Forza Horizon 4

[SkylineObsession]

Mayaswell start the guessing game at this stage.

Going by this post at GTP, i'm reasonably confident that there's a good chance FH4 will be in Britain. Take a look at how many British cars there are, plus off road versions of off road vehicles (Bentley something, and a Range Rover). Was hoping for Japan, but Britain is still left side of the road based, so it'll feel more at home for us game neglected leftie countries. ;)

https://www.gtplanet.net/forum/threads/forza-7-thumbnail-leaks.377525/

EDIT: Not sure if these pics will work:

https://www.gtplanet.net/forum/attachments/thumbnail_2625_big-png.731107/

https://www.gtplanet.net/forum/attachments/thumbnail_2494_big-png.731108/

Taxi, huh...
https://www.gtplanet.net/forum/attachments/thumbnail_2912_big-png.731090/

Will definitely be interesting/cool either way i'd suspect. And the last British based open world driving game was The Getaway, no?

[Tom Servo]

The general consensus over on /r/forza is that it's going to be set in Japan. Now I don't know what to believe!

[DelSolMan]

Two games back to back in the incorrect lane :P

[SkylineObsession]

BANNED! :mad:




:P

[Jason]

City wise, I'd much prefer Japan, but I'd absolutely love to see a game drive through Scotland as well, hmmm

[Tom Servo]

Well, hold the presses, might be Hong Kong.

https://i.imgur.com/1C0exkz.jpg

https://i.imgur.com/BJgIUpz.jpg

https://i.imgur.com/Qk6jxI2.jpg

https://i.imgur.com/jeMjv1Q.jpg

https://i.imgur.com/4flujUX.jpg

For what it's worth, this is supposedly concept art from a verified partner of Microsoft Studios, however, that doesn't necessarily mean that it's the concept art that's being used for the final product. As the poster who put this on reddit mentioned, for FH2 a verified partner had concept art showing New Orleans, and the game ended up being set in Europe.

[Freude am Fahren]

I suppose if it were HK, at least some of it would be in mainland China? I don't know much about Hong Kong, but wouldn't they need to go away from the city to get any kind of open area that isn't just city stuff or tight mountain roads?

Maybe they would include Macau too, and we could recreate some Macau circuit madness...

[Rare White Ape]

I downloaded a Macau curcuit for Assetto. It’s not a fun track.

[Kchrpm]

https://www.dualshockers.com/leaked-forza-horizon-4-hong-kong-images-hoax/

[Tom Servo]

My shame knows no bounds.

[Rare White Ape]

Yeah but what are your feelings about that leak?

[Tom Servo]

:angry:

[GreatScawt]

So I came across this song browsing my followed Soundcloud artists.... what are the chances this is the theme song in FH4? :lol:
https://soundcloud.com/seven-lions/seven-lions-tritonal-and-killl-the-noise-feat-haliene-horizon

[SkylineObsession]

I'm a little happier that it's been outed as a leak. Wouldn't t mind maybe going there in a Horizon eventually, but yeah. And those pics all look very Need 4 Speedy too.

[Tom Servo]

Britain it is.

[SkylineObsession]

:rawk:

[Tom Servo]

According to the "all the info" thread on the /r/forza subreddit, FH4 will be either 4K or 60fps on the XBox One X, you get to pick, but you don't get both. Makes me happy that it'll work on the PC too as I've gotten very spoiled with FH3 and F7, although it did end up having me drop another $220 or so on a terabyte SSD since I'm so low on room already. It's insane that F7 is about 100gb, I'm assuming FH4 will be larger.

[Tom Servo]

From reddit, FH4 information dump from Q&A at E3.


Drag & Snow Tires still in
Competitive 6v6 Team PVP mode called Team Adventure with leaderboards, based on skill rather than XP, also works with playground games like king of the hill, infected, flag rush.
There will only be one Horizon Festival site.
Horizon Festival set in ruins of a castle, contains drag strip and drift pad
You can progress through the game through painting, tuning, streaming.
The 10 houses act as mini-festival sites where you can customize and tune cars, costs in-game credits to buy and the front driveway of your house works as a forzavista site.
Traffic cars have roof racks carrying bikes, sufrboards, ladders, etc for variety
Danger Signs and Drift Zones are back, can be done in a group ala Burnout Paradise
You can use the rewind feature during co-op races, it won't affect other drivers or their lap times.
Online photo mode, and you can pause the game online.
There will be hourly, daily, and weekly forzathons, you get forzathon points for doing them and can spend them in a forzathon shop.
Goliath race will be back.
Horizon Edition cars will be there but will be named Forza Edition to match FM7.
Wheelspins, drone mode, auction house, and clubs are all returning
There will be no real world race tracks in the game
Lots of new "parts" added to the game: body kits, wide bodies, hot rod kits, off road kits, drift suspension.
Router creator allows you to create point to point and circuit races in game.
Groove music is teh dead, no replacement.
Deformable mud ala the Blizzard Mountain deformable snow.

[Jason]

Route creator :up:

[Tom Servo]

Some more explanation of the online functionality. Claims sound good, but not holding my breath until I see it in action.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2YXFiWMqqlw

[GreatScawt]

https://i.imgur.com/uvjRc7f.jpg

[Tom Servo]

Fun so far, but hoping that like previous ones the release version is significantly more optimized than the demo.

[SkylineObsession]

Ooohhh, whats wrong with it? Buggy?

[Rare White Ape]

I’ve played up to the end of the intro race, and as far as I can tell it’s identical to FH3.

[SkylineObsession]

But with less 'Maaate', 'tell him hes dreaming', 'strewth shirl', 'bloody kiwis stealing our inventions', 'lets get a new prime minister, this ones been in here for a week now' type sayings?

And less Aussie cars from what i've seen. Bloody bet you they'll end up in DLC packs....

[GreatScawt]

On PC, demo for FH4 still crashy for me, just like FH3 (crashed twice in two and a half hours). Pretty disappointed. Otherwise, the demo is definitely better optimized (framerate hitching seems to be fixed). Ran 1440p ultra like a dream.

First couple races were standard affair. Movie stunt thing seemed neat. Game crashed as I was crossing the finish line for the street race so didn't get to test beyond that.

[Jason]

#xboxonexmasterrace

[Tom Servo]

The couple of things that I noticed:


Supposedly FH4 performs better than FH3, but I can't *quite* hold 60fps on Ultra at 4K, which I can do on FH3. It drops down into the low 50s if there are a lot of other cars around, though some of it looks to be I/O based, like when it's loading something in the background it drops a bit. It also drops a bit on the rally portion of the intro (spring?). Setting it to High seems fine, but I'm hoping that it's an earlier build and that the release build will be able to maintain 60fps. I did think it was weird that it suggested that I go for "Medium", given the hardware I'm throwing at it. That said, with G-Sync I don't see any tearing when the framerate drops, and if I turn off the FPS display, I don't really notice it at all.

I've seen others point out the same bug on Reddit, but sometimes when driving really quickly (like in the Summer portion of the intro), the road ahead will fail to load in time, leaving just a big gap where you can see the skybox for a second or so. That's not *so* bad, but what is bad is that if you reach the point where the road has failed to load, your car stops completely dead at 0mph while the AI cars continue on. Was leading, then slammed from like 180mph to 0 and had the entire field drive past before I could go again. I would not imagine that this is a disk I/O issue, as the game's installed on an NVMe SSD.


I remember the Forza 7 demo build being total crap compared to the actual release in both performance and physics, so I'm hoping that the release build will be in better shape. Happy to say that I have yet to have a crash, though FH3 very rarely crashes on me either.

[Rare White Ape]

#xboxonexmasterrace

Yup.

I found the frame rate smooth on the standard Xbox but layered with a slightly overbearing motion blur.

The way to go would be the 1080/60 mode on the X.

…for couch potatoes at least. Don’t mind all the stink that Tom’s talking about with PCs and 4K at high frame rates.

[GreatScawt]

Tom, I've yet to see the road-loading issue. Interesting! Maybe I haven't gone fast enough :lol: I assume you're running an SSD?

I have a feeling my crashes might be related to memory/HD space issues. Not sure.
But this game definitely runs completely hitchless, compared to FH3. It looks stunning and feels awesome. The frames are right around what I had at lower settings for FH3. But I'm running 1440p, not 4k.

Also, the "night shadows" OH BOY do this look good. :up: :up: :up:

[Tom Servo]

Tom, I've yet to see the road-loading issue. Interesting! Maybe I haven't gone fast enough :lol: I assume you're running an SSD?

Yep, Samsung Evo 960 NVMe, so it should be plenty fast. Can't find it, but saw a video of someone else who had that happen maybe 20 feet before the finish line.

[Tom Servo]

The full game is up for pre-downloading. Asked for ~64GB on my Windows 10 box.

[Tom Servo]

Hey, bonus. Looks like the Ultimate edition unlocks at midnight, EDT, on the 28th, as the store tells me I can start playing at 9PM pacific on the 27th. Just a few more days.

[Rare White Ape]

This will be available on Game Pass.

I’m gunna pay my $11 for a month and go until I’m bored with it :D


https://youtu.be/t6Pq3UmNg34

[animalica]

Just played it straight for three hours on my 1st gen XB1 because on my PC it starts, shows the title pic and then it closes.
But the demo ran without any problems.

On the 1st gen XB1 it runs better than FH3 which always stutteredm during the loading screens with the Dingo, the sat dish and the snowy road etc.
Only at some cutscenes with some busy scenes or fast cam movements you may get one or two small hiccups.

The graphics and scenery is breathtaking, the menus grew wild and even more colorful and flashy and the feedback for the controller has been improved.
Be it with a McLaren on a bumpy village street or with a G-Class on back on dirt and forest tracks which makes you feel how the axles are trampling.

Awesome! :up:

[Tom Servo]

The game starts on my PC, but having big problems with the world not loading in quickly enough, so big missing gaps in the world and repeated "Low Streaming Performance" warnings that lead to that same "slam to a halt" issue. In the demo, it happened during the Senna races, but now it's even happening when tooling around in an Audi TT.

I'd think that means it's slow streaming data off the drive, but it's a Samsung 960 Evo NVMe SSD, that's definitely on the faster side when it comes to drives. I'll try lowering settings tomorrow to see if that helps, but it surprises me that it's struggling this much.

