Winter feels quite different - especially if you're not on snow tires. Spring brings more puddles and stuff to courses, which can definitely change their feel. Beyond that, it's mostly aesthetic. Which is still appreciated, don't get me wrong - autumn in particular can look beautiful in the game. It's a feature I'd definitely like to see them keep doing, if they can do so without having to sacrifice development on other aspects of the game.
That ought to teach me for trying to write a post while laying in bed... Zzzzz
Anywho, I agree. I wonder if all the effort put into seasons (and I'm sure it was sizeable) took away from other parts of the game. Here's what I intended to continue writing last night lol...
Player houses are a nice idea but are so limited - I only go to them for screenshots or if I don't want to hear background music while in the menus (I.e. basically never). Anymore, I just stay at the festival because the background music makes it feel a bit more lively than silence plus an odd bird or train whistle here and there. With instant travel letting me get around the map as I need, I have no other reason, really, to "move into" any of my houses.
What player houses should have been is something you can go into and customize. At the least, each house should have a garage you can go in and decorate and display your favorite car(s). Just off the top of my head, there could be posters, calendars (keep your mind out of the gutter
), and license plates you could collect or buy to display on the wall. Maybe a favorite screenshot or a simple random one generated with the car you currently have selected - or maybe this could be the mechanism to show off your favorite rides.
The house itself is a whole other issue. It would be nice to walk around it, since we own it and are in this persistent, year-round world. I could come up with ideas here, too, like being able to watch YouTube on the living room TV or log into the Forza hub/website from the computer in the den. Admittedly, this starts to lose focus from the core of the game so I'm only throwing it in to make the point that you could flesh these properties out so much more.
Then there's the avatars. Why can't we choose from a small selection of hair styles and facial hair? 80% of people I see are using the same guy as me - it's like a clone factory! Also, there's all this emphasis on getting clothes and such but you can't really see how your character is dressed except for cutscenes. Why not have a car meet location at the drag strip by the main festival and let us get out of our cars and walk around? Throw in a chat system and people could meet, chill, and talk cars while showing off their rides and their threads.
Another thing is the locked car system. I absolutely loathe it. You could keep Forza Edition and one-off cars (E.g. Hot wheels) as special reward/locked content, but everything else should be purchasable in-game. It's really limiting and frustrating.
