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Does it matter?

https://support.forzamot...1991068-FH4-Known-Issues

i HATE the jumps and speedzones , i don't understand how i'm suppose to have fun doing them, these the most anti fun activities i ever seen in a driving game...i hate how you need to complete them to get at least 50% completion, i wish these would be optional cause i would never touch them

Edited by user Saturday, October 12, 2019 3:08:15 AM(UTC)  | Reason: Not specified

They are worth a total of about 18%. You therefore don’t need to do them even to get the 80% mark.

[Mod Edit - thread merged - MM]

According to Xbox Live, 0.84% of active players have achieved 100% in any of the Series' Playlists

Yes, this is yet another rant on the Playlist.

Now we have metrics to evaluate it, as Playground kindly added an achievement for us to base our data upon. Under the assumption that all of these accounts are owned by different players (alts and smurfs are a thing on the Xbox, deal with it), FH4 had 4 million active players as of August, which is a lot, and 12 million players total. Among these 12 million, according to Xbox Live, 0.08% have the achievement for 100% in a single month, which is around 9,600 players in the world. Do the math for 4 million, assuming everyone who got this achievement has remained active until last August, and you reach 0.84% of active players who did 100% in any of the Series. Less than 1%!

This number will certainly increase, as there are many prolific achievement hunters on Xbox One. Currently there's less than 600 tracked people with this achievement on TrueAchievements, which is about 4% of their total (about 15000-16000 tracked players). 4% in a community known for achievement hunting. Chump change. But that's beside the point.

People don't care about the Playlist.

And, if people don't care about it, it's because they enjoy doing other stuff in the game. Achievements for winning all seasonal championships have been earned by more players, yes, but as soon as they get their shiny 50% car, they go back to doing the things they actually want to do in the game. There is an achievement for winning all the prizes in a series, and 0.68% of the player base has got it, which makes it 81,600 players. Too little in a game with 4 million active players.

Worse: we see cars locked behind Trials these days, which is unfair to Xbox One owners as they have to pay for online interaction. 8.84% of the player base has the achievement for beating a Trial (at least one of them), a little above 1 million players. But this achievement has existed ever since the game's release and the first Trial to give away an exclusive car was back in December with the Mosler MT900S as the prize. Even taking into account the active players, and assuming every single one of these players has been active throughout the game's lifespan, that's 75% of the active playerbase who don't have access to DLC content unless they search the AH for the cars and inevitably frustrate themselves at the current state of the AH, which is overrun by players using macros on their PCs.

At this point, I ask myself: what's the point of locking these cars? Is it for the challenge, the feeling of accomplishment, as some say? Certainly not so, as the Apollo has been awarded as a prize for one of the hardest Trials in the game, but has been made available in the Forzathon Shop twice now. Grinding Forzathon Live to rack up FP is one of the least fulfilling things this game has to offer. No Playground Games have awarded newly released cars during the time we had the Playlist, and these are pretty challenging and can go either way. Ranked placement in Leagues doesn't offer newly released cars either. Seasonal championships with cars as prizes have had their minimum difficulty toned down to Highly Skilled down from Expert months ago. The idea of "working for your rewards" is a badly-made excuse.

In light of such data and facts, my only conclusion is the team is so much enamoured with the features it tries to bring to the game that the people in it completely fail to realize people would probably keep coming back to FH4 if the cars were properly free. As in, update arrives, you get the cars in a permanent state (as in FM7 and Gran Turismo), and that's it. People play this game for the great things it offers, like the graphics and the gameplay.

Sadly, the Playlist is not one of them. The team does not accept that people have different goals, different uses for the game. I wonder why the forums and Discord are treated as a "small community" when it comes to criticism, but significant enough when they offer praise?

The time spent on coming up with ways to lock cars behind events could've been redirected to ensuring the newly-added content is glitch-free. Every other new addition to the game is bugged in some way. Some cars are paid content and have been bugged since day one.

tl;dr Do your magic with the game world and the physics, and let us take care of how we want to have our fun. This is not 1999 anymore. Gran Turismo-style grinds are boring. Get over it.

