the older motorsport games actually had something similar to the manufacturer system you described - the old affinity system! i've put so many hours into motorsport 4, and that was always something i quite liked. it included part discounts, prize money, and prize cars. it's no coincidence that motorsport 4 also had a much better campaign mode than any other forza game i've played.
Motorsport 4 was, and still is, the best Forza Motorsport to date, and every one since then for me has been striving to beat FM4 and has failed every time. FM7 came close, all it needed was a better mutliplayer lobby set up and it was golden. (Back in FM3 and FM4 you could make open custom lobbies and do whatever, you could even make a closed custom lobby just to play around, but now you can't make a custom lobby at all unless you have a friend in your lobby beforehand. Not to mention, custom public lobbies are all removed, so no fun stuff. I also miss A Class Tag, which I guess by newer games PI would be B Class now.)
Plus if you wanted to, you could play individual events in the Events List if you don't want to do it in the order they want, you had that option to do it at your own leisure and that was probably one of the more enjoyable things in the entire Forza franchise
@@DaysofKnightI have been screaming from the bleachers for years for them to bring back the old multi-player setup. What a shame they haven't done it :(
@@Elit3NickI think it’s more of a cars we already should’ve had will finally be added issue. For example, there’s no reason there’s no Ferrari 488 gt3 car at launch. But they’ll likely add one in an update and the 296 gt3 will be the paid DLC if we get one at all.
@@Elit3Nick I’m not sure about all the licenses but I know forza is partnered with IMSA and there’s a 296 GTD car. Since other GTD IMSA cars like the Audi R8 and Acura NSX are there I hope there’s a 296 gt3 style car at any point in the game.
@@jamesharden3timedpoy466 partnering with an organization and acquiring permission to use the cars in the game are 2 completely different things bud just because they partnered with IMSA doesn't mean anything however the only thing they gained from that are the new prototype cars but the FIA do have a lot of sway in things such as F1 and WRC which is why you don't see newer F1 cars but ultimately the manufactures still have the final say on the cars themselves given the obvious reasons
Some of the old surface and curbing still exists, but I wouldn't call it raceable with a huge gravel trap and barriers blocking the way. I'm curious to see how it looks in-game, whether it's an authentic vintage version of the track or a sort of fantasy layout set in the current day. I'll try to find some gameplay to find out for sure. edit: It's the latter.
@@nathanstroud2223 Now that is disappointing. It obviously would have been a lot more work to rebuild the environment to match the historic layout, but it would have been such a great way to embrace some of the history of motorsports, and share some of that story and evolution, particularly with such a prestigious track. Just another example of how T10 has completely flubbed this relaunch of a once great series. It's such a shame, they took so long to release this, and made it sound like they put in a great deal of effort, only to spent all that time on effort making the wrong decisions.
The Crazy part thing is Forza 4 had Alex's progression system in mind to an extend where you would have manufacture levels to earn discount on upgrades or credits, the entire game just feels by design to spruce up gamepass numbers or player count through its car level system, events coming in overtime and it won't surprise me if they pull a Horizon and do fear of missing out content with missing cars later
FM4 was too good. Free upgrades across an entire manufacturer by simply using their cars a bit. The event races that totaled to over 300 races, ontop of a campaign series twice the size of this one. More tracks and track variations at launch. And as a player that enjoys A-B class racing, is personally fond of 90’s to early 00’s cars, and loved the Fujimi Kaido mountain climb track, this game just doesn’t bring anything interesting to the table other than ‘it looks pretty’. The best tracks, cars, and gameplay for me is still back in the FM4-5 era. 1v1 racing up the mountain was such a blast.
I miss Fujimi Kaido, I never played FM4, but I loved building A-B class cars to race my friends on the mountain. I'm also disappointed that the most expensive cars are ~400k Cr... In FM3 the cost of some cars were insane, from 1-10 million credits if I remember right. I remember throwing a 4 rotor in an RX8 which put it in R3 class and beating a Bugatti Veyron in a drag race for a fraction of the cost. This might be an unpopular opinion, but I actually like the car upgrade system in FM8, 2-3 hours for level 50 doesn't even sound that bad, in maybe 400 hours of FH5 I spent a good majority of that in the MR2 SC turning it into the ultimate A class Volcano weapon.
fujimi kaido was awensome and really hope they bring something like it [ fictional mountain track with a big variety of different curves/corners ] to new forza motorsport
Genuinely impressive how bad of a design decision the upgrade system is. It's gotta be some sort of scheme to drive up average playtime so it looks good in shareholder meetings or something
Late-stage capitalism is killing everything. Video games are hardly very important in the grand scheme, but we see it here too. It's not enough to make a great and complete game, sell it at $60, sell millions of copies, and make a handsome profit. They have to try to leverage every single trick they can to squeeze every single cent out of it, and really every single cent out of 10% of the player base that are going to pay for lots of things that should have been in the game at launch, all to make corporate profits in total 2% higher. I don't think I'm buying this game until it is at least 60% off.
