Forza Motorsport 7 One Year Later: The Biggest Racing Game (Still Needs Direction)

[mekonrider]

The biggest suck element of FM7 imo was the fact took the bloody airport away from us! Sometimes I just wanted to tear about in a massive open space, nothing to hit, getting my drift down without any walls to hit. I know they kept it for tag or something but it's not the same.

No doubt they'll probably give it back to us in FM8 and expect it to be praise-worthy.

 

[Northstar]

The biggest suck element of FM7 imo was the fact took the bloody airport away from us! Sometimes I just wanted to tear about in a massive open space, nothing to hit, getting my drift down without any walls to hit. I know they kept it for tag or something but it's not the same.

No doubt they'll probably give it back to us in FM8 and expect it to be praise-worthy.

IIRC it came back with the drift update.

 

[ImaRobot]

The biggest suck element of FM7 imo was the fact took the bloody airport away from us! Sometimes I just wanted to tear about in a massive open space, nothing to hit, getting my drift down without any walls to hit. I know they kept it for tag or something but it's not the same.

No doubt they'll probably give it back to us in FM8 and expect it to be praise-worthy.

Um.. didn't they add it back?

EDIT: Tree'd

 

[Dsavage27]

Yes guys, the open airport is back. It came with the drift update.

 

[GT Kelv]

I like what the did with this game for the most part. I still think PC2 and GT-S are both better as well. I feel the game needs more content and cars especially since they’re not making another Motorsport for this Xbox generation. I want to see cars like the Delorean, 300 SLR coupe, Mercedes McLaren SLR 722 coupe, Corvette C6 Z06, Camaro Z28 (‘15), the new Vantage S, the new M5, 488 Pista, 600 LT, Huracan Performante, and Aventador SV-J in my opinion. But it’s still a good game though. Those 90 degree steering animations have got to go in Motorsport and Horizon. This is the only game that still has these and not 360 degree or more steering animations.

 

[palqo]

You have to have adjustability.

If FFB was locked to a universal setting the devs deemed correct for everyone there would be tens of thousands of negative opinions across dozens of different wheels.

What feels correct to me on my old Fanatec CSR would be far too powerful on my brothers OSW mige, or too light for the T150 user.

There has to be options to dial in our gear.

Take for example one of my only Motorsport 7 complaints, FOV.

The devs gave us no adjustability here, probably as it greatly affects FPS but wouldn't you like to fine tune it so that dashboard is perfectly lined up behind your wheel?

Perhaps I'm misunderstanding you're thoughts but I think the real gains for us all here will be in improved physics and tire model.

Well, I think you do. I'm not saying there should not be any FFB setting possible, or that there should be one for any wheel. I'm saying that it should come set correctly for each wheel (if you even can choose one, as there is mostly only "a wheel" setting), which currently it is not. My "real feel" settings are so far off the default setting (which is the same for every wheel btw.; see the irony? ) that it's not even funny.

FOV? Yeah, currently it's so big, it's the only thing keeping me from immersion in FM7, even when I'm directly in front of my 55" TV.

 

[Dopplegagger]

No thanks. I don't have a problem setting my own wheel up. It takes about 5-10 minutes to get a decent setting. And tweaking it isn't rocket science.

Would I would like to see is a live setting. Where you can make changes while driving a car, just to eliminate needing to stop playing to tweak FFB and wheel settings. Then again, I can do most of that on the fly with my wheel, so eh. It's kind of moot.

 

[FoxMulder]

FM7 was a disappointment really and I've been a fan of the franchise since the first. I fell off it quick for a number of reasons, and decided to check out GTS.

I was probably burned out on the Forza formula, while I find the actual motorsports elements in GTS more compelling. Online is a **** show in Forza as well.

 

[mekonrider]

Yes guys, the open airport is back. It came with the drift update.

Damn! That's what happens when you give up on a game early on! I've not played it for a long time now. I got overtaken by the need for GTsport and Dirt Rally in VR.

I may drag the g920 out and give it a go again.