Edited by user Friday, October 18, 2019 6:51:56 AM(UTC)  | Reason: Not specified

Nice wall. It also says only 79.93% of players arrived at the festival. And that only 54.14% of players bought a car from the auto show. I don’t think the percentage on Xbox Live is anything to base your “data and facts” off of.

Xbox achievement statistics are not very informative imho. There are games which immediatly start with a prologue (so no way to avoid it) and the achievements say ~60% of the playerbase completed the prologue. ~40% of the players didn't finish a 15 minutes prologue?
I wouldn't rate the success or failure of a game feature based on achievements statistics. T10/PG have their ways to collect more reliable information about feature/mode usage, most used cars/car classes and so on.

It is not possible until the end of the current series to get the "encore" achievement. First, the achievement is new and secondly, the playlist was until recently bugged. So it was not possible to get the achievement. Also, there was no reason to end the playlist 100% when you get all the rewards with 80%. A lot of people play the playlist every week.

It's what we have.

Unless the devs disclose the numbers themselves. They said on screen that Seasonal Playground Games is "popular". Prove it, then.

One thing I agree with you on is how possibly drift statistics misrepresent its prevalence in the game. Drift PR Stunts have less completion rate than Road Racing but there's a very large number of people engaged in drifting activities around the map. You don't have to complete the full Drift Zone set to enjoy drifting.



Believe it or not but playing a game for 10 minutes then dropping it for later is a thing. I'm definitely not surprised to see that ~60% of players made it to the end of the tutorial, for example, and that takes much more time.

In my account you'll find I ran GTAIV once, IIRC I have zero achievements in that, but I misclicked on the tile. There's many reasons why players could run prologues without finishing them.

If Xbox Live's percentages are wrong then the feature (percentage of players who got it) is useless. A sizable amount of people on the Xbox tend to care about their achievements. Imagine being one of 10,000 to hold an achievement only for you to find out one day that the numbers are much bigger. Not nice.



If you got 100% in previous Series you'll have it already. I have all of the achievements for past efforts, including the one for earning all bonus prizes, which I did last month (prior to the update, then).

Edited by user Friday, October 18, 2019 12:55:48 AM(UTC)  | Reason: Not specified

Fact is definitely that the playlist is very popular. But almost nobody likes to play the playground games. Therefore, this achievement is a bad example and it distorts the reality.

Based on what?

I think the encore achievement might still be bugged for some including myself, as I have 100% on the previous season, and I have done absolutely everything for it, I made absolutely sure. However despite numerous console restarts, cache clearing, etc. It will not pop for me. I should get 100% for this season too so I'm hoping it will finally pop!

Players would do like time travelers, crackers, whatever you wanna call them. They download the update, get their filthy hands on the ID. R like 3 seasons in advance, run up and down the Needle Climb until they get bored and stop playing until the next update.





I have more #Forzathon Points than I could possibly need, as their only use I have for them is buying the occasional article of clothing I don't already have on the #Forzathon Shop.



When I play the Playlist what I do is not "grinding." If anything the Playlist plays more like the opposite of grinding, the so-called "frictionless gaming" in which I don't have to ever look back and redo anything.

I play one Ranked Free For All Online Adventure once a lunar month.
I play Rivals once a lunar month.
I play the Trial once a week.
I play the PGG once a week.
I play each of the single player Championships once a week.
I attempt each of the PR Stunts once a week.
I do the Weekly #Forzathon challenges once a week.
I do the Showcase Remix twice a lunar month.
I do the Weekly #Forzathon challenges once a day, usually while busy doing something else with this game.

A couple of hours on Thursday and I'm at 94% for the rest of the week, where's the grinding? I keep hearing of this game called "Forza Horizon 4" and its terrible grinding, but I have 100%'d everything on the Playlists since they first came in Series 7, and never felt any meaningful friction. I used to play with random players in the case of the multiplayer events until two Trials ago.

The only times there was any honest to God proper grinding in this game for me was when I got from rank 12 to 2530 Online Adventure points in FFA, before the update that made this easier came and bumped up everyone's ranks, or when I was smashing tables in Brickchester before an update made the definition of "table" more inclusive, or when I was searching for exclusives to complete my collection with on the Auction House... before an update introduced the Playlist.

