What do you think the next Forza Horizon needs?

phillgt2002

phillgt2002

4,114
United States
United States
There have been expansions, car packs, new events, etc, but for some reason the game feels like it isn't doing anything to what is already there. I know this game has only been out for around seven months, but maybe this could be a good basis of discussion on what we all think the series should focus on next.

I didn't get much time to play FH3, but immediately upon playing FH4 I realized that the game has a significantly less varied map. I think the next Horizon game needs a more varied and better traveled map. It doesn't necessarily need to be bigger, it simply needs more roads, and better ones than what is provided.

They need to add street signs, stoplights and honestly pedestrians or more realistic traffic. The city is just a backdrop and is boring to go through. Sure, racing through them is fun, but driving with friends through the city is just not fun. Add more businesses to purchase, not just car related businesses, but maybe a clothing store you can invest in, even a real estate business to get you reduced house prices? That would give a much better excuse to go to the city.

I know what you're thinking "He's just asking for another TDU" Not quite just another TDU, but I'm just suggesting that they shouldn't stop what they've started, they should evolve it further.

Obviously they should keep adding to the small detail things that players can opt into such as drift angle in the first person view, but maybe they should add a map-able button for headlight control, things such as that which can aid in immersing the player.

This is starting to get long, so the last thing is controllable game environment in private lobbies or single player. Seasons are their new thing, but maybe they should at least allow for time of day and rain/snow showers to be controlled.

TL;DR: Add more DETAILS and OPTIONS!
 
I'd like more structure in how game plays out. In other words, I'd like it if next game had a clear sense of beginning and an end.

Leveling up each discipline and unlocking more event is a blast in FH4, but I've found that game doesn't really go anywhere when the game runs out of events to reward you. Game just unceremoniously continues on, and all that's left at this point is building cars and just grinding yourself for Horizon Playlist and seasonal events.

So, all I'm asking for is basically a final race/showcase event and a credit roll - just like how previous Horizon games did it. Just a little something to end the game in high note and give players a sense of closure.
 
I'd be happy if the Horizon series was to revert back to a linear progression structure like the first game.

What I would really like is more emphasis placed on car building and perhaps some more restrictive events to facilitate this. Current restrictions focus on class and performance index; future games can go further by restricting engine size, cylinder count, drivetrain layout, aspiration, weight, tyre compound and so on. Such changes would actually make the player think about upgrades rather than "V12 Swap+AWD All the things".
 
There is an elephant in the room and I am going to name it.... BIKES.

While not being a dramatic gameplay changer, I think, that the series is well suited to feature two wheels aswell.

I know, many people will disagree, but the open nature of the game would allow players to ignore them, just as I do the cross country stuff.

When The Crew 1 brought bikes, the game felt so much fresher for me and I am not even a biker.
I think, FH would "simcadeulate" them even better, than TC does.

Next step, boats! ... just kidding. :D
 
- Better writing, and and an actual narrative surrounding your role, and the roles of the various festival characters. In Horizon 3 and 4, everyone is just smiley and happy and helpful and complimentary... and thus kinda bland. I don't need some Need for Speed "edgy" nonsense that takes itself way too seriously, but the last couple of Horizon games have been so open ended that the narrative has basically been reduced to "It's a festival! Wee!"

- A more detailed, bigger world. And I don't necessarily mean more detailed pixels - Horizon 4 is a gorgeous game, and I'm sure Horizon 5 will be even more so on new hardware - but more vibrancy and detail to the life of the world itself. Pedestrians with logical daily routines. Dense traffic. Other racers out in the world (AI or not), actually doing events and stuff. A music festival that doesn't consist of AI placards standing in place, behind cordoned off gates. Think of the vibrancy of Red Dead 2's world, brought to a Horizon game.

- The ability to get out of cars and walk around, and a compelling reason to do so - especially at the festival itself. Imagine being able to walk up to the outdoor broadcast stages for the various radio stations at the festival, and give interviews or something. Horizon doesn't do enough with the whole festival motif.

- Wider array of online hoppers, with skill and sportsmanship ratings.