 

[KingK76]

This article absolutely NAILED IT! Great bit of writing there. I 100% agree that with Forza Horizon being the far more arcade style experience that Motorsport should double down on the Sim aspects of the genre. I actually just played FM5 directly after playing FM7 and found FM7 physics dumbed down slightly compared to 5. That is going in the wrong direction in my opinion. Here's to hoping Turn10 raises the bar going forward with the Motorsports series.

 

[TheCrazySwede]

What happen to Dan? He was the creative director for T10 when I worked with the studio. Do they have a new CD now?

 

[SlipZtrEm]

What happen to Dan? He was the creative director for T10 when I worked with the studio. Do they have a new CD now?

Dan moved up to CD for the entire Forza franchise around the time of FM7's launch. Chris is CD for Motorsport, with Ralph in that position for Horizon. FWIW, Bill Giese's Twitter profile says he's still a CD of Motorsport as well.

 

[TheCrazySwede]

Dan moved up to CD for the entire Forza franchise around the time of FM7's launch. Chris is CD for Motorsport, with Ralph in that position for Horizon. FWIW, Bill Giese's Twitter profile says he's still a CD of Motorsport as well.

Oh ok! Thanks for the update! Dan's a great guy. Glad to see he's still around and doing well.

 

[RikkiGT-R]

I've played most modern racing sims, and would like to offer my thoughts on the "big three" mentioned in this thread...

PCARS2 - Incredibly mundane in my opinion. I was extremely excited about it to begin with, but on release there was that awful bug whereby I would set a great lap time in qualifying and, thinking it was clearly good for pole, simulated the rest of the session only to find all AI drivers had set astronomically quick (read: impossible) lap times and relegated me to last on the grid. I found it staggering that something like this got past testing before release. In the end I found myself doing time trials instead and tinkering with cars without any real direction to my game. The simulation itself is very good, the sounds are amazing, the cars feel heavy and powerful, noisy and metallic... you could almost smell the petrol.
I just don't like the game. Not being able to actually "win" anything bugs me, no way to buy and upgrade/modify cars leaves me feeling very hollow. It's just race weekend after race weekend, without anything... tangible(?) to show for my efforts. No real progress as such; each time you load up the game, everything looks as it did on day one. Doesn't mean it's a bad game of course, and if you like that sort of thing you'll absolutely adore PCARS. I don't.

Forza 7 - the sheer number of races and cars available beggars belief, but I find the presentation cheesy and "over Americanised" with daft and unnecessary voice-overs that take away from the game's solid attempt at being a simulator. I guess it's to appease a wider audience, but (again, personally) I don't like it. The first thing I did when loading the game was switch off the background music - more cheese with it's rock backing tracks quickly grating. Getting back to the game itself though - a monumental genre-leading array of cars from countless manufacturers easily leaves it's rivals some distance behind, and it's not too short on tracks either. The AI gets criticised but set to the hardest difficulty and "hardcore" driving mode and FM7 offers a great challenge for a single-player gamer like me, which leads to my next point... online racing. FM7 really is the worst imaginable online racing experience. Absolutely stuffed full of incompetent morons, Hell bent on ramming and crashing and spoiling any hope of fun you might wish to have. Sometimes you get lucky and manage to have a good race, but those times are rare unless it is a "ghost" event where contact is impossible - but contact possibility is all part of the excitement of racing, and switching it off is akin to running hot laps.
Thankfully there are plans to change the online experience, but we'll have to wait and see how that works out. Looks positive though.

GT Sport - regulars here will know I don't play GT Sport, my last 'Turismo was 6, so anything I say about it is not from personal experience and can be taken with a pinch of salt. What I can say though, is that the reason I didn't buy it was it's focus firmly on online play, with a total lack of Gran Turismo mode as we know and love it meaning the game had absolutely nothing to offer me. I love nothing more than starting a new game with a small balance, doing some license tests, winning races, buying cars, improving them, winning more races, better cars, upgrades and so on. Aficionados will say I'm missing out, but I've never been about online play, it's just not for me (aside from online leaderboards that I've invested years in with Forza), so there's nothing for me to miss. I have been tempted lately, however, because I'd love to footer about with the livery editor which, I'm learning, is utterly outstanding for a first go in the GT Series. But the online play would just annoy me, I prefer the freedom to do things at my leisure (which is why recently I returned to GT4).