I'm so far deep into the endgame, with Ultimate Edition, all the achievements, a completed Star Card, and all the cars save for the Focus PO, that the Playlist and custom Blueprints is all I've got left that would keep me playing.

Great, now instead of 9,600 people we have, say, 12,000. Big difference.

As I said many times before, nobody is forced to do anything. And I like the idea that players who play this game on a regular basis get rewards that others who just bought to dip into it and never touch it again, won't get.

Edited by user Friday, October 18, 2019 1:23:32 AM(UTC)  | Reason: Not specified

I can not give you specific numbers. this is based on experience from mixer streams. 90% of all streamer are always very hot on the playlist on Thursday. Playground games are very unpopular nobody likes. But with the rest, there is virtually no one who says he does not like it.

See, no. You can’t just change the number because you believe that’s how far it’s off by. It could be, and probably is, a huge underestimate. You’re basing your numbers off of hypothetically low numbers. If the playlist wasn’t doing good, they would’ve gotten rid of it. I’ll bet they have precise ways of seeing who’s actually partaking in it, and it’s more than likely a lot of players. Until you can get an accurate number, they have nothing to “prove”.

I'm a big fan of the Festival Playlist as I like the variety it offers and something to work through each week, I'm normally not that fussed about the most of the cars you unlock either. I don't have the achievement though because I can't stand Playground games which I think is just broken with the current implementation so each season I do all the tasks apart from PG Games. This season I have done PG Games to get the 100% for the achievement and my opinion of it hasn't changed, teams are often badly unbalanced but each session is won or lost in the first thirty seconds as someone will quit which will cause the rest of the team to quit. For this season unusually the opening round felt fairly balanced although our team won so on the second round three people had already quit which meant the game was over at that point.

You play Trial and PGG once. But that's you, right? Lots of people have difficulty winning Trial and PGG.

I remember when there was still a prize for 100% where I spent 2 hours trying to win a PGG. Not my specialty, I admit. And the reason I'm not good at it is because I couldn't care less about it. Modes like this one are supposed to be recreational, not competitive. FH4 is still advertised as a racing game not a "bumper car" game.

I even gave up on last Winter's Trial because I didn't get a good team. I wasn't at the best of my ability either but my teammates were even worse. I spent the better part of 2 hours on this failed attempt. It's 2 hours that busy people don't have. Doing RL work or winning a Trial in a videogame, I know what will look better on my RL resume.

One year into the game's life, if you're still playing, it's because you enjoy the game regardless. People who enjoy the game won't leave out of boredom, they're the really dedicated people. It's my situation. You'll keep doing whatever you want in the game, whether it's racing, drifting, Ranked Adventure, painting, even PGG. One of my most raced new cars is the Ranger Raptor, the only post-DLC car that isn't an exclusive. And it's alright to leave during Winter and come back in Spring if you don't like it. Unfortunately there's the threat of missing out on content.

FH4 still has lots of players but the tight knit community, which benefits from the Playlist, doesn't look all that big to me, going by what I see on Discord. I'm all for incentives to bring people back into the game but when they amount to running events I could have created myself (save for custom routes), some of which I most likely would not (last season's Street Scene events for example), I might as well not have these additional events in the first place, as they have no impact in my enjoyment of the game save for the rewards (and in some instances they may have negative impact!).

You tell me earning enough cash for multimillion cars, trying to compete with automated macros in the AH, restarting Trial until you get a good team, etc. isn't grinding? Spending time to reach even 50% on the Playlist isn't grinding? Surely enough 50% takes 2 hours at most but it still takes time, and it still involves doing boring things such as racking up a million score in a Lamborghini, or running events you may not want to run, such as the Community Championships where the devs pick routes and randomly add unintended conditions that ruin the events themselves (recent complaint on Discord).

I know people who have difficulty with the offline Seasonals, which I usually complete on my first try. Restarts usually involve trying to achieve 100% wins on a higher difficulty than required. So yes, there's a big fluctuation in player skill in this game and the more invested ones like you and me are a minority. This is in a game where you can rewind your way to victory and it'll still count, even on Unbeatable. Can't do that online obviously.

I apologize for my tone if it sounds aggressive. It's not directed at you. But I really find all this stuff frustrating, which is why I complain.