- A more tangible sense of ownership over your cars
 
- Less freedom. I know it sounds weird, but Horizon has really reached the "too much of a good thing" in this regard. I love being able to create my own races, but give me a goal to strive for in the process! Stories and the seasonal events are fine side things, but the game needs an overarching purpose.

- Change the theme. The EDM thing was cool in the first game, but it's really become an odd fit for what the game has become. Since it's pretty much become a game about car culture in general, I wouldn't mind seeing a "Festival of Speed" style theme.

- Bigger map. I probably ruined Horizon for myself by playing ATS/ETS as a map that only takes a handful of minutes to go across the entire thing doesn't do much for me anymore. Obviously a giant map like that won't happen in Horizon, but twice the size of the current standard shouldn't be outside the realm of possibility next generation.

ExoticMachines
I thought they were not going to make another Horizon game.
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Perhaps not this generation, but it's pretty much the highlight game for Microsoft at the moment so that pretty much guarantee's we will see another. The only change will be it likely having a longer period of time between titles.
 
Northstar
- Less freedom. I know it sounds weird, but Horizon has really reached the "too much of a good thing" in this regard. I love being able to create my own races, but give me a goal to strive for in the process! Stories and the seasonal events are fine side things, but the game needs an overarching purpose.
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Totally agree. one of my biggest gripes with FH4 is that the game gives you too much freedom too quickly, and kills any sense of progression.
 
ShawnPhillips
Totally agree. one of my biggest gripes with FH4 is that the game gives you too much freedom too quickly, and kills any sense of progression.
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I don't mind freedom, but I do think the way the games gives you random cars with no real progression to it, undercuts it a bit.

As an example, there's that first stunt mission that has you drive the Chiron... clearly as a hypercar teaser. But there's nothing to say you couldn't get that car (or an even better one) in a random wheelspin five minutes later.

That kind of openness can be fun - it makes the game more a sampler of all the different aspects of cars and racing - but it would be nice to see Playground switch it up and try a slightly different formula.
 
I just hopped on the Horizon 4 bandwagon after getting a new PC. One thing that always bugged me about Horizon 3 and now Horizon 4 is all the different voiceovers that occur. I've turned their volume down, but I really would prefer a more passive way of making the player aware of new races or whatever the game wants you to know about. Either just temporary dialogue boxes in your field of view, or just wait until the player views the map again to bring attention to new items.
 
-A "Find Convoy" feature with a choice of theme regarding the kind of convoy you're looking to join (IE: Cruise, Drag, Drift, Photo-Op, Chat, Campaign Race, Blueprint Race, Credit Grinding, Livery Showcase, Skill Point Grinding, Billboard Hunting, Off-Road, Playground Games, Online Adventure, etc). Maybe include optional car themes as well (IE: JDM, Classic Muscle, Trucks, Modern Sports Cars, A Class, X Class, RWD, USA, Italy, etc).

-Remove wheelspins, but buff credit rewards to compensate. Lock most cars in the autoshow until a certain player level is achieved, in which case, more valuable cars will slowly become available.
Heck, even giving each manufacturer its own progression tree could be a viable alternative. Start with the "worst" car from a brand, and unlock more cars within that brand by throwing miles on that car.

-Do more with the houses. Something along the lines of The Crew 2 would suffice, only with the option to invite friends or convoy members to your house to hang out or browse over your displayed vehicles.

-Clubs, inspired by Driveclub. Clubs are something you could establish with close friends, a form of permanent convoy utilizing a special club livery, a title/badge, exclusive rewards through club progression, and special club vs club online adventures. Maybe even expand on the house feature I mentioned by including club houses where you can all hang out.

-Interior customization.

-Working signal/hazard lights.

-Multiple "favourite" folders in the garage, each of which can be named to better sort your vehicles.

-Enable drivatars to only use cars that you own, as well as liveries you have created. It'd be a good opportunity to compare your various cars to see which is the best, and would also enable players to make thematic blueprints where the drivatars actually have body kits, upgrades, and liveries that suit the race at hand.
It just annoys me that whenever I host a cross country race, I'm the only SUV with a lift kit, rally lights, and a proper racing livery. All the other drivatars just have non-visual upgrades and (usually ugly or basic) community liveries from the default "popular this week" filter.

