Forza Horizon Catch-All

It would be more effective if people that have played the game were making the case. I have no idea if he is right or wrong, as I haven't played it.

I think Barnes whining about DLC is pointless. But I've already seen EA ruin perfectly good game modes in other sports games by tuning the game to encourage gamers to opt for paid cheats.

No one that is arguing he is wrong can actually detail the specifics. I'll be interested to see what folks say after playing the game themselves.

But 2 things are clear.

1) EA suspects a portion of their customers will find not find the travel between events fun, and will be willing to pay more for the game to avoid it.

2) EA saw something about their game that they suspected might drain fun from the experience, and instead of providing the option to skip it in the game, they decided to charge extra to obtain it.

Jayhawker wrote:

It would be more effective if people that have played the game were making the case. I have no idea if he is right or wrong, as I haven't played it.

The Giantbomb Quicklook video says he's wrong.

Jayhawker wrote:

It would be more effective if people that have played the game were making the case. I have no idea if he is right or wrong, as I haven't played it.

I think Barnes whining about DLC is pointless. But I've already seen EA ruin perfectly good game modes in other sports games by tuning the game to encourage gamers to opt for paid cheats.

No one that is arguing he is wrong can actually detail the specifics. I'll be interested to see what folks say after playing the game themselves.

But 2 things are clear.

1) EA suspects a portion of their customers will find not find the travel between events fun, and will be willing to pay more for the game to avoid it.

2) EA saw something about their game that they suspected might drain fun from the experience, and instead of providing the option to skip it in the game, they decided to charge extra to obtain it.

Just a note, it's not EA.

Doh! Confusing it with NFS.

Just a note, not about this game, but I got into forum argument about micro transactions with someone from DICE about paid unlocks. He - and he was speaking in a personal capacity - said that claiming devs make games more difficulty to sell unlocks sounds like a conspiracy theory and that he'd never seen it happen. And that he didn't care about paid unlocks; if people had they money, they could spend away. and that, in BF3, the outcome of an encounter was always down to player skill.

But, after some prodding, he did agree on the statements that financial incentives can influence human behaviour and that it's possible the outcome of an encounter might be affectedy items and not just player skill.

Edit

ANd is it whining to say something's bullsh*t, at least in a general sense? The gaming community has a problem with dissent, where people who are against certain things are accused of being 'entitled', whereas one could easily say they're pro-consumer.

From what I have seen in Forza 4, I think the Forza franchise has handled DLC/paid content well up to this point.

1)The car tokens to unlock cars do not seem to detract from playing the game without using them. There are plenty of opportunities to earn plenty of credits in game for those like me who are not inclined to spend real world money unlocking cars. They just provided an opportunity for impatient casual players with more money than sense to subsidize the game for the rest of us.

2) The car packs were reasonably balanced price for content. They enhanced the game for those who purchased without ruining it for those who didn't. Occasionally a car in a pack would become the leader board favorite for a particular class, but that doesn't matter for the vast majority of players.

From other reviews it sounds like the complaint about unlocking fast travel is technically accurate, but vastly overblown. Most players will want to spend the time racing the fast travel unlocking events anyway because the whole point of a racing game is to race. They will feel a sense of accomplishment for having unlocked, and the fact that some players got them buy purchasing them with real world money may actually enhance that sense of accomplishment ("I'm so good I didn't need to pay for that"). It seems very similar to the car tokens, and the car tokens were even mentioned at the same time. I think car tokens in Forza 4 are, and I expect car tokens and fast travel in Forizon will turn out to be, examples of how to do microtransacions right. They provide some amount of value for the buyer without harming those who don't buy.

Thin_J wrote:
Jayhawker wrote:

It would be more effective if people that have played the game were making the case. I have no idea if he is right or wrong, as I haven't played it.

The Giantbomb Quicklook video says he's wrong.

But you weren't playing, you were just watching someone play!

ElectricPi wrote:

1)The car tokens to unlock cars do not seem to detract from playing the game without using them. There are plenty of opportunities to earn plenty of credits in game for those like me who are not inclined to spend real world money unlocking cars. They just provided an opportunity for impatient casual players with more money than sense to subsidize the game for the rest of us.

This is one of the things are argued with the DICE dev about.

Just so I understand, are you saying that you can unlock cars by doing stuff in the game or by paying to unlock them?