I made myself a sizable list of very expensive, non-exclusive cars I didn't yet have, the total worth was 188.65 million credits if I was to buy them new. A staggering amount, yes. Whenever I would win one in a Wheelspin, or bought one for #Forzathon Points, or one in the Auction House, I'd scratch it off the list. In the end spent but a small fraction of what I expected. I recall buying more than one 10m car for just over 1m credits or something. In this shopping spree I only bought 3 brand new cars from the Autoshow in total.

People treating FH4 as a capitalism simulator invest more on hypercars, not ye olden classics. All my credits expenses are now directed towards upgrades. Mostly rims.



That's what the Playlist is for. It gives you exclusive cars as rewards even for single player stuff. If you don't like them, or don't need them, you sell them on the Auction House in a different season to get the credits you need for the above multimillion cars. It was way worse when all we had was the #Forzathon Shop and little else. It meant #Forzathon Live, Weeklies and Dailies. You don't like #Forzathon Live, do you? Do you want to go back to those days?



Across entire months I played a Trial twice only two times. I think I replayed only the Apollo and Lamborghini ones. I completely forgot when was the third-to-last time I had to replay a Trial, just to give you an idea of how emotionally impacted I was by the alleged "grind."



Uhhh... no? Bro I play the game and get new cars for it. New, free freaking cars, quick and painless, no sweat. The horror!

My motto is not: "No pain, no gain.", it's: "No pain, all gain."



I normally play with the radio off and Streamer Mode on, but I switch Timeless on just for those occasions, the Skill Song shows up after the DJ is done with his spiel, the multiplier goes to x10 so you need a 100,000 chain, and of course I have enough points to get all the possible masteries on the designated Weekly Challenge car. It's very quick, I just get a drift tune, hit destructible objects sideways left and right around the Greendale Aerodrome Drag Strip. If for whichever reason I'm low on points for the Car Masteries, I can do the same exact thing with my BMW M6 FE, my designated skill car.



Dude I won't know if the individual race or overall event is the best thing ever or if it sucks horribly unless I play it first. That's kind of the point of custom routes in general. And once I'm done, if I didn't like it, I'll never have to do it again. Never!

When you do a blind playthrough of a videogame, like a platformer or shooter, not knowing what you're getting yourself into, and you complete the first level for the first time, is it grinding? Grinding is something else.



I know there are people in this forum and elsewhere that would rather pay with cash than play the game. I for one have the diametrically opposite mindset.

I think you're either playing in an inefficient manner, or you're just burned out with this game.

Edited by user Friday, October 18, 2019 5:09:00 AM(UTC)  | Reason: Not specified

They may be to YOU, but not to others.
That's why people still play Gran Turismo 2, the game you're referencing.
Oh, wait, this is almost like saying, "This is not 1991 anymore, 2D-Style Platformers are boring."

If they come into Seasonal PGG with a Stock Car (like last week the Hoonigan Bel Air), yes, they will have a difficult time in Seasonal PGG.
If they come in with a Tuned Car, they didn't have as much of a difficult time winning Seasonal PGG, normally the team with the most top-end cars won
That is my Experience from playing more than 20 Rounds of Seasonal PGG over the last 2 Weeks.

50% on the Playlist is not Grinding, not this late into the game's lifespan. It literally takes an Hour at most, and that Hour is Summer, because of the requali for Ranked and Rivals
You wanna know what's Grinding, because 50% isn't Grinding.

Racing for 2 hours and 45 minutes to win a Ford GT Race Car

Racing for 4 Hours to win a RX-7 Race Car

Racing for 9 Hours to win a Nissan Skyline GT-R Race Car

Racing for 24 Hours to win a Le Mans Race Car

Racing for 24 Hours to win a Car, you can buy from the Dealership

---

For some people rackng up 1 Million points in a Lambo is fun, for others (You) it's boring.
And others make a Living out of that, so what, NOTHING has ever been locked behind the Weekly, the Weekly is just a side activity.
There's an old saying that applies here "If you don't like it, don't play it".

I have a question about the festival playlist?Is there anyway you can play the older festival playlists If i just bought the game????

No