Forza Horizon 5: General Discussion

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Found interesting things in the dialogue strings, this time regarding Rally Adventure. The file referred as Dialogue_PDLC2_HeroesBaja. Based on the dialogues it could be either :

1. Earlier draft of the Rally Adventure campaign/storyline. Using horizon story to unlock cars such as Ford F150 Lighting, Scumbug, and Alumi Class 1, Ford Focus RS instead of completing races to unlock cars like current version. There are also mention of Scott Tyler.

2. A horizon story to be added later on, because there are also dev comments in the [.....] bracket. One of the line is [ U S E T H I S L I N E I F Y O U N E E D C A V E P A I N T I N G S E X P O S I T I O N H E R E , B U T W I T H T H E N E W S T O R Y I D O N ' T T H I N K I T ' S N E C E S S A R Y ] This is somewhat unlikely because you can already unlock the cars mentioned in the strings by playing the current campaign.

3. Some sort seasonal update to Sierra Nueva? This is because of mention of rallymas and dia de los rally (pun). Again unlikely because so far we don't have any update to Hot Wheels map.
Some early conceptual art pictures of FH5 are similar to Rally maps.https://www.artstation.com/why_pack
 
I like Rally Adventure and enjoy it, but I can see why this expansion is controversial.

For example, the map design: unlike Fortune Island and Blizzard Mountain, it has a lot of visual similarities with the main map assets, and I can understand why some people don't see any changes.

Secondly, the track design: all of the preset tracks in Rally Adventure are good layouts that are very fun to drive in the lower A classes and below. However, this may seem cramped (whether we like it or not) to the hypercar fans in the S1 class and above, who make up the majority of today's FH series fans.

And car list. as a result I enjoy all cars. However, even for an off-road car fan like myself, the expansion's car list seemed to be too much biased towards buggy and trophy trucks. It would have been nice to have a little more variety in the car list, for example, off-road supercars like the Porsche 911 Dakar and Lamborghini Huracan Sterrato, or JDM cars like the Subaru WRX, GR Yaris, or classic rally cars like the Ferrari 308 GTB Group B or Peugeot 405 T16.

As a personal assessment, I love this expansion. But at the same time I thought they took a big gamble. This expansion is the exact opposite of the more open, more mass-market Forza Horizon evolution of recent years. They went back to their classic roots and released an expansion for the more hardcore fans.
While the reactions of the negative people on steam, forums and reddit may be somewhat overdone. But I think those reactions are also the right ones.
 
Steam users are a tiny portion of Forza players in total. I get the impression that the Steam version is buggier than the other versions, so I suspect this is partly frustration?
 
As a personal assessment, I love this expansion. But at the same time I thought they took a big gamble. This expansion is the exact opposite of the more open, more mass-market Forza Horizon evolution of recent years. They went back to their classic roots and released an expansion for the more hardcore fans.
While the reactions of the negative people on steam, forums and reddit may be somewhat overdone. But I think those reactions are also the right ones.
If this means that they won't take big risks next time around, say for the fh6 map being complex and tightly connected roads, it is a real shame. It also means that something like the progression system may not go further than just a simple class restriction at most.
I do think that they have pressure whether directly or indirectly, as Microsoft's only first party franchise that has pretty much been a success since the start. This also probably will lead to a more safe refresh of the franchise than a bold/back to the roots formula for the next one.
 
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I've noticed that the Rally Adventure Expansion is unfortunately getting review bombed on Steam.
I don't know the reasons for it (I have no desire to read angry Steam reviews) but I have some theories:

  • A day before release, people could accidentally play it early.
    If they did this, Forza's hotfix locked them out of the entire game for 24 hours.

  • Following the expansion's release, there were a number of notable performance issues and crash generators.

  • As PC is a tricky platform to optimise for, I wouldn't be surprised if some users are under or close to minimum spec, and their game is struggling as a result.

This is all on top of the content aspect that people can rightly criticise if a game doesn't meet their expectations.

From experience, poor technical performance absolutely tanks the Steam (Recent) Reviews score as users will post negative reviews for even the smallest of bugs.

A game can recover (DiRT Rally 2.0 went from 40% Recents to 90% Recents at one point, it's currently at 94%), but it's an uphill struggle and will require multiple positive patches/updates.