I share the same sentiment. While in FH5 the skills per car was something to unlock rather quickly as we get points for everything. In game that is more on a sim side I miss the days where upgrades were just bought with common credits earn in game by completing races. Per car upgrades seems like a grind.
Per people making the decisions at T10 it was done to address the complaints people had of various cars being so much better than other cars in class racing even though this does nothing to actually address said issue.
You’d think that when every year the Forza community says Motorsport 3/4 were the best, they’d get a clue to model the new games in a similar way. They make changes that nobody wants or asked for
Then you have the knob gobblers that say this progression system feels so rewarding. No, it feels like a waste of fucking time. I installed the game, played a couple hours, and uninstalled the game. I'm just glad I didn't waste any money on this pile of shit.
We can say same for gran turismo. I mean it is ok to do new things but when older game has a better features and campaign then new games then you know you fucked up.
@@evandaymon8303 Literally the entire GT community: We want a large fleshed out single player mode with free-form progression like in GT3 & GT4 Polyphony Digital: *_"WUZZAT!? YOU WANT A LINEAR SET OF SINGLE PLAYER RACES?"_*
@@1mariomaniac dont forget this too community: we also want better payouts and improve the custom races and new tracks. Pd: Ah you want 3/4 or 6 or whatever many cars instead as well as events that barely payout well and changes to legend car dealership prices?
You know the showroom menu thing you described? That is literally my best memories of Project Gotham Racing 2. Another series lost to pursuit of bottomless wells of money.
I'm keeping a keen eye on 360 emulation for those 4 games exclusively haha. Getting to re-enjoy PGR3/4 and FM3/4 all over again is all I really want nowadays.@@MrZyLeXx
You know why PGR was so good? The same people who worked on that also ended up working on some older Forza titles as well. Because those people actually cared!!!
Ride 5 has an affinity system similar to what you described, where you level up your manufacturer and bike affinity to get discounts and unlock liveries. To lock the best feature in Forza games away behind hours of grinding, and to reduce the MASSIVE FM7 championship series down to this, blows my mind.
This game seems to be crafted to have constant player engagement, what with the car grinding and having to wait around to do single player races. Microsoft's gotta bump up those player numbers to show off to investors that you made a successful game, doesnt help this is all online only...
If it's online only then I'm out. There is no reason for the game to require online unless it's multiplayer only. It doesn't even look as good as Horizon 5.
@@theunhingedgamer3762 You sure about that? Cause the only difference I've seen in this video is water making things more slippery than in Horizon and the courses looking ungodly bland.
Youve articulated my fears on the upgrade system to great effect in this video. Yet most of the people ive had the chance to speak with fully support this upgrade system because they want game progression with a small and intimate number of cars. After watching this video i dont even get the impression that theyre getting what they hope for either.
Same for me. The concerns I had over it are why I'm not buying it at launch but instead giving it a month on GamePass, then deciding whether to buy it. I've seen others wash over it saying "See how easy and quick it is" while ignoring that it's only the first few levels, so of course it's easy and quick. I wonder how many of these folks will change their minds once the novelty of a new game passes. I seem to remember similar reactions to homologation in FM7 until reality came a knocking.
@@Elwaves2925the first few levels thing, already saw leveling guides, they're dumb, but appears to be no xp scaling, level 2 and level 50 take about a lap on monza
I completely agree with your take of the car upgrades and level system and progression. FM2 was the only Motorsport I had from 360 era but the career mode was amazing and with car affinity and levels giving you access to more exclusive cars it felt the most rewarding of any forza game I’ve played. You even got boosts with choosing your manufacturer continent. There were so many different races from what I remember even extreme endurance racing in a career mode. It’s a shame they haven’t decided to replicate what they’ve already done in the past and instead do something no one asked for.
not sure where you've been looking but plenty of people have complained about how easy Forza is to grind and that same set of people are now complaining because they got what they wanted with this game in particular
@@theunhingedgamer3762 Yeah I’m aware. The section of people who complain about the typical forza progression are simply put just anti-wheelspin, giving cars too early, and give us slower starter cars. Along with the issues in the PI system, meta cars, even auto upgrades and homologation. It seems like they tried to solve those issues with this system that no one wanted hence the backlash.
@@theunhingedgamer3762 That is only partialy true, almost everybody complained about how easily you obtain cars in Forza, but nobody wanted system like this.