[Tom Servo]

Lowering the preset to "High" instead of "Ultra" seems to have fixed that problem for me. Unsure what the bottleneck is on my machine, but hopefully more information will come out soonish, because as far as I can tell, this should be able to run Ultra just fine. Still, looks great and totally playable, enjoying it so far though still unsure about all the online stuff. Just made it to Winter, which is turning out to be a lot of fun using my MX-5 to drift around the backroads that haven't been plowed.

[DelSolMan]

This will be available on Game Pass.

I’m gunna pay my $11 for a month and go until I’m bored with it :D


https://youtu.be/t6Pq3UmNg34

Me too :)

I know games pop in and out randomly but I wonder how long Horizon 4 will stay on gamepass.

[Tom Servo]

I've played the previous FH games from launch day until the next one came out, so I figure even at $100 for the Ultimate edition, that's coming out to $4.17 a month for 24 months. Works for me.

[Rare White Ape]

Me too :)

I know games pop in and out randomly but I wonder how long Horizon 4 will stay on gamepass.

Should be there forever, as all 1st party MS games are.

[Rare White Ape]

I've played the previous FH games from launch day until the next one came out, so I figure even at $100 for the Ultimate edition, that's coming out to $4.17 a month for 24 months. Works for me.

That’s not factoring in the hundreds of other games on the service.

Plus I’ll be playing for a month, two tops. That’ll cost me $22.

[Tom Servo]

Yes, but I have a little fancy crown icon next to my name.

[Tom Servo]

Aww rats, just had the low streaming bandwidth warning happen to me on "High". That's annoying.

[Tom Servo]

It looks like going into the task manager and bumping the priority for the process to "Above Normal" may fix the issue. Just ran for a bit on Ultra with no problems.

[Tom Servo]

Well, worked for a while at any rate.

I guess the downside to early release is that you might get sidelined with one of the bugs.

[Tom Servo]

Initial testing looks like a BIOS update may have sorted it. Hoping that sticks.

[Tom Servo]

I think it's safe to say that the BIOS update fixed it. I'm also very happy to have knocked out the cross country and dirt championships. Goddamn do I hate cross-country.

[Jason]

I think I'll pick this up when it goes on sale during the holidays 👍

[GreatScawt]

Full release, running buttery smooth at 1440p 70-90 FPS at Ultra/Extreme settings post day 1 patch.

This game is really fucking good. I'm enjoying the seasonal challenges more than I thought I would. Even against expert drivatars in Aston Martin DB10s in the quarry race :lol:

Greatly enjoy seeing real people around the map, and I especially enjoy the social aspect of the Forzathons. It's a neat little group coop challenge.

Definitely will be putting some serious time in to this. Is there a GTXF group?

[Tom Servo]

Agreed, now that my issues have been resolved I'm only at 60fps, but with G-Sync at 4k on Ultra. It looks ridiculous. Some of the mountain vistas are really something else.

I did one of the Forzathon Live things - I'm not totally sold on that since two of the challenges just appeared to be "drive to a spot, then drive back and forth and fast as you can until we tell you you can stop." The third was racking up skill points, which was fun to do in my little MX-5. It does appear that they're trying to put more of an emphasis on regular challenges, I hope they get more inventive with it as we go on.

No group yet that I know of - last time I glanced at it the club option was greyed out for me, but that was a while ago. Been too busy trying to knock out achievements. I'm happy to see that the credits are a little more free flowing than they were before. I know a lot of people don't like that, but as a normal human with a full time job and other responsibilities, it's nice that I've been able to rack up a few million and have some houses in the limited play time I've had so far.

And agreed that serious time is going into this. For this, I do not have the buyer's remorse.

[Rare White Ape]

My Xbox is downloading as I type. It’s probably ready to start right now but it’s 02:20 and I should really be asleep.

Insomnia?

I have to wake up in four hours :(

[GreatScawt]

I played early (before full installation) on my X1 and was greeted by a "Null Car" when I went to pick a rally car - it was a blacked-out Crown Vic. :lol: Maybe wait so you don't miss anything.

Yeah, Forzathons aren't the most inventive, but I really like how it makes the world really seem alive.

I'm all about no money issues. Now it's a Forzathon points issue...

[Rare White Ape]

I’m cool with waiting. I played the demo for a few hours so most of my early gameplay will just be slogging out a repeat of that.

I’m awake, BTW. I feel terrible, like I’ve had half the sleep I needed. Gotta go to work, then after that hit an Onyx nest in Pokemon Go on the way home, then shower and have dinner.

After that I’ll play Horizon. So, 14 hours from now.

[Cam]

28 GB for a demo? :rolleyes:

[Tom Servo]

Yeah, for some reason all the Forza games are just enormous.

[Rare White Ape]

There’s a lot of scenery in the demo. It showcases, what… a whole quarter of the map?

[Rare White Ape]

It’s 21:00. I grab a beer and sit down. I turn on the Xbox.

“Your Xbox needs an update. It’ll be 700MB”

Why didn’t my Xbox update by itself in the 72hrs since I last turned it off?

Nah, I’ll skip this one and play Forza Horizon 4 offline then let it update when I’m done. I haven’t launched the game yet and I’m keen to have a go.

I launch the game.

“An error has occurred. Please connect to Xbox Live.”

Sigh…

Is there any wonder why I’ve only ever bought three games for the cunnova thing and never turn it on?

Looks like I’m up for another evening playing Gran Turismo instead :up:

See ya Saturday, Xbox. I’m glad I only paid $10 for this month of Game Pass.

[Tom Servo]

Let's just say it's not only performance-related reasons that I prefer to play stuff on my PC over my XBox.

[GreatScawt]

Ugh, annoying. :|

Tried the Cheeky Lambos seasonal race. Got our asses kicked. It's a team race against "highly skilled" AI drivatars. I thought it would be relatively easy. Nah, they destroyed us :lol:

[Tom Servo]

Yeah, everyone seems to think that one is pretty bugged.

Autumn just started and the main weekly forzathon challenge is *way* easier. Step one is buy a '92 NSX-R, step two is hit at least 175mph in it, step three is win three point-to-point road races in it, and step four is get 10 air skills in it. Special car is a Peugeot 205 T16 for 300 forzathon points. I bought the car for 90K, spent 92K on a downloaded S1 900 tune that seemed to favor handling over speed and breezed through.

[Cam]

Yeah, for some reason all the Forza games are just enormous.

I think digital downloads have made developers lazy. No longer is there a size limit to fit a game onto a single cartridge/disc. Plus, so what if the game doesn't work on release? It can just be patched. :rolleyes:

[Tom Servo]

That's definitely true, but the Forza games seem so much worse. Most of the AAA titles I get on Steam are like 15-20gb. Project Cars 2 with all the DLC is ~60gb, and Forza 7 at launch was ~100gb.

[GreatScawt]

Yeah, it's big. Just under 70 GB for me on PC. Think X1 varies by console. I had to make some sacrifices to make room.

[GreatScawt]

Yeah, everyone seems to think that one is pretty bugged.

Hah, glad it wasn't just us. We got stomped on. I managed second place in the second race, but by then the wheels had already fallen off. :lol:


Autumn just started and the main weekly forzathon challenge is *way* easier. Step one is buy a '92 NSX-R, step two is hit at least 175mph in it, step three is win three point-to-point road races in it, and step four is get 10 air skills in it. Special car is a Peugeot 205 T16 for 300 forzathon points. I bought the car for 90K, spent 92K on a downloaded S1 900 tune that seemed to favor handling over speed and breezed through.

I ended up using the Stevio Youtube guy's advice and grabbed an Integra, threw a tune on there, and put resident GTXF/GTP'er Slipztrem's paint job on. I certainly like the idea of the NSX one, though. :up:

https://i.imgur.com/9YC7kVb.jpg

[Tom Servo]

Nice! I started on that prior to his posting on Reddit and had already invested a bunch in trying to make a pretty bonkers Corrado. Pretty easily hit 204 and was bouncing off the rev limiter at that point, the hardest part was finding a speed zone where it could handle well enough to three star it. I hadn't tried the one he pointed out which worked well, it demolished the 3 star time.

[Rare White Ape]

That's definitely true, but the Forza games seem so much worse. Most of the AAA titles I get on Steam are like 15-20gb. Project Cars 2 with all the DLC is ~60gb, and Forza 7 at launch was ~100gb.

One legit reason is that the 4K assets for Forza take up so much more space. A base Xbox won’t download them.

At least it’s not the situation seen on Switch, where cart prices vary by size, and tight arse publishers (like 2K Games) buy cheap ones off Nintendo and make you download the rest of it.

[GreatScawt]

So, the Forza image share feature seemed to think I had bad language buried in this photo... so it wouldn't let me share to the community. Huh. Just thought I'd post because I quite like it.

https://i.imgur.com/jQdpCrV.png

[Rare White Ape]

Noice :up:

The demo wouldn’t let me use my old CHKN:FKR plate from FH3 :(

[Tom Servo]

Surprisingly, the extra-long final road race (Colossus, I think?) is not that long. I took that same NSX-R I used for the weekly challenge and finished the circuit in about 5 1/2 minutes, which netted me about 45K in credits. Could probably bump the difficulty some to get even more - the NSX-R tends to lose out a bit on the straights but it absolutely crushes the AI around corners, so it does pretty well.

I thought I was raking in a good amount of money until I saw it's 15M for one of the houses...

[GreatScawt]

Yeah, the castle's a long way off for me. But I see no value in that TBH, other than a place to buy parts/tune?

BTW, did anyone else realize how they changed the fast travel/car change mechanics vs FH3? You can only fast travel to the festival, you can't just fast travel anywhere. And you can swap your car out on the fly for free, anywhere. I've been doing that for Forzathons.

I just dipped below $5mil to buy the Lancia Stratos classic rally. I did the seasonal championship against expert AI without looking at the requirements.... there's another tier of reward if you win on unbeatable difficulty. D'oh, so I did that again and also managed to do the horrifyingly difficult matchmaking seasonal team championship. I highly recommend buying the Peugot 205 FE from the Forzathon shop if you don't have it already. That thing was perfect for the team championship.

Speaking of that seasonal team championship, be careful if your team drops a race or two. People seem prone to rage-quitting, and depending on what place they were in, could totally screw up the team totals. The first time I played, we were on race 5/5 against the drivatars and a few people quit; and these were folks who were not just placing last but getting the team points with respectable finishes. Extremely frustrating. My next team ended up 3-0'ing the drivatars, so I was pretty chuffed about that.

[Tom Servo]

The only other value to it is a free Alfa Romeo P3 and 10 Super Wheelspins.

It looks like if you buy Fairlawn Manor for 2M, it grants the ability to fast travel anywhere.

