I went ahead and made a post on this back in the FH3 wishlist thread, but at this point we're not likely to see any real changes in that game besides more cars. The original post is here:
https://forums.forzamoto...sh-List.aspx#post_736532This is an edited/improved version of that post with some new/tweaked ideas.
Location: Island with highly varied terrain and mountains.What I really want to see in terms of geography is something like the fictional island of Panau from Just Cause 2 where we had a little bit of everything all within a relatively short distance of each other. Putting everything on an island is an easy way to bound the world without making the map feel unrealistic or having to make excessive use of invisible walls and such. Plus I like ocean views and beaches and islands tend to have lots of those.
The tough part of this is that there aren't really any real-world islands that have a manageable size, strong car culture, and the amount of terrain variety (tropical beaches, large mountains including snow, rolling hills/plains, open deserts, dense forests, large cities) that I would like to see. I would prefer that the Horizon games stick to real locations, but we definitely need something more interesting than the relatively boring rendition of Australia we got in FH3.
Map Design: Larger playable area with a wide variety of roads. Especially want paved, scenic and highly technical roads.The world map should be significantly larger than what we have now, possibly the actual size of a smaller island like what Test Drive Unlimited did with Oahu and Ibiza. I would like to see 3 or 4 major city areas around the island, each with its own feel. One could be a large city like Honolulu with a bit of everything, another could be more of an industrial port, another a wealthy beachfront resort (like Surfer's Paradise is now), and a fourth could be a smaller inland city. These should be connected to each other (and the airport) with a realistic freeway system (including elevated portions and ramps) with small towns realistically dotting the rest of the island.
A wide variety of roads should be present. In addition to the aforementioned freeway system, there should be a secondary two lane highway system connecting the smaller towns, plus a variety of scenic roads along the coasts, through the forests and through the mountains. Off road trails should meander off highways and backroads through the mountains and forests and interconnect with each other like service roads do in real life. A few scenic locations should only be accessible via a fairly lengthy drive on a primitive road. Additionally, each city area should have some sort of race track free from traffic. The main city should have a full-blown major raceway and maybe even a stadium as well. Smaller cities could have simpler tracks, and there should be a few random dirt tracks scattered around in the small towns to keep things interesting.
Like real world locations, it's ok to have reasonably large swaths of empty plains/desert/farmland/forest/mountains between towns, we don't necessarily need to have hidden goodies around every corner (not that I would complain if we did though). The goal is to have an interesting road to drive with a nice length, not something like the pathetic version of the great ocean road we got in FH3.
Character: Full customization, ability to do things outside of the vehicle and interact with the world.The ability to choose our avatars in FH3 is a nice improvement over the previous Horizon games, however I was not terribly impressed with the choices we have. The default avatars in FH1 and FH2 were better than any of the options we have now (unless you're playing with a female avatar). I would like to see full character customization like a lot of RPGs (and even TDU2) have. Default options should obviously still be provided for people who don't really care what their character looks like and just want to drive, but for those of us who don't want to drive around looking like an idiot (or want to do so intentionally for the fun of it) it would be great to have the option to customize our character's appearance and clothing.
During freeroam and at festival/carmeet locations, it would also be neat to be able to get out of your vehicle and walk around. In the world map, there could be a limit on how far you can walk from your vehicle so you don't park it in town and then proceed to hike up a mountain (this is a driving game after all). While walking around a festival/carmeet, other players avatars should be wandering around as well to interact with, and theme park rides/concerts/hot air balloons/etc should be interactive and functional.
During official festival races, the player character should be wearing appropriate protective gear like they did in FH1. That was a neat touch that really added to the immersion of the game that I'm sad to see absent in the newer versions. Protective gear (like a helmet or even just wraparound sunglasses) should always be worn while driving vehicles without a windshield (your character might be reckless, but they aren't stupid).
