I feel like the game is kinda stuck in between wanting to keep the gamepass subscription model going, while at the same time not quite putting in enough resources to truly make it worth it. Whether it's because they want to keep more resources for the next game or it's restrictions from Microsoft, obviously we have no idea from the outside.
The playlist has been all over the place and sometimes feels hacked together from leftover bits. I think if they had more resources and planning for the playlists to have stronger themes it'd go a long way to make them more enjoyable. A change I'd like especially is for playlists to have focused car themes. Maybe I'm in the minority, but I'd really rather have a car theme than a Holidays theme. I love the holiday season but I don't see the point in a car game.
I think the game's biggest asset is the size and diversity of the car list and at times it seems like PG isn't really aware of it. There's a lot to be leveraged with a 500+ car list. The game could benefit massively just by highlighting the cars more, make them the focus of the game. And I think the playlist isn't doing a good enough job of that. If it did it'll probably alleviate a lot of the complaints people have about the game, by shifting the focus on the cars already in the game instead of making people only think about the next car drops.
At the moment you earn cars by doing a collection of nearly random events, and then cars just magically appear in your garage. You don't feel like you've "earned" the car since everything you did to get it was so random, and nothing "special" happens when you do unlock it. There's a pretty big disconnect between the grind and the reward, which in turn makes the cars feel less special and more like a random collectible. If the playlist did more to connect the grind and the reward with a strong theme it'd be a big improvement.
A "relatively" easy way to do it would be to turn playlists into mini campaigns IMO. Pick a theme; eg. hot hatches. First week in D class, then C, then B. Make people pick sides like they did with countries last year. All rewards cars are hot hatches, all events done with hot hatches. Make the rewards cars available at the festival site in Forzavista, even before the cars are unlocked. Maybe even throw in some voiceovers from guest stars like Jason Cammisa, Chris Harris, TGT trio, or even some smallers personalities so players learn about the cars. Make the cars feel special, instead of just another collectible to tick off a list.
Having a theme would also benefit creators in the game, since everyone's driving the same cars it'll be easier to highlight tunes, liveries and eventlabs.
This model would take a fair bit more planning to implement so I doubt we'd see anything like it in this game, but I hope the next game has a better thought out playlist model.
Generally agree with most of this, but there are some asterisks and things that make it tough.
I agree that they aren't really making the "games as a service" model work great if that's what they are going for, and I think the biggest part of it is that they are primarily relying on cars to do it, with the occasional holiday decorations and annoying "stories" here and there that amount to basically the same thing; random people telling you to do random things because... reasons, and you get a car at the end. From the prizes to the events to the "challenges" it all just feels like RNG making the game.
I think if they are really going make the game feel consistently engaging they need to also add routes and implement new game modes or race types in there too. Even simple things that ancient arcade racing games had like "knockout" style races where last place is dropped, or utilizing some of their EventLab modifier things for the power penalty races, bring back a mode with those weird races like FH3 multiplayer had where you earn both style points and finish points, and so on. How about an old OutRun style mode with a super long route that has some route choice in it? There are a ton of ideas they could use if they got a little creative.
Of course, the problem with all those ideas and many others is that the AI is just garbage to race against. Between wildly varying performances in-race, the weird "physics bubble" where they can crash through stuff without slowing down, and occasionally oddly scaled difficulty from race to race, all of those different kinds of races still wouldn't be much fun for more than one or two runs.
Multiplayer would be an obvious way to help avoid the AI issue, but unfortunately the multiplayer community has devolved into a bunch of douchebags spamming quick chats and horns while they ram you off the track, chasing away nearly all of the people that might actually be fun to race with.
I generally like the theme idea, but as mentioned above the game has a big playerbase and it's hard to please everyone. Using your example with the hatches, I don't really like them but don't mind racing them, and I find lower classes far more fun to drive in this game, so while I'd be fine with a C class hatch series followed by a B class hatch series, there are a bunch of others that would be like "I ain't drivin' no gotdang rice burner!" or whatever, and a bunch of supercar kiddies who think it was boring because they couldn't go 200mph, and so on. Overall it's a good idea though and assuming it doesn't end up as "RNG like before but this time we have 1 consistent division" then it would be an interesting way to highlight cars and divisions and hopefully make people develop an appreciation for some of them.
I think the easiest solution for them would be to just make a bunch more ways to earn points so we have more freedom. If they just want people playing the game, then why should they care whether we do their RNG championships or just make our own championship? Why should we only get points for doing the Horizon Tour (or whatever it's called) and not for the Eliminator?
that forgot to check its mailbox for the free Cupra and disbursed 2,000,000! Dunce of the Year!!!