@@theunhingedgamer3762 The issue isn't that recent Forza games were too easy to grind. It was that everything was getting thrown at you. Even that said this is not why T10 added this upgrade system. T10 added this upgrade system to address the complaints of unbalanced cars that dominated class racing. That is per T10's own heads of departments.
Replying to what you say about them not replicating the older games, it’s because they don’t need to. They will get insane amounts of money and insane amounts of players because of Game Pass/blind fans who just need something new. All they need is to do is the bare minimum and they make a shit-ton of money, and investors are happy.
You know where else I've seen a version of this upgrade system? World of Warships. A goddamn free to play game. And it does it better, for 2 reasons: 1: It is an actual progression. The ships are all in a tree per country, and to unlock a ship you spend xp from the previous, lower tier ship. That way, the people in tier 1-3 ships are all very new, the people in tier 4-7 ships are somewhat experienced, and the people in tier 8-10 ships have been playing for ages. 2: You get free xp equal to 10% of the ship xp you earn, so if you want to start using ships from a different country, you can use the free xp so you don't have to grind in the super low tiers so much.
Get the players on at first, they try to tough out the grind for a while. Rack up a ton of playtime initially. You present those numbers to investors. Get a bunch of money sent your way. The players give up on this game. You shove it into a corner and let Horizon 5 maintain franchise popularity.
@@bolbyballingeri doubt FH5 can maintain the franchise popularity at this point. PGG and Microsoft Studios have under-delivered in terms of long term playability. Everything is so cut and paste with no creativity and thouht put into championships. There are types of cars basically ignored. Even the series themes are neutered. Italian Automotive was sad (you reintroduce Lancia to Forza and they get a crappy trial with 10 PI to upgrade cars). For a few series, the PR stunts were S2 anything goes, regardless of series theme. I don't know how many big channels or (relatively) large streamers make this their main game (I'm a very small streamer and I'm moving away from it as it no longer brings in much in terms of views and followers, and bigger streamers than me I interact with have been moving away from it more). If FM fails, this could be the end of Forza in it's entirety. I have been holding on with FH5 for the last few months only knowing Motorsport is being released soon (in getting it on Game Pass, so October 10 for me) because I enjoy driving games. I'm ready to see if I can find TDU on Game Pass to give it a go before committing money to it if FM is really going to be as bad with progression and career mode as it looks.
The idea behind the upgrade system is actually quite good. But I think it's just badly implemented. It might be fun at the beginning. But I think it quickly becomes boring to grind each car individually.
Car level up unlocks should be unique to the car. It should be a special set of rims, paint color or livery, special wing that it’s cosmetic only. And brand levels should unlock other cars. Like for for example you should be allowed to buy the base mustang and focus but have to grind levels to get the GT
you know that nothing about a race car is for cosmetic purposes aside from the livery right? It's not car show tilty wheel simulator like horizon, it's a racing game. I get it's not for everybody and they kinda screwed up by giving horizon the same forza name.
Oh Laguna “short” is actually the old historic layout that they used to run. It’s pretty cool to see in a modern game but I don’t know why they treated it as a modern version of it because it doesn’t still exist IRL
Jesus to hear someone normally so positive about mostly everything just go full fucking scorched Earth HATE on the car upgrade system was... amazing tbh lol It was incredibly cathartic to hear him literally rant about everything I typed on Reddit after the literal VERY FIRST MINUTES I seen this upgrade system and thought about the implications of it.
I watched some considerable amount of videos regarding this game by different youtubers and their 1st impressions + general thoughts. But none of them addresses these issues as vividly, accurately and ergonomically as Alex. So kudos to fail race chief Alex. And I genuinely think, this game is going to be crap in terms of the player's game experience and their commitment to play further. In terms of graphics, game engine performance, game physics and those kinds of things, this game made some good improvements, but they lost in game play and game ergonomics + player feeling and enthusiasm.
The way gran turismo 3/4 worked were perfect certain events for certain cars earn credits to tune a car or buy one and licenses to open up new events This just looks over complicated
theDrive my favorite car news website says: "Forza Motorsport Review: A Solid Reboot Strictly for the Racers Six years in the making, Forza Motorsport’s return chases the thrill of competition at the expense of all else."
As someone who has a full time job and not the time to dedicate hours to a single car just to go have fun with it, I won't be getting this game until that's fixed, if it ever is. So thank you Alex, from saving me from wasting my money
This is the video ive been waiting for from you, mainly because i had a feeling you wouldn't like the new upgrade system and im so glad you called out the new bloody awful upgrade system that as you say completely gets rid of any freedom like in previous motorsport games, I'm praying that the devs see this video and change this system im begging they do, don't get me wrong im still excited to play the game next week on the 10th, but this video has just solidified that this system does not work.