Garage: Customizable space to show off cars.Rather than just a list in the UI, the garage should be a customizable, upgradeable space the player character can walk around in and organize their cars, and invite other players to come in and look at their collection. The number of vehicles that can be put on display at once could be dependent on the garage upgrade level.
Autoshow: Multiple dealer locations, ability to test drive before buying and sell unwanted vehicles.Like the garage, rather than just a single giant UI list we should have interactive dealers scattered around the map like in Test Drive Unlimited 2. The different cars should be more or less evenly spread out between the dealers, so a make with a lot of cars like BMW, Ford or Ferrari could have their own dealers, while makes with only one or two cars could be bundled together in something like a foreign imports dealer with similar makes/models. Old classics could have their own dealer, and older cars from the 90s and 2000s could show up at a used car dealer. We should also have the option to test drive a car before buying. The used car dealer should allow players to sell cars.
Players should also be able to sell their cars at the used car dealer for a relatively low but consistent price. The auction house could also be an interactive location that players could visit, and the auction rules could be more advanced with the ability to set reserves for an auction, and automatic bidding. I'm not a fan of the current auction system with how much time you have to waste in menus watching an auction like a hawk to not miss the opportunity to raise your bid.
Car Rentals: Allow players to put cars out for rent, and rent cars from other players.Players should be able to put their extra cars in a rental pool. Other players could then rent the car for a period of time (1 hour to 24 hours) and use it in races and freeroam, although they wouldn't be able to tune or customize it. Rental rates would be set by the game relative to the dealer value of the vehicle plus any upgrades. This would allow new players to easily get a vehicle for a one-off race or championship without having to go buy a car for just one forzathon challenge. It would also allow players with extra cars they don't use to generate some side income.
Tuning: Add a basic mode for inexperienced players, expand tuning options for advanced players.Add more tuning parameters (ecu, engine timings, boost, etc), along with a basic/advanced mode. Basic could be much simpler than what we have now with sliders to tweak the car for speed, acceleration, on road, off road, etc. They might not necessarily be optimal, but the point is to allow players who don't want to dive into the details of tuning to get a decent build for most conditions. Basic tunes should not be shareable. Advanced tunes could have more options than what we have now, and would be shareable for credits. A test track should be available for creating tunes, with the ability to quickly jump back and forth between adjusting tune settings and driving.
Vehicle upgrades: Limit conversions and put modified vehicles into their own class to prevent AWD from dominating everything.AWD conversions should be much more limited than what we have now instead of every last vehicle having an AWD option, even when it doesn't make sense. This and engine swap upgrades make vehicles lose their unique characteristics and ruins things like muscle car races since there's no way to ban AWD vehicles from the race. Vehicles with conversions should be placed into a separate modified/custom race class to prevent them from competing directly against cars that stayed true to the spirit of the class unless the race explicitly allows it.
Vehicle Customization: More visual options and effects. Make custom horns an upgrade, not the default for everything.We need a larger variety of customizable aero instead of all the race aero (especially the spoilers) looking the same on all vehicles. Interior customization also needs to be added. At the very least we should be able to choose interior color, but the ability to add extra gauges and screens, and install racing seats would be neat as well. The interior should also reflect the level of weight reduction that has been done to the vehicle like it did in older Forza games with seats/carpet being removed for the more extreme reductions. The ability to add underglow lights would be neat as well.
I'm not really a fan of the current implementation of the custom horn system. It's silly to have all vehicles use whatever custom horn you've chosen at the moment, I want to hear what the real horns for these vehicles sound like. Custom horns should be an optional upgrade to a vehicle, not the default for everything. When the horn upgrade is installed, you choose what custom horn you want for that vehicle (can be changed anytime once the upgrade has been installed, but the choice stays with that vehicle, not your entire profile). Also have the option to create our own musical horns.