That's going to be an issue going forward. When I did the team thing against drivatars, we ended up with two guys who just never moved the whole time and came in dead last both races, and one guy who was doing really well and got disconnected. The drivatars do not have either of those problems. I also had a Forzathon Live that only three people showed up to, and they don't adjust the totals based on how many drivers there are. Couldn't even get halfway through the second part before time ran out.

[GreatScawt]

Yup, low attendance Forzathons are not great. I was really surprised to see they don't scale. Luckily that's only happened once where we failed out. Every other one has been 6+ people helping.

And people not moving in the team championship is just scummy - I haven't quite experienced that yet. What a tremendous waste of time

[DelSolMan]

I picked up a 1980 Renault 5 Turbo Forza Edition off auction and been chaining slides Tony Hawk Pro Skater style in the Winter by the airstrip. With some of the perks unlocked you get a ton of style and influence points with minimal effort.

[Rare White Ape]

I finally got time to play the game yesterday. I took my fetching matte black Dodge out for a spin to the Main Street of Edin-berg, which quite frankly is a stunningly beautiful city.

https://gallery.services.forzamotorsport.net/fh4/photo/86d13c00-7261-4b7a-b7cb-b2fddfe0cb8d

After that I attempted to drive it up a cliff to get a good view of the highlands. The devs have done an excellent job in capturing the splendiferous serenity.

https://gallery.services.forzamotorsport.net/fh4/photo/bfa388e5-28db-4aa9-9279-1b1d79722d92

Next, having driven up the cliff, I drove off the cliff and found a nice little dwelling. I’d love to live in a place like this. Or I would, if it wasn’t so gosh darn cold there in winter and I wasn’t such a sook.

https://gallery.services.forzamotorsport.net/fh4/photo/91dec169-9b26-4950-84df-845db7c8535c

[Rare White Ape]

Also the Dodge rips some hekkin sick burnouts and sounds like a NASCAR.

:up:

[Tom Servo]

Slowly dragging myself up in credits, hit 8M today. Finally got a chance to drive the Senna as part of that "World's Fastest Rentals" Horizon story. 'Course, now that I have a "business", I can't find the option to collect earnings from my business anymore, I have no idea where that went.

[DelSolMan]

I saw a 'business' tab in the messages/inbox screen. BTW I'm mos_skeeto on Xbox Live in case you're wondering who keeps playing the la cucaracha song :)

[Tom Servo]

Thanks for sending the request for an invite to the club, we're now three drivers strong!

[Rare White Ape]

They see us rollin’…

[GreatScawt]

Had a fun session with Novi a couple nights ago, finally getting around to posting some pics

https://i.imgur.com/UPFKYsO.png
https://i.imgur.com/UlRIldT.png
https://i.imgur.com/bEETbnC.png
https://i.imgur.com/COcbNzt.jpg

Ran into slipztrem during a Forzathon and took a quick snap as we launched off a ramp :lol:
https://i.imgur.com/nrWFQjf.png

More:
https://i.imgur.com/WgyPGT0.jpg (one of my favorites so far)
https://i.imgur.com/P2rfWNC.png
https://i.imgur.com/s5c7yrC.jpg
https://i.imgur.com/xl8k4fz.jpg
https://i.imgur.com/8CyqeQX.jpg

[Tom Servo]

Winter is here. I have a feeling that means my speed zone quest is on hold for a bit, a little harder to keep the power down in the Agera when there's ice.

Overall the weekly challenge is easy, but tedious. Own and drive an Offroad vehicle, then win three cross country events in it, next get a wrecking ball (literally just drive down a stone wall until it triggers), but then - get 7,000,000 skill score points total. In about 50 minutes I got just over a million, so that's gonna take a bit. That's after maxxing out the perks for the RWD-converted Raptor I'm driving.

[GreatScawt]

Wait, so it's not 7 million in one shot? Thank god :lol:

[Tom Servo]

No, thank goodness. Verified it on the Forzathon screen, the total just accumulates as you put together skills. Still, none of the "Offroad" vehicles are big drift monsters or anything, which has made it hard for me to come up with those massive combos. I thought making the Raptor RWD might help, but it went from nearly impossible to drift to nearly impossible to avoid spinning out. Also, the snow tends to bog things down, so it's hard to keep any speed going even when you do get a good drift going.

Saw that next week's challenge centers around the Corrado, which is great 'cause I already got one and used it for that hot hatch thing a couple of weeks ago. Then I realized that I'm going to be out of town from early Thursday morning until late Friday 8 days later which means I'll miss it. Meh.

[animalica]

Helpful if you need quick money - two players required:


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vcJL8K16YZ4

[Rare White Ape]

:boggle:

There’ll be a patch for that before the week is out.

[Tom Servo]

Huh...well, that 7 million point thing might still kinda suck. I just got a few hundred thousand more and then went to see where I stood. Says I've got ~680K out of 7 million. I *had* over a million this morning. I hope it's not "in one session".

[Rare White Ape]

Guys I’m just curious: do photos work for you if I link them directly?

If they do… some shots for yiz!

A Huracan with ice tyres is a weapon for traversal in the snow.

https://gallery.services.forzamotorsport.net/fh4/photo/90a8c840-168d-418a-bc94-f1f098811849

And the obligatory tunnel shot. Looks amazeballs in HDR.

https://gallery.services.forzamotorsport.net/fh4/photo/a1ea9665-6f56-4e36-a1ed-f154d8a8bf6b

[dodint]

They work.

[Tom Servo]

Managed to do the 7M skill points in a single session, took about 2 1/2 hours for me. With the Raptor, you get bonuses to a lot of wreckage skills, so just tearing around Edinburgh worked pretty well. The plowed streets give enough grip to control drifts, so you really just need to keep it in 2nd gear and toss it back and forth to keep the street going, then keep aiming for trashbins and mailboxes to get the bonuses for those. If you can reliably pull off drift taps, that's a good way to build the amount quickly as well.

[GreatScawt]

Dat tunnel shot, RWA :up:

Also, yeah Tom, took me about the same time. I ended up using the Forzathon Edition Land Rover Series III that I had won. Went up and down the highway drifting and getting destruction skills (FE bonus). Also maxed out the skill-based attributes in the car's skill tree. Those helped a lot.

Still ended up making dumb mistakes along the way and probably lost about 1million total skill points by hitting stupid shit. :lol:

[Tom Servo]

Up to 528 of 531 roads found, looks like Novi's at 529. With the snow in winter, my plans to work on speed zones and danger signs is kinda sidelined, even with snow tires you still aren't going to be able to maintain the grip you would without snow being there, so it's time for road searching. Wonder how long it'll take me to find those 3 missing spots...

[Tom Servo]

Well, not too long. Surprisingly, the achievement fired at 529.

[Rare White Ape]

Despite myself, I’m actually enjoying this game.

I’m a bit of a Forza hater, and it’s 99% identical to FH3, and I said as much to some friends before going in. But FH3 was a good time so yet another game just like it has to be a good time too.

I love, love, love the cross country events. I think they’re my favourite. No other racing game does it like this. Onrush is a fun title with the cross country vibe to it, but it’s not set in a vast open world where anything can happen. Those curated tracks set in huge empty paddocks that feed into tight village obstacle courses push all the right buttons for me. Forgiving almost-sim, almost-arcade physics are the icing on the cake.

Throw in a huge collection of supercars, hot hatches, rally weapons, souped-up shopping trolleys and family sedans, plus the ability to customise the heck out of each of them, plus high speed highways, winding country roads, dirt tracks, a robust photo mode and that scenery and you’re onto a winner.

[Freude am Fahren]

Hmm, I figured I'd wait on this until I move into a new place (staying with family in the interim), since I won't be able to use the wheel here. Might not be able to hold out that long.

[dodint]

You need a wheel for an arcade game?

[Tom Servo]

I definitely prefer both FH and FM without a wheel. They both work with a wheel, but they clearly weren't designed to be played with anything other than a controller.

It sounds like that reset I had on the 7M skill points wasn't because I turned the game off, it's a bug that's hitting a lot of people at random times. Someone on Reddit's saying they were at 6.2M and then the next time they checked, they were at 180K. Feeling lucky that I managed to get it.

RWA, I'm glad to hear that someone likes the cross-country stuff, because I can't stand it. That's the one part of this game that I just loathe. Every race is just hoping that you don't hit a weird bump that ruins the entire event for you, and the races that have you smashing through barriers seem to slow you down but not the AI cars, which I find extra irritating. My initial goal was to get to level 10 on cross-country and then never, ever have to run another one of those events again.

[Freude am Fahren]

I prefer a wheel, yeah. It's just more fun for me. I haven't really done any driving games with a controller in years.

[Tom Servo]

Spent the past couple of days grinding road racing. Getting from RR level 18 to 19 took forever, I think I ran Colossus or whatever it is 10 times or so. Was enough that I gave up yesterday, then just went in for one race today and found that it got me nearly all the way through 19. Not sure what's up with 18, you have to get a ton of points for it, but 19 is quick and unlocked Goliath at level 20. Ran that for one lap, ended up with about 100k in credits about 35k or so in Influence, which was enough to level up twice, getting me about another 130K in credits from the wheelspins. Not sure why I've made getting that 15M castle my goal so early on, but I did, and I'm at about 12.6M now.

[dodint]

The idea and execution of FH4 sounds really fun, but actually playing it sounds like work.

[Tom Servo]

It started really good, but right now it's feeling like work. I'm hoping that as they iron out the kinks of the online multiplayer (like how GreatScawt joined my convoy the other day and I still have no idea what that actually meant, and somehow ended up confused as to what to do next and he eventually left, maybe as confused as I was?) that'll change. It's still fun, though, don't get me wrong, and it looks so damn pretty it's hard to not have at least a little bit of a good time with it.

[dodint]

Yeah. It's getting me to toy with the idea of picking it up.

[Tom Servo]

Zonda R FE manages to get around the Goliath circuit in just over 8 1/2 minutes per lap, so a little under 45 minutes for a 5 lapper. That netted almost 500K in credits, plus multiple levels up of both the road racing stat and the overall level. It also easily cruises about half the lap over 200mph, so it just racks up ultimate speed skills which both fills the skill points and generates influence for the overall level. By the end of it I had 13 wheelspins which got me about another half million, now sitting at 13.6M.

[GreatScawt]

:up: Think I'll do that right now.

[GreatScawt]

Pretty sure the super-dependent-on-your-team coop championship doesn't actually grant you super wheels spins.
Did it earlier this week with nothing. Did it again last night with Novi and nothing.