In how many circumstances it would make the diference in t he first couple of hours? I mean, until you learn the car and learn 2-3 tracks you have grinded quite a bit, right? Or is there another problem i miss?
This guy is absolutely right, it's absolutely frustrating!! The more I play this game the more I want too play GT7 or Asetto Corsa. You can't restrict your players like this, we want fun variety, freedom, choices, realism where you buy upgrades with the money you earned not based on how much driving you do. In real life people don't modify and tune their cars based on how many miles they put on it. They upgrade, tune and modify their cars base on the looks, and performance their going for and they do this with money, period!!
I think alot of the issues you've described are related to modern gaming in general - it's almost ALL moving to online play as the main feature. Forza has always had massive shortages of cars at launch that are filled with DLC's over time and even a few "Unicorn" cars that are handed out through competitions that are run mainly online (sometimes even through Twitter or whatever). The upgrade system being free was great, I don't know why they've changed it so much... I used to test drive on Forza Motorsport for one of the communities relatively well known tuners (not the top but pretty competitive) and half the fun for us was making and tuning different non leaderboard cars and racing them against everyone that ran the leaderboard cars (if you saw an unusual, non leaderboard, vehicle in the top 200 on the leaderboards there's a good chance it'd be one of us in a DNA tuned car doing tesing runs)... you can't do that without an opened up upgrade system.
While I haven't played this game and won't buy it either, you are 100% right. The main reason I enjoy forza was always the huge variety of cars combined with the PI system so everything could stay somewhat competitive. I remember bringing my own homebrewed cars in Forza 4 and beating many other players using top "meta" cars. It was a blast, you had the David vs Goliath feeling. I did spend hours fine-tuning the right upgrades for specific tracks and also tuning to shave off every millisecond possible from my lap times. That wasn't grind, that was fun and my competitive nature to always improve that made me do it. The you saw other people doing the same and they earned my respect. That was what made forza so fun for me back in the day. Looks like they completely ditched that aspect, for no reason really, what a shame.
Gran Tuirsmo 7 had (and arguably still has) a woeful number of career mode events and it looks like Forza has the same issue. I'm not sure why developers have a hard time making events when it should be the easiest thing to do since you've already made the cars and tracks.
yea it at least looks like FM has a rotating list of different series that come into the single player experience. Also there's class races where you can just race in that class just not E class. GT7 they released a new car I think it was the Beat that I really wanted to race it but there was absolutely no races it would qualify for. Like why release the car and then not have a way to race it?
@@STRIDER_503 Agreed. Honestly the worst part of it, for me, is how restrictive the game is with the events it has, too. In previous mainline GT games, events like the FF, FR, and 4WD-specific races were a small-is slice of the event total, and there were fewer racecar-specific events that DIDN'T just let you build your own monstrosity to take the race cars down. The vast majority of GT7's events, on the other hand, restrict you to cars from a certain region or of a certain design or origin. A lot of the appeal of older GTs is taking one car and being able to do a metric fuckton of different things with it. This was often to the point of comedy, but being able to bring an 88C-V to a road car event is better than searching to find ANY events for it to race in. GT7 misses out on that both due to the short length of the career and due to the lack of event variety and freedom of car choice from event to event. With the exception of the Brickyard, Monaco, and the Top Gear Test Track, there are no real-life circuits in GT5 that don't exist in GT7 in some form. Then there's all the ones that have been added in since, like Spa, Goodwood, and Brands Hatch. THEN there are the added fictional venues of Maggiore, Sardegna Road. If they could just copy-paste GT5's career into GT7 with minor adjustments (AI improvements, proper grid starts) that'd have been enough to wipe Forza off the face of the Earth, given the crazy depth of the customization system.
They should have done the upgrade system to have all parts unlocked, yet you just use your CP to unlock points still. That's the only drawback that I have found with the upgrade system, is parts being locked behind a level. That being said, I've raced the first 3 races in builders cup and am already car level 9. But I'm sure they'll fix it like the past 3 games in the motorsports series for the career mode.
What struck me as especially odd is that there is no Bugatti Veyron, despite it being in damn near every racing game, despite there being the Divo, Chiron, EB110, and even a prewar racer. I don't really mind, as I don't really care for the Veyron, but of all the Bugattis, you'd think the Veyron would be top of the list. Maybe there's gonna be some "Legends of Speed" DLC pack or something, but for the base game, to have four Bugattis, including two very similar ones, but no Veyron, just strikes me as, like Alex said, bizarre.