Vehicle Systems: Allow player more options to interact with vehicles, add fuel usage to all game modes.I would like to see options to interact with things like lights, power windows, turns signals, convertible tops, start/stop engine, etc in all vehicles. Additionally, if a vehicle has a navigation system it should be functional in cockpit view, along with the radio tuning between stations when the player changes what they're listening to. All vehicles should have limited fuel, and gas stations should be scattered around the map. Fuel usage should be realistic with regards to how aggressively a player is driving. Fuel should be free at gas stations. Running out of fuel results in the car being rescued to the nearest gas station (or the pits with a time penalty if appropriate for the race), or can even potentially fail some race events if there isn't a pit. This would allow for race events based on driving efficiency where you have to run a long race on a single tank of gas and have to conserve your fuel.
Vehicle Damage: Add a real simulation damage mode where one hard collision equals game over.The current "simulation" damage should be renamed to something like basic damage, and proper simulation damage mode should be introduced like what Need For Speed Shift had (cars disintegrating when slamming into concrete walls at high speed). In this mode, destroyable objects that barely even slow you down with the current system would do significant damage.
Vehicle Types: More "normal" affordable modern vehicles, offroad trucks/suvs, and novelty vehicles (monster trucks).FH3 already has a massive car roster, but if I was going to add to it, I would like to see more normal cars that people could realistically go down to a dealer and buy today. Also add more offroad vehicles and novelty vehicles (monster trucks?) instead of large numbers of very similar BMWs, Ferraris, etc..
Off-road driving: More realistic simulation so that trucks have their niche and you can't go everywhere in a street car.Vehicles not set up for driving off road should get stuck and take damage very easily (when damage is enabled) when venturing off road and need to be rescued back to the nearest driveable road. Off road trails should be much more realistic (not bombing through farms and backyards in giant trucks) and realistically simulate different surfaces such as sand, grass, gravel, mud, ice, snow, etc. Driving a street car through deep water should stall the engine and require the vehicle to be rescued. New stadium events should be added for players who like the current jump-crazy off road races, but the other off road races should have the jumps toned down significantly. Working winches would be awesome, but it might be beyond the scope of a Horizon game to have that level of offroad simulation.
Progression: Bring back the system from FH1.The original Forza Horizon did this the best out of all the games IMHO. I would like a return to the wristband system where you get points for finishing events and challenge specific "boss" racers to unlock new wristbands which unlock new, more difficult events. This doesn't mean that you have to start out with a slow car and work up or that you can't use a particular car that you like for the majority of the events. There should be significantly more events than needed to unlock the final race, and each track should have a few events available that covers the types of vehicles that would make sense for that track (no racing hypercars offroad). The idea is that if a player really likes a particular car, they can get to the final race using just that vehicle if desired since there should be enough events for each vehicle type that they can get all the points needed by placing first in all the events available to that vehicle. Otherwise the player is free to mix and match events based on their interests. There could be several different options for the final race (in game, it could be posed as a vote to the racers participating in the race but it's actually just the player deciding what race they want for the finale). The options could cover all the different race types (paved, mixed surface, dirt track, offroad trail and circuit or sprint) so the player can choose the finale they want.
Races: More long endurance/rally events, add dirt stadium events.Going with the suggestion for a much larger map, I would like to see the option for much longer race events such as high lap count endurance races and long rallies (both traditional off-road and also on road) with multiple legs where you have to drive more conservatively to save fuel. There should also be the option to qualify for races so the player doesn't have to use a perk to start at the front of the pack. Also, have an option for staggered starts for some races. Gymkhana style events like in Dirt 3 would be great as well. Team races could be fun also.
Racer AI: Remove cheating behavior and random highly skilled drivatars at low difficulty levels.Rubberbanding is a terrible way to make up for a poor AI and needs to be burned with fire. AI racers shouldn't have any bonuses the player doesn't have, they should know how to drive the car and not get magical amounts of grip around corners. AI difficulty should be consistent across all racers in an event instead of one or two highly skilled drivatars starting out front that can be very difficult to catch even on easy difficulties. If an AI racer is more skilled than the average, they should start at the back of the pack instead of the front.
