Forza Motorsport General Discussion Thread

[toastet]

Even if you could control your car on pit exit, it wouldn't do any good to follow the road course exit as you would just crash into that barrier/tires.

Ah yes thanks. I erased that from my memory of disappointment!

 

[meganinja]

But FM still has atleast 54,000 people playing the game. It maybe lower than expected but, that is far from a DEAD game.

The fact this is the only decent track racer in Xbox right now will guarantee that at worst they will keep updating so Xbox have a track racer, similar how Grounded and Sea of Thieves are updated


About Daytona, i have a theory that they leave pit exit like that beacuse the entrance would be too tight, making the first turn a mess in multiplayer, even more if some bad apples still mix up with good drivers due low numbers in lobby

 

[B58B30]

I've spent the last few days playing GT7 as we're going through open homes and my PC is in storage so playing GT7 on my wheel.

GT7 still has less meaningful content to me than FM, the staggered starts are truly awful, it's a chore going through the "career" mode of GT7, not only because the races are pretty terrible, but because you have to fast forward a bunch of meaningless menus and subtitles to advance the cafe menus. The licence tests are filler, I know many people like them, but I can't think of anything more dull to do in a racing game

Even disregarding the FM AI, the races in the career are far more enjoyable than in GT7, and they will only get better as the AI issues are addressed.

The views suck, it's 2024 FFS, can't they give us a bonnet cam instead of the godawful hood camera that also makes every car sound like a vacuum cleaner again like in GT5/6.

What GT7 does have going for it are some of the assists they have to help keep races clean, but these are pretty immersion breaking in single player mode. By this I mean the crash physics, when you hit a wall you get bumped off back onto the road, with a dull thud coming though your speakers, getting hit by another car gives you a bit of a shunt but the game definitely has some assists to put you back on track, it's all pretty immersion breaking in single player, but is certainly helpful in ensuring online is less crashy than Forza.

Multiplayer is an area that while more consistent in GT7, there is no variety, 3 daily races are pretty limiting in their track/car choice already, but to make it worse the meta is known at the beginning of each week, I watched Rory's stream last week where he was racing a one make race of Ford GT's in Daytona all week, how dull!

Despite its issues, I find myself turning on Forza more than I do GT7, so for a game that is "DOA" I'm sure getting a lot of fun out of it. I really don't care either for some of these content creators putting out their videos on Forza, it seems like a bit of a boys club, they all engage with each other on twitter to have their little giggles about the games struggles.

My guess is things will move on, the game will only get better with time, some of the creators that are stuck putting out negative engagement vids will get overtaken by those that keep playing and enjoying the game, and even when steam has 0 daily active users, you'll still be able to log online and get yourself a full lobby to do some online racing.

I don't care about which of the two is better, I only mentioned it to show it won't be very easy for T10 to fix FM.

I've followed the entirety of Polyphony's support, there were some very rough months in GT7, but they were starting from a more polished base so it was easier to fix and implement new stuff. FM on the other hand is a complete mess and, given there's no guarantee each update will improve and add to the game without breaking stuff, T10 is in a tight situation.

Keep in mind that I'm talking about the bare minimum to make this game functional and fun, because Forza has a huge list of leftover bugs from older games, especially linked to car models and textures, which keep piling up because T10 chooses not to address them. These are usually more fanboy fuel than anything, but in FM in particular I've seen particularly egregious ones.

To add to it, there were games like Cyberpunk 2077 which launched in a worse state than FM and experienced a comeback, but they already had a strong dedicated community in the first place (even with that catastrophic launch!) and had broader appeal. Also, when you play Cyberpunk you can tell CDPR could not fix it 100%, they did their best but there's just so much you can do with a messy product after release.

The people criticizing the game on YT are the same ones who were praising it at launch. The game has a very bad rep now and it'll take far more effort than you think to turn things around. I don't think the current T10 is up to the task TBH.

But FM still has atleast 54,000 people playing the game. It maybe lower than expected but, that is far from a DEAD game.

Event has been out for over a month and just 50k players on both Xbox and PC. There's games out there which get more than this in less than a week. I remember in FH5 launch the numbers were over a million as well.