I'd like 10 freebies as payback for the imposed stress, k thx, Playground.

Also, the Senna arrived in my Xbox live msgs last night. I redeemed it and got it in my garage without resetting the game. I love that thing.

[Tom Servo]

Also got the Senna, am pleased about that.

Zonda did the trick. Ran it two more times, but of course the second time was when I was smart and maxxed out its perks. It gets 6,000 points for an Ultimate Clean Racing skill at that point and 2,400, I think, for Ultimate Speed, which thankfully now come fast enough that they keep your streak alive. Managed to hold the streak all the way down the west coast on one lap and got my PB for a skill streak, somewhere around 460K, just for driving really fast. Was leveling up almost once a lap just from xp (I'm going to call it that instead of influence points, because it's the same thing) earned from skill streaks. Finished the 5 lapper, went to buy Edinburgh castle and ended that with 20 wheelspins and 10 super wheelspins, and completely earned back my skill point investment, I think I got about 90 points during the race. Kinda got cheated on the super wheelspins, I had one that was just three clothing items which is the ultimate in disappointment. Still, got a couple of FE cars out of it, bank account is back up to around 800K, and now I never have to think about trying to buy that 15M castle ever again.

[GreatScawt]

It started really good, but right now it's feeling like work. I'm hoping that as they iron out the kinks of the online multiplayer (like how GreatScawt joined my convoy the other day and I still have no idea what that actually meant, and somehow ended up confused as to what to do next and he eventually left, maybe as confused as I was?) that'll change. It's still fun, though, don't get me wrong, and it looks so damn pretty it's hard to not have at least a little bit of a good time with it.

Oops just saw this. I have no idea, I thought you joined my convoy :lol:. I wanted to do a Forzathon so I ended up leaving since you weren't queued up for it as well. You're right though, it's not obvious what being in a convoy actually means.

What I end up doing when convoying with Novi is start PI-limited coop races against the AI. You level up your various XPs pretty quick. And the races are marked complete as you do them still. That and the seasonal stuff.

[Tom Servo]

Am I the only one that misses when games came with actual printed manuals that explained what everything is, and how you use it?

I remember seeing that you "Joined my convoy". I'd only seen that once before when Novi did the same, but I was just finishing up my last race before leaving for work and I had to quit out, so this time I thought "Sure, this sounds good." Then I didn't know what to do so I tried to start a race, but it just counted down for a while and kicked me out. Then I saw someone else was trying to start a multiplayer race so I joined that and then it said you left the convoy. *shrug* No idea at all what you're supposed to do with that.

Also, there aren't any non-team online races, are there? Like, just a bunch of people racing each other as individuals? I haven't seen that yet...

[Tom Servo]

And then this morning woke up to another code for a free McLaren 720S...and a black jumper.

[Tom Servo]

What's the Spring season's special Forzathon cars? Not that I can buy them as I'm off in Tel Aviv and as far as I can tell I can't buy it without actually being able to start the game, but I'm curious on what I'm missing out on.

[8400RPM]

2018 Civic Type R
Alumi Craft Race Car FE

[Tom Servo]

Sweet, I can live with missing out on those two for now, and I assume the spring barn find will come back next spring.

[8400RPM]

I’d imagine you can just buy them in the auction house now anyway? I bought 2 Civics if you want me to sell you a cheap one.

[Tom Servo]

I'm down. I'll let you know when I'm back from Israel. Thanks!

[8400RPM]

The update is supposed to be out right? It’s not triggering for me.

[Rare White Ape]

Peeps, may I please draw your attention to this post?

http://gtxforums.net/showthread.php?28-Next-XBox-XBOX-One&p=128631&viewfull=1#post128631

[M4FFU]

I've picked up a new XB1S to play this, and I've got a massive deadzone when (steering) going from centre to full left on the joystick - from centre to half of the distance left does nothing. From centre to right is perfect.

I plugged the controller into Windows 10 and the calibration is fine.

I played 30 mins of RDR2 and if the problem is still there, it's not noticeable. My character goes right or left at the same input either side.

Anyone else suffered this?

[M4FFU]

Thanks for sending the request for an invite to the club, we're now three drivers strong!

M4FFU is me :)

[Tom Servo]

I've got two drift zones left to get 3 stars on all the PR stunts. They're in deep snow during the winter season, but otherwise I think they're both really muddy, so none of the formula drift cars seem to work there. I want that achievement, dammit.

[GreatScawt]

Same, that's all I have left.
I was playing yesterday with a few friends and I commented on how the snowy drift zones seem to be really, really narrow; Very difficult to maintain point accumulation in them. They all agreed immediately. I'm gonna wait until non-winter seasons to try these zones again.

[DelSolMan]

Drift zones are bumming me out so outside of Forzathons I refuse to do them. At least the game doesn't really penalize you for not doing them.

[Tom Servo]

I'm finding them overall significantly less painful than FH3, if only because the AI cars get ghosted so you're not constantly dodging traffic while trying to put together a good drift. FWIW, I've never even gotten close to getting all of the PR stunts in a Horizon game, and this time it's just those last two drift zones. All the danger signs, speed zones, and speed traps are 3-starred.

I used a couple of the Formula Drift cars out of the box to 3 star all but these last two. For now, I'm just waiting until Spring and then checking the leaderboards to see what cars people used. It does make me miss my old Celica drift car from FH3 though, that thing just demolished every drift zone I threw at it. The ones I've been using on these muddy/snowy ones just can't get any sort of grip going from the rear wheels, so they bog down completely.

[Tom Servo]

Just in case people don't know this, as more and more of the "get Daredevil/Threading the Needle skills" challenges seem to be showing up and the main Forzathon challenge for spring includes getting 5 Threading the Needles, you can get around the "no AI traffic" bug by going to Horizon Solo. That goes offline and suddenly your world will be populated by AI cars that you can use to get those goals, then just go back online when you're done.

They keep claiming they've fixed the "no AI traffic" bug in online play, but every time they say that it seems like it gets even worse, I almost never see any AI cars now.

[M4FFU]

Just in case people don't know this, as more and more of the "get Daredevil/Threading the Needle skills" challenges seem to be showing up and the main Forzathon challenge for spring includes getting 5 Threading the Needles, you can get around the "no AI traffic" bug by going to Horizon Solo. That goes offline and suddenly your world will be populated by AI cars that you can use to get those goals, then just go back online when you're done.

They keep claiming they've fixed the "no AI traffic" bug in online play, but every time they say that it seems like it gets even worse, I almost never see any AI cars now.

Heh, yeah. Had to do that last night with the Caterham!

[Tom Servo]

Woot, got the 3 stars on every PR stunt. The Formula Drift #43 Viper with one of the shared drift tunes (I did the one that said it got some 2xx,xxx city score) made short work of the remaining drift zone. That thing is pretty beastly, I kinda wish I'd used it from the start.

[Jason]

Bought this on sale... Loving Driving around Scotland. Don't understand the online stuff, so I go back to solo every time. Seems mostly the same as FH3, but in a better location :up:

[Freude am Fahren]

Decided to give it a go, given the discounts this weekend. Installing now...

(at about half of the speed I'm paying Comcast for. Those fuckers.)

[Tom Servo]

Down to two single-player achievements - one more barn find that I think you have to buy one of the houses to unlock, and the Veyron SS speed trap target. Then I have to face the unwashed masses for the multiplayer ones :/

[Freude am Fahren]

Eh, finding it very frustrating to play with a controller. I played FH1 and 3 with controllers, partly, and don't remember it being this difficult. Maybe I just suck.

I'll probably shelve it until I have a wheel setup again.

[Tom Servo]

Huh, weird, I can't play FH4 (or FH3 for that matter) with a wheel, I have to use a controller.

[Jason]

Is there any way to set it up so that you're only online with friends instead of randoms?

[Tom Servo]

AFAIK, no, but you also basically don't have to interact with the randoms either. I don't get much out of it, but I have to admit when I went back to play FH3 to get one of the forzathon cars it was sorta disappointing to realize that the other drivers out there were just AI and not real people.

If someone you know is playing, there's generally a tile on the Horizon tab that lets you jump into their server. That said, I'm not sure what you do at that point because the "convoy" system seems completely broken. I'm not even sure what it's supposed to do outside of telling you one of your friends joined your convoy, then immediately telling you your friend left your convoy, and even if they didn't leave, I'm not sure what you're supposed to do in a convoy.

[Tom Servo]

Letting the train hit you makes for fun physics: https://www.reddit.com/r/forza/comments/a1qc1f/figured_id_try_it_myself_if_anyone_wants_to_know/

[GreatScawt]

Went back to FH3 the other day and the amount of annoying drivatars on the road was awful. Big fan of ghosted players :up:

Also, highly recommend grabbing the KTM X-Bow GT4 in the Forzathon shop and full decking it out with the racing V12 and turbos. That thing has in unbelievable down force. My buddy and I have been destroying speed zones with it.

[Rare White Ape]

Letting the train hit you makes for fun physics: https://www.reddit.com/r/forza/comments/a1qc1f/figured_id_try_it_myself_if_anyone_wants_to_know/

Cheap way to fast travel :D

[Tom Servo]

Winter season is here, and the forzathon shop features the 1980 Renault 5 Turbo FE and 2016 Gymkhana 10 Ford Focus RS RX. Both repeats, already.

I don't even play that much and have something like 1,500 FP banked when the game is a couple of months old. Hopefully this gets better when the expansion comes out in a week or so.

[M4FFU]

Ah. I'm sans internet at home at the moment and was worried I'd miss out on something good; got one of those and so not bothered by the Focus. I don't even bother with the weekly stuff; few forzathon live events and you can rake up points quick enough to afford the special cars each week.

[Tom Servo]

Definitely, though usually the weekly goal is pretty easy, I usually bang it out in like 20-30 minutes, and it gets you a ton of points. I really hope they come up with some ideas for the Forzathon Live events though. Every once in a while you get a drift one which is kinda fun, but the speed trap ones are consistently boring as hell or you get the "rack up a bunch of air skills" in some place with almost no bumps, so it's just everyone driving back and forth across the one bump big enough to get air off of.