Street Races: Expand into an independent, parallel career path.Street races should have a completely separate progression path from the main festival (we kind of have this already) with a full underground scene that rewards rare cars that can't be purchased normally and lots of credits compared to the main festival. Depending on the player's street race notoriety/ranking, they would eventually be able to plan out custom events and set the rules and be one of the leaders of the scene. It could also reward custom perks and abilities (call drivers to distract police?).
Drivatars: Make them drive more like real world drivers (not necessarily the players they're based on).Drivatars should represent competent festival drivers with racing styles and vehicle choices influenced by other players, not insane maniac drivers who cut you off and run into you head-on while you're parked for no reason during free roam. They should generally follow traffic and drive reasonably safely, although they could drive above the speed limit and frequently overtake traffic vehicles. When two drivatars encounter each other, sometimes they will challenge each other to a race. In general, drivatars should be encountered significantly less frequently than they are now. Players should still be able to challenge them to open world races and invite them to convoys. Drivatars should be smart enough to turn down a race challenge if their vehicle is significantly slower than yours.
Police Presence: Make street races more interesting, encourage players to not drive like a maniac everywhere.[Outside of official festival events, police cars would be patrolling and pull over players/drivatars who are street racing, drive dangerously or crash into things. The police would have a very high chance of showing up during street races. If the player is caught, they are taken to the nearest police station and have to pay a fine relative to their bank account/garage assets/wristband level/notoriety. The police should be fairly realistic and not overly aggressive so that they're not a constant nuisance, and there could be a perk to temporarily disable them. Speed traps and drift zones should have an official bucket list style sanctioned event with traffic disabled for standard completion, and completing these in freeroam counts towards street race ranking.
Motorcycles: Add them please.It would be awesome to have motorcycles in the game. These should be in their own class, so outside of unlimited races they wouldn't be racing against cars. Both road and dirt bikes should be represented. Since we already have UTV style buggies, ATVs would also be a neat addition.
Go-Karts: Fun minigame-style race events in festivals.Each Horizon festival location could have a go-kart track that players can race karts around. These should be completely optional side races that aren't part of the main festival events. After winning all the kart races, the player gets a go-kart as a reward they can drive around in freeroam or use with their own blueprint events.
Traffic: Provide a way to turn it off, at least temporarily.Have traffic follow a schedule (they kind of do so already now) so it's heavier in the city and during rush hour, and lighter at night. There should be a perk for temporarily disabling traffic.
Racing School: Please add this so players have a place to learn how to drive correctly.At one of the race tracks there should be a racing school with beginner, intermediate, and advanced level driving courses. Very few racing games include any sort of tutorial (I guess they assume people playing the game already know what they're doing), but I'm sure there's a lot of players like me who are basically self-taught racing drivers with lots of bad habits. These would be completely optional for progression (making these mandatory was a huge mistake in the older Gran Turismo games), but could reward a large amount of XP on completing the courses to make it worthwhile for players to try it out.
Wheelspins: Less common, but more rewarding. Remove pitiful credit rewards entirely, each reward should be of roughly equal value.I would like to see wheelspins be much more rare than they are now, and have much better rewards so that when you do get one, you're guaranteed something good instead of a relatively high chance to get basically nothing like we do now. Car rewards should be much more common, and the value of the rewards could increase with the player's level. The wheelspins should be an interactive event at festival locations instead of a menu popup. VIP passes also need to go away, paying real-world money to double your wheelspin rewards is dangerously close to pay-to-win.
Horizon Edition Vehicles: Remove them.I would like to see these removed. Right now they're just duplicates of vehicles already in the game cluttering up my garage rather than something actually unique, and the bonuses they provide limits the number of "good" car choices for an event. If you're not using a HE car, then you're hurting yourself by losing out on extra rewards, and in some multiplayer events that award first place based on XP, you have to use an XP Boost car just to be competitive which locks you in to a very small number of practical options.
