Forza Horizon 5: General Discussion

[UKMikey]

Poor DJS is going to get a reputation for hating the game now although when you look at his tweet he specifically added two immediate replies to say that this is not the case. He clearly loves the game but not the broken bits which should absolutely be fixed or at least for now acknowledged by MS/PG's army of community liasons.

I hope that doesn't make him a "casual" for heaping praise upon the offline portion of the game 😆

 

[Marqus]

It is a sad state of things that simple criticism is considered "bashing" nowadays. Even preemptively like in DJS' reply.

 

[NotThePrez]

I know it's a little bit late but the Raesr can be bought and sold for 20 mil in the AH even if you are not a Legendary Tuner/Painter. Have no idea how they got it. Never saw it in any wheelspin. Why would you do that? Because there are Accolades for buying and selling a car for 20 mil.

IIRC, PG more-or-less scrapped the old system where car values could be adjusted based on the legendary status of a player (which is convenient, since Creative levels are a bit broken right now). Now how it works is that, besides the base value of the vehicle, a cars value in the Auction House is based on its overall availability. Since the Raeser is/will be an exclusive car for the Spring season, it can basically only be earned once through normal gameplay, and as such the Auction House assigns it a significantly higher value. It's also the reason why cars like the LaFerrari and 911 GT3 RS Forza Edition are selling for $10 million plus, since they can only be earned once through the Car Collector page.

As for how people are getting it, the answer is exploits. I remember there being an exploit in FH4's seasonal playlists that basically allowed players to "time travel" through different seasons in order to unlock, preview, and sell soon-to-be-released cars. Pretty sure that using this exploit could get you banned, though.

 

[EngieDiesel]

I'm pretty sure they're already trying to fix things as quickly as possible, no game developer purposely slows down unless it's near the end of a game's life cycle. I will say, however, that communication isn't exactly their strong point.

It never really has been, but then again the Forza community overall is one that's always been about as pleasant to deal with as a pack of agitated porcupines, and neither T10 or PG ever seems to do anything that even remotely satifies them (though admittedly it's partly their own fault as well, but that's a different discussion). So I can't blame them if they decided to just keep their heads down and not make any promises until they have something substantial to show.

And at the same time, I've no idea how much of an influence Microsoft has on their communication channels but given the direct affiliation and the fact that Forza is their flagship game, I wouldn't be surprised if there were "men from Redmond" watching over their shoulders too. Because if there's one thing Microsoft is good at, it's putting the kibosh on any sort of internal statements implying that their products are anything less than gold plated unicorns.

What they've done is launched the game in a bit of a state (which admittedly was probably unavoidable with this many players), released a small hotfix that fixed some minor bugs (but removed exploits that allowed people to have fun), then just went silent. It's not a good look.

At the same time, pushing out multi gigabyte updates every week and then inevitable rollbacks when something in those rapid fire updates doesn't play nice is only going to anger people even further without fully fixing anything. A lot of smaller developers have made the mistake of doing that in recent years in their attempts to placate an angry fanbase, and it always ends poorly.

Now when the first major update drops, if they still haven't fixed some of the very glaring things that have been raising the most player concern, then all the impolite grumbling that comes their way is well-deserved.

 

[Cerebral303]

Eliminator, yesterday, I was surprised and a little disappointed to be harassed by a wingman in a Ferrari who was covering their mate in a Vocho. The Ferrari kept blocking me and trying to spin me out and if I hadn't crashed into a tree I would have blamed them for my elimination.

Is this cheating? Is it possible to find a way to join a session your friends are in? Was it just a brief Italo-Germanic friendship struck up in the heat of battle royale?

Either way, I am more annoyed that everyone discovered my (sort of obvious) favourite starting point next to two car drops, and I now lose both drops at the start. I found it myself and had that secret for like one day!

 

[Famine]

I've no idea how much of an influence Microsoft has on their communication channels

All of the.

You can't speak to PG at all. It all goes through Microsoft (though they're nice enough).

 

[Apple Slipper]

Been replicating the Ken Block Gymkhana 10 Guanajuato Extended cut video in the game!

 

[Moglet]

At the same time, pushing out multi gigabyte updates every week and then inevitable rollbacks when something in those rapid fire updates doesn't play nice is only going to anger people even further without fully fixing anything. A lot of smaller developers have made the mistake of doing that in recent years in their attempts to placate an angry fanbase, and it always ends poorly.

Now when the first major update drops, if they still haven't fixed some of the very glaring things that have been raising the most player concern, then all the impolite grumbling that comes their way is well-deserved.

I agree, which is why the lack of communication is a bigger issue than it has been in the past. I'm assuming they are working on a big patch that will contain a lot of fixes but we don't know for certain because messaging has been very vague. For all we know the next patch will just fix some more exploits. Even a rough idea of what the first patch will address would be nice at this stage! E.g. "The first patch will focus on networking".

BTW has anyone else had the Forza Horizon 5 survey come through on email? It says it will take around 30 minutes to complete.

 

[AttackDickie]

It's going to be very hard for PG to find good Event Lab blueprints for future series...