They need an option to keep DrivAtars off entirely. I *hated* when they added those stupid AI. Constantly crashing into me, taking corners wrong, not driving fast enough, braking for no reason, and smashing against me around corners. It's fucking annoying. I like my AI that stuck to a line, not stupid "AI" that can't fucking drive. I have had my damage on cosmetic only ever since DrivAtars were added because they're absolutely stupid and always wreck my car. Fuck DrivAtars
Why do people make this lying PR excuse? Just because the game is in "Early Access" for 5 days doesn't mean its not the full release. It is and anybody making this excuse is either a complete dumbass or willfully lying to make excuses for their bad purchase.
Another issue: there will be that one track, one event that gets you a little bit more Car EXP than others, and that's all everyone will ever do. Fun, exciting, creative events, tracks and themes will lay dormant because they're not good for grinding car EXP and that's all anyone will want to do.
@@mervunit Alright. Let's say the game has 800 cars. If you play 3 hours a day, getting every car to the point where it is usable in events will take TWO YEARS. If you see an event you want to participate in, you need to buy AND level the car first, by which time the event might well be over. We reach a point where everyone will just have 1-5 focus vehicles that they grind, ignoring the entire rest of the game, and being able to participate in maybe 5% of the overall events. This is absurd.
@@sandwitch1613 why would i want every car in the game let alone to level up every car in the game. If I did why would i complain that the game is giving me two years of things to do?
@@mervunit I play Horizon 5 and one of my goals was always to own every single car in the game in order to be able to participate in every event that comes my way. If you're happy with 5 or 10 cars, that's good for you, but then isn't it a bit of a waste to only use a few cars in a game with hundreds? The time scope is also personal preference; I don't want to wait years just to get access to all of the game's features, so to speak.
They're just trading one kind of grinding for another. Instead of (like in GT7) doing the same mind-numbing GT3 race for hours on end to make money, you now do time trials with your car of choice for 3 hours to unlock upgrades. Personally, I don't think I'll mind it too much, I like using stock or lightly modified cars. The appeal of the racing game for me is weird and wonderful cars, and actually being able to drive them. I love classic Le Mans racers, but I'll never get to drive one in GT7 because they cost 20 million moneys, and I don't have the time or mental fortitude to grind that out.
I think its GT7 that has made it this way, they screwed the pooch so badly forza can get away with something such as this and let it still be less time to get a Le Mans Car
@@kyonbrace5487 No. It is Forza/T10 trying to address complaints from players of unbalanced cars. The proper answer to fix said problem is a better working PI system. Turn 10's answer is this even though it doesn't address the actual problem at all.
I think a part that you're missing is that if u already have a MX5 that you've upgraded and like in say A class and you wanna make one for B class, you have to start all over again no CP or Car level gets sent over to the other MX5, this is actually just insanity.
5:42 this was my biggest issue with motorsport 7. The cars up front aren't making mistakes and are pulling away while the back markers are practically stopping on apexes. It makes it very difficult to follow and race them because their driving is so erratic. The number of times ive slammed into the back of cars because i didn't expect them to brake (because there was no reason to) shame to see thats still the case
It's the exact same as FM7 on this, the midfielders will brake check you all the time, as the first 2 or 3 cars will pull away really fast. Playing on difficult 7 or 8 is pretty much annoying bacause of this.
I feel like the idea behind the upgrade system has more to do with a short-sighted idea, with the end goal being going to the boardroom and going "look how much engagement we're getting!" I don't think that's going to happen, but you have to impress the suits somehow, I suppose. "What are YOU doing to contribute to our sales growth?" so corporate. Just so...corporate, and I feel so, so bad for this. I know how much this series means to you and the FR community. I do hope it gets fixed and soon, for your sake, and for those who love this series of games.
I feel incredibly strange now, because it was the upgrade system that convinced me to get this game in the first place. In FH5 I never drove any cars stock because I could just upgrade them however I wanted, which was fun, except arguably I never really tried those cars out how they were meant to be, so the new Motorsport appeals to me because you have to spend more time with only a few cars, getting a feel for how they drive as you slowly upgrade them. It's pretty obvious how this would suck for much of the community though. I hope they tweak the upgrade system in two important ways - first, have the car level stay the same across at the very least the same make of car (such that two of the exact same car should have the same level), and second, ditching linear part unlock (but keeping the car upgrade points system so that you still need to level up the car a bit before you can max out all the upgrades - but if you want weight reduction right away then you should be able to.) But I'm definitely a minority in liking the basic concept of the system.
I like your points. One thing that I'd personally like for them to add is some form of scaling over time. I know your whole point is wanting to drive the cars as stock. However, 1 or 2+ years down the road or so I don't want to still be grinding out car levels at the exact same rate. If I've been playing that long I want the game to open up and offer me the freedom to play as desired.
The idea behind the upgrade system is actually quite good. But I think it's just badly implemented. It might be fun at the beginning. But I think it quickly becomes boring to grind each car individually.