If so - and this is a general point, since I've only played the Forza demo - then the developer is not giving you an 'opportunity', they are charging for something that doesn't need to be there in the first place.

Whether one likes unlocking things or not, whether you do or don't mind paying for them, whether you think the unlock requirements are fair or unfair if you can pay to unlock items there is no gameplay reason for the unlock system.

If there was a gameplay reason - say the devs wanted players to be familiar with the car, to understand a set of mechanics, to earn the right to move to some area - you couldn't skip the unlock.

It's a bit like a karate school allowing people to walk in and buy a black belt after only one lesson. It's cool, you get a new belt and a certificate, but it means there's no point in having a grading system, because Joe Bloggs can come in and skip it.

Forza might be fantastic fun to play, the demo didn't click with me, but I think we should be careful about describe these sorts of things.

1Dgaf wrote:

Whether one likes unlocking things or not, whether you do or don't mind paying for them, whether you think the unlock requirements are fair or unfair if you can pay to unlock items there is no gameplay reason for the unlock system.

If there was a gameplay reason - say the devs wanted players to be familiar with the car, to understand a set of mechanics, to earn the right to move to some area - you couldn't skip the unlock.

I've been trying to figure out exactly how to explain my objection to paying microtransactions to unlock things within a game, and this pretty much nails it.

It works in the "Free-to-Play" mmo market (think World of Tanks, for example) because you're getting the client for free, and the unlocking is basically their monetization method. There's very clearly no gameplay reason to require unlocks, rather it's there to provide a treadmill to keep players running, and RMT's for revenue generation.

For a traditional game where you're purchasing the game, it's exactly the same: there's no gameplay reason to require the unlocks, rather it's there to provide an inconvenience in hopes of creating extra revenue.

LiquidMantis wrote:

Except you're not "unlocking" cars in Forza, you buy them with in-game earnings, the way Forza has always been. The addition of tokens allow people to use real money instead.

And, in this case, getting new cars isn't really a gameplay mechanic. It is just more cars to drive, much like iRacing, except they are cheaper and thankfully there is an in game way to acquire them!

Except you're not "unlocking" cars in Forza, you buy them with in-game earnings, the way Forza has always been. The addition of tokens allows people to use real money instead.

It's been a while since I played a racing game, I admit. The races these days are all done in car-specific races, right? So it will only ever be a Model T Ford against an identical Model T Ford (except one has a Hentai paint job).

1Dgaf wrote:

It's been a while since I played a racing game, I admit. The races these days are all done in car-specific races, right? So it will only ever be a Model T Ford against an identical Model T Ford (except one has a Hentai paint job).

Actually it varies by event in the Forza franchise. You can do same-model, stock-model, car class, etc. Usually people just set a class and everyone picks whatever they want that doesn't rate higher than the cap of that class (so, you could use a D or E car in a D-class race if you wanted, but not a C-class car).

Jayhawker wrote:
LiquidMantis wrote:

Except you're not "unlocking" cars in Forza, you buy them with in-game earnings, the way Forza has always been. The addition of tokens allow people to use real money instead.

And if I see a car I want, run the numbers and see that it will take 3 races to accomplish, I play the game to buy it. But if that same car requires 28 races, i might just plop down some cash to buy it, so I can use the car I want for those extra 25 races instead of a car I don't to earn it. and that's just the number of races to win, not how many attempts it might make.

And that's the balance I don't trust developers to get right when publishers are pushing for revenue streams.

Jayhawker's point is really where I sit on the spectrum too. Devs added monetization things like this to their games isn't a deal-breaker for me, as long as they balance it run to not be a punishment to their "budget" players. With how Forza Horizon is implementing it (the shortcuts, etc), it's not enough of a negative to push me away from the game. I'll still be eagerly snapping it up early next week.

In case anyone was wondering if there was a "returning player" bonus again, I found this info over on the official forums. As with the Forza 3 to 4 transitions you won't be getting specific cars from your old garage, but you will be gifted cars based on your driver level from the previous games.

The game sees the level you've achieved in Forza 3 or 4, depending on which you have gained the higher level in.

