things are done a certain way, how things are changing in regards to development and what they will look at in regards to accessibility. They are an “Inclusive” dev which these days is almost a swear word in some corners of the internet! So it’s nice to know they consider people like me with additional needs!
Torben said it was humbling to know that Horizon was the bright spot in my days when i’m suffering and in pain. That was good to hear, because it means they really are listening and will do their best for us! They are trying to build a bridge between developers and community and for what it’s worth, i think that’s brillliant!

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25

I think the Forzathon Live events would be much, much more enjoyable if there was even just recognition of the player or players who earned the most points. It would improve participation and add to the fun by turning what eventually becomes a mundane task into a bit of a challenge.

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26

Lot to read man, to much to share in a few mn of discussion with those guys. As I am too dealing with software project I would try to give you a very very high level view.

Many complaints shared on this forum are related to existing features of the game while game team is focusing on delivering new things.

When you go to Agile Spirit, you manage things by priority and return on investment, which is mainly good in main cases but pushes to have MVP only and always unfinished stuff.

In FH4, there is not a single feature that does not comes with some major miss or inconsistency or bad user experience.

  • Being proposed to report my own tunes in creative hub
  • Impossibility to switch car/tune in rivals
  • Garage filling with duplicates
  • no way to join a ‘no collision’ championship without forcing the others aspect( class/type … )

Every feature is possibly a good thing but none will satisfy an intensive player because they are all MVPs.

27

Hi, thanks for the opportunity. I was invited too but had to decline due to my holiday arrangements.

After completing the usual Events, PR stunts, Stories etc. the only aspects of Horizon games that I play are:

1 Building, tuning and racing cars in Rivals mode.

2 Creating Vinyls and car liveries.

You can imagine my disappointment with the game at launch LOL.

The areas of the game requiring most improvement for me are:

A The hopeless Rivals menu system that:

  • Kicks you back to free roam after each event without even opportunity to view the leaderboard of the track you just raced.
  • Doesn’t allow you to change cars.
  • Doesn’t allow you to change a car build.
  • Doesn’t allow you to load a new setup.
  • Doesn’t indicate shared setups on the leaderboard.

PG could learn a lot from Turn 10 on how to present Rivals.

B The obvious lack of thought when balancing the performance of cars in each class. This has been mentioned by others. The Peel Trident is the worst example in D class.

C Accessibility of new cars. In my opinion, new cars should never be linked to Multiplayer activity. Many people like myself avoid Multiplayer like the plague, and even the reward of a car that I want will not entice me to participate.

D If PG insist on continuing with Wheel Spins, please make sure that all owned items are removed from the wheels. The amount of time wasted maintaining my garage to remove duplicate cars is huge. I recently had accumulated over 1500 spins which woud take me far too long to process.

I could continue this list for ever, but that is probably enough LOL.

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28

Well said, Moss. If I may, I’d like to add a couple things.

  1. When looking at your own tunes in the creative hub, there should be the same type of stats for each tune as there are for paints. The way it is now, I have to IN a specific car and go to a garage, then go to my tunes and hopefully be able to figure out which tune was downloaded or liked. Why is this a completely different system than paintjobs?

  2. If i have the ultimate edition, car pass and all that jazz, why are there many cars I don’t have access to? As Moss said, I’m not a multiplayer guy. I paid for the ultimate edition so I’d have all the content. There are many cars I’d like to have and at this point ALL should be at least purchasable from the auto show! I give you the '93 Mustang. Can’t buy it, I’ve had it sniped from the auction house twice. This should not be an issue if a car pass/ultimate edition was bought.

  3. GIFTING. Plain and simple. Gifting needs to come back. With this new auction sniping crap it impossible.to buy some cars. I had a friend try to sell me a '93 Mustang. He told me the second it was in the auction house, I immediately found it, hit buyout and lost the auction. Maybe 5 seconds elapsed!! That NEEDS addressed badly.

Gifting also makes holding tuning comps and giving prizes for such events much easier. Especially with that sniping business.

  1. Does there really need to be a new game worked on already? Why not just make this game better instead of reinventing the wheel. It took almost a year to get rivals, and as Moss mentioned, they’re still all wonky.
  • once you’re in rivals you should stay in rivals till you’re done, not thrown back into freeroam
  • time splits are helpful!
  • downloading tunes from leaderboards
  1. Anyone that knows me knows I won’t NOT ask about this,

Other than slicks being put in the game and static timing lights, is a drag suspension or upgrade path EVER going to make it I to these games? Motorsport put in that experimental drag, asked for feedback and NEVER looked back at the thread. 13 pages of feedback and it’s still exactly as it was when they released that ONE track, single player!

Anyway, that’s all Ive got for now. Good luck and have fun with the tour!

