Please help me understand how Horizon 5 ended up such an unmitigated disaster

[Jakeymate]

I’m no programmer, but I get the gist of how that works.

It’s very complicated, I get that.

Cyberpunk 2077 was a disaster of biblical proportions, but at least it was a new game.

But before 5, we had Horizon 4, with updates over almost 3 years making it better and better, and even at launch it had very few bugs that were gamebreakers. TBH, I’m not sure it had any.

So, they develop 5, which as far as I can tell, over 4, has a new map (very awesome btw), and accolades (an extension of the concept of the Legoland expansion), and ramps etc in the route creator.

And now, NOTHING works anymore.

Download and apply a tune setup? Crash half the time. That worked fine in 4.

Download and apply a livery? Crash half the time. That worked fine in 4.

Exit an event? Wait 10 times the normal time and MAYBE you’ll return to Freeroam, otherwise you’ll crash. HALF THE TIME! That worked fine in 4.

Route creator? Drivatars are so slow as to be pointless, not to mention numerous bugs that took something that worked fine in 4 and now doesn’t work at all.

You can’t manually select a time to beat in Rivals, 95% of the time. Oddly, here and there you can. That worked fine in 4.

Blueprints don’t show lap info and need testing AGAIN if you dare to breath anywhere near them. That worked fine in 4.

Change the type of car in a custom track Blueprint!!! Restest.

Change the weather in in a custom track Blueprint!!! Restest.

Change even the laps in a custom track Blueprint!!! Restest.

So, let’s stop there, because after a nightmare month, we all know the endless list of things that don’t work.

Would be faster to list the stuff the DOES work, because its a far shorter list

Back to my point.

How do you take game that worked just fine, change the map, add a FEW new features (lets be honest, and ignore the ‘masterpiece’ reviews), there’s not a lot added in the 3 years since 4 was released) and end up with something that’s only second to Cyberpunk 2077 in terms of an utter disaster?

Please enlighten me.

[Nursemorph]

I think it’s a combination of being forced to make the game work on older consoles as well as new ones (vastly differing processing speeds etc) and a new system in regards to how the servers and connections work (completely new).

Having said that, the game worked generally well at release apart from the network issues (there were niggly issues but that was the biggest issue)…just that whatever fixes they applied to improve the servers etc had unintended consequences.

[WiggyDiggyPoo]

Best guess there are multiple underlying issues that they have been unable to resolve that have carried forward into FH5, that plus the new features means theres a lot to go wrong that is doing. Also they can’t possibly have not known about all the other issues and have either just actively chosen to ignore them or worse did not test in the first place e.g. Accolades unlocking incorrectly

As an example I looked back at my old tickets for FH4, the long load times has been an issue with FH4 for at least year, but the fact the same issue is occurring in FH5 suggests under the hood there are bigger issues they have not dealt with. FH4 for me did have launch issues worse than FH5 (I was constantly disconnected online and the console would reset) but at least over time there was a gradual improvement in it’s performance. With FH5 the second big update has rendered the game unplayable for many and for everyone else we’re still struggling with the same issues from launch.

Lastly there just hasn’t been the same urgency I think to get this fixed. FH5 has been out 4 weeks now and has had 2 updates, FH4 in it’s first 4 weeks had 5 updates.