If not dead, then it's dying very quickly. They hid the situation for as long as they could, choosing whom they communicated with very carefully, but eventually they had to come out and speak with the community.

The player count after the holidays was a wake up call to them. Letters like theirs don't happen if a game's doing well. They wrote it in a way they tried their best to hide the fact the game's doing badly, but they can't fool people so easily.

The fact this is the only decent track racer in Xbox right now will guarantee that at worst they will keep updating so Xbox have a track racer, similar how Grounded and Sea of Thieves are updated

Both games have bigger playerbases than FM.

 

[UKMikey]

Event has been out for over a month and just 50k players on both Xbox and PC.

Assuming everybody who plays the game plays Rivals.

 

[r_outsider]

Assuming everybody who plays the game plays Rivals.

You have a lot of people who never touch rivals, on top of that I believe even a lot of those who do haven't bothered with the G challenge as there's no incentive for anyone without a shot at winning to play it. If they were gifting a car or some credits like they did in 7 all the time they'd probably get a lot more players involved.

 

[McLaren]

Haven't touched Rivals, personally. First I saw of the Mac challenge was through that pop-up in the messages instead of the main start screen.

 

[ScottPuss20]

Assuming everybody who plays the game plays Rivals.

Yeah because I don't.

 

[Morbid65]

About Daytona, i have a theory that they leave pit exit like that beacuse the entrance would be too tight, making the first turn a mess in multiplayer, even more if some bad apples still mix up with good drivers due low numbers in lobby

Unless I'm just misunderstanding what you are saying, this makes no sense.

When you say "the entrance" I assume you mean the entry where the wall starts at the 2nd apex of turn 1, in which case it wouldn't have any impact on turn 1 as the wall is already there, you would just be able to drive behind it when exiting the pits instead of exiting directly onto the 1st apex of turn 1, the biggest braking zone on the track.

With the stupid "auto-drive out of pits" feature they added this time around, you wouldn't have to worry about people ignoring the proper exit and just rejoining unsafely, or Jimmy Johnson-ing themselves into the end of the wall while attempting to exit the pits either. Both of those are the only reasons, other than ignorance (or possibly laziness I guess), that I could see for them not using the proper pit exit before.

Forcing people down the proper pit exit is the only positive I see to this auto-drive thing, but the funny/sad part is they haven't utilized it well so places like Laguna Seca it not only doesn't use the proper exit, but it also actually rejoins the track more dangerously than is necessary even ignoring the proper exit.

Besides, regardless of what turn 1 is like, sim (and not-so-sim) racing for the last 20 years has proven that people can and will find a way to **** up every turn 1 in existence. Repeatedly.

 

[meganinja]

Unless I'm just misunderstanding what you are saying, this makes no sense.

I was talking about the part that is on circuit itself, not the pit-exit area
During the road course races, they extend the wall with temporary walling, making the turn 1 less larger to get in that it is actually it is, this walling problem is also a problem in the turn that goes back to oval from the horseshoe, it also gets too tight there, but in this specific sector there is with permament walls

Without the irl temporary walls in the turn 1, leaving only the grass, it leaves more space in turn 1 to avoid confusion in the turn

Now, i do agree that they should make auto-pit exit thru the way and coming out in turn 2-3, but i think they needed to close the walll to make it happen, at least in all areas where the pit is closed, the auto pit happens

The exeption is exactly in Laguna Seca where has no wall splitting the 2 areas

 

[-Fred-]

Assuming everybody who plays the game plays Rivals.

Rivals were a lot more popular when they came out in FM4 than they are today, I'd guess-timate probably 20-25% of the playerbase actually bothers playing them at best. I personally liked the format a lot better when you'd start from the bottom and beat people according to the leaderboard and where you were instead of basing progression on your friend list. Like, a lot of tracks I don't even have a time registered at and my suggested rival most of the time is @RPM Bibblefish, who I know there is absolutely no chance I'll ever beat.