-Enable players to sell cars to the autoshow for the minimum buyout price.

-A larger Map in general. Not nearly as big as The Crew, but probably twice as big as FH4. But I could definitely sacrifice size for detail. Maybe include more than just one tunnel for once, or maybe a multi-level car garage.

-Uploading of livery groups from external PC software, similar to how GT Sport does it. I know I can create some really amazing car liveries, but with the confusing and sluggish interface offered in-game, I just can't manage it. Instead of awkwardly puzzling together shapes in hopes of making something from them, I'd rather just draw something in Photoshop, save it as a flat .png image, upload it to the Windows 10 Xbox interface, and download it into the game with my other private livery groups.
 
JoshMead
-A "Find Convoy" feature with a choice of theme regarding the kind of convoy you're looking to join (IE: Cruise, Drag, Drift, Photo-Op, Chat, Campaign Race, Blueprint Race, Credit Grinding, Livery Showcase, Skill Point Grinding, Billboard Hunting, Off-Road, Playground Games, Online Adventure, etc). Maybe include optional car themes as well (IE: JDM, Classic Muscle, Trucks, Modern Sports Cars, A Class, X Class, RWD, USA, Italy, etc).

-Remove wheelspins, but buff credit rewards to compensate. Lock most cars in the autoshow until a certain player level is achieved, in which case, more valuable cars will slowly become available.
Heck, even giving each manufacturer its own progression tree could be a viable alternative. Start with the "worst" car from a brand, and unlock more cars within that brand by throwing miles on that car.

-Do more with the houses. Something along the lines of The Crew 2 would suffice, only with the option to invite friends or convoy members to your house to hang out or browse over your displayed vehicles.

-Clubs, inspired by Driveclub. Clubs are something you could establish with close friends, a form of permanent convoy utilizing a special club livery, a title/badge, exclusive rewards through club progression, and special club vs club online adventures. Maybe even expand on the house feature I mentioned by including club houses where you can all hang out.

-Interior customization.

-Working signal/hazard lights.

-Multiple "favourite" folders in the garage, each of which can be named to better sort your vehicles.

-Enable drivatars to only use cars that you own, as well as liveries you have created. It'd be a good opportunity to compare your various cars to see which is the best, and would also enable players to make thematic blueprints where the drivatars actually have body kits, upgrades, and liveries that suit the race at hand.
It just annoys me that whenever I host a cross country race, I'm the only SUV with a lift kit, rally lights, and a proper racing livery. All the other drivatars just have non-visual upgrades and (usually ugly or basic) community liveries from the default "popular this week" filter.

-Enable players to sell cars to the autoshow for the minimum buyout price.

-A larger Map in general. Not nearly as big as The Crew, but probably twice as big as FH4. But I could definitely sacrifice size for detail. Maybe include more than just one tunnel for once, or maybe a multi-level car garage.

-Uploading of livery groups from external PC software, similar to how GT Sport does it. I know I can create some really amazing car liveries, but with the confusing and sluggish interface offered in-game, I just can't manage it. Instead of awkwardly puzzling together shapes in hopes of making something from them, I'd rather just draw something in Photoshop, save it as a flat .png image, upload it to the Windows 10 Xbox interface, and download it into the game with my other private livery groups.
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I'll bet several of these things are in the next game - especially some semblance of the more involved "club" concept, since they seem to be focused on making Horizon more social.

Your idea with the houses sounds more interesting than I suspect it would be in practice, because I can't imagine many people are interested in "hanging out" in their friends house, or staring at the cars they may well own themselves. I would, however, like to see the houses become a more fully-featured hub of stuff to do, rather than glorified fast travel points. I've said before that I'd like to see the next Horizon game introduce some more aspects of car maintenance to the game, and the garage at your house could be the place to do that. I'd also like to see the festival site become a social hub instance, sorta like other online games, where there's just a collection of random people milling about.