Zepp

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29

This 1 right here is a solid point. It makes no sense to have to jump through a bunch of hoops to see your tune downloads.

Agreed here as well. Locking items behind multiplayer has always been bad practice.

After reading other’s posts in here I’m noticing 2 things.

  1. Some people don’t play MP because it’s toxic.

  2. Others aren’t mentioning MP at all.

So does this mean those that aren’t mentioning it don’t play it? Or does it mean that they think it’s fine the way it is? I know there was a large majority of people who loathed the skill points system. I wonder if they think this new system is better. I refuse to even play it so now I’m a no MP racer as well when I played H2 & H3 MP almost every night.

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Yeah, multiplayer. Well, for me, it’s not been worth the trouble. I love playing together with my friends, people I know. I cant stand being forced online to do these seasonal events and championships. Flag rush during the seasonal playground makes me want to rage quit 30 seconds into it.

If there were private lobbies, things may be different. But just “being online” is not my idea of a good time.

31

Hello,

Could you please point the devs over to the Forza Horizon Project (ChickenWorm4902 | Flickr).

Many the cars in Forza have errors in the car model/bugs that are carried over from game to game and are never fixed. In addition while its awesome that Horizon continues to expand car customization there are plenty of bodykits that are simply missing pieces or have components that exist in the 360 versions and were never ported over to current gen.

All these items have been submitted to Forza Support, and posted on the forums with many more to come, but who knows if any of this gets through, your help in bringing up this matter would be greatly appreciated.

Here are some examples of my work:

960×540 93.3 KB

960×540 73.5 KB

960×540 70.5 KB

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32

Could You kindly ask them to STOP Locking Up Vehicles behind Multiplayer?

As Someone on the Autism Spectrum, I am mentally unable to cope with the Stress and Toxicity of Online Multiplayer, so when a Vehicle, IE, the Apollo IE or the Deberti Jeep, is locked up behind it, I am, basically, locked out of that vehicle until it returns as a Single Player Reward if it even does so (as the '65 GTO has been locked up behind MP Yet Again for its Return) , I also know seceral other People who have been locked out of Cars due to not being able to Cope with the Toxicity of Online Multiplayer due to various Learning Difficulties.

I would rather Playground STOPPED locking Me, and others like Me out of Cars, and made it so ALL Cars can be attained PURELY via Single Player Championships (or 50% Season/Series Completion) only in future, so, if You could bring the fact their Decision to lock Certain Cars up Behind MP is literally Locking People with learning Difficulties out of those Cars, I would be very Grateful.

I Personally suggest You Recommend that Online Multiplayer Rewards are limited to either very Large Cash Payouts, Cosmetics, or Super Wheelspins and not Exclusive Cars in Future.

Thank You.

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  1. It would be more reasonable if the seasonal events would serve as an opportunity to get the newly added cars without having to buy them. That, instead of the locking items behind multiplayer. What’s even more ridiculous is that some of the ‘exclusive vehicles’ are ordinary cars. Like, even with millions of credits, you can’t just buy a 2009 Opel Corsa unless someone puts it on the Auction House.

  2. Selling unwanted cars without the Auction House. It’s still impossible. I want to de-clutter my garage and the only option is to delete them; EVEN the cars which are worth millions.

  3. Selling duplicate cars won on Wheelspins, HOW could they remove this? It was in FH3!

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34

Find out what the deal is with the sound. I want to know why this isn’t mixed and engineered nearly as well as FH1 or FH2 were. ESPECIALLY in cockpit view. Very few cars actually feel like you’re inside a car when in cockpit view. The EQ curve and stereo image should match what a person actually hears and feels (bass) while inside these vehicles.

Furthermore, I’d like to know why I have to turn my volume to say 80dB to get any kind of low end out of say the 2002 Nissan R34 GT-R. A vast majority of the cars are like this. It’s like they’re engineered like an EDM tune. Loads of upper mids and very little bass 'n sub-bass. That is the WORST possible engineering decision that could have been made. Are they trying to make everyone that like to play this with the volume cranked up for immersion deaf?

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35

Tell them to bring these listed features that FH4 needs before EOL (20 months from now which is Feb 2021 i think)

  • Offline Drivatar Convoys
  • Custom Championships either with Horizon or Custom Route
  • Modern GT Racing cars from FH3
  • A third expansion/addition to the current map with Bigger Airfield, some Drift Touges and a better highway
  • Ability to add props, walls and jumps to Route Creator
  • Ability to edit existing Custom Routes
  • Bigger and Better Customization in every single car possible
  • Stop locking cars through Multiplayer.

Also if possible:

MAKE THE UNICORN CARS IN FH3 AVAILABLE IN THE AUTOSHOW!!