 

[Morbid65]

I was talking about the part that is on circuit itself, not the pit-exit area
During the road course races, they extend the wall with temporary walling, making the turn 1 less larger to get in that it is actually it is, this walling problem is also a problem in the turn that goes back to oval from the horseshoe, it also gets too tight there, but in this specific sector there is with permament walls

Without the irl temporary walls in the turn 1, leaving only the grass, it leaves more space in turn 1 to avoid confusion in the turn

Now, i do agree that they should make auto-pit exit thru the way and coming out in turn 2-3, but i think they needed to close the walll to make it happen, at least in all areas where the pit is closed, the auto pit happens

The exeption is exactly in Laguna Seca where has no wall splitting the 2 areas

There is no temporary wall in turn 1 when they run the road course though.

Even if there was, leaving the grass open at turn 1 doesn't really help anything anyways though, as if someone is using the grass on the entry to turn 1 they are about to cause a massive incident so it doesn't help anything to have the grass open there.

The AI maintains control after pit walls end at multiple tracks, including Mid-Ohio which is one where an early release could lead to players rejoining dangerously, and is one of the examples of the auto-drive exit not being bad really.

 

[Ande3200]

I don't care about which of the two is better, I only mentioned it to show it won't be very easy for T10 to fix FM.

I've followed the entirety of Polyphony's support, there were some very rough months in GT7, but they were starting from a more polished base so it was easier to fix and implement new stuff. FM on the other hand is a complete mess and, given there's no guarantee each update will improve and add to the game without breaking stuff, T10 is in a tight situation.

Keep in mind that I'm talking about the bare minimum to make this game functional and fun, because Forza has a huge list of leftover bugs from older games, especially linked to car models and textures, which keep piling up because T10 chooses not to address them. These are usually more fanboy fuel than anything, but in FM in particular I've seen particularly egregious ones.

To add to it, there were games like Cyberpunk 2077 which launched in a worse state than FM and experienced a comeback, but they already had a strong dedicated community in the first place (even with that catastrophic launch!) and had broader appeal. Also, when you play Cyberpunk you can tell CDPR could not fix it 100%, they did their best but there's just so much you can do with a messy product after release.

The people criticizing the game on YT are the same ones who were praising it at launch. The game has a very bad rep now and it'll take far more effort than you think to turn things around. I don't think the current T10 is up to the task TBH.


Event has been out for over a month and just 50k players on both Xbox and PC. There's games out there which get more than this in less than a week. I remember in FH5 launch the numbers were over a million as well.

If not dead, then it's dying very quickly. They hid the situation for as long as they could, choosing whom they communicated with very carefully, but eventually they had to come out and speak with the community.

The player count after the holidays was a wake up call to them. Letters like theirs don't happen if a game's doing well. They wrote it in a way they tried their best to hide the fact the game's doing badly, but they can't fool people so easily.


Both games have bigger playerbases than FM.

For reference the time trials in gt7 has more like 100k people setting times each week,
In time trials,

 

[SDSmurf]

Keep in mind that I'm talking about the bare minimum to make this game functional

Dramatic.

 

[nukleabomb]

For reference the time trials in gt7 has more like 100k people setting times each week,
In time trials,

That's definitely a lot less than i expected.

 

[Ande3200]

That's definitely a lot less than i expected.

Yes but it still shows that fm has even a smaller amount of active player count, and gt7 is almost 2 years old, but its nothing new as gt has always had a bigger audiance campared to fm, horizon games does have a larger playerbase than both but its not strange considering its open world, and we know open world is more appealing for more people than track racers

 

[nukleabomb]

Yes but it still shows that fm has even a smaller amount of active player count, and gt7 is almost 2 years old, but its nothing new as gt has always had a bigger audiance campared to fm, horizon games does have a larger playerbase than both but its not strange considering its open world, and we know open world is more appealing for more people than track racers

Considering that Xbox gets outsold like 4:1, i thought GT7 would be matching FH5, even with the extra PC players.

 

[Cayit]

I like FM a lot and I never Played any FM games before!!!
For years I played always and only PS racing games.
Just for the newly FM I got a X-BOX Series X and I am happy with it.

 

[Hasse 86]

Dramatic.

I love to start my week by browsing some doom-and-gloom-posts 😉

 

[syphe]

I don't care about which of the two is better, I only mentioned it to show it won't be very easy for T10 to fix FM.

