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I had a small suggestion about the format of the livestreams. I think if you guys did an additional stream, like a Q&A stream, that would be cool.

I'm not sure Retro if you're familiar with Old School Runescape, but the way they format there livestreams as Q&A's is fantastic. It really keeps a good cadence of back and forth between the players and the devs. They take all the questions from twitter and reddit etc a few days before and it means that they can answer a bunch of them with well thoughtout responses and explain why that potentially may or many not be a good idea or the logistics behind a certain issue etc.

I'd love if you guys could do one of these (doesn't have to be every month) every now and then. Just some food for thought

Here's a link to one of there Q&A's

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_XeNv--4dJQ

Class based leaderboards and Rivals would provide endgame activities for many of us. It would allow us to build and meaningfully race any car we want, in the class of our choice.

PG are throwing resources each month to invent new ways of keeping people occupied, instead of fixing the game and letting people get on with it themselves.

We are not asking for something new. Class based event leaderboards have appeared in every Forza title since the original FM. They are a cornerstone of the game, and give meaning to the excellent class based PI system that we all use to build and race cars. Without leaderboards the game becomes a glorified Car Collector game.

When will we hear PG's response to our very reasonable question?

Anything relating to in-game modes (such as rivals) should be discussed in the relevant forum thread or submit ticket.

As noted in the first post, this thread is about Transparency and Communication between the devs and players than being a discussion about the game itself.


I used to love playing OldSchool Runscape (before my account got deleted under inactivity)

I am in discussion regarding Q & A, and how to do it. A "Q & A stream" is one of the many options currently but we are deciding whether this would be the 'best' way.

Thanks for the reference link and feedback

I submitted a ticket on this issue early in November. It is the only ticket I have ever created. It was deleted without response in early January, which was disrespectful.

I have no faith in your overloaded ticket system and refuse to waste my time completing another.

My post was a request for some transparency and communication on a subject that is so important to the game.

I honestly have to agree here. Having people submit tickets is not a suggestion method for new modes or features (especially if they have been in previous games), it SHOULD be a place for tech support and honestly, asking everyone who has a suggestion to submit a ticket only causes the ticket system to flood, people to get overwhelmed and legitimate issues get pushed further back, which is isn't fair to those people and leads to bad customer service complaints.


If the purpose of this thread is for people to communicate and be transparent, then it needs to be more of that and less of people being told to submit a ticket and that their suggestions aren't being taken seriously and just thrown into a suggestion box that is already overflowing and may have good suggestions and bad suggestions.

The feedback in this thread and several others on the forum is a good indication of the way people are beginning to feel about the direction Forza is taking. Some of it is good, a lot of it is bad, but there are good suggestions being made that are seemingly being ignored. The latest update is a good example of this and it's several threads have many good suggestions.

Many of us a concerned for the franchise at this point and do not want to see it fall from grace.

Unfortunately anything to do with the Support site is not under my control, however I would suggest forwarding your feedback regarding the ticket system and support site to @NitroGlitter.

In terms of "Suggestion & Feedback" tickets - I do deal with these personally. I can ensure that these are taken seriously.
I note each ticket into a spreadsheet, and then this spreadsheet is filtered and discussed with the relevant department (usually Design) if necessary.

"but there are good suggestions being made that are seemingly being ignored. The latest update is a good example of this and it's several threads have many good suggestions."

Theres alot of good suggestions, and I've taken many on board (see my first post regarding which I'm doing / discussion / in the backlog to discuss). The only issue is many of these can't be change or presented overnight and a lot of topics and information have to be approved or confirmed especially with the importance of what can and can't be told to the public.
For example, people gave me information regarding the streams - I now do a stream summary thread. Also read my past few posts regarding a Q & A - This will now undoubtedly be my next step.
There is only me, myself and I in the PG community team, so please bare with me as it will be a long process, but I am working on everything to help improve the communication for you all.

Edited by user Thursday, March 14, 2019 3:53:50 AM(UTC)  | Reason: Not specified

The problem here is I mentioned an improvement as far as communication and not a way to improve the support site. I was directed to forward it somewhere else. communication is a two-way street and I see no reason why the feedback we share cannot be shared internally between co-workers within the same company. We should not be having to act as a go-between between two departments within the same company. I will PM NitroGlitter as well with my suggestions, but if I'm going to be told to submit it a ticket, it defeats the purpose and only further proves me point.

I'd be glad to discuss this further with you and NitroGlitter over PM, so as not to flood the thread.