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36

Most of what you people requested in this thread have been brought up time and again in this forum. So I’m not sure what the point is by starting a new thread that does exactly the same thing…especially when there’s already a huge feature wish list thread.

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That is precisely why this thread is needed. Both titles are affected by many long-standing bugs that have been either plaguing, or mildly niggling, all of us for years.

For what it’s worth, I am a former IT professional, who, after leaving school at sixteen and becoming a messenger for a small business travel agency, worked his way up to a prominent role within the Business Technology Division of a leading global travel management company. During my time there I was technology lead on dozens of multinational projects, implementing complex suites of proprietary software applications for blue chip clients.

By the time I was forced to give up work in order to care for my disabled brother, my job title was EMEA Special Projects Manager. I was basically that bloke out of Tarantino’s Pulp Fiction, the Wolf my boss’s boss asked for when John Travolta had accidentally blown some poor kid’s brains all over their multi-million-pound project plan.

I tell you all this not to brag, but to give you an idea of my credentials, whilst assuring you that I thoroughly understand the challenges, both technical and commercial, that come with any major software implementation.

Every issue reported that is not basically just, ‘WAAAAH!’ will go onto a list. Which will then be prioritised, by us, the community, before PG or T10 get anywhere near it.

Trust me, this process gets results.

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38

Are u serious?? cool.

This is the first thing
https://forums.forza.net/turn10_postst156084_Ranked-adventures-need-to-change-somethings.aspx

Fix the game crash on launch after the lego update.
More car customizations
Fix the op cars, we need a better pi system.
Couple cars wishlist for future updates xD
Toyota supra, Toyota ft1, Royota corolla hatchback, Aston Martin Valkyrie, Mercedez SLR. Henesey f5, Koennigseeg, Koenigsegg jesko. Land Rover Range Rover Evoque, Bugatti Divo, Pininfarina battista, Tesla roadster…

New mode
Ranked online by car category, engine place or drivetrain type eg: muscle cars s2, s1, A. Super Gts s1, A, s2. Extreme track toys s1, s2, A. Retro classic RWD, Supercars Front engine, Mid engine, etc…

Change the setup and tyres before the race start.

Ban the cheaters on leadberboards.

More filter options in garage, like:, tuned cars, original cars, tuned by, duplicated cars, engine power.
More fav options like, fav s1 road class, fav s1 circuit, fav s1 cross country. Fav A dirt, fav A road class, etc…

More clothes to character customization.

Return to the live forzathon if you got disconnected, and return with the points earned.

Limit the auction house search for 10 or 15 seconds per search, this will prevent the bots.

Increase the limit of saved tunings.
Add an option to see all saved tuning from all cars.

Take out the lego cars from the normal world, for God’s sake.

39

Yup, deadly serious.

Cards on the table: I used to be an IT consultant, a fixer, who absolutely loved his job. But I had to give all that up when my brother became sick. For the past 11 years I’ve been looking after him, but now he’s much better, I might be able to take on a little bit of part-time consulting work.

I can’t say much about the today’s session yet, as I’m still waiting for some clarification on the NDAs I had to sign. What I can say is there was a frank exchange of views, and I explained to the team that the reasons I would like to help are twofold. First of all, I simply love these games, and I believe with closer liaison on some of these issue, together, we can make it even more awesome.

And, straight up, I’m not looking to get paid. Payment enough would be a nice letter of recommendation from Playground or Turn10 if I ever get round to pitching a project to EA to help them shape the hecc up.

In terms of helping people, mending relationships, and making things work better, that’s mana from heaven for me. Honestly, I’ve not had this much fun in years.

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40

@FreshGALNET

The “no more Mustangs” thing has me a bit perplexed. I went and looked at kudosprime.com and looked at the complete car list to see if indeed there are “too many” Mustangs. This is just a sample of what I found (I did count all variants including pre order in the case of Camaro).

Mustang - 13
911 - 13
M3/M4 - 7
Camaro - 7
Corvette - 9

Now while I agree having a balanced car list is ideal, it can be a bit skewed when it comes to how a company “names” it’s cars. Mustang has been a name plate for Ford Since 1964. While M3/M4 has only been around since 1989 (ish). One thing I don’t want to see is 3-4 variants of Lamborghini that are only a minute adjustment from it’s previous version. Brands like AMC, Pontiac, Buick, Plymouth and others have been restricted to 1-2 cars in most cases since FM4 or even earlier. What ever happened to the leaked Jensen Interceptor for FH3? Why are cars like the 1969 Corvair, 1988 Camaro IROC, and 1992 GMC Syclone no longer around? Where are some of the mid 70’s cars from Europe? Lotus Europa? Alfa Romeo Montreal (which is in FM7 right now).