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In the recent Forza Monthly livestream there was a call for constructive feedback & criticism for the game. I see a lot of scattered threads (most of which are quite old) providing feedback on specific features and a pinned features wishlist thread that's not quite the right place for this, so I wanted to create this thread to try to collect some of this feedback that might not be worth putting into its own thread.

Remember to be polite and respectful in here when providing criticism and feedback (as was mentioned in the livestream, if criticism is rude then the point is often lost even if it's otherwise good information), and if at possible try to provide some constructive ideas on how to improve things.



I'll start off with a big one for me. I'm not a fan of the way vehicle exclusivity is handled in FH3 and FH4 (and was in FM7 prior to the car unlocking update). I understand the rationale behind it in terms of giving players something new and exciting to look forwards to each week to encourage them to play regularly, but the way it's currently implemented with the timed exclusivity feels borderline exploitative by coercing players to log in and play for fear of being punished by being denied easy access to the vehicle with no guarantees it will ever be available again, and the myriad of problems with the AH that I won't go into here.

Sometimes RL happens and players don't have time to play one week or get busy with other things and forget, or they simply need a break from Forza. Worst of all, in the case of FH3 all those exclusive cars are now permanently unavailable to new players who enjoy FH4 and want to try out FH3. My understanding is that fundamentally Forza is about enjoying and appreciating cars, and this system as implemented seems to go against that design pillar by artificially limiting what cars players can enjoy.

There's been quite a few times I've been on Discord and it's disheartening to have new players come in asking how to obtain a specific car, and I feel their pain when I have to tell them that they just have to wait until the devs offer it again at some unknown point in the future, or they have to waste a bunch of time in the AH hoping to find one for sale at a reasonable price. I also have quite a few RL friends who have stopped playing since it feels way too much like work to keep up with the new cars and have moved to other games,

I've thought about how both the desire to give players something to look forwards to each week (I know it's kept me playing both FH3 and FH4 a lot longer than it would have otherwise) without unfairly punishing them if they miss a week or are coming into the game later, and I think something along the lines of how spotlight cars were done in FM7 would be a good place to start.

Each week, the new car is handed out for free. After that week, it's added to the autoshow so players are still incentivized to log in and get it for free (or maybe via some type of showcase event that uses the car and rewards it on completion), but still have a reasonable way to obtain the car later. Additionally, the events each week could be themed around the new car so players can start using and enjoying it right away instead of having to use up their game time jumping through hoops to get the car without providing a chance to really utilize it like it is now.

To handle the huge backlog of current exclusives, I would honestly just go the FM7 route and add them all to the autoshow.

For other types of exclusives like barn finds and challenge rewards, the cars could be unlocked in the autoshow once a player has satisfied the challenge requirements so they can easily get duplicates of a car they like, which right now can be nearly impossible if you happen to like a car that's an exclusive.

Ultimately the goal here is to allow players to enjoy cars and live out the Forza fantasy, while still providing a reason for players to log in regularly and enjoy the new content.

Edited by user Tuesday, August 25, 2020 9:19:49 AM(UTC)  | Reason: Not specified

I agree, GT Sport manages to retain a high number of active players without having cars locked behind short time windows. Still approx 100k players a week actively participating in online multiplayer:

https://www.kudosprime.c...et=weekly_sport_activity

I think it's much healthier to have a game that attracts players because they enjoy playing it, rather than coercing them into playing it to maintain full access to the game's content.

(So why am I not playing GTS instead? a) FH4 online is free on PC vs having to pay for PS+. b) GTS's theoretical emphasis on clean driving doesn't translate into practice, as they just can't make the penalty system work properly.)

Ok gamer1000k, let's give them a chance. any feedback of them on any point below, I will consider it a change in their behavior.

Below is more than 5 months old, last time they announced they were reading.