"except arguably I never really tried those cars out how they were meant to be" In no Forza game were you ever meant to drive the cars stock outside of specific events. Forza has always been a proverbial sandbox that allowed you to take a car and modify it how you want, within certain limits. That was it's one selling point and this change completely butchered that. The entire point of Forza games was easy, accessible car modding. With that gone in this FM it has become a very, very underwhelming driving game compared to what else is out there. "the new Motorsport appeals to me because you have to spend more time with only a few cars, getting a feel for how they drive as you slowly upgrade them." They showed how to do this in a great way in FH5. An event that had you start stock, do a race and then slightly upgrade the car as you did more races in the event. I like the basic idea, especially for special events like I said above from FH5. I don't like not being able to use money to buy and having upgrades locked behind grinding. That is just anti-gamer changes.
Fully agree with you here and I'm really enjoying the game because of it, but I do get the anger from the more veteran racer groups that know what they are doing and want to get into what they want to do right away. I really like the system but it could definitely be tweaked to improve the experience for the hardcore groups. I like the idea of manufacturer leveling versus car leveling and also the discounts. Make it so you sort of hold off on some uogrades because it's a lot of money and you're not sure you're going to like this car, but once you've played with it a while and you know you like it, you're free to spend less money on every upgrade.
Level per manufacturer is really good if this has to be the new way forward. As then, a reward (for example for reaching level 51) can be a one make race in a car you haven't might have never driven to which you can quickly build where to stand an chance you need to do the engine swap which unlocks at level 50.
I still think it would've been a far more enjoyable experience if they just went with something like manafacturer affinity. Like what FM4 did, just with the upgrade system. That way you'd get to try a variety of cars while still retaining that ever so-important progression they're constantly going on about.
I've played every FM since the og. Have about 20 hours in this new one, and I couldn't agree more with your takes in this video. I respect how you pointed out both the positives and negatives.
Its micro$oft I wouldn't bet on them fixing anything. F1 had to do vr mode because fans protested and said they would not buy a new f1 game that didn't have a vr mode so the dev were forced to do it. Thats the only way you'll stop game development from milking games is to protest and effect their profits. Why can't forza and other race sims 3d scan race tracks now? I racing has done this for almost a decade now. Can't really claim to be race sims if you can't do basics like 3d scanning tracks. Its the simplest way to make race tracks and make them true with all the bumps and what not of the real tracks
They really said "people want progression in Forza, instead of making it more rewarding to get higher level cars, how about we make it hard to upgrade every car?"
honestly starting to feel like sim/real world racing games are just becoming a dead genre. the monetization inherent in motorsport is just gonna eat new games alive
I don't check out this channel as often as I'd like. Shane on me. But i always come here when theres a new racing game I'm excited for. You always test thise games in whats most important for me! Fun! So thank you!
what pisses me off about forza is how they intentionally cut cars to add later as a "free update". horizon 4 ended with 700 something cars, and horizon 5 releases with 500 cars. over time, it is now back up to 700, but now motorsport is coming out with.... 500 cars. obviously it makes no sense to add offroaders, but the rest of the cars being missing on launch is just silly. It's also extremely silly to launch without nurburgring. one of the worlds most famous race tracks, and they are promising it in a free update months after launch? im sure the game will be good in a year and thats when im waiting to buy it.
As you said, they could have just made it really expensive to purchase upgrades unless your car was a certain level, at which point it would be either really cheap or outright free. Encourage the idea of driving a certain car (or manufacture) frequently to avoid breaking the bank, or allowing players to bypass that if they have the cash to spare. It's not rocket-science. It's impressive that they had all this time to analysis the good and bad of Gran Turismo 7, and they decided to take the most absurd route possible. I'm also disappointed that the "stupid" cars seem to be missing. Things like the Cadillac Limousine, GMC Vandura, Ford Transit Supervan, HUMMER H1, Willys Jeep, Volkswagen Beetle, DeLorean DMC-12... It seems shitboxes in general are missing. That's disappointing, because I always found it fun to take a shitbox and see how high I could upgrade it before it became undriveable. We waited six years for this. And they somehow made a game WORSE than Forza 7...
@@mervunit I find the "stupid" cars tend to be some of the most fun to race. FH is all well and good, but I think I should be allowed to race official tracks if I so please. Plus pit stops aren't a thing in FH, which means extended races aren't possible.
@@Dat-Mudkip yea i mean two different games that have different appeals. I'd rather not have a hummer ramming everyone off the track in a race like it used to be. Beetle, delorean and shitboxes like that are fine and will probably come along through the course of the game with it being a "live" game. I think there's still plenty of shitboxes here as they haven't removed ferrari from the game tho.