I've followed the entirety of Polyphony's support, there were some very rough months in GT7, but they were starting from a more polished base so it was easier to fix and implement new stuff. FM on the other hand is a complete mess and, given there's no guarantee each update will improve and add to the game without breaking stuff, T10 is in a tight situation.

Keep in mind that I'm talking about the bare minimum to make this game functional and fun, because Forza has a huge list of leftover bugs from older games, especially linked to car models and textures, which keep piling up because T10 chooses not to address them. These are usually more fanboy fuel than anything, but in FM in particular I've seen particularly egregious ones.

It's disingenuous to call this game non-functional, and fun is in the eye of the beholder, I am having a lot of fun, it seems many others are, but you may not be, and that's ok.
You also allude to it, these are "more fanboy fuel than anything", I try not to let fanboy fuel affect my enjoyment of the game.

To add to it, there were games like Cyberpunk 2077 which launched in a worse state than FM and experienced a comeback, but they already had a strong dedicated community in the first place (even with that catastrophic launch!) and had broader appeal. Also, when you play Cyberpunk you can tell CDPR could not fix it 100%, they did their best but there's just so much you can do with a messy product after release.

Yeah Cyberpunk was definitely far worse than FM at launch, I regret not getting a refund for that game after they pulled the rug on console reviews. Thing is, the core of FM is great, the driving physics are better than ever, no issues with lacking car licenses like in FM7, and the structure of multiplayer is IMO brilliant, there's not much in FM that can't be fundamentally fixed.

To add some positivity to the mix

I'm absolutely loving the D class lobbies again, I've had a few races now and most have been really good, I'm really appreciating the track variety, it means no-one is building a meta and taking it from race-to-race, I took a Torana with handling upgrades around Nurburgring, a Celica which didn't fare as well around a couple other tracks, then I put some super heavy ballast on a C class Holden Commodore around the Road America short loop and just drove past everyone on the straights, even little Miata's that sacrificed handling for straight line speed were wriggling through the turns while my heavy V8 just took them smoothly, was glorious

 

[zaxs]

I like FM a lot and I never Played any FM games before!!!
For years I played always and only PS racing games.
Just for the newly FM I got a X-BOX Series X and I am happy with it.

And how are controls to you?
If you are driving with gamepad.
Assuming you have experience with GT series, where controls are great by default.

 

[breeminator]

But FM still has atleast 54,000 people playing the game. It maybe lower than expected but, that is far from a DEAD game.

Steam's figures are the CONCURRENT player count, which is expected to be far lower than the total number of people who play a game. We can compare like with like by looking at peak concurrent player counts for several games (from the last 7 days):
FH5 22k
FH4 10k
ACC 5k
Automobilista 2 1.6k
rFactor 2 1.1k
FM 1k
RaceRoom 1k

A couple of other MS 1st party games that are also on Game Pass for comparison:
Age of Empires II 26k
Age of Empires IV 23k

I won't get into debating whether a term such as "dead" should be applied to FM, as that's pretty pointless, but 1/5th of the peak concurrent player count of ACC, lower than Automobilista 2, and similar to rFactor 2 and RaceRoom, I'm pretty sure will be seen as extremely disappointing by any of the senior execs involved with the game.

 

[PJTierney]

Getting handily beat out by Forza Horizon 5: Understandable

Getting handily beat out by Forza Horizon 4: Not good

 

[nukleabomb]

Steam's figures are the CONCURRENT player count, which is expected to be far lower than the total number of people who play a game. We can compare like with like by looking at peak concurrent player counts for several games (from the last 7 days):
FH5 22k
FH4 10k
ACC 5k
Automobilista 2 1.6k
rFactor 2 1.1k
FM 1k
RaceRoom 1k

A couple of other MS 1st party games that are also on Game Pass for comparison:
Age of Empires II 26k
Age of Empires IV 23k

I won't get into debating whether a term such as "dead" should be applied to FM, as that's pretty pointless, but 1/5th of the peak concurrent player count of ACC, lower than Automobilista 2, and similar to rFactor 2 and RaceRoom, I'm pretty sure will be seen as extremely disappointing by any of the senior execs involved with the game.