Bugs
- Game Sync issue resetting progress
- Winter tyre filter issue
- Rewind working intermittently
- Recording online failing with success popup
- Instant travel blocked intermittently
- Convoy joining online often takes many tries with disconnections
- Cars going under the map ( rivals, stunts , …)
- Sync issue at finish line
- Invisible walls
- Rewind allowing to remove obstacles

Inconsistencies
- Downloading own designs + bug creating duplicates.
- My designs not filtered on current car while My tunes is.
- Creative hub not showing number of downloads for tunes
- Proposing reporting his own tunes or liveries
- Not possible to delete tunes/liveries from My creative hub
- Not possible to delete rivals score.
- Team Adventure systematically putting team of beginners to face team of veterans ( like levels 5-6 vs levels 0/1
- Online proposing to join a mate that is in a private lobby.
- Street races rivals with drivatars

Boring things
- Having to quit rivals to change car
- Online wheel spin filling garage
- Having to quit sprint, travel back to start, start race just to redo race without losing point
- Not possible to start a custom race/cs alone
- Custom championship not allowing seeing ongoing championship to get in.
- Parts tunes : No filter/sorting on rims weight

Limitations with no in game work around
- Number of tunes: no filtering on cars with tunes, no places indicating the remains slots available, discovering error message when willing to save a tune.
- Rivals : no weather based rivals, no global board, no filtering/indicator of platform, no filtering on car used, no filtering on difficulty level
- No customization of weather possible on street races
- Number of cars : more and more cars every month , online filling up garage through wheel spin
- Rivals : missing race name on leader board thus unable to share meaningful screenshot
- Online race : no weather condition on race finish board.
- Impossibility to completely remove specific sounds : music, speed traps ...
- Custom radio gone
- Difficulty level is not considered online
- No way to differentiate 2 tunes with same parts and different fine tunes
- No way to compare 2 fine tunes

Lost / Missing features
- Club board : weekly score, messages etc gone from FH
- Fair play racing promotion
- Online, B class, 3 races road championships
- Online, B,A,S1 dirt championships with only 3 races
- Online , B,A,S1 free roams with 3 races

They need to keep things as they are right now, please don‘t add these cars to the autoshow. You already can get most of the cars just by checking the Forzathon shop.

I own 1 billion credits. There would be nothing more disappointng and underwhelming then just going to the autoshow and buying these cars with my almost unilimited amount of money. With the current system, at least you have to put some effort into getting them, no matter how rich you are.

Also the exclusive cars motivate the players to regularly play Forza and keep it alive, so PG doesn‘t have to develop a new game every 2 years. I rather have one big expanding game instead of 10 little sequential games which would drain more of my spare time then one big Forza which only requires to be played once a week.

When I realised there were exclusive cars in the game, I made a list and collected them one by one instead of complaining. And this goes out to every new player, if you‘re interested in collecting all cars from the entire game, you should be ready to devote some time into playing it. If you just want that one special car you always dreamed of, it‘s really not that hard to snipe it.

I'm glad for you that you enjoy the current system and I'm sorry that you interpreted that as complaining rather than constructive criticism, but you seem to have missed my point that I'm trying to brainstorm ideas on how to keep players engaged in the game (like I said before, I know more people personally who have burned out and quit playing over the weekly chores to get the exclusives than who have continued to play) and still allow players to easily enjoy the Forza fantasy of driving and enjoying their dream cars without arbitrarily denying them access to particular vehicles. I do have all the cars (I'm a collector and completionist) and I did go through the lists of exclusive cars to get the ones I didn't have, but honestly I didn't really enjoy the process. For the auction house, if you don't have good internet, "sniping" (really, spamming button presses as fast as you can to repeatedly search for new listings, no precision skill involved as the term might imply) doesn't really work, plus this is supposed to be a car game, not an auction house simulator.

Yes, collecting cars is a big part of the game too, but for a new player, just earning the credits to buy all the cars would be a large task, more than the 40 hours most games take. Players like us who have everything and mountains of credits and still play occasionally are the minority, and the change I'm proposing would still see new content each week, it's not like those previous exclusives suddenly being available in the autoshow would affect our enjoyment at all (its not like we're hoarding rare cars to sell for a huge markup).

I also fail to see how the current design saves you time. With this proposed change, if you miss a week (or just want to take a week off for something else), you can easily obtain the car you missed, especially if you've already got tons of credits. No need to waste time dealing with the auction house, or even to only play once a week, but there's new challenges and content to keep things interesting if you do want to play.