I thought I'd play one tonight hoping to find something a bit different.

Apart from the ones that PG created themselves, all the "best"/"most popular" events are flooded with...

AFK
10SP in 27S

🙄

As someone who has tried to do put a little bit of thought into BPs (rally stages, a Volvo safety test etc) it's disheartening to see BPs with the same old super/cars getting tons of likes. I have fun creating them all the same and it's the one feature that could keep me interesting in the series moving forward.

 

[Famine]

I agree, which is why the lack of communication is a bigger issue than it has been in the past. I'm assuming they are working on a big patch that will contain a lot of fixes but we don't know for certain because messaging has been very vague. For all we know the next patch will just fix some more exploits. Even a rough idea of what the first patch will address would be nice at this stage! E.g. "The first patch will focus on networking".

Well... GTPlanet does include the FM/FH community manager among our membership...

 

[strela]

Poor DJS is going to get a reputation for hating the game now although when you look at his tweet he specifically added two immediate replies to say that this is not the case. He loves the game but not the broken bits which should absolutely be fixed or at least for now acknowledged by MS/PG's army of community liasons.

I hope that doesn't make him a "casual" for heaping praise upon the offline portion of

I totaly understand him. He was first on the leaderboard. Probably almost completed everything only to be surpassed by a guy that clearly didn't complete the Creator portion of the Accolades.

IIRC, PG more-or-less scrapped the old system where car values could be adjusted based on the legendary status of a player (which is convenient, since Creative levels are a bit broken right now). Now how it works is that, besides the base value of the vehicle, a cars value in the Auction House is based on its overall availability. Since the Raeser is/will be an exclusive car for the Spring season, it can basically only be earned once through normal gameplay, and as such the Auction House assigns it a significantly higher value. It's also the reason why cars like the LaFerrari and 911 GT3 RS Forza Edition are selling for $10 million plus, since they can only be earned once through the Car Collector page.

As for how people are getting it, the answer is exploits. I remember there being an exploit in FH4's seasonal playlists that basically allowed players to "time travel" through different seasons in order to unlock, preview, and sell soon-to-be-released cars. Pretty sure that using this exploit could get you banned, though.

Legendary status still exist. You need 15,000 downloads to get there. Once there you can sell cars for 20mil.
And I think it was @Populuxe who posted about a bug that allow buying an exclusive car from the Car Collection menu. I think it's that. It's also possible that someone did the time travel.. but that is easy bannable. I don't know.

 

[Moglet]

Well... GTPlanet does include the FM/FH community manager among our membership...

I definitely feel for them at the minute as their hands will be tied when it comes to what they can and can't say

 

[breyzipp]

I agree, which is why the lack of communication is a bigger issue than it has been in the past. I'm assuming they are working on a big patch that will contain a lot of fixes but we don't know for certain because messaging has been very vague. For all we know the next patch will just fix some more exploits. Even a rough idea of what the first patch will address would be nice at this stage! E.g. "The first patch will focus on networking".

My guess is that we won’t see a patch before next Tuesday anymore. I would expect Series 2 rolls out then anyway and that update will also include a bunch of much needed bug fixes.

 

[MagpieRacer]

Been replicating the Ken Block Gymkhana 10 Guanajuato Extended cut video in the game!


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Stunning work.

 

[Apple Slipper]

Stunning work.

Thanks, mate! Glad you liked it!

 

[Stang616]

My guess is that we won’t see a patch before next Tuesday anymore. I would expect Series 2 rolls out then anyway and that update will also include a bunch of much needed bug fixes.

I agree with this. Most likely the Season 2 update will include more fixes as well as the next round of car pass cars. Considering there was no Torben Tuesday I would suspect it's a heavy patch to fix a lot of issues.

 

[Cerebral303]

They will probably purge the AFK and skill point farming stuff and leave Horizon Arcade alone. Hope I'm wrong.

 

[Stang616]

They will probably purge the AFK and skill point farming stuff and leave Horizon Arcade alone. Hope I'm wrong.

Honestly,

There would be no reason to remove those features or wheelspins from cars if people wouldn't abuse them and then claim it isn't an exploit since 'it's in the game as a usable feature.'

 

[Famine]

What the hell is going on with these cars in Eliminator - always low level ones - that cannot be challenged despite being available for challenge and showing the challenge button above their car?

I mean, it's obviously a cheat of some kind, because they're always low level cars and always hanging about car drops, just waiting.

 

[Cerebral303]

Honestly,

There would be no reason to remove those features or wheelspins from cars if people wouldn't abuse them and then claim it isn't an exploit since 'it's in the game as a usable feature.'

There was no way of knowing that using skill points to unlock a wheelspin was considered an exploit. At least AFK is pretty obviously not how the game is intended to be played. I just hope the focus is on fixing the online problems.

 

[Stang616]

There was no way of knowing that using skill points to unlock a wheelspin was considered an exploit. At least AFK is pretty obviously not how the game is intended to be played. I just hope the focus is on fixing the online problems.

The devs have a habit of making the same mistakes game after game. The wheelspins perks and 50 lap Goliath races have been a problem since FH4.

