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So basically the solution to our problem is Moby?!!!


😐

LOL, perhaps!

What a waste though, eh? I have a beautiful Ferrari, but underneath, it has almost no meat and potatoes!

Easy solution to your problem - don't play it.
Moving on, nothing to see here.

Centuries ago... there was a great Empire in the East.

"The divine holy land, with resources in abundance"...

Bro since it sounds like you only enjoying racing and want to completely skip anything fun or experimental... bro what if you played motorsport????? Insane revelation I know

no expansion 3

I haven't read every post in this thread, but a couple of points:

"Pay to progress" - I know what the OP means by this, but he didn't explain it very well. In FM7, without VIP, and without having a high reward tier, I think it only took me just over 100 hours of gameplay to have every car (apart from those you couldn't buy directly). In FH4, even though I'm now at reward tier 11, and even though I eventually cracked and bought the ultimate add-on, partly to get VIP, it took me over 300 hours of gameplay to have every car that can be directly bought. That is a big difference, and I agree with the OP that progress is painfully slow without VIP, which I believe is what he meant by pay to progress.

Wheel use in FH4 - I know exactly what he means because I felt the same way, I could use a wheel absolutely fine in literally every other driving game on the market, but with FH4 I couldn't keep the car on the road. With FM7 I did find some cars massively faster with a controller, but it seems to be mainly a tuning issue, so it's a problem if you have to drive a car in stock form and it's badly tuned. I don't know what changed, but I suddenly found myself able to use a wheel in FH4. It coincided with getting a better gaming monitor, so maybe it was a latency issue that affects FH4 particularly badly for some reason. All I can say for sure is I now seem to be able to do similar times with a wheel to what I used to do with a controller, faster in some cases, I've gone back and beaten an old rivals time that I set with a controller, using a wheel. I never like having the wheel on the screen, as it never exactly matches the real wheel in any game. E.g. here you can see the on-screen wheel lag in GT Sport:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X2oukQAP6vI

At least Forza gives you a view without the wheel, in GT Sport there is no cockpit view that doesn't have the wheel on screen.

I mostly find FH4's physics quite realistic with a wheel. One exception is that braking seems to have too much effect on preventing you from steering in FH4. GT Sport goes too far the other way, you can turn while braking to a crazy extent, I think reality is somewhere in between the two. But in terms of the way cars lose and re-gain grip, I feel FH4 is as "sim" as anything else, and better than most games. I've played FH, FM, GT Sport, Assetto Corsa, Assetto Corsa Competizione, Project Cars 2, F1 2017, F1 2019, Raceroom Racing Experience, rFactor2, and IMO FH and FM actually feel the most realistic in terms of how grip is lost and re-gained, it's a major reason I'm playing FH4 now. You only have to do a handbrake turn in FH4 and GTS, for example, to see a huge difference, with FH4 being markedly the more realistic of the two.

The main annoyance for me with FH4 is the time-locked content combined with the introduction of the playlist that increased the time it takes to unlock the time-gated content. But all the games I've mentioned have their issues. E.g. the attempts to improve the penalty system in GTS over the last few months have been laughably bad. For being "full" games, none of the others come close to FH4 and GTS, they all feel rather skeletal in comparison. And frankly, if you want to seriously compete over an FIA season in GTS it is far more of a timesuck than the FH4 playlist.

My biggest beef is with the cockpit view audio. It's just awful in most cases. I also have issues with the tendency of the devs to tune stock cars to be a lil too slidey. Even AWD cars. I've driven my fair share of RWD cars and it is nowhere near as easy to get them to slide out as this game makes them. FM7 had a similar issue. I blame it on the all the 'bois' wanting to drift all the time, and that's fine, but don't tune everything so that it can be done as easily as these games make it. Especially cars that are supposed to grip really well.

I don't think the location is terrible necessarily, but they didn't focus on the fun parts of the country. Why do we not have mountain runs through the highlands that aren't dirt? Where is the Isle of Man? It just doesn't feel as fun as H2. H2 had the coastal highway, lots of twists and turns, and a giant expressway with tunnels. It had everything ( except destructible environment and HDR ). I made a post on reddit the other day saying that Project Cars 2 - California Highway is more fun than the entire FH4 map, and that's just one sprint course, and I stand by that.