Lvl 1- '11 Cooper S

Lvl 5- '11 Citroen DS3 Racing

Lvl 10- '12 Dodge Charger SRT8

Lvl 15- '69 Camaro SS

Lvl 20- '08 BMW M3 E92

Lvl 30- '12 Jag XKR-S

Lvl 40- '09 Gumpert Apollo S

Lvl 50- '12 Lambo Aventador LP700-4

The hentai paint jobs are still there though.

LiquidMantis wrote:

Except you're not "unlocking" cars in Forza, you buy them with in-game earnings, the way Forza has always been. The addition of tokens allow people to use real money instead.

And if I see a car I want, run the numbers and see that it will take 3 races to accomplish, I play the game to buy it. But if that same car requires 28 races, I might just plop down some cash to buy it, so I can use the car I want for those extra 25 races instead of a car I don't want to earn it. And that's just the number of races to win, not how many attempts it might make.

And that's the balance I don't trust developers to get right when publishers are pushing for revenue streams.

More potentially useful info from the official forums: the missing STM assist controls may actually have just been (confusingly) combined with the difficulty option:

(Source thread.)

Or at least minimize it. I read about this on gamespot, and I was certainly skeptical at first, but it really does seem to work!

What you do is change the difficulty to expert (maybe anything but easy- I'll get to that later), then just make the individual assists and settings how you want them. This seems to remove the hidden STM assist, which can really be intrusive and annoying.

If you want to test out the difference, just set the difficulty to expert (you can turn off the clutch if you need), find a long, wide stretch of highway, and in third gear sway left and right to drift on alternating sides (Choku-Dori, for the drifting literate). You should be able to maintain speed and continue indefinitely. Now set the difficulty to easy, then change all of the individual assists and settings to what they were previously. Try to Choku-Dori at the same speed and in the same gear, and you'll find that it's impossible to keep enough speed. This is due to the hidden STM assist that seems to be turned by the "Easy" difficulty, which the game starts you with. If you're like many people, you didn't bother switching the difficulty level before customizing the assists and options to how you wanted them.

I've experimented with the difficulties between "Easy" and "Expert", but if they have STM enabled it is nowhere near as intrusive. They may have been trying out a multiple setting STM like they use on GT5, with all but "Easy" using milder STM and perhaps "Expert" using none, but that's just speculation. Regardless, this trick makes the FH demo feel much closer to FM4, although it still doesn't seem to be quite the same (especially the rumble and force feedback!) Hopefully an STM option will exist in the full game, but until then this trick can make the game much more satisfying.

Get out of here with your talk about the actual game.

[size=6]What is STM?[/size]

What is STM?

Stability management. Like TCS and ABS, it automates driving inputs to help prevent you from losing control of the car. However, this also means that you have less direct control over the car, making it harder (and sometimes impossible) to drive the car at the limits of grip and do fun things like drifting. For skilled drivers this often means an overall decrease in speed. For unskilled drivers (like myself :D) it means you aren't forced to learn what you are doing wrong.

(Of course, there definitely are cars that even the best driver would be crazy to drive without such assists, since the real world versions are designed to be driven with these kinds of computer assists on.)

Thanks for the link, zeroKFE! Another poster in that thread also recommends turning the inner steering deadzone to 0 for controllers.

That's why I try to read the official Forza forums, for kernels of information like those, lost though they are in the giant steaming cow pats of typical Internet discourse.

zeroKFE wrote:

In case anyone was wondering if there was a "returning player" bonus again, I found this info over on the official forums. As with the Forza 3 to 4 transitions you won't be getting specific cars from your old garage, but you will be gifted cars based on your driver level from the previous games.

The game sees the level you've achieved in Forza 3 or 4, depending on which you have gained the higher level in.

Lvl 1- '11 Cooper S

Lvl 5- '11 Citroen DS3 Racing

Lvl 10- '12 Dodge Charger SRT8

Lvl 15- '69 Camaro SS

Lvl 20- '08 BMW M3 E92

Lvl 30- '12 Jag XKR-S

Lvl 40- '09 Gumpert Apollo S

Lvl 50- '12 Lambo Aventador LP700-4

Nice! As noted previously, I skipped 4, so i was unaware they had done this. I played the sh*t out of 3 so I guess I'll look forward to that Lambo

Thanks, zeroKFE.

Any idea if this is in reference to the demo, retail copy, or both?