In my opinion, the solution isn't to remove those features, but rather go after the people abusing them or find a way to prevent the abuse without punishing the legitimate players.

 

[Cerebral303]

The devs have a habit of making the same mistakes game after game. The wheelspins perks and 50 lap Goliath races have been a problem since FH4.

In my opinion, the solution isn't to remove those features, but rather go after the people abusing them or find a way to prevent the abuse without punishing the legitimate players.

Totally agree, being new I didn't know how many points would make a wheelspin "exploitative" - Was 5,10,20,30 ok?

I did hear that they stripped players of their wheelspins and gave back the skillpoints in the extreme cases and that didn't affect me, so hopefully they are!

 

[warp9engage]

Totally agree, being new I didn't know how many points would make a wheelspin "exploitative" - Was 5,10,20,30 ok?

I did hear that they stripped players of their wheelspins and gave back the skillpoints in the extreme cases and that didn't affect me, so hopefully they are!

They shouldn't punish the players for their poor balancing choices. You earn skill points by performing skills, exactly as intended, and you spend those skill points, in the car mastery trees, for bonuses and rewards, as intended. If those rewards are unbalanced, that is Playground's mistake. We, the players, are merely following the rules they set and, of course, we will use the best methods for success, within that rule set.

One thing is certain, you don't find you've made a rule poorly, change it, and then retroactively punish players who took advantage of those rules when they were the ones in place.

 

[Silver Arrows]

They shouldn't punish the players for their poor balancing choices. You earn skill points by performing skills, exactly as intended, and you spend those skill points, in the car mastery trees, for bonuses and rewards, as intended. If those rewards are unbalanced, that is Playground's mistake. We, the players, are merely following the rules they set and, of course, we will use the best methods for success, within that rule set.

One thing is certain, you don't find you've made a rule poorly, change it, and then retroactively punish players who took advantage of those rules when they were the ones in place.

Ding ding ding.

When it comes to the Supra/Willys/Firebird 'exploits', it is simply hyper-streamlining the features that Playground put in. The fact that Playground are punishing people for doing stuff that they allowed through them not doing due diligence in making the Car Mastery trees actually commiserate with a car's rarity level (Why are these low level cars packed with a Super Wheelspin to begin with?) is an absolute joke move.

I get it. You don't want to make a joke out of the game's economy. But the genie is already out the bottle, and really, the best course of action is to remove the Super Wheelspins and not punish people who have participated in it.

 

[Populuxe]

BTW has anyone else had the Forza Horizon 5 survey come through on email? It says it will take around 30 minutes to complete.

I got that last night. It’s just the usual stuff. What features do you like? What features do you dislike? Etc.

 

[ImaRobot]

Question as I'm having trouble finding exact information, but does the VIP membership still offer double credit rewards?

EDIT: Nevermind, found it basically as soon as I posted that lol.

 

[Stang616]

I was mostly referring to the Goliath 50 lap AFK exploiters versus the skill tree when it comes to punishment.

That is 100% a balancing issue and it would be extremely hard to determine what constitutes an exploit versus someone legitimately earning skill points and using those to earn Wheelspins from perks by buying inexpensive cars and using the perks that came on the car.

I also agree that the Skill Mastery trees should reflect the rarity of the vehicle and I think they did at one point, didn't they? A 40k, common rarity car, should not have a Super Wheelspin in it's Mastery tree.

 

[Wolfe]

I'm certain that I'm late to acknowledge this, but I discovered the low water level behind the Sierra Verde Dam for the dry season, and acquired the bonus board there. Two things to say about it:

1. I love it.
2. They stole my idea!

I'm loving the details of the seasonal changes. The stormy season made itself very apparent, which was cool (I'm a typical Midwestern lightning-watcher), and I don't mind having to climb the volcano to play in snow. It's Mexico, after all. I'm also enjoying noticing subtler details across the map & 24h cycle in each season.

I'm envious of FH5's lighting and environmental effects. There's a lot of aesthetic and sentimental/nostalgic value in the details there, and I wish I could recreate it all.

 

[Silver Arrows]

I was mostly referring to the Goliath 50 lap AFK exploiters versus the skill tree when it comes to punishment.

That is 100% a balancing issue and it would be extremely hard to determine what constitutes an exploit versus someone legitimately earning skill points and using those to earn Wheelspins from perks by buying inexpensive cars and using the perks that came on the car.

I also agree that the Skill Mastery trees should reflect the rarity of the vehicle and I think they did at one point, didn't they? A 40k, common rarity car, should not have a Super Wheelspin in it's Mastery tree.

Someone in this thread mentioned that FH4 had the skill trees relate to a car's rarity level, but only on launch day vehicles...and the same might be true for FH5.

 

[dirtydog]

What the hell is going on with these cars in Eliminator - always low level ones - that cannot be challenged despite being available for challenge and showing the challenge button above their car?

I mean, it's obviously a cheat of some kind, because they're always low level cars and always hanging about car drops, just waiting.

Probably connection issues rather than cheaters, FH4 had this problem when Eliminator first came to Forza but they fixed it.