In terms of keeping the game alive, it's the new content (and ideally good, fun gameplay) that should be doing that, not the fact that said content is time gated so you have to play or you'll miss out. IMHO that's bad game design that will hurt the franchise long term (and from my own experience, has already done a lot of damage). It's certainly removed a lot of my interest to play any more than I have to since I often feel like I have to play to get the new car rather than playing because I want to play.

Edited by user Tuesday, August 25, 2020 2:51:09 PM(UTC)  | Reason: Not specified

Oh boy, where do I start?

This is the second year of FH4. I still play, because the cars are fun to drive and you can explore them in many ways. But the game currently has nothing going on to make me interested. Playground's current support model is cars, cars, cars and the situational QoL improvement, but the game needs much more than that.

I've had my heated arguments with people who defend the Playlist and, from the looks of it, I'm convinced I was right. This update has proven itself to be the final neutering of the Playlist. The original idea was to keep the game fresh by adding monthly events and by enticing players with exclusive cars. It was harsh, and monopolized gameplay (remember the couple weeks when you needed 100% to win prizes? I do).

The problem is that such a model only works when the events are fun and the rewards are interesting. No one is gonna play S1900 Modern Muscle championship #999 to win an SUV, unless said SUV is competitive online and even then it appeals to a very small percent of players. I think Playground noticed this, because they realized people only played the Trial and PGG when there were newly available cars, but forcing online to earn cars was a bad move to Xbox players (who must pay to play and form the majority of FH4 players) and the possibility of these cars being available in the Forzathon Shop later on killed all remaining interest.

I'm on Discord a lot and I used to see people posting on auction channel to buy cars which they could unlock that week via event, which is the ultimate proof of how useless the Playlist actually is.

The only month I genuinely had fun with the Playlist was when they added custom routes to championships (September last year I think). There's no significant reward for 100% either and, even if you earned an exclusive car at 100%, it'd have been worth it only if the car was the Capri FE or something. You do all those events and the most you get is an achievement and a pat in the back, like WTF? At least give me a choice of any exclusive car if I put in the effort. Or a hefty paycheck, like 5 million CR or so.

But that's only the surface. The game has lots of under the hood issues that detract from the experience.

To this day, you cannot fully disable the music. You must enter streamer mode to do so and it resets every time you run the game. FH4 is the perfect game to play when listening to my Spotify playlists but it creates weird obstacle for me to have a seamless experience the way I want to.

There's still DLC cars without a full set of suspension upgrades, I love my 1969 DBS but I don't drive it as much because I can only fit rally suspension to it, and it's a car I paid money for (Jimbo DLC). Small inaccuracies in cars were never fixed (the Countach was even featured in a Showcase and Playground seemingly ignored those bugged taillights).

Cars painted before the Fortune Island update still have their wheel paint bugged, as if Playground placed responsibility on the creators to reupload their designs broken through no fault of their own. Search criteria for content are poor, there isn't even an option to only search followed creators. Never fixed the thumbnails looking funny when you changed tune on a painted car.

Track width update was half-assed, they stopped at letter D in the car list, jumped to Subaru and that's it. Never gave us the bodykits they promised despite plenty of them in FM7 to choose from. Didn't bring over the new sounds from FM7.

Never added props to Route Creator. Never expanded the Blueprint to add more options such as drivetrain restrictions or stock PI, or even randomize cars to prevent those ridiculous mono-Mustang grids when running Modern Muscle. Never fixed the bug when the Drivatar liveries disappear after a couple races. Drivatars in Solo mode get bunched up and make Britain unbearable. No ability to create custom championships.

No Online Adventure in the DLC maps. Online mode with game breaking bugs that were never fixed. Cheaters banned, yes, but their cheated times never cleaned from the leaderboards.

Instead we get battle royale, silly stories which are inferior to custom Bucket Lists (can you imagine the popularity of a possible Bucket List event with the Caddy Limo?), Star Cards which are useless beyond the rewards, and Horizon Promo... The icing on the cake is 250 additional garage spots but no more design/tune slots, when we have exclusive/unique cars in the 100s and must waste a slot to paint them all.