Unique reward cars for special events (the old unicorn cars) can be made unique with special paintjobs you can't get anywhere else so players can show off, but otherwise have the same performance as the base car so they don't have an unfair advantage. Keep XP/credits bonuses as perks that all players have an equal chance to acquire, and work with any car so players are encouraged to drive what they want instead of figuring out how to game the HE system (I didn't touch anything besides a credits boost Countach I was gifted early on in the game if I could avoid it just because the credits bonus was too good to miss out on).
Car packs/DLC: Reassess car pack pricing, make the season pass a true pass for everything, not just select items.There really needs to be an "everything" bundle that will include all car packs, DLC, and promotional content for the entire life of the game. Car packs also need to be cheaper IMHO, the base game has around 400 cars plus everything else in the game for $60, but with the car passes we have to pay around $1 per car. Not a good deal from my perspective, and even the car pass is very expensive for what you get. I realize that licensing and modeling these cars is a lot of work, but given the price discrepancy between these packs and the base game, and the fact that you can only drive one car at a time, the value just isn't there for me. Also remove tokens and especially that terrible treasure map microtransaction.
Hiring Drivers: Allow players to hire CPU drivers (not drivatars) to drive their vehicles.One of the great problems of a racing game like this is that there are many great cars, but you can only drive one at a time. One idea I had to allow players to better appreciate their giant collections is the ability to hire drivers who will follow you around in freeroam with whatever vehicle you put them in. The player could freely switch between these vehicles with hired drivers anytime in freeroam, and the drivers could be ordered to go back to the garage and get a different vehicle at any time. This would provide a way to easy switch out vehicles without always having to return to the garage, and would also allow players to more easily compose awesome photos with multiple cars.
Additionally, these drivers could go race for you and bring in some extra cash on the side, although much less than if you did the race yourself.
End-Game Credit Sinks: Provide an end-game use for large credit stockpiles for the player that has everything.Many high level players have more credits than they'll ever be able to spend. They've already bought at least one of every car in the game and maxed them out with upgrades, and still have millions of credits lying around. One idea for a sink for these credits is to allow such end-game players to run special race events and championships that cost lots of credits to put on, but they have the ability to set all the rules and actually be the boss unlike the lip-service we got in FH3. There could be options for this both in the underground racing scene and the official Horizon festival. Very generous players could set up the rewards to be multimillion credit cars for everyone who participates in the race. There would need to be some mechanism of balancing this however so that endgame players don't just start giving out high end cars like candy and devalue the entire car market.
Radio Stations: All unlocked from start, option to prevent forced station/song changes for events, and remove Groove music subscription requirement to listen to personal music.Have all radio stations unlocked from the start. Also have the option to prevent bucket list events and showcases from forcibly changing the station. I like the classical station, and don't really care for the others. It's quite annoying to be forced into listening to these other stations since you can't change the station back until the clock starts ticking for an event, and if you mess up and have to restart, you have to change back AGAIN and waste precious seconds. I usually just end up temporarily muting the volume depending on how bad the chosen song is.
Also, the decision to require a Groove music subscription to listen to our own music is a really low move. The Xbox already has a media player that can play local media files and this has been a feature on the PC for decades, so just allow people to use the Xbox/Windows media player to play local files. I can understand the difficulties of incorporating all the streaming services people might use so I'm not expecting those to be integrated, but the option to play local files would go a long ways towards improving the music system.
There's also a rumor that FH1 was removed from sale due to music licensing issues. I've seen this licensing disease kill other games, so any licensed music should be a free day 1 DLC that can be pulled when the licenses run out without affecting the rest of the game.
Edited by user Thursday, July 6, 2017 11:07:08 AM(UTC)
| Reason: Fixed formatting and typos