[M4FFU]

True. I don't bother unless I'm in a 'hmm, what to do moment' and the pink circle appears. Arm 205 T16 and go ham :D

Fortune Island Launch Trailer:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F-e_447DY4U

New cars included:

2019 Lamborghini Urus
2018 BMW M5
2017 Ram 1500 Rebel TRX Concept
2002 Koenigsegg CC8S
2018 Exomotive Exocet Off-Road
2012 Lamborghini Aventador J
2010 Saleen S5S Raptor
1953 Morris Minor Series II Traveler
2018 Funco Motorsports F9
2015 Hoonigan GYMKHANA 8 Ford Fiesta ST RX43

[Tom Servo]

It was sorta a revelation to find out that I can change cars mid Forzathon Live (or pretty much anything). I somehow just totally missed the "deliver me a new car" thing for the longest time.

[DelSolMan]

It was sorta a revelation to find out that I can change cars mid Forzathon Live (or pretty much anything). I somehow just totally missed the "deliver me a new car" thing for the longest time.

Yea it's nice. Also if you knocked down all the fast travel boards you can teleport yourself to places which is very handy for danger sign events. Some danger signs take a while to drive back to the ramp.

Is there a way to quick swap tires? Every winter I put winters on all my fav cars and it's very tedious. I would rather have a saved tuning setup or something where I can just swap it on the go.

[Tom Servo]

...which is very handy for danger sign events. Some danger signs take a while to drive back to the ramp.

Ooh, that's a good idea.

[Tom Servo]

Might be common knowledge, but wasn't to me. There's a set of cars that you can only get via a wheelspin or the auction house.


Audi TT RS
Austin FX4 Taxi
Cadillac XTS Limousine
Ford Crown Victoria Police Interceptor
Ford F-150 SVT Raptor 2011
Ford SVT Cobra R 1993
Ford XB Falcon GT 1973
Honda Civic Type-R 2004
Honda NSX-R 2005
Hoonigan Napalm Nova
Hummer H1 Alpha
Jeep Grand Cherokee SRT
Lamborghini Aventador LP750-4 SV
Lancia Delta HF Integrale Evo
Lotus 2-Eleven
Lotus Elise 111S
Mercedes-Benz E63 AMG
Mini John Cooper Works
Nissan GT-R LM
Pontiac Firebird Trans-Am SD-455
Porsche Cayenne 2018
Subaru Impreza WRX STi 2004
Volkswagen Global Rallycross Beetle 2014
Volkswagen Golf R 2010

[Jason]

I was wondering where a few of those cars were...

[GreatScawt]

My buddy is losing his damn mind trying to get the '04 WRX. Never appears on the auction house.

[M4FFU]

I've got quite a lot of those I don't want. (and not the scoob) To the auction house they go!

Anyone got the Island DLC yet? Thoughts?

[Tom Servo]

I like it so far. The treasure chest/riddle thing is a little goofy, but I can't argue with the million credit payout each time, that's quickly replenishing the bank account after buying up all the houses and the Veyron SS for the achievement. I love the overall look of the place, with some parts of it pretty barren and full of ruined buildings it almost makes me feel like it's Forza in Fallout. So far, the PR stunts have been pretty easy, though that may be due to the fact that I've already got my weapon-of-choice cars for each event from the main game (Agera RS for any speed related stuff on tarmac, Hoonigan Escort RS for off-road speed challenges and danger signs, and Formula Drift Viper for drift events).

It also feels less like a huge add-on to the game than either Hot Wheels or Blizzard Mountain for FH3, it kinda just feels like some extra map with two sorta new bits in it (treasure chest is basically barn finds but for money, and the trailblazer thing). I think I might be a little annoyed if I'd paid $20 for it, but pretty happy with it as part of the Ultimate bundle.

[GreatScawt]

Without saying too, too much:

Love it so far. They added some roads / drift zones that people have been clamoring for and I think they did a nice job.

Always a fan of the crazy storms. Atmosphere and skybox is incredible.

Had a convoy of 6 progressing through the campaign yesterday and doing a seasonal championship and a Forzathon. It's great you can jump right into MP with everybody soon after the intro.

Map size. They said it was the largest expansion yet. I can't fully comment on that yet, as I haven't driven everywhere.... but it feels about on par with the Blizzard Island size.

[Tom Servo]

The new Drift Club series is waaaaay easy. That said, the one with the BMW was a lot of fun, drifting on that mountain road with the sheer cliff at the edge is pretty entertaining.

[Tom Servo]

It's not just the drift club. All the PR stunts are super easy (there was one trailblazer that I had to try twice to three star). To give you an idea, I have one danger sign and one speed zone where I am ranked in the top 100%. Like, the worst ranking you can get. I still got three stars. Over 99% of every person who has put down a time or a jump has three-starred it.

[GreatScawt]

Yeah, I ended up popping the achievements for 3 starring Danger signs and Speed traps during a Forzathon. Hadn't even realized they were mostly wrapped up!

My friends aren't the biggest fans of hunting for treasure, but I really enjoy the riddle/treasure system they have going. Nice change of pace to figure out the riddles and go find your reward.

[Tom Servo]

Yeah, they were fun. I kinda wish there more of them, they went by pretty quick. Still, it was more fun than the barn finds - randomly searching with the drone is less fun than having a hint that helps you find the spot.

[Tom Servo]

Finally tried team adventure. It's fun, but since they do three stages of whatever version it is broken up by two stages of "freeroam rush" (read: just drive as fast as you can from one spot to another by whatever, probably off-road, route), the road-racing ones are just broken. I started with a road racing one and picked my F40. Disadvantaged since it's stock and at the low end of its tier, but I figure I'll make up at least a few places since I can actually make a corner. First race went fine, then it was "bound through the forest at high speed." You can't change your car. If you pick a good road racing car, you're fucked on the roam stages. Meh.

[Tom Servo]

If any of you guys missed out on the McLaren Senna, it's 250 forza points right now.

Team adventure's kinda growing on me. Freeroam rush is still stupid, but it's also stupid for everyone else, so if you just don't drive like a moron you can generally make not a total hash of it.

[Tom Servo]

The online Trial event this week nets you a Mosler MT900S if your team wins. Took me a few tries to find a team that wasn't useless, but once a group came together that wasn't half full of rage-quitters, we won easily.

[GreatScawt]

Yeah, I had a lot of luck with the Aventador FE. It pulls so hard from a dead start you can get to first or second very easily. Took two tries to find a decent enough team and get a feel for the races. Ended up winning all three races, with the team winning 2/3.

[Tom Servo]

Well, turns out it wasn't really needed, it looks like they just gifted everyone the Mosler anyway.

[M4FFU]

I did wonder why that suddenly turned up for me.

'Finished' The Island - well, got the last treasure - and have enjoyed it a lot. Will keep going back to that drift section as I love me some FH drifting :D

[Tom Servo]

I recently got out of unranked on the racing Team Adventure, and now I'm learning the joys of playing ranked. Gave up after about 15 minutes of waiting and three "not enough people signed up" attempts to join a session. On average, I'd say it takes at least 15 minutes to find a working one.

[GreatScawt]

It's the worst. I swear I had someone trolling a group of us for 30 min one time by purposefully letting it time out.

I hate to admit it, but I only played ranked for the achievements.

Unranked I had a blast with. And it queues instantly.

[Tom Servo]

For the unranked, do they ever have ones that aren't A or S1 class? It'd be kinda fun (and probably cut down on the ramming) if they had some lower class events.

[Tom Servo]

Oh, and apparently it's very worth it to get the Hoonigan RS200 that's a prize for one of the seasonal challenges.

[Tom Servo]

One of the features of today's patch is removing the Carlton and Floss emotes. Guess they didn't feel like getting sued like Epic over them.

[DelSolMan]

We lost 2 dances but got some old Mitsubishi's!

[Tom Servo]

That seems like a reasonable trade-off.

[Tom Servo]

Now's your chance to get the Cadillac Limo, it's 500FP in the Forzathon store this week.

[M4FFU]

I did - and what a waste of 500 points! :O

[Tom Servo]

It is mostly a joke car, but since it's almost impossible to get otherwise (I think you can only get it through luck with a wheelspin or in the auction house, where it's pretty rare), it feeds the OCD car collector part of the game for me.

It also looks like it's a pretty entertaining drift car with the right setup.

[M4FFU]

I was actually more excited by this weeks wellies, given I'd already had the Vulcan too :D

[GreatScawt]

I spun the caddy and hadn't realized it was a hot commodity :lol:.
I'm not looking forward to trying to get the Rip Rod. Have to win a PVP drag race championship (in an old Ford?). Hmm

[Tom Servo]

I likely won't bother, but over on /r/forza there are a few people giving tips on it. Namely to download one of the tunes (I know the user 'Stevio' puts up good stuff for Forzathons) and apparently almost immediately shift into second to control wheelspin.

[GreatScawt]

So yeah, just got it first try. Thank god :lol:

Indeed, I downloaded Stevio's tune. I followed him ever since FH3 when Ani was posting his videos for the Forzathons then. So I saw his video a few days ago and saw what you had to do.

Thanks for the tip on starting in 2nd. Saves the time on the first shift, plus any significant wheel spin. Also, no one misbehaved!


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eI99Z0HAOd0

[Tom Servo]

I was actually more excited by this weeks wellies, given I'd already had the Vulcan too :D

Heh, glad I didn't buy them, just won them in a wheelspin.

[Tom Servo]

Somehow I've gotten myself stuck in this mode where the only team adventure I can get is S2 road racing in winter and it's making me fucking bonkers.

[Tom Servo]

Well, the "get 3, err, 5 airborne pass skills" challenge is a little irritating. For some reason, they're just not triggering for me. I did the cross country event at Bamburgh castle and got an Ultimate Pass on someone while in mid flight on the huge jump as you leap into the castle grounds and nothing.

In fact, I've done maybe 10 cross country races specifically trying to time jumps to get airborne passes and I still have none. Meh.

[GreatScawt]

According to Stevio you need to have the jump stunt trigger before the pass stunt. Don't know if that helps...


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z8HsZh4obZU

[Tom Servo]

Huh, well, at least now I know that passing while airborne is *not* what an airborne pass is. Silly me.

[Tom Servo]

Alright, after some rewind shenanigans inspired by the video, I've got this week's challenge done.

[Tom Servo]

There's also a fun little bug around one of the seasonal championships, the one where you have to race cars from the 2000s and the top prize is a Reventon. The race that's in the south of the map (I forget which one, but it's one of the three) has a bug that kicks in partway through the second lap where it goes from daytime to pitch black night over the course of about a second.

[GreatScawt]

Yep! That was jarring.
I recorded it, because I thought it was so strange.

And yeah I wasn't aware airborne skills technically operated like that. Just did that race + rewinds. Literally the second it popped I quit to do Lucky Saves.