OPINION - Gran Turismo is a vastly superior driving simulator than Forza. I spent months playing FM7 solid, and make no mistake I adore the game, but when I loaded up my PS3 for some GT6 a month ago, the difference is absolutely staggering. The cars just feel... right. I've said elsewhere on these forums, a while ago now, that there is no better experience than turning off the HUD completely, and taking any car around Nürburgring at night time in Gran Turismo (I recommend the 458 Italia). There just isn't a better and more realistic experience to be found on console. It's just a shame GT6 is rubbish as an overall game, and GT Sport isn't a "true" Gran Turismo - I sometimes daydream about GT4's content with GT Sport's polish. My God
I haven't spent long enough playing PCARS to really judge it in comparison.

 

[beyond72]

GT6 sounded so great on paper and I did enjoy it for a while, but the dead a.i, erratic frame rate and graphics eventually killed it for me. Going back to Forza 4 after, even with much less content, I appreciated how they on the other hand prided themselves on delivering a rock solid experience with it's frame rate and graphics. And now jumping to Forza 7, it's got the content too.
I agree about some of presentation of 7,which comes as no surprise given the popularity of the Horizon series, but it has no effect on the game once I jump into a 20 lap race around Brands Hatch in the rain!

 

[beyond72]

I do miss my Willow Springs though!!

 

[RikkiGT-R]

I do miss my Willow Springs though!!

That's one track I cannot stand
Willow Springs and Fuji Speedway are both awful, and I mean I genuinely detest Fuji (modern layouts). Long tightening turns with no real apex to work with, track as wide as The Atlantic ocean, just cannot find any kind of rhythm at all.

 

[SimTourist]

With the news of Turn10 of taking an extra year or maybe even more to develop the next Forza for the nextgen xbox I hope they do it right. Switch it to a full service based game while offering a massive starting package at launch, basically one mainline forza for an entire generation, make it available at launch of new xbox, game pass obviously to maximize the user base, build up from that. Regular content drops like cars, tracks and new features to make it exciting, not just some minor fixes here and there and nothing new aside from paid car packs. Honestly if you play games like Fortnite or Rocket League you know what a good service game is, the developers are constantly making improvements, changes, seasonal themed events, interacting with the community instead of being immediately put on making a sequel. With decreasing popularity of racing games the old model of having a full boxed product at 60 bucks every 2 years doesn't work anymore, the player numbers have only decreased going from F5 to F6 to now F7, which is probably the lowest selling forza so far, and I can't blame the players, it's really just a minor upgrade from Forza 6, 4 new tracks of which 3 are remakes, a handful of new cars, a dynamic skybox... it's like "wow who give a s..." instead of "damn I have to get this game because it's so much better", PD made the right call but were a bit late to the party as far as content goes. T10 has a strong base to work with, with over 800 cars in the game and 32 tracks, but they can push it further, a game that gets a new track every month gets the community excited and keeps the game from getting stale quickly, simultaneously keeping the game alive. Personally Forza 7 was the quickest I dropped a forza game, it was by far the buggiest forza I've played, barely any new content, the look and feel of the game feels tired and dated, the floaty handling started getting on my nerves, etc. I think T10 still has potential to turn it around, but the new game needs to feel exciting, new and continuosly developed after release for years if not an entire generation to grow into something insanely massive by the end of it's lifecycle. Just my 2 cents, I could go on and on as an old forza player, or maybe that's just me getting old.

 

[beyond72]

That's one track I cannot stand
Willow Springs and Fuji Speedway are both awful, and I mean I genuinely detest Fuji (modern layouts). Long tightening turns with no real apex to work with, track as wide as The Atlantic ocean, just cannot find any kind of rhythm at all.

That final corner on Willow Springs would probably be a mess on F7 anyway lol.