What you're saying, in this video, is exactly what longtime Forza fans have been saying for more than a decade. They should just remake Forza 4 with upgraded graphics, cars, tracks and conditions. They don't make this game for car people anymore, they make it for people who don't know what they're doing in real life. Thank you for saving me money on this game. I've given up on this franchise because they've lost their way.
The upgrading system is a joke. If they really wanted to lock them behind doing stuff then they should have made them unlockable through the campaign. And of course make the campaign better. This game is just a skeleton that might become good at some point but why not at the start? I'm fed up with modern gaming
All of you are misunderstanding Forza this is a games as a service game there are no DLCs they're planning on 10 years of updates and track editions car editions and they're also fighting several legal battles with several European car manufacturers who have refused to give them the license to put the cars in the game because of the more realistic damage modeling
There are already DLC's, what are you talking about? I also can guarantee you there will be microtransactions down the road, it's clearly built for it. Also devs should stop making every game GaaS, it's a model where the bubble is already about to burts and there is only a place for a handful of those games. There is only so much time in the day for people, a lot of them are not interested in a GaaS game and the others are already invested in other franchises. Stop trying to shoehorn games into that model, it won't work for 99% of them. But it makes it more clear why it is missing so much content (but not why it took 6 years, I have a feeling this game went through development hell).
The MFR level sounds so great compared to the per car level. I would love that. I would also be somewhat okay with the upgrade system as is IF the career mode was longer. I still have not finished FM7 career because there is so much to do and it is fantastic. Completing one of the cups had so much pride and achievement for me. Seeing the limited career mode here made me very sad as I just don't really race multiplayer. Like you said, I don't have a large community to just do races with and I also don't want to drive in the average forza lobby. I was looking forward to this game and now I am a bit put off it... I might go back and finish FM7 while waiting to see if they change anything on the new FM.
I think the tyre physics, weather and progression system all look pretty good, but there’s no where near enough innovation or progression here considering they’ve had 6 years to work on this.
Horizon 5 has the same A.I. issue. First and second place A.I. basically drives on rails. Everyone else is a basically a slow moving pylon. And once you're in first, everyone just gives up and you win with a huge lead.
Some very bizarre decisions been made there, with that restrictive career mode, and baffling car leveling upgrades system. They had a system that worked perfectly well, was fun, and allowed great experimentation with cars and classes... and yeeted it out of the window...
Because the game is being included on Gamespass they want to keep people playing as long as possible, it is a truly disappointing time to be into gaming, Forza Motorsport 4 was my favorite game growing up, all of these these games are a shadow of their former selves :(
Honestly the situation with alfa, lancia and fiat is so weird. I would write it off as a licensing issue like in horizon 5, if not for the fact that the presence of the giulietta suggests that they do indeed hold the rights. Maybe they added it last minute and the other cars are coming back in a future update, but man if it’s not disappointing to have another forza game launching without these brands
Laguna Short = The original Laguna layout from the 60's. This layout does not exist anymore IRL (the portion that cuts out Andretti Hairpin is where RVs park now).
I wonder if their vision was to have horizon for more freedom (not only for the world itself but upgrades etc as well) and motorsports for something more realistic/serious (could be improved quite a bit still) Just a thought
But then there's not enough classes to race with if we're going to focus on motorsports. They don't have a full field of LM HyperCars, GTEs, GT3s, GT4s, BTCC, WTCC etc. I understand wanting to make it more serious....but then If I can't race against a full field of modern GT3s why would I bother with FM, when iRacing or ACC do the same? The whole point of FM was that you could build your own racecar to their classes and then race them. Safe to say I won't be buying this one.
@@sameermohideen4913 Exactly. And ACC doesn't have nearly enough variety and lacks any real career mode, and iRacing is a paid monthly online subscription, which is a total non-starter for many. I'm dying for a proper/serious track motorsports game with a serious and substantial career mode and a good variety of cars with realistic grids available on console/playable offline. Those games were my bread and butter growing up, and there just aren't any left.
@@sameermohideen4913it's on gamepass so you don't have to buy it, just play it for them to make money. Are you not going to play it either or are you going to try it out and realize that things change and change is okay? Or are you one of those people who play madden every year because it's the same game?
