Forza Motorsport General Discussion Thread

[Kedmasterz]

I think the main problem is not how bad the game is but how it could be so much better, it has the good ingredients for a lot of things but the cooking is just bland and sterile especially without a fulfilling career to elevate it.

 

[UKMikey]

And? People can want aspects of a superior game in the franchise in the newest Forza, especially when the career is as barebones as is.

It's not superior in all aspects though. If it were I'd be playing that instead. The career and car selection are better though.

 

[TheAnimeDude]

It's humorous to see some folks to say that the line for them with this game is literally the looks of menus and the lack of atmosphere "Vibes bro, omg where are the vibes brooo" is pretty much what I read from them, but some of those folks have no problem with core issues in one game like...

• Menus being an actual hassle to go through
• No form of qualifying/practice in a race or championship at all
• The entire grid being stupidly spread out in races
• Classification for race cars is garbage
• Boring/Bland racing
• Mostly uninteresting and outdated car list
• Plenty of cars having no races/championships for them
• New tracks and new events barely ever getting added
• Missions haven't really been added upon since forever
• The promised endurance races being truly not added still
• Invitation system still locking people out of cars years later
• No new championships ever being added
• A career mode that pretends and lies to its players about being grand in scope, but it being the literal opposite in reality.

Issues going on for three years straight for that one game by the way.

 

[deththrasher]

It's not superior in all aspects though. If it were I'd be playing that instead. The career and car selection are better though.

Not in all aspects no, but as an actual game it was much superior. Reviews and fan reverence prove that

 

[skazz]

Not in all aspects no, but as an actual game it was much superior. Reviews and fan reverence prove that

The difficult thing about this statement is that once I played FM23 it became impossible for me to struggle through the snap mid-corner oversteer and terrible curb behaviour of FM7 anymore.

No matter how many game-elements are missing in FM23 compared to predecessors, just not having to use rewind every time the stupid snap oversteer happens is so refreshing, I simply can't go back.


Now in many ways this driving improvement could even be called a shame, since FM7's career mode and car collecting was indeed better. But I was 100% for all single player career races and only 25 cars short of collecting everything before FM23 launch though so I don't really need to go back.

 

[UKMikey]

Not in all aspects no, but as an actual game it was much superior. Reviews and fan reverence prove that

"Misty water-coloured memories... of the way we were..."

I'm not going back to the better game with worse driving either.

 

[ClydeYellow]

Not in all aspects no, but as an actual game it was much superior. Reviews and fan reverence prove that

Was it, tho? Because the career, that is nowadays somehow praised as engaging and well-structured, felt like an immense (and quite pointless) chore. The Autovista felt more like a licensed gimmick than an actual feature. The multiplayer was dreadful, with the public lobbies split in between car football (which, I'll admit, was fun in small doses) and impromptu sessions of car bowling (which weren't), and private lobbies regularly splitting in two due to IP conflicts and desyncing. The car list was nothing to write home about in the end, the track list was padded to no end with fictional tracks that looked decent but were god-awful for racing (like Camino Viejo and Positano), the AI was just driving on splines and was dumb as a bag of bricks, and the menus weren't all that great (although they didn't require ten click-throughs to do the most basic things).

I've said it before and I'll say it again; what made FM4 so great for so many Forza enthusiasts was the community surrounding it. I remember jumping into Forza around the time FM4 came out - I'd been a GT player before then, and Forza felt like a massive downgrade in many regards; that is, until I started to get involved with the Forza scene on the official forums and sunk countless hours playing the game socially, and then I got the point.
If that sense of community is gone, it's not just because of the faux-pas that was FM5 (which led many people to postpone or forego entirely buying a new Xbox), but also due to the the barriers to emergent gameplay imposed by the abandonment of many social features that came with that accursed game, and more broadly speaking, because of the death of this kind of environments on the internet. But of course, this won't stop people from looking at FM4 with rose-tinted glasses because they had a lot of fun playing with it, and will make claims as ludicrous as "the paint booth in FM4 was better", "the public lobbies were cleaner", "we had more race cars", and so on.

 

[sirjim73]

It's unquestionably the best driving game in the series by far. But it can be argued that the act of "purchasing" and "owning" say a Dodge Neon and a Ferrari 458 Italia just feels about the same. In FM4 you had a candid narrated tour of the Italia, and its presentation was remarkable (don't think the folk working on GT didn't take notice). Some brands and models, especially those with racing prestige, should be above the more pedestrian offerings, IMO.

I think that's Peter Egan doing the voiceover after Clarkson? For those old enough and in the UK to remember it, Ever Decreasing Circles, he has appeared in many other things of course (the father in Unforgotten recently). Always a fantastic voice 👍

 

[Morbid65]

I think it's a pretty valid argument that FM4 was the best of the series relative to the time it was released as the standard was a bit different then. Most areas of the game have seen an upgrade since then (although maybe not a big enough upgrade) but the most important part, the driving and racing, certainly has seen big upgrades.

I don't really think sim and sim-ish racing games age as well as we remember them. We use our imagination to kinda play "make believe" with games that are supposed to be realistic, which can impact our memory of them a bit as we don't remember just the game but also the parts our imagination filled in to augment the experience. Going back and actually playing them can be a pretty stark reminder how far things have come though.

Was it, tho? Because the career, that is nowadays somehow praised as engaging and well-structured, felt like an immense (and quite pointless) chore.