I really like that they seem to be doing community custom routes for the seasonal championships now. Makes it way more interesting. But fuck that cross country one.

Weird question... I was playing on Xbox and the Forzathons weren't giving me double FP like they do on PC. Glitch or intended??

[Tom Servo]

Agreed, really liking that they're using community routes. We were getting to the point where doing the same circuits was getting a little old, so it was nice to get some new stuff. I even liked the cross country one, and normally I hate cross country ones.

That sounds like a glitch to me. I have seen a few people complaining that just happens to them even without switching platforms, and it sounds like you can buy that 5M house again (for free) to get it working again.

[M4FFU]

Alright, after some rewind shenanigans inspired by the video, I've got this week's challenge done.

I gave up. I watched Stevios video, tried for 20 mins or so, and couldn't be bothered. I've got 1000 or so FP so I'm good for the moment, but yes - a toughie, given that recent ones have been so easy!

[Jason]

Annoying note: I loaded this up to play for a few minutes the other day before I had to go do something, because in general it's a good game to have some fun in short bits... I was met with about 10 minutes of unskippable ads for various add ons, DLC, etc before it loaded me to my property and I could drive around. Does this happen every time, or is it because I haven't played in a while and there's been various additions released since?

[Tom Servo]

I gave up. I watched Stevios video, tried for 20 mins or so, and couldn't be bothered. I've got 1000 or so FP so I'm good for the moment, but yes - a toughie, given that recent ones have been so easy!

I ended up basically following his guide, but set a 20 lap race, and would let the pack get in front of me each lap (there was one straggler who I stayed in front of). Then the key for me was to let them get a bit of a gap before the jump section, then take a good run at it. Otherwise I'd end up crashing into the back of people leading into the first jump, but if I had enough gap, I'd end up in that section a good 15-20mph faster than the drivatars and that made it pretty easy to get the airborne passes.

[Tom Servo]

Annoying note: I loaded this up to play for a few minutes the other day before I had to go do something, because in general it's a good game to have some fun in short bits... I was met with about 10 minutes of unskippable ads for various add ons, DLC, etc before it loaded me to my property and I could drive around. Does this happen every time, or is it because I haven't played in a while and there's been various additions released since?

It's gotta be the latter, though it's hard for me to say since I got the fancy version that already includes the DLC. I think a remember a teaser video for Fortune Island at some point, but definitely nothing like that.

[Tom Servo]

Small but good update out today, namely that the limit to the number of cars in the garage is up to 750 from, I think, 550.

I still don't actually understand why they have a limit on the size, but whatevs.

[Tom Servo]

Really enjoying the new free-for-all adventures, it's basically the same as the team racing adventure only it's back to traditional non-team mode and you just get points for your finishing position. I'm even liking the freeroam, finding that a lot of times in road cars that it's better to just stick to the roads, you'll often beat the people who beeline across the landscape.

I still need to find cars that work for all the disciplines though - if I get S1 road racing my NSX is a monster, but I don't really have a go-to for any of the others.

[Tom Servo]

Looks like they're realizing that we all are just sitting on a ton of Forzathon points and stopped bothering with the Forzathon Live events a while ago, the price for a 2018 Civic Type R is 800 FP. I think that's the highest any car has been so far.

It'd be nice if they'd just make the Forzathon Live events actually fun rather than try to cajole you into doing them by increasing the cost of the cars.

[Kchrpm]

If only gaming in general, and gamers in general, realized that fun was a better motivator than high cost. The whole market is going away from it.

[Tom Servo]

If anyone's working on the enraging "Moor Than a Feeling" seasonal co-op challenge, I finally made a tune worth sharing for the ATS-V. It should be available under my gamertag "Swervo". Made what was an infuriating challenge laughably easy.

[GreatScawt]

Thanks! I grabbed it and ran it just now. Once the, uh, underperforming teammates left the first race (even though I came in first, with your setup), we clean-sweeped the second two. I can see how that challenge would be a PITA.

[Tom Servo]

It was an absolute nightmare when I just went in with a 'Vette. Just absolutely impossible to put any power down, and going through the jump-puddle bit on the second race was just an exercise in futility. Very happy to hear that the setup worked for you as well. As is, that might end up being my go-to for S1 class dirt.

[GreatScawt]

Yeah, they should have given something more than a spin.
There was similar coop championship a few weeks ago that I tried once, failed, and said, "heck it". Powerful cars, mud and rain. I wasn't mentally prepared to do it again.

Next week FH4 is implementing a new way to unlock cars. I guess they will start to track progress of every weekly activity and give you a car for 50% completion and 100%.
The new BMW Z4 will be part of it... which I had no idea was a thing. That's pretty exciting. :up:

https://www.reddit.com/r/forza/comments/ayu99k

[Tom Servo]

I wish it didn't require you to do the team-based stuff. I finally gave a Playground seasonal championship a try yesterday since I knew that was part of the 100% completion. It started 5-v-5, by the end of the first event it was 5-v-2, and by the end of that one it was me against 5 people, and then for some ungodly reason when one team is up to 3 wins, the championship doesn't end. You get to play all 5 events even when you've lost.

Then I realized I'm going on vacation for four days coming up soon, so I won't be able to get all the daily challenges anyway, and now I'm just focusing on the 50% completion thing.

[GreatScawt]

Yup, completely agree. I don't like relying in others. Just let me race the AI and I'll be fine. Locking cool things behind playing with real people is my least favorite thing so far with the seasonal stuff.

[GreatScawt]

Patch notes

https://support.forzamotorsport.net/hc/en-us/articles/360019472074-FH4-Release-Notes-March-12th-2019

[Tom Servo]

Got lucky on a ranked adventure, it was S1 dirt which my new ATS-V is just right for.

It did well, though it didn't win anything. Gear ratios are too short for a long asphalt straightaway (one of the freeroams had that), bounces off the rev limiter in sixth at 170ish. Also, the rammers and wall riders tended to win the circuit events, which was frustrating. Came in third overall though, which is better than I normally do in anything not street or road racing, so at least I have a not useless car for that sort of thing. One big plus I saw for it is that it's reasonably competent on-road (though the front end tends to wash out on tight corners) and does really well at the freeroam.

[Tom Servo]

Oddly the co-op challenge is once again dirt racing in S1 modern muscle, so the ATS-V works again and easily walks away with things.

Unfortunately, I have yet to be paired up with teammates who have gotten the memo, so some of the races have been me winning, then 2-8 being the drivatars and 9-12 being the rest of my team. Hopefully I can win it at some point.

[GreatScawt]

I couldn't use the ATS-V. I tried but it only gave me the option of a couple Corvettes, Demon, ZL1, and Viper. I ended up tuning up a Viper, got on a good team, and 4-0'd'em.

So, after completing the Playground Games seasonal, we lost, but it still said "Playground Games Series 7 Completed!"
Didn't actually get credit in the festival planner :|
I hate how much time those damn events take.

[Tom Servo]

That's weird you couldn't use it, I had no issues. I did find out, however, that you have to win 3 of the 4 to get credit. So far my team has lost 1-3 and 0-4. Oh well.

Agreed about the time. This weekend my in laws are in town and we have to travel down south, and next weekend I'm going on a short vacation with the wife, so there's really no actual time to complete some of these.

[Tom Servo]

Hey, got a decent team and got the co-op challenge. Not sure I feel like bothering with the playground though.

[GreatScawt]

I actually got everything done except the daily challenges.

Take a look through your Festival planner... there are many seasonal activities I had completed in past months that are counting again in future seasons. I have only one more "Trial" to do.

Also, I did the Ranked Adventure qualifying. Oh my god that was obtuse and annoying. Still had fun, but good lord is the matchmaking a slog. I also think there's a TON of desync going on that's just straight up not addressed. Either way, if you qualify, it looks like that completes the Ranked Adventure for every single Series 7 season moving forward.

[Tom Servo]

Did you have to do it for team, playground, and free-for-all or just one of them?

[GreatScawt]

So, I did it for just one - Team Racing.

But I think you can do it for anything. Not sure. Missed the opportunity to get the new free-for-all achievement if that's the case.

[GreatScawt]

Image dump!

1. https://i.imgur.com/HkPKFvP.png 2. https://i.imgur.com/cTDzsU1.png 3. https://i.imgur.com/o2N5Hdy.png 4. https://i.imgur.com/1ZpTFnp.png 5. https://i.imgur.com/GbW36wJ.png 6. https://i.imgur.com/He4REwT.jpg 7. https://i.imgur.com/JS0J3nD.png 8. https://i.imgur.com/1EgRgzX.png 9. https://i.imgur.com/SPmc0VE.jpg 10. https://i.imgur.com/iI5lkpS.jpg 11. https://i.imgur.com/D6SdKl3.jpg 12. https://i.imgur.com/tQbUeJr.png 13. https://i.imgur.com/IRqn7MZ.png 14. https://i.imgur.com/jhHTO90.png 15. https://i.imgur.com/E3J4c05.png 16. https://i.imgur.com/2wKDnBb.png 17. https://i.imgur.com/GPsCjKT.jpg 18. https://i.imgur.com/NnEV718.png

[Tom Servo]

PG are changing the requirements for the 100% goals to 80% for the festival playlist. I think that's the right call - after a few tries at the playground weekly where my team just quits around me, I gave up on trying to do it and just wrote off getting the 100% goals. That and going on vacation tomorrow for four days meant there was no way I'd get all the dailies, now I still have a shot at getting everything.

https://i.imgur.com/qKhGh4g.png

[Tom Servo]

Update made it out, and sure enough, the 80% is in and retroactive, so I immediately got the Pontiac GTO and the Porsche 914/6. I think it's a vast improvement, and while I agree with a lot of people saying that it goes against the FH ethos that you can play it your own way, at least it feels doable and I am not held hostage by the poorly designed multiplayer and luck-of-the-draw when it comes to my team.

Hell, I tried to do the co-op championship on Fortune Island and it never even got to the bit telling me how many players joined, it just said it couldn't find enough players to bother trying to start a session. It's kinda sad how they've massively neglected FI - I went there to knock out some of the seasonal championships and it's still a good level design with one of the best skyboxes in gaming, but they just sorta threw it out there and forgot about it. I feel like the game is the poster child for having tons of wasted potential. I'm still having fun playing, and I enjoyed my adventure rounds tonight (despite it taking a good 10-15 minutes to get each one up and running), but just some simple fixes could really make it a vastly better game.

[GreatScawt]

Ah good to see. The forced MP (let alone having to win the games) is just crap. I won the Playground games twice due to the other team forfeiting.