That's too little. It's Playground saying, we don't need to do anything, because we're the best in our genre. Yes, you are, but your genre has NFS and The Crew, which suck. Not difficult to be the best with such competition, right? But this should be no excuse to let this game rot. People will only ignore the flaws for so long. We don't even know if there's a plan for FH5 since, with 1,000 cars in the garage, you could theoretically support FH4 well into the next gen. Appealing to people who are not into cars does not mean you have to strip the game of all its depth.

Honestly, Forza is so nice to play that it's frustrating to see the game in its current state. It's not terrible, but it could've been so much more.

Edited by user Tuesday, August 25, 2020 6:33:44 PM(UTC)  | Reason: Not specified

Shared feeling.

Dude, I rather have it the way it is being handled than if they start experimenting and things go wrong. Like, never change a running system.

There are good reasons why PG went this way with FH 4 and we all benefit from that decision, even though it doesn't seem to be the optimal solution to everyone.

It's "Never change a working system."

The best advice is...

1/ Fix the bugs.
2/ Improve the Ai.
3/ Improve the sounds
4/ Increase the tune limit.

With the weekly challenges the improved Ai will make it more exciting anyway.

Edited by user Wednesday, August 26, 2020 11:06:00 AM(UTC)  | Reason: Not specified

I think the constructive feedback that I would give would be more general. There needs to be better engagement with the community generally and a feeling that issues are being dealt with.

Whilst the recent apparent changes and announcement in relation to enforcement are welcome, it’s notable that this only arose after a fairly popular Youtuber posted a critical (but balanced and fair) video. The cheat times on leaderboards and other adverse behaviour has been an issue raised frequently by many people across various platforms and had not previously been adequately dealt with. It should not require concerns about adverse publicity for these points to be addressed.

The big elephant in the room so far as I’m aware remains points for ranked Team Adventure (and Team Games). In case anyone is unaware, if anyone leaves a Team Adventure they receive no penalty and no one in that adventure receives any points. Essentially, 90% or more of all races are totally pointless if your aim is to improve your ranking. This has been the case since around last October/November. I personally have reported it twice and each time it has been marked as “solved” and a standard generic reply provided to say it’s a known issue. So far as I am aware, at no stage has any announcement been made on any platform to say what is being done (if anything) to fix this problem. It’s entirely unsatisfactory to have such a major issue completely unresolved with no communication on a fix (or explanation of why no fix is needed if that is the case). .

GT Sport's player numbers nearly 3 years after release show that no such tricks are needed to keep people playing.

You seem to personally want a car collecting game rather than a driving game. For a competitive driving game, which is what many players want from the game, having cars that are not readily available to all players is a terrible game mechanic. Cars are just a tool of the trade, something that you need to have to be able to do the thing you really want to do - drive in races.

I'd be interested to know how FH4 player numbers in ranked adventure compare to GT Sport's sport mode numbers, but they don't allow access to those numbers for FH4, as far as I'm aware.

imagine writing a novel yet its all about cars in a garage not the gameplay....... no mention of rammers in ranked lobbies, no mention on bans for using a imagine the devs have in-game... all I see is i couldn't get this car "crying like a child"

+1

It's so important. I care about cars and racing and don't need much unlocking. It's fine to have some career for unlocking but there are no careers in current games.

You can see the total number of ranked players (if you have a rank) at the bottom right of the ranking leaderboards. It is around 35,000 to 40,000 for FFA I think, which is much lower than it really should be..I strongly suspect that is due to a lot of players being put off by the ramming element which is still there. By way of comparison, over 200,000 had done the monthly rivals event last time I checked.

Good example against car exclusivity ... GT Sports. Wait, wasn't GT Sports the game which excluisively had licensesed Toyota so any other racing game wasn't allowed to use them??? No tricks you say...

Also you don't need all exclusive cars to 'do what your really want to do'. If you're not into collecting cars, you can completely ignore them all and just drive how and where you want to drive. There are plenty of cars in the base game already to choose from.

Dunno how popular GT Sports is, I haven't touched it since around 2 years now because Forza stole the show completely for me. Also I don't like that Polyphony is forcing me to play it on the PS4.