I'd be curious to give it a try with the demo, as my MS Store retail copy won't be coming through for quite some time (chose free 5-7 day shipping).

If the bug made it to the retail copy, I'll definitely be using this walk-around when my copy arrives. I had all assists off in Forza 4 (sans clutch & rewind), and will doing the same for Horizon.

Hopefully this temp. fix sticks to the associated save file settings so you don't have to jigger it every time you fire the game up.

zeroKFE wrote:

More potentially useful info from the official forums: the missing STM assist controls may actually have just been (confusingly) combined with the difficulty option:

(Source thread.)

Or at least minimize it. I read about this on gamespot, and I was certainly skeptical at first, but it really does seem to work!

What you do is change the difficulty to expert (maybe anything but easy- I'll get to that later), then just make the individual assists and settings how you want them. This seems to remove the hidden STM assist, which can really be intrusive and annoying.

If you want to test out the difference, just set the difficulty to expert (you can turn off the clutch if you need), find a long, wide stretch of highway, and in third gear sway left and right to drift on alternating sides (Choku-Dori, for the drifting literate). You should be able to maintain speed and continue indefinitely. Now set the difficulty to easy, then change all of the individual assists and settings to what they were previously. Try to Choku-Dori at the same speed and in the same gear, and you'll find that it's impossible to keep enough speed. This is due to the hidden STM assist that seems to be turned by the "Easy" difficulty, which the game starts you with. If you're like many people, you didn't bother switching the difficulty level before customizing the assists and options to how you wanted them.

I've experimented with the difficulties between "Easy" and "Expert", but if they have STM enabled it is nowhere near as intrusive. They may have been trying out a multiple setting STM like they use on GT5, with all but "Easy" using milder STM and perhaps "Expert" using none, but that's just speculation. Regardless, this trick makes the FH demo feel much closer to FM4, although it still doesn't seem to be quite the same (especially the rumble and force feedback!) Hopefully an STM option will exist in the full game, but until then this trick can make the game much more satisfying.

I could swear the demo defaulted to Medium, I switched it up to Hard anyway. But, I don't remember Easy being displayed when I went to change it and the other settings.

MisterStatic wrote:

I could swear the demo defaulted to Medium, I switched it up to Hard anyway. But, I don't remember Easy being displayed when I went to change it and the other settings.

I think it starts on Easy for the first Viper vs Flynt race. Then when you can change it, you get Easy/Medium/Hard/Expert/Custom (IIRC, with corresponding Easy/Medium/Hard/Insane AI difficulties).

Any idea if this is in reference to the demo, retail copy, or both?

I believe the people in the thread are talking about the demo, but I'm pretty sure the option is missing in the retail copy too (I'm replaying the Giant Bomb quick look to see for sure).

If the bug made it to the retail copy, I'll definitely be using this walk-around when my copy arrives. I had all assists off in Forza 4 (sans clutch & rewind), and will doing the same for Horizon.

Not sure it it's a bug or an intentional simplification of the menu, but it's odd either way. People are saying in that thread that earlier builds seemed to have the option, which is easily believed if you look at this screenshot:

IMAGE(http://i.imgur.com/p6qVZ.png)

See the missing row in the UI?

In any case, the workaround indicates that the removal was a rush job whether it was intentional or not. Basically, the presets that you toggle between at the top of the menu work like they did in previous Forza games -- they just switch the options below to preset states. The workaround indicates that switching presets is still changing the STM option even though it's not displayed in the menu.

Bad news, everyone! I was looking at the car list and while it has many of the non-Porche cars I enjoyed in Forza 4, it's missing one big one I was looking forward to driving on open roads: the Mercedes 190E EVO.

To commemorate this sad day, a picture of me driving it at sunset.
IMAGE(http://eknoop.net/images/f4/sunset6.png)

Hopefully they'll add it back in with the rally expansion -- in fact, that's probably why it's missing in the first place, along with the expanded roster of Subaru and Mitsubishi that previous Forzas featured.

I suppose in the meantime I'll have to be content with my '69 Fairlady Z,
IMAGE(http://eknoop.net/images/f4/ladyalps1.png)

BMW 2002,
IMAGE(http://eknoop.net/images/f4/2002m8.png)

and of course the Shelby Cobra Daytona.
IMAGE(http://www.4mul8.net/up/files/1369_ceq8q/13.jpg)

EDIT: Also looks like there is no Stirling Moss SLR concept car. How are we supposed to make batmobiles now?

