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
May the forced induction be with you.
Alice >>>>>>>>>> Keira