Edited by user Wednesday, August 26, 2020 9:05:40 AM(UTC)  | Reason: Not specified

That's good decision :D PC releases brought many troubles and I think it's not worth it. Forza is now known as buggy mess which is completely new situation. Console releases were always pretty tight.

Two different types of exclusivity, one is platform based with license agreements keeping the content off other platforms, the other is based on using time windows to restrict content availability. Both are bad, but in the case of GT Sport if you're willing to pay the cost of entry for the PS4 you have access to all the game's content. With Forza, if you miss a week you flat out miss out on the content with no guaranteed way to get access to it regardless of how much you might be willing to pay (leading to the super sketchy black market scams that prey on desperate players who simply want to enjoy a particular vehicle).

In the case of Sony and GT Sport platform exclusivity it's no different than Forza only being on MS platforms (Xbox and Windows 10 store).

Edited by user Wednesday, August 26, 2020 10:17:00 AM(UTC)  | Reason: Not specified

To add some additional feedback unrelated to my original post, I have a couple of things related to online that I would like to see changed that haven't been mentioned in this thread yet:

- I really don't like how the game tries to "trick" me into joining an online session on every single login if I happen to accidentally hit X. I play solo for a reason (half the time I'm at a place with poor internet, and for me Forza has always been a solo game first with optional multiplayer on the side, not a multiplayer-first game and I don't appreciate the multiplayer interactions or hourly Forzathon Live annoyances) and I would like the game to remember my previous setting. If I was offline the last time I logged out, don't try to log me in again the next time I play. I can easily join online if I want to.

- The handful of times I do play online for the playlist, I don't like how wheelspins don't let me sell duplicate cars or save the wheelspin for later in many cases. I already don't enjoy playing online for the most part with all the wasted time in countdowns and lag/disconnects, and this is one extra strike against me wanting to participate online. It's great that we can easily sell duplicate cars now, but please don't force give them to us with no change to sell if we happen to be playing online. Let us use the wheelspin later.

- Remember my offline setting after joining a one-off online event. If I joined a ranked adventure from solo freeroam, put me back into solo freeroam when its done. I'll let you know when I want to join online freeroam, don't try to push me into it.

I know that you want to keep online player counts up, but often it feels like the game is designed to push me into online rather than letting me play because I want to. Things have gotten a little better on this front since there hasn't been any new content locked behind online events in a long time, but there's still a few friction points that I would like to see addressed.

I think that would be comparable to GT Sport's monthly sport mode total of 200k players. But we'd have to add up the people from all ranked modes in FH4, and that would include duplicates.

Re not needing all the cars, of course someone who wants to play the game competitively needs all the cars. It's a basic starting point of competitive gameplay that everyone competing must have access to everything that can affect the race result. It should be their skill and decisions that affect the result, not being unable to access the cars they want to use.

Contrast with AoE II DE, for example, which is another MS / Xbox Studios game, and has time locked content BUT with the difference that nothing that affects the result of ranked gameplay is locked in this way, it's only cosmetic items such as player icons (basically the equivalent of clothing in FH4).

One thing that WOULD be reasonable as a way of sustaining interest is to add new cars at the same rate as they have done, but just add them to the autoshow. This would give people a new car to experiment with tuning and racing each week, but everyone would always have access to the same set of cars at any given time.

When FM7 expanded on the exclusive cars gimmick of FH3 with the locked cars system, one of the cars they locked was the 2016 GT3 RS.

Yes. The GT3 RS. Locked. In a game played mostly by car enthusiasts. That's like locking the AK47 in a shooter, or offering Scorpion as DLC in Mortal Kombat. You just don't do that.

The person who took that decision should be fired on the spot, because they're unfit to direct the development. If it was Alan, well, fire Alan! It was so embarassing for Forza that TORA wanted to use the car in their league but had to request permission from Turn 10 to get access to it.

Fast forward to 2020 and Playground under Ralph Fulton (who should be sent to Fable if colorful and silly is his brand of gaming) thinks locking an electric SUV and a base model Velar will make people play.