That being said, the review secores for DLCs aren't as important to publishers as the base game, and that has been stable since launch.

 
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That'll be because it wasn't "Japanese City Drifting Adventure" 😂😂😂
They all thought 'Nightfall', the codename meant a city expansion. But I would strongly disagree as Forza's physics aren't reasonable with 90-degree turns, especially with urban streets. I think these so-called whiners and negative divebombers happened because they got a rally expansion and nowhere close to what they thought they were getting.

Found some hilarious Forza comments that were flagged as well, and they're pure gold:
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Had to censor this guy's spaced out profanity and I flagged his post.
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This last one is super hilarious, it's the same guy (who set up another account as his previous sockpuppet account was blocked) who keeps begging for a specific Aventador, the roadster model. This comment was deleted.

Me personally, I liked the idea of bringing back a long-lost feature last found in the first Horizon game. Too bad the wretchedly insufferable dialogue (except for Alex) ruins it.
 
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I dusted off my wheel. This expansion is great as there is limited mount of booring tarmac. Still its not all that creative so if you dont run it for the racing preferrably with a wheel I can see its insanely booring. I started off with gamepad and it felt just as dead and pointless as the main game. The career stuff is done to death and have no replay value. But the feel is so good with wheel I get into it.
 
Which YouTuber decided that the FH5 map was built just for the Eliminator? I‘ve seen so many people parrot that everywhere since last week…

Rather than being added to the game a year after launch, as with Forza Horizon 4, the Eliminator mode in Forza Horizon 5 has been considered from the very start, with Brown saying that “the world is now much better suited to Eliminator, as we’ve been able to build that level design into the world, thinking about how Eliminator would work and how it would play.”
 
Which YouTuber decided that the FH5 map was built just for the Eliminator? I‘ve seen so many people parrot that everywhere since last week…
It's something that has been stated by PGG multiple times. Pretty sure it was said recently again on stream too but that's a little too much work to find so I hope this will do...

"This time around, though, we were able to build the world with [The Eliminator] in mind and think about the cool scenarios you'd want to create within Eliminator as we were building the world," Brown explains. "We thought, 'oh, wouldn't it be cool if a final circle closed down on top of the volcano? Wouldn't it be cool if while the circle is closing in, a dust storm grows up, and you suddenly now have to try and find people in a dust storm?' I think it allowed us to build a world that's a bit better level designed for that mode."

“We released Eliminator around about a year after Forza Horizon 4 came out. This time, Eliminator already exists as we’re putting the world together. So the world is now, I think, much better suited to Eliminator.”
 
Found interesting things in the dialogue strings, this time regarding Rally Adventure. The file referred as Dialogue_PDLC2_HeroesBaja. Based on the dialogues it could be either :

1. Earlier draft of the Rally Adventure campaign/storyline. Using horizon story to unlock cars such as Ford F150 Lighting, Scumbug, and Alumi Class 1, Ford Focus RS instead of completing races to unlock cars like current version. There are also mention of Scott Tyler.

2. A horizon story to be added later on, because there are also dev comments in the [.....] bracket. One of the line is [ U S E T H I S L I N E I F Y O U N E E D C A V E P A I N T I N G S E X P O S I T I O N H E R E , B U T W I T H T H E N E W S T O R Y I D O N ' T T H I N K I T ' S N E C E S S A R Y ] This is somewhat unlikely because you can already unlock the cars mentioned in the strings by playing the current campaign.

3. Some sort seasonal update to Sierra Nueva? This is because of mention of rallymas and dia de los rally (pun). Again unlikely because so far we don't have any update to Hot Wheels map.
Jesus there are so many whitespaces there
 
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I've got to imagine most of the people asking for a big city map or expansion are very tunnel-visioned on one thing: drifting. Don't get me wrong, I love drifting and throwing cars sideways, but I think they're forgetting to consider how a dedicated city map would feel to actually race in. I'm sure Playground could do it well, but realistically speaking, a modern city is mostly 90 degree turns and intersection after intersection with not much variety, mostly at least.