This is on steam.

The rivals count is better indicator for all platforms, however.

 

[deththrasher]

This is on steam.

The rivals count is better indicator for all platforms, however.

What's wrong with steam?

 

[breeminator]

This is on steam.

The rivals count is better indicator for all platforms, however.

But it's a different number. You can't compare a total player count against peak concurrent player count because of course the peak concurrent player count is massively lower than the total player count, the same is true of all the other games too. You need to compare like with like, so in the absence of total player counts being routinely published for all games it makes sense to compare the numbers that are routinely published, i.e. concurrent player counts. FM's concurrent player count, when compared against the same numbers for other games, is undoubtedly low. FH4, FH5, AoE II and AoE 4 are all also available on Xbox / Game Pass. ACC is available on console as well.

 

[nukleabomb]

But it's a different number. You can't compare a total player count against peak concurrent player count because of course the peak concurrent player count is massively lower than the total player count, the same is true of all the other games too. You need to compare like with like, so in the absence of total player counts being routinely published for all games it makes sense to compare the numbers that are routinely published, i.e. concurrent player counts. FM's concurrent player count, when compared against the same numbers for other games, is undoubtedly low. FH4, FH5, AoE II and AoE 4 are all also available on Xbox / Game Pass. ACC is available on console as well.

In the context that i made that post, I said rivals is a better indicator because I was comparing FH5 and FM. I also did mention that they are not really comparable to active steam players.

Just to be clear, i am not saying FM is doing well. I am also saying that it is not a dead game.

Here is my quote:

These numbers are not the total number of players ofc, because there are a lot of players who aren't doing rivals. But a decent idea of (a fraction of) how many players are playing these games.

FH5 has about 6x the players of FM.

But FM still has atleast 54,000 people playing the game. It maybe lower than expected but, that is far from a DEAD game.

And Xbox/Microsoft store is also the bigger store than steam for both of these Forza games. So comparing that to games on steam is also not representative of the entire player base. AoE is more PC than Xbox as well.

on Xbox, these are the top 25 games (25th is Sea of Theives) for the US [for the week ending Jan 7 2024]

FOr the week ending in DEC 5th 2023:

Getting handily beat out by Forza Horizon 5: Understandable

Getting handily beat out by Forza Horizon 4: Not good

According to these charts (on Xbox mind you), it doesn't seem to be the case. But I wonder how many players are on the monthly rivals event.
Seeing below 1000 concurrent players is a bad look either way. Idk how much they will be able to bounce back. But it is not like Forza Motorsport will be one of the flagship titles for Xbox for a long while. They do have Bethesda+ActiBlizzard, and FH is definitely more popular than FM.

 

[syphe]

This is all academic anyway, Battlefield 2042 had a similarly rough launch, steam charts show it got pretty low numbers considering the type of game it is, at this point (3-4 months) in that games lifecycle it still had 4x the amount of players FM currently has on steam daily, however it was basically a brick for me, as I just sat in the matchmaking screen forever. Conversely, I keep on getting into full lobbies in Forza, so I'd say Xbox or PC on Xbox Store is doing the heavy lifting here, makes sense, considering you get 2 games for the price of 1, or just part of the sub on GP.

 

[skazz]

Given the paltry number of Steam users I wish they hadn’t invested in cross save between Steam and Xbox. That tech probably caused much of the saved game issues.

 

[nukleabomb]

All this player number talk just made me nostalgic for FH4.

Given the paltry number of Steam users I wish they hadn’t invested in cross save between Steam and Xbox. That tech probably caused much of the saved game issues.

And I just got snapped out of it, because of how long it takes to sync up save files in FH4 when compared to FH5 and FM (which is instant).
Still, I will hop on. It has been a while since i have heard "A Moment Apart". The last time was the anniversary update on FH5.

 

[R55NA]

All this player number talk just made me nostalgic for FH4.

View attachment 1319516

FH4 was my favourite (maybe biased because I am a UK citizen) but I loved how the Seasons actually made a difference to the world, and the gameplay - like how bonus boards were inaccessible unless the lake was frozen over.

Unlike FH5 which looked the same every time you booted the game up.