Unicorns are not a new thing to Forza. I missed the 360 era but I know there were many. Furthermore, since gaming was different (read: better) back then, it was even possible to unlock the unicorns by yourself (IIRC in FM4 there’s a reward for doing Le Mans for 24h straight).
Fast forward to 2016 which is when FH3 was released and we begin to see a dramatic increase in the number of exclusive cars tied to times events. Forzathon was a new feature to FH3, appreciated by many, even though most of them involved performing extremely grindy tasks to earn menial rewards and the odd exclusive car. In FH3 the Auction House was brought back as well and Playground saw it fit to limit the player’s ability to price their cars on their own, offering the chance to unlock unlimited freedom (up to 20 million CR) should you reach Legendary tuner and/or painter status. The system was obviously exploited by dishonorable players who effectively founded a cartel within the game and locked exclusive cars out of the market, unless you showed up with 20 million CR obtained by whatever means (most of the time in violation of the Xbox Live TOS).
When 2017 came and T10 released what could be called “Forza Horizon 3.5: Motorsport Expansion”, with a much different tone to the game compared to FM6 (I like the rock music but most don’t and it gets old fast), they really, REALLY upped the ante on the exclusive cars feature. The game shipped with Prize Crates which were likely to be involved in microtransactions containing said exclusive cars had the backlash against EA’s Star Wars: Battlefront II’s microtransaction system not happened. The poor reaction to the crates, even based on made up arguments, boosted by the VIP debacle, would undermine FM7’s commercial performance. The game also had a “Car Collection” menu resembling Forza’s very own version of a Pokédex, even with a full set of “Legendaries”.
In the following months T10 would try to tweak their exclusive cars system with mostly poor results, sometimes disastrous like the late offer of the 1932 Ford Coupe with bugged features in a February 2018 event (I think it was around that month), which was a previously locked car with bugs people couldn’t report because you can’t customize rentals. Forzathon itself was so badly coded, T10 moved validation to their own servers. Finally, in July 2018, T10 unlocked almost everything in the game, owing to our many requests that they did so. In November it was the crates’ time to say goodbye (good riddance!).
The next and latest game in the Forza franchise is Horizon 4 released September last year. It didn’t have the rocky launch FM7 did, save for the worse multiplayer modes and lack of custom time trials. But it did bring the exclusive cars feature up another notch. Forzathon would no longer reward you with cars outright, but give you “Forzathon Points” to be used in a new shop. The easiest way to earn these points was, and still is, to partake in Forzathon Live, which is an hourly, co-op version of those grindy events FH3 had, in real time. Moreover, there were quite a few cars exclusive to wheelspins, many of which having no special trait other than being exclusive.
The Legendary tuner/painter system and the Auction House were brought back almost unchanged from FH3, the only difference being a level bar, and it was the team’s desire, since Creative Director Ralph Fulton has said on stream prior to the game’s release that “we won’t be changing it since players need rewards for their efforts”. As a matter of fact, the team was also asked about the removal of the ability to sell duplicate wheelspin rewards back to the game and they replied with “not happening since we don’t want to give players an unfair advantage”. This policy on Playground’s part could be first seen when they inexplicably increased the price of wheelspins in the Forzathon Shop, which was difficult to understand since there was a lesser chance of winning good prizes with the availability of cosmetics among the possibilities.
The Auction House would go on to become an even bigger disaster than it was in FH3. What followed in the following months was a bunch of Legends earning their privileges by uploading easy designs and tunes (just some random, odd body color), while renowned creators who took their time to bring excellence, some of whom were even given a headstart by owning the game before everyone, were left behind. To make matters worse, the Fortune Island update added multiple paint groups to wheels but broke old designs in the process, making people quit as a result, as if the team wanted to say, “it’s not our problem, you should tweak and reupload your stuff”. Thing is, there were people who already had hundreds of designs in their Storefront, all of which broken after the update. Activity in the Paint Booth dwindled as a consequence thought there’s still good content coming.
Now we had exclusives being sold at 20 million once again by people who didn’t deserve their status, making the Auction House unusable. What’s more, the inability to disable crossplay in FH4 has let PC hackers run rampant and snatch all the cars with a myriad of tools outside Microsoft’s control and the season system enabled people to tweak the in-game clock to receive their exclusive cars early, in a repeat of what used to happen in the Pokémon games with day/night and season cycles. Regular players who wanted to ensure their cars didn’t fall into the hands of scammers didn’t have a proper buy/sale system to fall back to, so they had to risk a rudimentary trade by private messaging.
Playground’s “magna opus” when it comes to car restriction was yet to come, though. In March, in a shameless attempt to make players spend more (online) time in the game, the Festival Playlist was created, offering rewards for doing daily and/or weekly tasks. 50% completion was possible without online interaction and took the best part of two hours at the most. The juicier prizes, however, were locked behind 100% completion (yes, ONE HUNDRED!) and required, among other things, taking part in The Trial, qualifying for Online Adventure (which was still a mess when Playlist was first introduced), doing every single daily Forzathon event and, worst of all, winning a Playground Games event in co-op. The backlash was such that Playground had to back off and lowered max completion to 80% as well as moving many of the exclusive cars to the 50% tier, which wouldn’t be enough next to what the devs would do in the upcoming months.