If the trend continues to bring in silly things like LEGO and Hotwheels as expansions, I will not continue to buy the ultimate version of the game. I don't want those, and I don't wish pay for them either. ESPECIALLY when the 'cars' they added have better sound than like 90% of the real cars in game. That LEGO Porsche sounds better than almost all the real Porsches. The recent addition of the Battle Royale nonsense is a big clue to where they wish to go with this, and I don't think I'll be getting the next one.

If rumor holds true and Motorsport 8 is similar to Horizon in that it's open world then I won't need to. We'll see what the future holds there. Shame there's no other title that offers what Horizon does. The Crew doesn't count. Its physics are awful.

I also give this a 12/20. Pretty disappointed even tho i'm still pretty addicted but that's only cos it's literally the only title that offers fairly immersive open world driving. :/

I find two things about FH4 terribly disappointing:

When I first started playing the game, it was awful. It was the least fun driving game I had ever played and I would recommend it to no on on that basis. You start with a small selection of rubbish cars. The Horizon festival starts you with almost no content, then just throws more at you in an unmanageable torrent. New players are locked out of the things that are fun with no real explanation of how to advance (the Season mechanic is truly obtuse to new players and I've had to explain it to ever family member who decided to play). This is a game that only sells on the basis of its brand, and is only played into the full game because of sunk cost fallacy.

Thankfully. Because its a damned fine game once the journey is made. I got FH4 as a gift and it sat barely played for about a year before out of sheer boredom I managed to accidentally put in enough hours to unlock a fun subset of cars, and enough content to understand what the hell the weekly seasons were about and the forzathons and so on. And from that moment on its been the only game iv'e played on my XBox.

The next thing is the sheer lack of attention to detail the developers have given the UI. There are like 3 conflicting menu systems depending on where you trigger the menu. Why can't we have one menu that is context aware that we are near a house or Festival and simply show the Garage and Auction house as extra tab options? Why MUST I have "Anna" and "Picture Mode" on my controller when it has all of 8 buttons, and I'd really have a full manual+clutch + telemetry and online mode setup? Why does a game that purports to be so much about tuning try so hard to hide the actual details of the upgrades and stock parts from the players? What is that front aero's downforce? What is this stock rims size? Does the F150 have rally or race suspension? Does this Drift car have race, drag or what tyres? Why are prices in the AH given artificial caps when players are literally capable of deciding how much to bid? Seriously, the list goes on and on and on.

The other stuff, I don't really care about. I love the eliminator and the online games and free roam, and story mode.

My fundamental issue with FH4 is that it feels like the franchise has lost its core focus on being a game made by car guys for car guys, and has devolved into a by the script AAA game designed to make money first, and be a good game second.

Instead of the overall game focus being on driving and enjoying cars as you want, it's shifted to abusing cars as rewards for games as a service timegating mechanics and locked content to coerce players into logging in each week, making many cars arbitrarily rare and unable to be enjoyed by the majority of the playerbase. The game "progression" is balanced like a F2P game with a deluge of initial rewards to hook players coming in on gamepass to start playing, then slows to a trickle to keep them paying the subscription. Offline mode is still inexplicably locked to global seasons, likely to discourage players who don't care for the seasons from playing offline. New content has been dominated by things like the festival playlist which is a blatant attempt to increase weekly playtime and bolster metrics by increasing the weekly chores. The eliminator, although a decent implementation of battle royale, still feels more like an attempt to cash in on BR popularity rather than an effort to truly improve the game. And then there's the blatant advertisement of the LEGO expansion that I PAID for inadvertedly with my ultimate edition purchase.

The overall quality of the game has taken a nosedive as well, and many parts just feel sloppy and like the victim of costcutting and rushed scheduling. The clunky UI, visual glitches, poor audio, and major bugs are really disappointing for such a high profile franchise.

It's a real shame too, since the underlying driving model is awesome and we've got an great car roster (unfortunately with a few blatant mistakes in modeling/audio/specs). Overall, I still play because there isn't any real competition in the open world driving space (other open world games have poor handling models and worse AI), but often I feel like the game is going out of its way to annoy me with the heavy focus on online/forced weekly play to enjoy new content.