Edit: I do realize that this is not your's or NitroGlitter's faults and I do appreciate the communication, I did not mean for my posts to come off in such a manner.

Edited by user Thursday, March 14, 2019 4:38:11 AM(UTC)  | Reason: Not specified

My DM's are always open so feel free.

And don't worry, that's the point in this thread, I want people to express how they feel etc. But I just want to direct you to the relevant person and even though I do cover alot of topics, I don't necessarily cover everything or can answer everything. (And I always like to double check or get double confirmation on things too).

Biggest bottleneck abaout communication between devs and players is devs themself and how they are not willing to tell almost nothing and as long as they are not willing to talk we will have communication problem. I just check rivals thread and i found 5 post from you and 4 of them was abaout tickets, so one post in over 5 months (and that is 4 month ago) i would say that is not good communication.

I sent you a PM.

Here's something to pass along as well:

When people, such as myself and several other longstanding members of the community, stop giving you the benefit of the doubt and supporting most decisions and start speaking out against things, it becomes a problem. Losing your biggest supporters is not a good thing for any business or product.

Edit: Feeding off the post above mine:

I work in the service industry, when a breakdown of communication occurs between departments, or a lack of communication between them entirely or even a perception of either of those two things by customers, it leads to a bad impression of the company as a whole and not just an individual or department.

Edited by user Thursday, March 14, 2019 6:51:52 AM(UTC)  | Reason: Not specified

Which is absolutely wise and correct. Nothing worse than giving out semi-confirmed information and the Pandora's Box you would open if said confirmation would come out as false.

"You have promised [insert feature]"

"We actually didn't...." and you are doomed.

BUT I would love to see more confirmation (doesn't matter if to my liking or not) directly from the devs. In streams, in Q&A sessions, in forums posts, on reddit or discord. I don't care.

You have a great example of this sitting very frequently in Forza Monthly - Chris Esaki. He does an excellent job in talking about upcoming plans, features & achieved milestones.

@RetroKrystal:
Sorry, your companies problem is not the communication structure, it's the will to communicate.

I postet this minutes ago and it shows spread misinformations and the will to not communicate.

"... [It was] said, the challengelist would be an additional way to get cars. That's not true. You get only one car in the old way - but you the playground-games challenge for the Hoonigan RS200. All races only give you (Super-)Wheelspins.

Before the update: You got 3 cars plus/minus while driving in races. Now you have 3 cars, but you have to do the playground-win for the first one, 50% of everything for the second and 100% to get the third one. This is not an additional way to earn cars, it's a new way including more work.

...

Next thing: If have allready done several races in the next weeks and even one trial! So PG is repeating all this stuff from now on. Was this communicated before?"

It is easy to see: You do not give the bad informations during a live stream - only if you think, your idea like the challengelist is a big, really good thing. But you hide informations and that's not a way-problem, it's a will-problem.

Morning/afternoon Retro,

So it was briefly chatted in the chaos of Discord, and figured discuss here. Not sure if this is a submit suggestion.

This is that "Forza test and tune" stream idea, to find a way that allows for running ideas past players while also maintaining privacy of your development process and to prevent an expectation on a hard deadline.

This type of stream or posting wouldnt be a whole, new features and what we are working on type presentation. Intead, it should be or could be considered part of the development cycle. Primarily for things that have an adjustability to them. The idea is vetted, it is well on its way to completion, so a month or a couple weeks before they go live, have the test and tune. Show just parts of the feature to present the variables. What your team thinks, vs what players think. Allows for that bit of discussion and then tweak to show the final complete package as normal.

To example, with playlists, it wouldnt be telling us about the playlist features. Instead, it would be that plan on having bonus rewards for regular play and what we feel about such and such milestones. It doesnt reveal the features, but does open for feedback.

Another one is playground games. Low activity and would like a new championship. Five rounds of play or a better way? Not really a new feature, more of just adding more to what exists. This can go for other types of championships if thinking something new.

I think it would be beneficial for both players and developers. It saves developer time by less having to adjust, rebalance or stop having said events all together. It also has opened up a large pool of ideas to make it a better experience at launch. A better launch experience means less negative posts or complaints, good for people coming for info and player satisfaction for new events. All in all it should be a win/win. It will even benefit support with all suggestions being in one forum stickie vs filtering through tickets.

But rehash, doesnt need to be the feature itself, but just presenting for discussion a concept for variables that can be adjusted during final prelaunch testing.

