Skill Headache

Forza Horizon Forza Horizon 4 FH4 Discussion
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So, you updated the game, loads of skill points disappeared, then you ‘fixed’ it by giving us back the missing skill points, and 10 Super Wheelspins, as compensation.
Now the game has a limit of 999 skill points, and untill i get down to 999 again, the skill points i make from driving go down the drain. I my case, i got ~20.000 skill points back.
I would have to spend 19.000 skill points, and i did a bit of math, the way i see it, i have 2 options.
Option 1: Spend, Spend, Spend…
Takes me ~2 min to find, and fully upgrade a car, at a cost of ~100 skill points. 190 x 2 min = 380 min, or 6 hours+ - As i dont recieve a stady paycheck from Turn10, this will NOT happen.
Option 2: Drain Drain, Drain.
Simply use points here and there, at some point i will reach 999 again. BUT WAIT… ive been playing for 7-8 months now, and know that on a daily average i use to get ~50-150 skill points, so every day i can say goodbye to that.
I short, the SNAFU with the skill points, will either cost me 6 hours, or thousands of skill points, but hey i recieved the 10 SUPER DUPER Wheelspins, Lucky me, right?

I would claim, that your SNAFU, is now our headache, Thanks!

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They could have done better. The game still needs a button to apply multiple skills to a car at once, also an indication of how many skills a car has added to it in the garage.

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From a technical perspective, and from a customer service perspective, I have a hard time imagining how they could have done this any better. Admittedly, I only had something like 3000+ skill points to distribute, so I wasn’t as hard hit as others. And I was able to apply them all and distribute them strategically, and got it mostly done in one evening.

Applying them for us probably couldn’t be done because of the technical limitations of not necessarily knowing exactly where those skillpoints came from, and the uncertainty of being able to safely edit a save state, especially when that user could come online at any moment and start trying to read it. Giving them back to us was probably the best option.

Creating a button to apply all or apply multiple skill points would require testing, and probably couldn’t have been rolled out quickly. I don’t know if it was a requested feature before, but if it’s something they’re looking at now, it’s probably going to take days or weeks to develop. Getting people back into their game as quickly as possible was probably the priority over adding new features.

Not to mention that the feature would only be most usable as a result of this issue. For general use, it’s limited. How do you handle situations where a player doesn’t have enough points to fill a skill tree? Do you disable the option? Do you give it to them, and fill from the bottom up? Does that include the 25 SP “extra life” perk, which is the most expensive, but on the bottom row? These are all use cases that need to be considered before implementing such a feature.

Yes, it’s annoying, and it shouldn’t have happened, and it’s frustrating to have to redistribute our points one at a time. But, they got it fixed pretty quick. We got our points back, we can redistribute them strategically, in a way that we can benefit from if we plan it out, and as an added bonus, we got 10 free super wheelspins.

I’ve had worse bugs take longer to fix in far more critical applications than a dumb video game, and had customers loose more important data that we couldn’t recover. I’d consider myself lucky if I could pull off a fix like this, that not only restores service, but is potentially a blessing in disguise for a large number of users.

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Was this issue not created due to PG removing “hacked/illegal” cars from players garages?

Those very same “hacked/illegal” cars that admittedly, players shouldn’t have had, but most of which were bought from someone else for cr20,000,000?

So the buyers of those “hacked/illegal” cars had them removed from their garage? That’s fair enough?

The buyers also lost the cr20,000,000 they paid as well as all the skill points from all the cars in their garage? I suppose that could be fair enough as a punishment/slap on the wrist.

But those of us who took no part in the obtaining/buying of these b]“hacked/illegal”** cars also lost out big time!

I get that it was unforeseen and that PG did their level best to recompense those that unfairly lost those skill points and for that I am grateful., but I have a question

That question is;
What happened to the “hackers”?

Those who originally obtained these cars and who’s name is listed as the “Original Owner” and not those that just “Flipped” the cars.

Some of the “Original Owners” went on to sell those “hacked/illegal” cars in the AH (multiples in some cases, I bet) for cr20,000,000 a time and amassed maximum cr999.999,999 relatively quickly.

Those same players probably don’t even play the game any more, so, this issue won’t affect them anyway.