Would that really make for the best racing and driving experience? I'm inclined to say no, as just going off of some Eventlabs I've played that are city-based, while good and very well-made, they typically aren't the best to actually race in. That's subjective, but it's just my opinion.

That aside, I've been absolutely loving Rally Adventure and enjoying it at my own pace. Completing one team at a time, thoroughly trying out all of the new cars, and just being in awe at some of the best driving and rally roads I've ever seen in an open world game, all while rocking out to Epitaph Radio, in my opinion some of the best music in the game. I've wanted Playground Games to add in more of these sorts of off-roaders and buggies for so many years now and I'm delighted we got a healthy new supply of them. Favorites so far have to be the Hammerhead and Trophy Jeep; those things are monstrous.
 
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I've got to imagine most of the people asking for a big city map or expansion are very tunnel-visioned on one thing: drifting. Don't get me wrong, I love drifting and throwing cars sideways, but I think they're forgetting to consider how a dedicated city map would feel to actually race in. I'm sure Playground could do it well, but realistically speaking, a modern city is mostly 90 degree turns and intersection after intersection with not much variety, mostly at least.
Burnout Paradise flashback... I missed so many turns in races in that game I think I eventually gave up.
 
Finished the DLC. Can finally add it back to my 100% showcase. 😊👍

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Overall it was a enjoyable experienced only slightly marred by some annoying performance issues in the dune region of the map (my PC comfortably surpasses not only the minimum but also the max Recommended specs so Shouldn't struggle anywhere).

The reward cars are interesting and fun to drive with the Standouts being the CM Focus RS, The Scumbug and The RJ Anderson Pro truck (mainly because the Funco engine can be swapped) 😊 (I would have preferred a few more actual Rally cars like the #4 RS given the supposed Classic rally theme of the Pack but all the reward cars are welcomed and fit the broad offroad theme overall.

The roads are the star of the show. Aswell as being really fun to drive and technical They also they seem way more visually detailed especially with the different asphalt applications from brand new smooth black tarmac to the usual cracked used dirty roads. I liked the amount of routes that come along with the DLC, 8 for each Team so 24 routes out of the box seemed a large improvement over the HW expansion which I thought lacked route variety.

A patch to improve Performance, Anti Lag backfire texture and the ability to buy the DLC cars would be much appreciated.

I enjoyed it, Then again I'm not as unreasonably hard to please like the majority of the wider FH5 player base.

Edit: How could I forget... The updated dirt and dust accumulation was a great addition too!
 
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On the common point that the expansion vehicles aren't the best fit for the expansion's actual events, I feel like the same thing happened with the previous expansion too. Hot Wheels, which was all long straights and maximum speeds, included two high downforce track cars, a Pikes Peak buggy, a rallycross car, and a gear-limited drag car.

However, the season directly before the HW expansion had a full set of very appropriate cars, with five Hot Wheels specials and two muscle cars with extreme 1500hp+ engine swaps. The same is true of the latest expansion - Series 18 had a Group B rally car, a rallycross car, a lower-performance trophy truck, two buggies, and a pair of classic off-roaders. There's even duplication of prizes again, with the quattro being given out as part of the expansion career, like the Hot Wheels cars were.

With it happening twice now, it must be a deliberate design decision. Cars appropriate to the expansion are given away free as a taster (and perhaps to tempt players to buy the upcoming expansion), while the expansion itself includes a different set of vehicles as paid content. Doing it this way means that the player can use those appropriate free cars in the expansion, as the paid content is given away as prizes as late as the very last race. The paid vehicles can then be taken back and used in the base game content, for example the COPO Camaro, WRX ARX, and the various Baja trucks all being best suited to event types not featured in the expansions that they debuted in (drag, dirt, and cross-country respectively). This potentially means that any player spike from the new expansion launching continues into base game multiplayer lobbies as people who have finished the expansion try out their new toys.
 
but realistically speaking, a modern city is mostly 90 degree turns and intersection after intersection with not much variety, mostly at least.
I'd just like to point out that this is a very U.S.-centric view. There are many many cities in the world which are not built on a grid structure. And like Guanjuato would be mediocre for drifting.
 
Gave all the cars a brief meta test over the weekend.