The above comments relate to in-game features. Just reminding everyone that this thread is for transparency & communication between the player and the dev.

In terms of the "future" communication such as milestones or "more confirmations" I am discussing this at the moment and see if there is a way to potentially show a 'roadmap' as such. However this could also merge or relate to the Q&A discussed above.

Thanks for all these ideas.

I'm assuming we've all given up on this thread as no-one truly believes anything will actually change.

I'll be ecstatic if I'm proved wrong, but I've been advised by medical professionals that holding my breath for that long won't be good for my health.

I took a few weeks off the forums, and I can confirm nothing has changed since I've been gone. Everything is still in discussion like it has been since..... uh.... November? At least we got a soft commitment to discussion of possibly looking into solo adventure. That's good

The only chance of direct interaction with the developers is via discord. They don't check the forums from what I can tell, they only receive information from here indirectly from Retro.

I still check this thread and there's a lot of discussions regarding changes which I'm going to consider.

Unfortunately any change will be a slow process but also a learning curve in response to your feedback.
Yes, the Discord would be a great place for active feedback or response depending on the topic/question.



They do, it's just that there focus is on improving the game whereas it's my role to be the respondent within the forums. I do often sending thread links to the relevant person and many of the teams do keep an eye on the forums

Edited by user Tuesday, March 26, 2019 1:45:00 AM(UTC)  | Reason: Not specified

Not truly accurate. Some devs do regularly read posts here and interact with people and take part in conversations. Not all of them ... but some definitely do.

And to be honest, I know that the Forza Discord channel is relatively new .... but I've seen more interaction with actual devs here on the forums than on the Forza Discord.

Edited by user Tuesday, March 26, 2019 2:25:56 AM(UTC)  | Reason: Not specified

That is fair enough but in practice imho the current system is just not working. Look at what happened with the Horizon Playlist. Textbook example in a communication bottleneck.

The view that 100% completion requirements is bad game design was heavily expressed on the forums here; with about a week until the Update 7 release. That should have been enough time to simply change the 100% value into 80%, but either this game design issue was not conveyed to the developers or they did not have enough time to make the simple numbers tweak which resulted in a terrible but justified community backlash. In my opinion this was another in a long list of communication breakdowns and as such does not inspire much confidence.

The only real positive I have seen recently is the direct developer interaction on the discord where they have actually asked for feedback on the drifting adventures, which is a great sign imo, but I feel they need to actually have a presence on these forums too.

This thread isn't for in-game aspects. However, you will find more of our changes regarding 100% to 80% with Festival Playlist and can continue the discussion here.

Edited by user Tuesday, March 26, 2019 6:26:14 AM(UTC)  | Reason: Not specified

Yeah! The discussion about what could work best for drift adventures is exactly what I was referring to in my last post. The concept not about the features, but how to discuss them to make them better. Isnt uncommon knowledge that I am not a fan of drifting, but a 30 minute banter got a bunch of us to discuss what would and eouldnt make it enjoyable as well as bring up different points of why stuff wouldnt work. Collisions on/off for example.

That was a great example of discussion and transparency of the concept/finalization phase. It wasnt the media that made it stand out, it was the result. Presenting intent, gathering opinions, then re-presenting new intention. A fine example of a constructive debate and idea vetting plus positive developer discussion by embracing the players and letting us support developers in improving a product we enjoy.

Edit: Essentially such things are only an example of where communications can be improved. Identifying points in development where there is variability and bringing it for discussion to get player and developer on same wavelength.

Heck. After discussion, I would even be willing to give a drift adventure a go.

Edited by user Tuesday, March 26, 2019 6:38:57 AM(UTC)  | Reason: Not specified

My post was squarely aimed at discussing communication and transparency. I used the example as factual evidence to illustrate communication and transparency has a massive amount of improvement required and that outside of discord no (or very limited) improvements have been made from what I can tell. (I concede that Update 8 will be the real litmus test as to whether or not the community is being listened too)

So i would ask why this is only thing in discord? Heck we are here in offical forza forums and here we get almost zero communication from devs. For example drift adventure discussion it should not be that hard some of devs starting thread here to ask what we would like to see.

Drift Adventure hasn't been discussed at all by the devs other than our mention in the live stream.

This may have been discussed by other players amongst themselves in the discord, but there hasn't been anything from the devs. As noted in the stream, we will give more information regarding Drift Adventure in future streams.