As it is, the “Original Owners” ultimately caused this huge issue for most players and have cost those affected a lot of stress, inconvenience, wasted time etc etc (it took me personally a full week to re-apply 13,000 of the 29,000 skill points I had returned) and has spoiled my enjoyment of the game to the point I cannot be bothered with it any more.

What actually happened to the “hackers”?

Were they permanently banned?

If not, why not?

IMHO, they should be permanently banned as if it wasn’t for their greed and need to “Look Cool” or “Look Clever”, by having seemingly “Unobtainable” cars, this issue would not have occurred in the first place.

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Why did PG list the cars in the Auction in the first place?

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To entrap the hackers im guessing
Just like they did in a previous forza to catch credits hackers

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To entrap the hackers im guessing
Just like they did in a previous forza to catch credits hackers

[/quote]

Yeah, right and then delete them from normal users :smiley: Makes sense…

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Yeah, right and then delete them from normal users :smiley: Makes sense…

[/quote]

Well you messed that up

Normal users wouldn’t have bought them to begin
Only those that knew about would have been wasting the 20 million to get them
Touch hacked stuff expect to get burnt

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I have mentioned this on so many occasions, since around 6+ month ago at a guess. Mainly due to the baked-in waste of time that is the 5-second skill point animation that prevents you moving to the next until the red border is visible again. That really needs to go, but would have been appreciated before now and having to sit through 13,000 of those, AKA 18 hours. That’s just the time cost of the animations and doesn’t include browsing for the cars, navigating menus and associated loading times.

I’ve completed my application of 13,000 of my 29,000 skill points to 700+ cars now though and it has literally sickened me having to go through this in bulk and had the effect that I cannot be bothered with the playing of the game now. This is a shame as I enjoyed playing every single day since pre-release (except for one day when I was away from home).

Now just flip the odd car in the AH and complete the weekly playlist.

Looks like I’m about done!:frowning:

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I think just removing the 999 cap would have been the easiest. They had to allow more than that for the refund anyways, why force folks to have to sit there and spend hours redistributing them. Just let us continue to get more and spend them at our leisure.

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None of it is hard to do, and they had 4 weeks, not 1 week. I’m a games designer, and programmer, I know how easy it is. I never said anything about adding the skills back to the cars automatically.

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You didn’t say anything about adding the skills back, but others have, and I’m just saying, I can see why that probably wasn’t an option.

I have a background in programming, though I haven’t done it much in a few years. I work in support for an enterprise server suite, and deal with developers all the time. I don’t know what kind of games you work on, but I’m sure you’re aware, every work environment, every company, every Q&A process is different. And adding a UI feature might seem simple conceptually, but even something simple can introduce uncertain behaviour, and needs time to be tested. And the more complicated the thingamabob, the more likely that is. Which I’m sure they’d very much want to avoid while dealing with the fallout from this bug in the first place.

They said they’d have a fix in 4 weeks, but were able to turn it around in less than 1, such as it was, which, sure, wasn’t perfect, but still pretty good. If you think you can do better, then send them your resume.

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Send them a resume to make a button click, that would be day one in a computing class. The program is pretty self contained, it should only go wrong in itself. It just needs to add up the tally of wheelspins to go outside of itself. So the bugs it can make shouldn’t go further than itself, and the wheelspin counter. If you garage is full should already be working with the wheelspin counter automatically.

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It was a lazy fix. If you know you can add it later you should tell it. I wanted that feature from start but didn’t care later… until that problem. It’s probably easy to implement, test and everything else and I didn’t need it immediately. If not you should tell it. Still it’s the most popular series for the whole console so it’s a big system seller.

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This is a very unoriginal thread.

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Like I wrote elsewhere. If you don’t have time, you can ask after first perk. Instead of a dumb question if you really really really want to buy that perk to ask if you want them all. No UI issues probably.

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Now’s your chance,
Check out Playground Games on Twitter @WeArePlayground
I believe yesterday they tweeted a Now Hiring.

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My God! You people are NEVER happy! You are aware they could have easily just said “screw you ungrateful lot” but no they did the best they could and I for one applaud them. I would LOVE to see those who reckon they could do a better job actually get out there and DO IT! But they won’t. They’re far too happy sitting bashing away at the keyboard, griping about nothing! Some will know I used to be something of a regular poster on these here boards but honestly is it any surprise I hardly come here any more when all I see is whining and blah blah?

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They broke the game, why should we be grateful? I’ve already been out there and worked for Activision, a bigger company.

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