And getting on to keep up with the dailies is a tough ask.

I just can't believe how obtuse the multiplayer is. It's not well thought-out at all. And to think people are having consistent disconnects, too, is appalling. Happened to me once after I had won my first free-for-all racing adventure and I got *nothing*. No influence, money, anything.

It's a fun game but they really botched some things up.

[Tom Servo]

I'm lucky enough that I still haven't had the disconnect thing, but it sounds like some people end up getting that every single time. I'm trying to figure out if the matchmaking only works with the people in your Horizon session, so like instead of matchmaking with everyone playing FH4 at the time, you're only matchmaking with like 30 people. Otherwise, I can't figure out how it's so hard to find 12 people to join a game. At least I had a really fun free-for-all adventure last night, which is surprisingly for an S2 event. The guy who won was legitimately fast and raced clean, and I was having a lot of luck getting the rammers to miss, so ended up with a lot of fun battles at the front with that guy.

[Tom Servo]

If anyone's looking for a S1900 track toy for the co-op challenge, I put up an Elise GT1 tune that I think works pretty well. It's all handling and has no top end, but the tracks are bendy enough that one of them I won and all of the drivatars got timed out before they could get to the finish line.

Could probably tune a bit of understeer out of it, and maybe shortening the gear ratios might make it a little faster, but it's fast enough as it is. The nice thing is is that it feels really planted and it's extremely hard to get it going out of control, without feeling like it washes out in the corners.

[GreatScawt]

It actually gave me a reason to use my de-ranked 2019 GT3 RS. That thing is wonderful. Tune also uploaded :D

[Tom Servo]

Oooh, I'll have to go grab that.

[Tom Servo]

Coming update summary paraphrased from Reddit (that I think was basically transcribed from a webcast):


Playlist Rewards for upcoming season

Series - 50% Alfa Romeo Guilia FE / 80% Ford Crown Victoria
Autumn - 50% Ferrari 599XX Evo / 80% Mercedes Benz 280 SL - one of the seasonal championships will have a 1958 Plymouth Fury as the reward car, which is new to the game
Winter - 50% 1967 Chevy Chevelle / 80% Lykan Hypersport - Trial gets the Terradyne Gurkha
Spring - 50% 2009 Vauxhall Corsa / 80% Easter Bunny Outfit - Lancia Delta S4 for one of the seasonal championships and Trial gets bunny ears
Summer - 50% Mercedes AMG GT 4-door / 80% Hotwheels Twin Mill - Mercedes Benz X-Truck (new to game) for one of the seasonal championships

Online updates

Drift adventure - new mode where you build up your drift score over a track. Asphalt only, multiple laps, score based on best lap. (No collisions, apparently some sort of AWD section)
Freeroam Rush removed from road racing and street racing team adventures, but will remain for dirt and cross country.
First 30 seconds of all races will be ghosted to try to lessen first corner pileups
S2 dirt being removed from team adventure and replaced with B class dirt
Teasing that next update will get some kind of ramming detection that will ghost cars that are ramming or wall riding.

Misc updates

Drift camera - option for cockpit camera that keeps the view pointed more towards where you're going vs. where the car is pointed. There are adjustable settings for it.
Barrett-Jackson car pack coming for car pass owners, otherwise paid DLC (1963 Shelby Monaco King Cobra, 1970 Chevy Chevelle SS, 1975 Ford Bronco, 1932 Ford Custom Double Down, 1932 Ford Roadster Hula Girl, 1959 Plymouth Atomic Punk Bubbletop, 1970 Plymouth Hemi Cuda Convertible)
Wheel spacers coming to 100 more cars
Playground game adventures will now end when one team reaches 3 wins rather than making you slog through all 5 rounds
Layer masks being added to livery editor (being able to place a shape that cuts through the vinyl layers back down to the base paint)
New story mode added (might be in the next update after this one)
More bodykits coming over the next few months

Forzathon shop

Forzathon point stats are tracked, so they're trying to stop people from hoarding the points by raising prices
Promising that there won't be any cars that only show up once, so presumably that means the 812 Superfast will be coming back as a reward at some point



It does seem like PG are starting to listen to some of the complaints, though now that I'm getting better at figuring out the best routes for asphalt racing freeroam rushes I'm less excited than I would have been a couple of months ago about their removal. That "ghost for the first 30 seconds" seems like a band-aid to fix a pervasive problem in the game - ramming/pile-ups at the first corner are a big issue but there should also be *some* sort of jockeying for position and we'll no longer have that. I am thrilled that we're getting a B class option at all in team adventure, but I'm not sure why they couldn't also keep S2 dirt, add B class to the others, and *let us pick which one we want to play*.

Finally, I'm not surprised that they track the average amount of forzathon points people have stocked, but if you're finding that people are hoarding them, maybe the problem is that what's being offered up for sale isn't enticing? Still, overall it seems like a solid set of additions.

[Tom Servo]

And that was quick, the season 8 update is already out.

[GreatScawt]

Man, they are seriously doing the percentage stuff again? I missed that when first reading about the update. I enjoy it but it can be a bit stressful. I'll be away from 5/4 to 5/11, so I'm going to be doing some serious grinding 5/2 and 5/3.

New car pass additions is good news, wasn't expecting them to dole out more free cars like that without spending more money!

And more bodykits is always good :up:

Good to see them listening to the community regarding some of the online updates. It can be a real shitshow sometimes. Less freeroam rush, GOOD.

[Tom Servo]

I tried out the drift adventure this morning. Pretty fun, I can only play unranked at the moment, came in third on my first two attempts and then won the third.

One nice thing is that once you're in the adventure, it just sorta continues. Like, you finish off a three round set, and then it just says "Okay, here's the next three round set" and you have the option to quit back out to normal Horizon, rather than punting you back to that and making you start the "find an adventure" process again. The events appear to be entirely on road racing circuits, with two classes, basically B+A class and S1+S2 class (I might not be remembering that accurately), then additionally they're either AWD or RWD events, so you basically need four good drift cars to make it work.

I haven't quite sorted out how the scoring works. Just like any other event, about half the people quit in the first race, but by the second race we had a full field again, with a handful of new racers who now stood no shot at the championship.

Since everyone's ghosted, it's a more relaxing event than most. They give you 7 or 8 minutes to run as many laps as you can, and the highest scoring lap is your score for that round, then you end up with points per position just like any other race. Score is based on a combination of speed and yaw angle when drifting, and it looks like you have to have all four wheels on the asphalt for score to accumulate.

A couple of minor annoyances - it's clearly built on the same code that runs the normal races, so they have things like starting positions that don't really make a lot of sense in this one. Another one is the "inactivity timeout", which is really annoying. If you don't have time to complete one more lap, there's not a real motivation to run another lap, so sometimes there'd be like 1:15 left on the clock when I crossed the line and I'd just park the car and do something else. Found out that it'll kick you out of the event if you aren't doing something for more than like 30 seconds, so you're forced to interact even if there's no real reason to. Also think I found a bug with the ghosting, I was just rolling around slowly to avoid the inactivity timeout and someone else was doing the same. We really slowly approached each other instead of flying at each other, and actually made contact just before we ghosted, it was enough to push me off the road, then he passed through me.

I do like the mode though, at least once you get a decent car going. I have a really good S2 AWD and just made a pretty good A class AWD, but I don't have much in the way of RWD. Need to figure out what cars to use for those.

[GreatScawt]

Nice! I'll have to try the Drift Adventure stuff soon.
Though I'm not sure why there is AWD specifications? I feel like that's exactly what you don't want when drifting.

The Barret-Jackson cars are actually pretty neat. And apparently the 1500HP/1500LB AWD Shelby Monaco King Cobra is the new drag race king of the game, according to Reddit.

Hopped on last night and did my last two events: Playground Games win and the Cross Country seasonal. For the fourth time, I got my win PG Games win because most of the other team quit (on two occasions, ALL the players on the other team quit). Just need the daily today and I'll be at 100/100 for the series.

[Tom Servo]

You'd think you'd normally want RWD, but AWD does work really well in the game. I'm using a tune for the Formula Drift Viper with AWD as my usual drift car and it makes the drift zone challenges plain easy. For the A/B class AWD drift I set up the 914/6 with an AWD conversion and drift suspension and it handled the task with ease.

I might have to try the playground games thing again now that it doesn't make you play all five rounds. I've only done it the one time, but 3 of the 5 rounds I was by myself, which just sorta felt pointless.

[Tom Servo]

The Trial this week is actually pretty fun, Fiat 124 Spyders around a few point-to-point road courses. They're capped at C600 and start at C577 (I think), which means there isn't a ton of room to turn them into monsters - you can either bump the handling a bit or the power, but it really doesn't make *that* much of a difference. I went in not understanding what it was and had to rent a bone stock one and still did well, won the first race, podium'd the other two.

Did run into one of the rare "bug that helps you" things. The first race I won, and the rest of my team collectively came in last. So, 650 points for my team and 3000 for the drivatars, but for some reason the game gave us the win instead. I'll take it, though we ended up not needing it, the next two rounds went easily for the human team.

[SkylineObsession]

Am i imagining things, or have none of the Forza games and their DLC been on special for quite a while now? Seems like they used to get discounted quite a bit on Xbox store, but haven't seen squat lately. Still wanting to get FH4 but not at full price. And kinda want to get FM7, but only at a crazy cheap price.

[Tom Servo]

At least here in the US, FH4 just went 40% off if you've got XBL Gold

[GreatScawt]

Yeah, the Trial ended up being weird for me. A few teammates that I swear were sandbagging it, but we still managed to 3-0 the AI. One we blatantly lost and it gave us the point anyway. Very strange.

[Tom Servo]

The "ghost for the first 30 seconds" feature still feels like a cop-out to me, but it's lead to undeniably better racing for me. I think that first 30 seconds is enough to get the fast people up in front (read: the people who didn't smash into the first couple of walls), and I've had some pretty thrilling finishes with not a lot of ramming at the end. Had one where three of us were doorhandle to doorhandle through the last 4-5 corners and I don't think any of us actually touched.

It'd be nice to keep the excitement that comes out of the first turn, but this seems like a reasonable compromise right now.

Also, ban the Bone Shaker.

[Tom Servo]

Shared what I think is a pretty good setup for the Vantage GT12 for this week's trial. Mostly set up for grip, but there was room to play with some power too so it doesn't get gobbled up in the straights. Pretty pleased with myself that I managed to tune some of the massive understeer out of it without ruining it, that is not something I can normally pull off.