Agree with the whole post in general, but this part always seemed strange to me too. There seems to be this weird thing in racing games where a certain portion of the playerbase mainly seems to care about collecting little checkmarks next to events, so lots of little checkmarks to collect automatically means the career is good even if the AI is bad and the events are 3 lap bash-fests using RNG generated car and track selections.

FM8 definitely has a pretty pathetic career on all fronts, but the most common complaint is that there aren't enough events... But I just don't see how more of something bad is somehow a good thing. If those people who want more events think that the AI is fine and the arbitrary car/track selections are okay and are fine with the shallow races, then Free Play exists... the only difference is you have to choose what you want to do (a plus in my book, as you can be creative) and you don't get a little check mark next to something when you finish it, but if you only enjoy racing if you get a checkmark then do you really enjoy racing? Always found it puzzling.

Also big agree Camino Viejo sucks, it was basically the track that started the whole "looks pretty but **** for racing" run of Forza fantasy tracks through FM7 (although one could argue Maple Valley was the progenitor). Ladera and Iberian were... not as bad but not great, I guess they count as part of the package.

 

[UKMikey]

FM8 definitely has a pretty pathetic career on all fronts, but the most common complaint is that there aren't enough events... But I just don't see how more of something bad is somehow a good thing. If those people who want more events think that the AI is fine and the arbitrary car/track selections are okay and are fine with the shallow races, then Free Play exists... the only difference is you have to choose what you want to do (a plus in my book, as you can be creative) and you don't get a little check mark next to something when you finish it, but if you only enjoy racing if you get a checkmark then do you really enjoy racing? Always found it puzzling.

Free Play and Tour races are not identical. Free Play kinda shoves you into a random position when you start. Career races let you tailor the start positionmore precisely than front, middle or back and results in a better experience. I don't want a check mark. I want a closer race.

 

[Morbid65]

Free Play and Tour races are not identical. Free Play kinda shoves you into a random position when you start. Career races let you tailor the start positionmore precisely than front, middle or back and results in a better experience. I don't want a check mark. I want a closer race.

I find that less important as you can make longer races in Free Play and therefore don't need to start as close to the front, but regardless, you can use the Car Groups to start you where you want. For overly complex things that already use them for multiclass and stuff it's tough to make it work right though.

Just set "Number of car groups" on the Rules page to 3, and turn on "Order by car group."

• If you want to start on pole, put yourself in Car Group 1, move all the AI to Car Group 2. Just do the opposite if you want to start last.
• If you want to start say 10th for example, put yourself in Group 2, and move 9 cars to Group 1, and the remaining cars to Group 3. Works for any grid spot.

I get that it's absolutely stupid that you have to do it that convoluted way when they could just copy and paste the thing from Career, or give us qualifying, but where there is a will there is a way, and working around the stupid limitations to enjoy the game has been something Forza Motorsport players have been needing to do for like 15 years now. As an added bonus you can use the Free Play settings to make the races longer, multiply the tire wear, add mandatory pit stops, customize your own weather, speed up time, etc so it really allows you to create more varied and engaging races.

You can also use the bucket system to make the AI a bit faster than you if you need a handicap. Just raise the PI in the 2 buckets you aren't in slightly above your bucket, and in most cases the AI will upgrade their cars... It can be a little janky though as sometimes they will refuse to upgrade without quitting out of Free Play and loading in again (so it recalculates the grid), and obviously some cars with limited upgrades (mostly certain race cars) won't work for it.

Here's to hoping when they finally bring us manual grid for private lobbies (one of the devs said it was planned on the official forum) that it's also usable in Free Play.

 

[Kelpy D]

I hope Benetton means we get MSc's WDC winning cars - the B194:
View attachment 1436062
And the B195:
View attachment 1436063

Definitely, but not the right models. I'd say the B188 or B190 based on the files.

 

[UKMikey]

I find that less important as you can make longer races in Free Play and therefore don't need to start as close to the front, but regardless, you can use the Car Groups to start you where you want. For overly complex things that already use them for multiclass and stuff it's tough to make it work right though.

Just set "Number of car groups" on the Rules page to 3, and turn on "Order by car group."

• If you want to start on pole, put yourself in Car Group 1, move all the AI to Car Group 2. Just do the opposite if you want to start last.
• If you want to start say 10th for example, put yourself in Group 2, and move 9 cars to Group 1, and the remaining cars to Group 3. Works for any grid spot.

I get that it's absolutely stupid that you have to do it that convoluted way when they could just copy and paste the thing from Career, or give us qualifying, but where there is a will there is a way, and working around the stupid limitations to enjoy the game has been something Forza Motorsport players have been needing to do for like 15 years now. As an added bonus you can use the Free Play settings to make the races longer, multiply the tire wear, add mandatory pit stops, customize your own weather, speed up time, etc so it really allows you to create more varied and engaging races.

You can also use the bucket system to make the AI a bit faster than you if you need a handicap. Just raise the PI in the 2 buckets you aren't in slightly above your bucket, and in most cases the AI will upgrade their cars... It can be a little janky though as sometimes they will refuse to upgrade without quitting out of Free Play and loading in again (so it recalculates the grid), and obviously some cars with limited upgrades (mostly certain race cars) won't work for it.

Here's to hoping when they finally bring us manual grid for private lobbies (one of the devs said it was planned on the official forum) that it's also usable in Free Play.

It may be possible but not very QoL. You'd also have to run a trial race to work out where you'd want to start to get a close race in the first place (or other places in this case). Qualifying or Challenge the Grid would fix this in a single stroke. It's all very well saying people shouldn't complain because there's Free Play but those caveats perhaps make our complaints a little more justified. Thanks for the advice though.