AND I'd like to see stuff like the autoshow become their own physical locations within the festival grounds - not just a submenu. Same with avatar cosmetics, car upgrades, the auction house, and so on. Physically ground these things with a real sense of place, instead of just menus.

Also, I was thinking of this yesterday, but imagine if Playground literally held LIVE AUCTIONS for some of the game's rarest cars weekly or bi-weekly - as in, people literally gather around a stage at the festival, and live bid on some crazy car that only a tiny minority have. You could also do this with fun stuff like one-off liveries that have unique features like changing colours or animations, or fancy rare cosmetics for your character.

Make the world feel more like a world, with things going on inside it!
 
ShakesMcQueen
Also, I was thinking of this yesterday, but imagine if Playground literally held LIVE AUCTIONS for some of the game's rarest cars weekly or bi-weekly - as in, people literally gather around a stage at the festival, and live bid on some crazy car that only a tiny minority have.
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They did that for unicorns in FM4, they'd put about 10 cars for auction at the same time, with no buyout options. Didn't really work well due to the different timezones of the playerbase that saw the auctions finish at ungodly hours for a lot of users, not to mention they'd go for crazy amounts of credits. It would work even more terribly now that the game's available on PC and people have figured out how to use macros and trainers to snipe the auction house.
 
I'm pretty sure the auction house unicorn's were just a way to identify those with modded consoles since that was really the only way to obtain that many credits and be willing to part with them on 1 car.

I hate "unicorn" cars, but if they insist on having them, which they seemingly do, the current playlist setup is the most palatable way to obtain them since there is a set goal. Limiting them to moving targets (auction house, bounty hunter) or subjective contests (photo, livery) is something they should never go back to.
 
Northstar
I'm pretty sure the auction house unicorn's were just a way to identify those with modded consoles since that was really the only way to obtain that many credits and be willing to part with them on 1 car.

I hate "unicorn" cars, but if they insist on having them, which they seemingly do, the current playlist setup is the most palatable way to obtain them since there is a set goal. Limiting them to moving targets (auction house, bounty hunter) or subjective contests (photo, livery) is something they should never go back to.
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To be clear, I wasn't advocating ONLY offering certain cars via these auctions - just cars that are otherwise rare. Like with FH4, they could have done auctions for the Capri FE.

I just think of how cool it'd be if the next Horizon let you get out of your car and walk around - and you could literally just sit in the Auction House for a while (say every day at a certain time, or once a week), and literally sit through a proper car lot auction with other human players who literally sit in other seats and raise their little paddle things that signify a bid.

As Fred says, its something that could be gamed and broken really easily without protections built into the game, but I think events like this would lend such a feeling of vitality to the game world.

I also don't mind super-rare "unicorn" cars, if they do what Horizon largely does, and also offer "non-unicorn" versions of those same cars - the Capri is a good example here again.

Maybe I'm an outlier though, as I also think it'd be cool if you could buy a car from the autoshow - take it to the festival's "garage" to get it upgraded with new parts, and you literally had to wait a day for the work to be done. Meanwhile, you could see NPC mechanics animating in the garage, working on your car.

That kind of thing is something certain players would find annoying (having to wait to use a new car you're upgrading), but I literally think that time investment would lend a tangible sense of ownership to a player's garage of cars.

I'd also love to see the next Horizon game loosely appropriate what Fortnite does with it's ever-changing game world - maybe spring comes and there's some new home construction happening outside one of the towns in the world, and over the next month of seasonal changes that construction eventually turns into new permanent houses in the game world. Or you have road construction crews clogging up certain roads. Or maybe one autumn season there's a lightning storm "world event", that strikes down a few trees across certain country roads before they eventually get cleared. Maybe there's extreme weather events like a typhoon rainstorm one day during a spring season. Just restrict all of this stuff to the live servers, so purists can play offline and avoid it if they want.

I'm just excited about the idea of a live service game world that really embraces the potential of that model, by giving players a truly living, changing world.
 
I loved Test Drive Unlimited 2, which had houses. You needed them to store your cars. In Horizon this could prove logistically difficult given the number of cars.

