Let me start off with this disclaimer. I’m an “older” gamer I suppose at 40. I’ve been a racing game enthusiast since Excite Bike for God sake. My age only influences a small portion of my judgement about Forza 7 but, it’s worth noting for anyone who reads this. I’d consider myself a semi-serious racer. After all I did construct my own cockpit from scratch for a Thrustmaster Wheel. Anyone who purchased a $500.00 wheel has to be considered semi-serious right?
I have a dedicated group of friends who all race Forza EVERY Tuesday Night dating back as far as the first edition of this game. At least Tuesday is our “official” Race Night. Most of us get on more throughout the week and often spend our Sunday afternoons testing and tuning cars in preparation. This brings me to my first problem. The Leader Board is a disaster. Unless I’m doing this wrong, I have not found a way to view fastest lap times by Class (Homologated or not). The Leader Boards just post fastest lap per-track period. So basically every track has thousands of X and P class cars and if I’m testing and tuning something down in C class, how does that help me? It doesn’t. Personally I used the Leader Boards for a knowledge base. “How Fast is Fast for this track?” It has been a vital tool for tuning cars. As it stands now I don’t know if my build is fast or garbage. Going into our Race Night we could all be sure to at least have a car that was competitive for the class with one another in the past. Now we just show up and roll the dice. We could get blown out of the water or it could be a competitive race…who knows?
This is where my age plays a small role. I have nothing against the public lobbies. I love all of you in the Forza Community. But we as a group (Tuesday Knights) run Private Match exclusively. We have 10-12 racers we don’t really need to go into public matches to have a decent sized lobby. It’s no offense to anyone but, it allows us to police our lobbies too. How often do you think we have wreckers in our lobbies? We don’t. The Leader Boards for me were my way of connecting with the community. Even though I don’t play in public matches I still see the times you guys post and post a few of my own. I’m sure it’s set up how it is because of the Homologate thing so I’ll move on to that.
The split system of Class and Homologated Division is terrible. I know, I know, there have been tons of post about this. I’ll move through it as quick as I can. I’ve read a few post that are champions of the new system. Something about “level playing field” blah blah blah. I just don’t see it. This goes back to the Leader Boards sort of. I realize there was a problem with “Leader Board Cars” and having one particular vehicle dominate a class. Is the Homologation suppose to fix that? Because I don’t think it’s going to. The underlining problem is a broken car. To me it seems like we’ve thrown the baby out with the bath water here. Personally I always tried to prove the Leader Boards wrong. I build old junk Muscle Cars and whacky old crap anyway. I made it a point to try and post fast times with ANYTHING BUT the Leader Board Cars. I guess you guys who play in public matches had more of a problem with everyone driving the same car than my group does. Again, I just don’t see how this is ever going to work having both systems in place. Ultimately someone will find the glitched ass broken car that will Homologate it’s way to dominate everyone else. It’s confusing, and most of all it’s limiting. I understand that this game can’t exactly simulate the real world. I have a fair bit of real life experience with Hot Rods, Cars, and Motorcycles. The PI system although exploitable (like anything else) offered the most flexibility versus fairness.
[Mod edit - WSD - Profanity and alluding to profanity is against the ToS}
Back to transactions… I paid for the Deluxe Version of this game. I did that because I love the series and I love racing. I’m disappointed in this outing. Really and truly I am. I would have expected more tracks (real life tracks), UI improvement versus a Skinner Box testing facility, and meaningful features over flashy collectibles. Sadly my group may be moving on from Froza.