With regards to the player base, it's worth mentioning that GT Sport revolves around its online mode. While 200k online players in GT Sport is a robust count for a racing game, the number of players in FH4's Ranked is not really representative of the game's success. FH4 is still one of the most played games on Xbox Live, which makes me believe that actual player count is much higher. Last year, FH4 peaked at 12 million, while GT Sport was at 9 million, with very low percentage rates for Sport Mode trophy, as your data hints at.

In addition to that, FH4 is an arcade game, with less emphasis on clean racing, so it doesn't have a deep penalty system on the level you see in GT Sport, nor does it need one.

The problem is that FH4 is a big game and could have had a better online mode. Arcade players have nowhere else to go. NFS is dead and The Crew isn't even a factor on Xbox. But, when Playground doesn't even focus on the basics, it's hard to see online racing improve. The metagame is one-dimensional as well, with heavy focus on AWD, to attract players from rival arcade series, which makes the whole thing fairly boring IMO.

Edited by user Wednesday, August 26, 2020 4:06:57 PM(UTC)  | Reason: Not specified

Ok so we have a game supposed to be ongoing in the UK but there is not even a track of a Jaguar XJ6 or any kind of Ford Zephyr, not even as a barnfind. Really?

To the case; as it is now this game is about making 4WD top-speed monsters and race up & down the only highway to see who is the fastest. Just that and nothing moore.
AI-drivers could offer you a challenge in earlier Horizons, but now their only mission is to sabotage your driving by blocking the road. This creates a tragic athmosphere & kills the fun.

Could write a long list but this sums up the most

The Lego and Fortune Island expansions should have multiplayer other than 1 weekly trial. First Horizon game to just say yea we just don't need that anymore for the expansions. That may have brought new players too. I spent more time on Storm Island in H2 than anything else. I know that same group played the H3 expansion Blizzard Mt. pretty exclusively. Just wasn't for me but that is ok. Lego I swear has some of the best road tracks and circuits in the game but it is just wasted on boring endless brick challenges for little reward. I finished it just recently and than asked myself why did I bother? All that for a 2 lap Lego Goliath race and a silly Trophy? Fortune Island was the perfect place to focus on multiplayer cross country events but we just we get nothing. If you are going to make expansions multiplayer had better be a part of it in the future, I cannot imagine it would have been so difficult to implement and maybe you still can. So much of the game baffles the mind in the departures from what worked in the past. Clubs meaning something was great. Why no club points? That kept people playing as well. At this point the only reason I would buy H5 is to keep up with the Forza tier points. That isn't a very good reason. I would like the reason to be nice clean racing. Good racing should make you want to come back. That is all you need to keep people interested.

Edited by user Wednesday, August 26, 2020 5:18:03 PM(UTC)  | Reason: Not specified

Hello all: Newbie here (in my 7th week) . Just wanted to say I am enjoying the game (playing on a Windows Gaming PC with keyboard). Now entering my 77th year, so the game is fun and expansive, but currently somewhat overwhelming for this old bugger.
My biggest issue, so far, is when I get beat by certain cars, and I check on their availability, I often find they were available in an earlier Weekly Special Event or Challenge. Do these cars get added to Wheelspin or become Special Awards later?
If I have posted in the wrong sub-forum, please enlighten me. With some guidance from the the Forum's Jedi Masters, I am confident I will learn to post correctly and intelligently in the future.

Cheers, Captain Nemo.

isnt this what this in support is for

https://support.forzamot...ket_form_id=360000166434



I'm not in here much any more but seems to still be the same people with the same issues
repeat and repeat
same thing since release

Edited by user Thursday, August 27, 2020 12:58:06 AM(UTC)  | Reason: Not specified

But he said that GT Sports doesn't need such tricks to attract players. Well, apparently it does. I also remember that in Gran Turismo 5 you didn't have access to all cars immediately. There was a used car dealership that switched through it's offered cars every two weeks and all of them were unique and not available in the standard car store. So if you missed out one rotation of the shop, there was no guarantee that the offered cars would appear ever again. And due to that circumstance, I've missed some cars. Did I complain about it? No, I just moved on because GT 5, just like Forza, offered enough other cars to drive.

Also Sony could open their own store on Windows/Linux to offer their games for PC gamers, but instead they insist you to buy their hardware unlike Micorosoft.