The nice thing about TDU 2 was the “Barn Finds” in that you could find them without the need for a prompt, so maybe a portion of the finds in Horizon could be located by just doing exploration.. Also the inclusion of a racing circuit to find was a nice idea. A racing circuit as part of the landscape in Horizon would make for an interesting addition and could have a create your own race option.

I must say I find some of the roads in FH4 to be rather wide. Some of the side roads ought to be a bit narrower as they are in real life. It could make for some interesting racing.
 
My thoughts .

- More character customization: Haircuts, beards, LOTS of clothes, height, weight, etc...

- On foot sections: Nothing exceptional, just the ability of walking around cars and/or some environments (stores, houses)

- Useful houses: Just think of TDU. Having a real house and a real garage to explore, customize etc.

- Good events: I'll explain. Imagine to have a real rally event. With sponsor, maybe a real rally driver as a host etc.. or a Elegance Event, like a showcase of classic cars. Something really goos besides of copypaste races.

- Forzavista Everywhere: Because, of course we want it
 
Here's something simple:

Instead of having a garage solely to display cars, or doing that dumb thing The Crew 2 does where your cars are all inside your house on plinths like it's a museum exhibit - make it so that you can park your cars wherever you want on your property, with a max of, say, 10 cars visible. Couple in the garage, couple in the driveway - wherever.

And make it so you can change the "state" of the car with related accouterments, so you could park a car in the driveway with it's hood open, along with tools resting on it, maybe one side of the car jacked up, etc.

I can't imagine it would be too difficult to do a "save state" of where your cars are parked and so on.
 
I like the idea of having houses with garages to display your cars. Maybe just have your Favourites on display in your garages. At least that way there wouldn’t be too many cars to contend with.
 
I’d love to see the TDU2 map remade for FH. Oahu preferably, though Ibiza would be something of an improvement in terms of size.
 
Doog
I just hopped on the Horizon 4 bandwagon after getting a new PC. One thing that always bugged me about Horizon 3 and now Horizon 4 is all the different voiceovers that occur. I've turned their volume down, but I really would prefer a more passive way of making the player aware of new races or whatever the game wants you to know about. Either just temporary dialogue boxes in your field of view, or just wait until the player views the map again to bring attention to new items.
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THIS. They really need to stop with the non-skippable voice overs and the constant focus pulling they do. Or at the very least give us the option to skip them, or turn them off.
 
ShakesMcQueen
Here's something simple:

Instead of having a garage solely to display cars, or doing that dumb thing The Crew 2 does where your cars are all inside your house on plinths like it's a museum exhibit - make it so that you can park your cars wherever you want on your property, with a max of, say, 10 cars visible. Couple in the garage, couple in the driveway - wherever.

And make it so you can change the "state" of the car with related accouterments, so you could park a car in the driveway with it's hood open, along with tools resting on it, maybe one side of the car jacked up, etc.

I can't imagine it would be too difficult to do a "save state" of where your cars are parked and so on.
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Cool idea. I'd even think it would be cool if the game took your top three or so winningest and/or most driven cars and loaded them in a garage or driveway.

--

As for other stuff, I'll ditto more and better music given the series' theme, and a full cityscape somewhere. Lately I've been recalling how much fun Tokyo Extreme Racer Zero was, despite all its goofiness, because of the setting. Although if I went back and played it now I'd probably think "That's it?!"
 
Sertsa
Cool idea. I'd even think it would be cool if the game took your top three or so winningest and/or most driven cars and loaded them in a garage or driveway.

--

As for other stuff, I'll ditto more and better music given the series' theme, and a full cityscape somewhere. Lately I've been recalling how much fun Tokyo Extreme Racer Zero was, despite all its goofiness, because of the setting. Although if I went back and played it now I'd probably think "That's it?!"
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I generally like the music in FH4, but it kills me that they never add new radio stations (or just new music to the existing stations) with the expansions.

Even if you love the music, there's only SO MANY times you can listen to Dawnbreaker by Metrik, or Silhouette by Goldroom, before you just mute it, haha.
 

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