[Tom Servo]

If you have not installed the latest update and have the ability to avoid doing so, it might be a good plan. All car mastery/perks got reset - not sure if they'll be recovered in the future but for now, all of my cars are back to square one.

If you have installed the update, don't bother spending skill points to buy the perks again, they'll just reset next time you start the game.

[racerfink]

Yeah, lost all mine. But at least I got to keep the Quartz Regalia D monster truck thing that cost me 99 points.

[Tom Servo]

You can take advantage of the perk reset bug by getting more of those. Usually you can only get one of those per base car owned, but now you can buy it for 99 points, quit the game, then do it again when the perks reset.

Just like that Goliath glitch, this'll be another thing that annihilates the economy, pretty sure the auction house is about to be flooded with those.

[Tom Servo]

We have identified the issue with Car Mastery Skill Points in #ForzaHorizon4 and are working on getting a fix out on or before Monday the 13th of May. We recommend not spending any Skill Points at this time. More updates to come.


I don't see a mention about whether or not previously bought perks will come back or if you just have to start again at square one.

[Tom Servo]

Fix for the perk reset issue is out, but it just prevents the issue from happening again. They say they think a fix to restore perks that were lost will be out before the Series 10 update, which means within the next month. If you're affected by the bug, you get 10 super wheelspins in the meantime.

I normally try to give devs the benefit of the doubt, being a software guy myself, but this was a pretty spectacular fuckup, and 10 super wheelspins is a pretty shit "sorry that happened" move considering my luck with wheelspins lately.

[Tom Servo]

It's sounding like those affected will have all the skill points they've spent added back into the point bank. Right now, that maxes out at 999 points, so they're going to have to change something to allow larger totals, and that means I'm sure they'll break something else.

[Tom Servo]

Got my 10 super wheelspins. Got a lot of 5,000 credit rewards and a bunch of clothes. Feel empty.

[GreatScawt]

Oh god, lucky I didn't even have a chance to boot up and update the game the past week and a half. I wasn't affected but still got 10 super wheelspins, with another 4 as well for VIP, I think.

I did spin a LaFerrari and the 93 Mustang. And finally ranked to prestige 2. Was curious when it would take over... Prestige1/lvl300.

[SkylineObsession]

This thread needs moar pics.

[Tom Servo]

I feel sorta overwhelmed by /r/forza - Thursdays are the only days that aren't just a ton of pics.

[Tom Servo]

Looks like the skill points refund has happened, just got 2,864 points to spend on car mastery perks again.

[Tom Servo]

Gah, and now I find out that I can't earn any skill points until I get that total under 999. I guess I need to figure out a bunch of cars that it's worth spending skill points on.

[Tom Servo]

I haven't personally verified this, but it sounds like all the Formula Drift cars have a 300K credit perk in their tree, so if you ended up getting that skill point windfall, that's a nice way to rack up a couple million.

[Tom Servo]

I've verified it now. All of them come with a 300K credit perk and two wheelspins, and I think there are 7 of them, so that's 2.1M credits + 14 wheelspins. Not bad.

I also grabbed a couple of cars that have other cars as a perk (like the Nissan R390 has a free Nismo GT-R LM FE) so I can be one of those people that ruins the auction house economy.

In the meantime, I'm finding the price increases at the Forzathon shop to be really irritating. If you do all the daily tasks + the weekly one, you end up getting 400 FP (20 per day + 60 for doing all 7 + 200 for the weekly), and the cars are now going for 600+, so you have to grind the Forzathon Live events, which continue to just be incredibly boring. I was grinding points just to try to get the Lotus 2-Eleven and then had it pop up in a wheelspin this morning which'll save me 600 or so that I was expecting to have to spend this week.

[Tom Servo]

Trials reward is the new-to-the-game Gumpert Apollo IE, which I understand is pretty speedy. Of course, the only way to get it is through this three-round S2 Hypercar team-based race against Unbeatable AI cars.

I got lucky, took my 998 Agera and did marginal in the first round, 3rd place, the rest of my team in dead last. All but one of them quit by the end of that race, so the next race was just me and one other driver. He quit as soon as the race started, which is a total dick move as the AI still scores points against you if you quit during the race, but I won that race, giving me 650 points to the AI's 600. This all worked out great for me in the third race, as I could only manage second but, since I was the only human driver, that meant one AI car got 150 points for winning and being ahead of me and the rest got none.

It was a little irritating that some time-lag issue hit right at the start of the third race - I was on the front row (since nobody else could be), and by the time I could start moving, the AI car had already started and almost immediately launched to 100mph or so. The netcode when it comes to the AI cars in this game is pretty shit.

Still, happy to have walked away with the Apollo on my first try, I see others on the /r/forza subreddit saying they're upwards of 8-9 tries and just can't seem to luck into a team good enough to win. I was lucky enough to end up with a team so shitty they all left.

[GreatScawt]

Don't forget the Trial is raining in 2/3 races. Ugh.
I got lucky and somehow match-made with only 2 other people. I managed to snag 1st in all three races. 998 918 :p. Lost the 1st, won the 2nd, and barely won the 3rd. Very thankful it only took 1 try.

Apollo is fine, I think it will be a great X-class car. Currently tops out at ~200 MPH, but has a ton of downforce.

AI is notoriously bad online. Extreme magnetic repulsion at times, especially in the middle of corners. I tried to take advantage of it in the last race, because it started me up front. So I got in front of the whole pack, and slowed down, weaving back and forth to give my teammates a few extra spots. Think it worked alright.

[Tom Servo]

Definitely - playing blocker if you've got a strong car is a really effective tactic. Any time I've got a teammate or two ahead of me and we're leading the pack I just do everything in my power to get the AI to slam on the brakes.

I'm guessing the true obnoxiousness about the AI is the server trying to synchronize what the AI is doing across clients. You don't want one client seeing a collision while the other client saw a clean pass, but it means every time you get close to an AI car it suddenly starts warping across the road and has complete invulnerability when it does it. I feel like this has been solved in other games, but maybe I'm wrong.

[Tom Servo]

New version is out - not a lot of changes, but I like that they added this "star card" feature. A bunch of cards for different disciplines that, if you fill them out completely, just get you a bit of flair to put next to your username. And then they fucked it up and half of the things don't register right.

I can't really talk too much shit, it's still my go-to game after all this time, and I still love playing it. But it's amazing how they keep avoiding features people are actually asking for only to add ones nobody wanted, that don't really do anything, and yet are apparently so important that they rush them out the door when they don't even remotely work right.

Heck, if they just bumped the PI slightly for the Bone Shaker, that'd be a massive improvement for the entire game, otherwise it just ruins A class racing.

[Rare White Ape]

I think this is worth my money :D


https://youtu.be/cASCytz8o9g

[Tom Servo]

I love Legos, generally love Forza Horizon, and I am bummed that the rumors were true. I don't see anything that this adds to the series, but chances are it'll just be another expansion that they'll release and then ignore like the last one.

[SkylineObsession]

Hahahaha, fvck yes!! :D That's bloody awesome, can finally (when i buy the game) realise my desire to race cars around Lego sets. :rawk:

FH3 had the Hotwheels expansion, and with this Lego one it's clear that the developers want to have a bit of fun and do things other car games aren't doing. With the decent driving physics of the Forza games, i think they are great additions to the series.

[DelSolMan]

I'm really excited about the expansion. I have a few of those speed champion cars sitting on my tv stand so I thought it would be cool to drive them in the game.

[Tom Servo]

Well, it's cute and all. The lego bricks falling off the car when you hit something is a nice touch, and going around the center of town brought back a little bit of the awe I felt when I first went to Legoland in Copenhagen as a kid. But I still just don't get what it brings to the table. The new map is fun, but it's fun because of all the normal FH stuff. Most of the roads are normal roads, and the ones that are lego bits with all the little pegs on top don't react with the cars at all, they drive over it like it's smooth as glass. Lego trees line the roads, but right behind them are normal trees. The mountains in the distance are lego on the map, but when actually driving they're normal mountains.

It's not bad by any stretch, but it feels like a different skin on a second Fortune Island (which I also enjoyed, and honestly appeals way more to my black metal aesthetic, but I digress). I'm enjoying it, but I feel like I'd be enjoying it as just a new, normal map like 97% as much as I'm enjoying it as a Lego one. It also makes me worried it's going to suffer the same fate as Fortune Island - be fun for like 2-3 weeks, then just be basically ignored when it comes to all the forzathon and multiplayer stuff that ideally keeps you coming back.

In other news, just because I never like being the kind of person who uses the overpowered car or whatever, I've been trying to come up with various builds that can at least compete with the Bone Shaker in A class. My new personal favorite is a Volvo 242 Turbo. It smokes the Bone Shaker in the corners, but struggles in the straights. I'm hoping maybe just shortening the gear ratios will help with that, as it is it struggles to make it to redline in 4th, but the transmission in it has six gears, so maybe shortening them will give it a little bit more acceleration. But I also just like showing up in an old Volvo and generally at least getting a podium finish.

[Rare White Ape]

But Tom, is everything actually awesome?

[Tom Servo]

I WILL NOT BE GASLIGHTED!

[Tom Servo]

One other thing - it's clearly not done and was rushed out for E3. There are four cars that come with it, but one is a barn find and if you get to the point where you find it, the game just says that you have to wait for another update to find out even what it is, much less see it/drive it. There's one of those "speed ramps" that flings you onto a bed of legos and many people, including myself, smash through it and into the abyss below when we do it. Some of the roads aren't mapped - the last discovered road I was looking for was just in an open area on the map that didn't have any marking at all.

Playground has been treating this as more a platform than a released game, but most of the time it's the feature updates. Kinda shitty to do that with a paid DLC.

I do really like that they have this massive list of goals to achieve to help build your lego house. Lots of little micro-goals, like the kinds of things that FH3 would have as Forzathon tasks or are the daily tasks in FH4. Those are fun to check off, though I was a little bummed to see the "build your lego house" is just "earn enough points and then we drop a pre-built chunk onto your house", there's no actual building/designing, at least at this point.

Also, this whole thing seems better set up for lurid drifting than Fortune Island was. Some of the drift zones are more relaxing than challenging, which I like.

I did get a second F40 Competizione out of the Lego F40 vs. Real F40 race though, so that might make for good Auction House fodder.

[DelSolMan]

Lego Valley has a race track. I know this is counter-productive, having Forza Motorsports as a seperate series, but I really like the idea of having a track in the open world. I know I can pop in FM but the idea of driving up to a track with my car and getting my race on is such a neat feeling.