Edited by user Monday, February 3, 2020 2:49:53 PM(UTC)  | Reason: Not specified

Explaining my issues with FH4 it goes like this.

Let's imagine FH4 is a cake. The dough (physics, controller feedback, graphics) is at its peak. Really, play any of the earlier ones after playing FH4, and you'll want to go back to FH4. However, the icing, which used to be Swiss chocolate, was changed to a cheaper brand of chocolate in FH3. In turn, this cheap chocolate was replaced with cheap raspberry-flavored syrup in FH4. A good cake is, thus, let down by the change in icing.

PG changed stuff in FH4 but they weren't successful with much of what they did. Their attempt to make multiplayer completely team-based was a huge failure. Their neglect of Rivals mode backfired on them. Their focus on cosmetics had people annoyed at getting hats in wheelspins instead of cars/money. Their new stories added unnecessary fluff to the Bucket List. The houses are very badly implemented, as you can't customize season/time of day in them to take photos or paint. The metagame spawned largely broken cars yet again. The meme additions such as the Track-Tor and the Peel P50 broke the game's PI system. The penalty system still lets people push you into walls (and you get the penalty) or ghost overtake you. Instead of getting the freebies in the game without hassle like in FM7, we have to grind events for them in the Festival Playlist. Finally, the Auction House's issues in FH3 were carried over to the following game.

Another issue I have with FH4 is not with the game itself, but its community. FH4 has its fair share of haters, but there are also people who legit get triggered by any criticism directed towards the game. The arguments I've seen in support of obviously broken features make me think these people must be trolling or something, because they can't be serious. Post-release content being free does not mean we're not allowed to complain about it. UI/visual/sound bugs in cars are serious stuff, because this game is ultimately about the cars. Lego and Eliminator was not what was in 99% of people's wishlists. Yet the people who adamantly defend the game make it sound as if we're pampered for simply asking PG to tailor the product according to what we expected it to be, according to the earlier games.

I have many, many hours clocked in FH4. It's such fun to play. Britain isn't as flashy as Australia or Nice, but the roads are still great. But most of my enjoyment comes from using my fork to remove as much of that cheap raspberry syrup as possible, so I can taste the dough at least. I wish PG could serve me this great dough with their old Swiss chocolate.

my current worst gripe....

buy a car and get it in a wheels spin and it does not tell you you can sell it it gives it to you and it no money but some auction

I'm curious to know if your saying FH4 is realistic compared to other racing games only or also real-world road and track driving?

Compared to real-world driving, Assetto Corsa is almost 1:1. Forza is an arcade game with sim-like elements thrown here and there, that's it. Just an opinion.



Right on - I know just what you mean!

Gosh, if we could just have our cake and eat it too. A Horizon game that has the physics and SOUNDS to match those visuals.

Is it ever possible in this universe?

Edited by user Monday, February 3, 2020 11:59:34 PM(UTC)  | Reason: Not specified

FH 4 right now is by far the best open world racer compared to its competitotrs and predecessors. I've played the Crew 2 and it's either grind your teeth or pay $$$ while PG hasn't asked us for any penny since a half year and they're still giving us new content. Need for Speed Heat has awful driving physics and is no fun to play. There is nothing really new to it, except of the Pista and the Performante which are also included in FH 4 now. I bet EA is still waiting for the 'big call' from Toyota to finally get their cars into the game. :D

Now, FH 4 has it's flaws here and there. But that's nagging on a high level and they are working on bugfixes and patches to sort them out.

I am really thankful for the continuous post release support of the game.

There is no evidence that they are working on fixes. A lot of the fixes are 10 minute jobs, but have been there for over a year.

It's a live service game.

Were I saying that to you in person it would be in the most dreary voice you can imagine, it's getting tiring and borderline ridiculous that with the amount of games using a live service model now there are still so many people who don't know what it means.

I agree out of open world racing games, it is the best one you can buy. Maybe it's exactly this that makes them not want to improve car sounds and other issues with the game.