So, exclusive cars became “easier” to obtain, but, with the end of the Car Pass, instead of releasing another couple DLC packs to round off the car list, Playground decided to bring T10’s “Spotlight Car” feature to FH4, with a twist: cars newly introduced to the game would be free as in FM7, but locked behind timed events (unlike in FM7). Usually, the new car was the reward for 50% Playlist completion, which took winning many unnecessary challenges (some of which repeats from championships we had in the first couple weeks after the game’s release) and filling up our garages with redundant cars we couldn’t, or wouldn’t, sell. But there were two instances were Playground blatantly backed off on their “ok guys, you’re right, 100% was too much” stance, which was when the Apollo IE and now the Jeep Wrangler DeBerti Design were exclusively available by winning The Trial.
Indeed, 50% could be achieved without online gameplay but it wouldn’t be enough if you wanted these cars… In addition to that, you needed The Trial. And the first one was a real piece of work: Hypercars on rainy Street Scene events! Now we have a Cross Country one in which the last event is none other than The Titan… And the Apollo is available outside The Trial, but at an inexplicable cost of 2,000 Forzathon Points when other exclusives cost less than a third of that.
Now, I ask: if Forza Horizon 4 is such a commercial and critical success, why are you guys trying to dictate when and how we should play? Why so much emphasis on stalling us and making us collect stuff?
Right now I feel as if playing Pokéforza. We even have “Legendaries” in the game, and, as in FM7, a Pokédex. FH4’s version of the Car Collection menu is, in fact, further closer to a Pokédex to FM7’s variant since it tells you how to get the cars (a feature in Pokémon’s Pokédex since the very first pair of games). I can bring my car friends with me in my journey to become Horizon Master and grow their abilities with my skill points (which made FE cars redundant) along the way, all while meeting new friends such as Rebecca, Alex and Jaimin. What happened to the driving experience? Engine sounds took a step backwards, racing is broken with many OP cars (some of which cleverly placed as unicorns by the team), the PI system still favors AWD cars and makes drivetrain swaps the unofficial assist in the game, houses were a lame addition next to what other games have, even the music has become worse (not that the ESRB helped with that). I like that the team brought back old features like Custom Rivals, but this was 9 months after the game’s release. Elimination of Freeroam Rush took less but still, many people had left by then.
The exclusive cars system hurts the game’s content. In fact, I wonder if the 1932 Ford Coupe’s situation in FM7 was the final straw in the back T10 needed to decide to unlock all the exclusive cars in the game. We have locked cars shipped with bugs that shouldn’t be there, given they’re “special”. The Mercedes AMG GT 4-door does not have Race suspension yet. The Apollo has a paint bug in the wheel center caps (which sucks because the stock color is a horrid orange). The Koenigsegg CCX has a poorly made shifting animation and comes fitted with a positive displacement supercharger, which is wrong since the real car comes with centrifugal superchargers, which has an impact on its sound. The Jeep Wrangler DD is locked behind The Trial but isn’t even distinct enough from the Trailcat to earn its exclusive status. Not really the same but even the Lego DLC has its issues regarding exclusive cars, with the rumored 1974 911 Turbo coming to the game after most people don’t even care anymore.
There’s so much focus on increasing gaming time among the player base by doing boring and/or frustrating events and not enough is done to fix the game’s flaws, or even improve on existing features. No new pricing system will save the current Auction House from the failure it has become. Blueprint does not let us set a custom PI limit, which would ease our frustration with the broken PI system. Heck, we can’t even edit Blueprints without reaching the max limit. Bugs are ignored (I sent a ticket regarding the lack of Race suspension for certain cars and, months later, they remain unfixed). Expansions are useless past completion since their online activities are limited and the seasonals repeat over the months. Even the clothing is useless (emotes are useless by default). OP cars aren’t toned down despite the game having a competitive online mode with a ranked ladder. Cars cost an absurd price in the Forzathon Shop for no reason whatsoever. Wheelspins hurt more than help once you start getting duplicates of cheap cars. Talked about (and highly anticipated) features like painting brake calipers are abandoned in favor of stuff like “Star Cards” (which were broken when they first came out BTW).
Playground, we want to play this game because it’s good, not because we have to. I know I could just give up on collecting the cars but I drive a lot of stuff in the game and I like a variety of vehicles (even the trucks). You guys have nailed the gameplay and the graphics but the rest is increasingly frustrating to deal with, I’m sorry. If I didn’t have a Game Pass Ultimate sub, I wouldn’t get Ultimate Edition the next time. Locking the Apollo was on a level of stupidity almost equal to T10’s when they locked the 991.1 GT3 RS in FM7.
In fact, locking stuff doesn’t help anything but number ratings.