IMAGE(http://eknoop.net/images/f4/batman1.png)

zeroKFE wrote:

EDIT: Also looks like there is no Stirling Moss SLR concept car. How are we supposed to make batmobiles now?

Aventador?

1Dgaf wrote:
ElectricPi wrote:

1)The car tokens to unlock cars do not seem to detract from playing the game without using them. There are plenty of opportunities to earn plenty of credits in game for those like me who are not inclined to spend real world money unlocking cars. They just provided an opportunity for impatient casual players with more money than sense to subsidize the game for the rest of us.

This is one of the things are argued with the DICE dev about.

Just so I understand, are you saying that you can unlock cars by doing stuff in the game or by paying to unlock them?

If so - and this is a general point, since I've only played the Forza demo - then the developer is not giving you an 'opportunity', they are charging for something that doesn't need to be there in the first place.

Whether one likes unlocking things or not, whether you do or don't mind paying for them, whether you think the unlock requirements are fair or unfair if you can pay to unlock items there is no gameplay reason for the unlock system.

If there was a gameplay reason - say the devs wanted players to be familiar with the car, to understand a set of mechanics, to earn the right to move to some area - you couldn't skip the unlock.

It's a bit like a karate school allowing people to walk in and buy a black belt after only one lesson. It's cool, you get a new belt and a certificate, but it means there's no point in having a grading system, because Joe Bloggs can come in and skip it.

Forza might be fantastic fun to play, the demo didn't click with me, but I think we should be careful about describe these sorts of things.

Don't get me wrong, I am generally anti-microtransactions, and I have low trust for devs using them, but in the speciffic case of Forza 4, they left the game play mechanic of having to "buy" the cars in career mode with in game winnings the same as it was in Forza 3 with two exceptions:

1) They made in game credits easier to get and more plentiful
2) They added the "car token" system to be able to "buy" the cars in career mode with tokens. They also made cars purchased with car tokens have almost no sell value, so you cannot use the token system to buy in game currency.

In both Forza 3 and Forza 4, you can use any car you want (except unpurchased DLC) in arcade mode, just not in modified or custom painted form. In Forza 4 you can also use those cars in Rivals mode and multiplayer (not sure about multiplayer in Forza 3). They usually aren't competitive in rivals and multiplayer because they aren't tuned to the limit of their classes, but you can use them.

Given this implementation, I think this is the best one could ask for. The game can be played exactly like Forza 3, but there is also the opportunity to buy your way into some cars. In some games devs have made things harder to get without the microtransactions when they start offering them, Forza has done the opposite. Forizon is the first Forza game with an open world and therefore any need for fast travel, but from what little we know it does not sound like they made unlocking fast travel any harder than they would have if no one had ever invented microtransactions. If that is the case (and I am not saying it is, just that it looks that way), then I don't see it as any big deal. If they made the fast travel unlock harder to try to get people to spend on the unlock, then that is a big problem.

ElectricPi makes a really good point about microtransactions and Forza's direction, at least as far as Forza 4 (since that's the latest we can play): it's more generous with credits and car rewards than any previous Forza game. FM4 practically trips over itself to give credits and cars to the player, including driver level and affinity level credit rewards, bonus difficulty credits, rivals credit rewards, the auction house and storefront, daily credit rewards for visiting the Community tab; a choice of reward car every driver level; free access to all cars in single race, Rivals mode, and mutiplayer, and Car Club garage car sharing; and finally quick and easy discounts up to 100% on upgrades. Did I miss anything?

I've got 125 cars in my garage, and 16mil credits with nothing to spend it on, with income from my vinyls still rolling in every couple of days.

It's a wonder car tokens are in FM4 at all, unless you really really want a 250 GTO right now and have $3 to spare.

More tasty bonuses for those that get in early according to a Xbox Live email I just received. It hinted at the car when you played the Demo, but nice to know what it is now. The multiplier should help with thise gate unlocks, and another car is nice too.

Add all that to the VIP unlocks, previous play unlocks, and the pre-orders, and I'll have quite the garage.

IMAGE(http://members.iinet.net.au/~monkey.boy/GWJ/Moooore.png)