Anyway - how can I get the Pista and Performante? I missed out on the seasonal events or whatever they're called.

If they copied/pasted the 488 GTB sound and the regular Huracan sound, then I'm not bothering, lol!

I don't find any games all that close to real world driving. It's as if no company has ever taken the time to properly instrument a real car to record the actual forces and use that recorded data to replicate the feel of a real steering wheel. I've tried AC and ACC and they don't jump out at me as being more realistic. One of the more realistic feels I've experienced is in Raceroom Racing Experience, where I could, for the first time, feel those micro losses of grip you get in a real car when you're getting towards the limit. But while it does that really well in that particular car, other elements in the same car feel unrealistic, and other cars feel unrealistic in other ways. In terms of what I feel when driving a real car, the way grip is lost and re-gained feels more realistic to me in Forza than AC. But to get the feel of real driving, we need hardware developments. We need better VR so we can see like we do in real life. We need something to convey forces to us via mechanisms other than the wheel so a wheel can feel like a real wheel instead of trying to convey forces that are felt in other ways in a real car.

I am not upset at some of the things others are. I don't mind having to put in time and accomplishing something to get new cars. I very much love doing the weekly Forzathon events. I have enjoyed doing the business events. I liked both of the expansions. The addition of the Eliminator has added new life to the game for me, as I fully love doing free roam.

What does bother me is when the fluff in the game prevents me from enjoying the game.

I absolutely hate the dancing, prancing and all the clothes, especially at the end of the race when many of the antics look less like a celebration and more like they are mocking those who lost.

I hate the repetitive cut scenes.

I hate the annoying announcers that can't be turned off. It is bad enough before the races, but the incessant chatter and yelling during the races themselves is beyond annoying. Unfortunately, my only solution has been to completely turn the sound off, which then also prevents me from hearing the cars.

I also do not like constantly being reminded that I am playing in solo mode (yeah, I know) as well as all the other random messages that come on the screen.

I very much enjoy most aspects of actually playing the game: driving, tuning, painting, competing and exploration. I think the map is laid out quite well and has enough diversity in terms of roads and scenery. I quite like the variety: on road, off road, dirt and street races. I especially love the stunts, particularly the danger zones. There is plenty to keep me interested in the game.

For me, if PG would just eliminate, or allow me to disable, the annoyances, this game would be very nearly a 10/10.

Edited by user Tuesday, February 4, 2020 6:02:04 AM(UTC)  | Reason: Not specified

It seems unlikely that's the case given how long many issues have existed for.

One example I came across the other day - Horizon Stories take place in the current season. In winter, this makes getting 3 stars pretty much impossible in some, maybe 100% impossible (I tried number 3 in the Upgrades one the other day and only managed 1:02.9 vs a 3 star target of 1:00.0 - I can't say for sure that nobody in the world can get under 60 seconds for that in winter, but it's plausible it's impossible). They should either:
a) always be in the same conditions, so the leaderboards and target times always relate to those conditions
or
b) be in conditions that reflect the current season, but are still fixed within that, and with separate target times and leaderboards for each season

If they went for option b, they could do the same for rivals, so the winter leaderboards would only be accessible one week in four. That would at least provide a nice consistent approach. They could all have wet conditions in spring, so we can test wet and snow for one week each per month.

You know, it's really not very difficult to be the best game in a genre where almost every game sucks right now. :)

Edited by user Tuesday, February 4, 2020 9:57:58 AM(UTC)  | Reason: Not specified

+10

Edited by user Tuesday, February 4, 2020 10:21:08 AM(UTC)  | Reason: Not specified

Also the 'stories' are just a bunch of FH2 bucket list style events, grouped together with some poor attempt at a narrative and usually hosted by someone who makes you wish there was an 18+ version where you could drive an Iron Knight at them.

When gamer1000k first mentioned the focus shift away from car enthusiasts, it dawned on me that the Bucket Lists used to be very much like in-game ads of a certain car. In FH4, they were replaced with Horizon Stories, which feel like those boring GTA side missions and don't tell you much about the cars themselves.

its sad how they now cater to kids and casual gamers, both frozas need to be car enthuasist focused, and nothing else