  • Most of the cars only really have viable builds for A-Class, and given the poor Handling stat across the board it’s mostly Cross Country.
  • The Focus is very close to being meta on A-Class Dirt, just lacks a little power vs the Ford GT40.
  • The Lightning is very close to being meta on B-Class Cross Country, it can match the International Scout over a single lap but I’m unsure on race consistency or route variance.
  • The Fastball isn’t far off meta on A-Class Cross Country, though I did need a near perfect lap to get close to the Mercedes-Benz X-Class.
  • The rest of the cars are “not terrible” but not amazing either.
  • All of this is (naturally) with early tunes I’ve found from reliably fast people, so they may not be optimised.

Times and the tunes I used are here:
 
TheGreaser:
" Forza's physics aren't reasonable with 90-degree turns, especially with urban streets.."


The physics are much the same as in FH4 and city-corners was no prob there, I had a lot of fun doing just that.

But off course if they`re "tuned" by some noobs :rolleyes:
 
It's less about the game engine not handling tight corners (it handles them fine) and more about a tighter map having a dissonance with the cars that are available in the game.

It's no secret that Forza Horizon games place a big focus on high-power cars which perform well on open roads with sweeping corners and high top speeds.

Having a highly technical map with lots of grids and twisties makes those kinds of cars feel rather awkward to drive, unless you widen the roads to a ludicrous degree.

We're seeing this with the Rally Adventure, where A-Class handling builds seems to be the "sweet spot" in terms of performance.

To that effect, here's a clip of me beating a Bone Shaker (known to be a high performing car in a straight line but with poor front end grip) in a GMC Jimmy.




If I were to guess, I would say that a full "city map", even at expansion scale, would tank the framerate on Xbox One, and we're unlikely to see anything larger than Edinburgh or Guanajuato until the series abandons the previous hardware generation.
 
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A game can recover (DiRT Rally 2.0 went from 40% Recents to 90% Recents at one point, it's currently at 94%), but it's an uphill struggle and will require multiple positive patches/updates.
If memory serves me well, that was probably because of Dirt Rally 2.0 receiving the old Dirt Rally (”1.0”) tracks as season pass content which was a controversial topic. 😅 Nevertheless, I liked seeing the old tracks return in DR 2.0 since many of them were my favourite ones (like Greece and Wales).

Still a top racing game out there, it aged very well being previous gen. I hope a DR 3.0 is in the making. 😎
 
If memory serves me well, that was probably because of Dirt Rally 2.0 receiving the old Dirt Rally (”1.0”) tracks as season pass content which was a controversial topic. 😅 Nevertheless, I liked seeing the old tracks return in DR 2.0 since many of them were my favourite ones (like Greece and Wales).

Still a top racing game out there, it aged very well being previous gen. I hope a DR 3.0 is in the making. 😎
It was a bunch of things, but server stability and poor VR performance were big hitters.

Both got fixed and the reviews went flying :)
 
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With Series 20 being dubbed "High Performance", I would be surprised not to see the Huracan STO in this update (unless it's coming with the leaked Drag Story update). A quick series 20 prediction from yours truly, which probably is too hopeful.

1970 Ferrari 512 S
2006 Koenigsegg CCX
2021 Lamborghini Huracan STO
2012 Lexus LF-A Nurburgring Edition
2018 Volkswagen #94 VW Motorsport I.D R Pikes Peak


The highly requested AMG GT Black Series would make a lot of sense here too - though Forza missed the SLS Black Series so I wouldn't be surprised if they missed the AMG GT's one too.

Some other FH returnees that fit the theme of this series IMO

2013 Bentley Continental GT Speed
1992 GMC Typhoon
1991 GMC Syclone (high performance trucks anyone?)
2009 Gumpert Apollo S (a man can dream)
2014 Infiniti Q50 Eau Rouge
2009 Lotus 2-Eleven
2000 Lotus 340R
2004 Maserati MC12
2015 McLaren P1 GTR (finally please PG?)
2009 Mercedes-Benz SL 65 AMG Black Series
2012 Pagani Huayra
2012 Shelby 1000
 
Yeah I'm thinking the STO might be the big ticket new to forza car for next series, if we get a 2nd new to forza car I'll be pleasantly surprised.
 

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