Well, it sounds like I wasted my money on a pre-order for this one (yes, that's on me) and it was the first one where I really wasn't sure about it for years now because it sounded like they were building something that felt like a modern online game. I should have trusted my gut (I told myself a couple of years ago to not pre-order this one) but I couldn't help myself with how much I have enjoyed the series over the years. I also really hope they are not going to bait-and-switch microtransactions, but who am I kidding (this game is made for microtransactions, I give them a month or 2 to put them in). Forza Motorsport 4 was my favourite one and everything after that has gone downhill imo. I have a feeling this game was originally meant to have been a purely online game and they refactored it and quickly put in some single player, it looks like it isn't done yet. The fact that they are going to release more content over the coming months makes it feel like a mobile game or battle royal game, it's somewhat pathetic. I mainly go through career mode in these games as I generally don't enjoy driving online, so I will probably be done in a week. I have also always loved the collecting aspect, but if there is no content that's going to be impossible to do. Chances are this is going to be the last time I give them money for Forza Motorsport, it also feels like this is supposed to be their last attempt and they are trying to make this go on forever. I will stick to Horizon from now on.
I’ve been itching for a new simcade circuit racer, so I was hoping FM8 would fill that void. The career mode being this bad is brutal, I’ll think I’ll just go back and replay FM3 or 4 instead.
REALLY wish the old Motorsports were backwards compatible. I almost wonder if they just won’t bother adding them ever because they know people will play them and call T10 out for their bullshit
another option for progression would be locking cosmetic aero bits behind car level. so when you join a multiplayer hopper you can tell who has put in time on a car and who’s just following the meta. sucks that you have to grind a car in unfun events to get to the fun bits
I just finished watching the video and thank you Alex for being completely honest about the frustrations you have about the game. Honestly I'd just suggest sticking with FH5 since it's that bad
If i remember correctly PGR4 had different garages that you could place your cars in and walk around, it was brilliant, i spent ages arranging them and looking around
Ive been passing on these driving games lately after watching your reviews. They all seem to have downsides that over shadow what a fun racing game is supposed to be. another pass. Thanks for the honesty!
So as a kid I played Forza 2 as my intro to the series and spent hours learning the new language of automotive engineering and mechanics and translating those physical principles into track speed was the core gameplay loop, every iteration of the game since has been more streamlined with autoupgrades, free downloadable user reviewed tuning setups and silly gigantic vehicles that lie outside the gamephysics accuracy range, botching their default tune and thus PI, they optimised out this core gameplay loop. Introducing a new currency just for upgrades reminds me of GW Warhammer's balancing scheme with points, and allows you to restrict cars based on how close they are to stock, as well as the existing PI system, adding another dimension of balance. Builders cups remind me of deck building games, MOBAs and AOEii (the best game ;)) which adds progress through the stages as yet another dimension for balance. These changes all work to rid the franchise of the pervasive, vapid, childish bonecrusher (or whatever next meta car) and redirect the series away from GTAV (which I love btw) and closer to something that resembles a racing game.
All I want to do in Forza Motorsport is Rivals. They killed experimentation with this progression. And yes, career is too short, and you can't change race length. No endurance races either!
That whole upgrade shit SUCKS. Like the whole thing about Forza, the FUN in Forza, is upgrading cars to compete with others, like taking a Lotus Elan to R class, and having fun battling a Lexus saloon and an SUV for track position. Not just in single-player, but ESPECIALLY online. Builds and tunes are what make the game, and to have it locked behind such a rigorous system that one could only hope to tune a few select cars that you grind out for too long of a time completely ruins it.
I lost a challenge and I need a forfeit can you name ten foods and ten sauces to go on my head please make sure it's messy and disgusting thanks for your help
I agree 100% about the car points I wish Forza never messed with it I also HATE the Bathurst isn’t in the game yet, it’s a crime for someone who lives in Australia
A car list that seems designed to make you pay for DLC 6 months after release Terrible AI Horrendus upgrade system. Yep. There goes my hype for this game.
How could both Forza and GT drop the ball so badly on their career modes? It seems like arguably the easiest thing to get right. Just make sure that every car can compete in AT LEAST two events. Give them a purpose
Nobody cares about career modes. Play gran turismo for that. Not being a dick but idk why anyone expected them to make a good career when the starter car is a 500hp car
@@unrealmagic6519 Speak for yourself, it's basically the only reason why I play the Forza games (same for GT and most racing games). I know a lot of people mainly play it for online racing, but I don'[t care about that as it only makes me angry when some idiot rams me of the road. Been there, done that, I am done with racing online in these games. To be fair I have dabbled in some online races with the Horizon games the last couple of years, but not a lot as it's not something I am really looking for. So the main reason why I play these is to go through career mode and to collect cars. I get plenty of time and enjoyment out of that typically, but this is probably going to first Forza game (with the exception of the first Horizon) where I am not going to get even close to 100 hours. FM5 might have been a little less as well because I really didn't like that one that much either (don't remember why). And yes, they are going to add more events, but they have worked on it for 6 years, I would assume them to deliver a finished product instead of a free to play style game while charging for it.
I was really considering getting this game, and first minutes of this video made me really want it. But that upgrade system made me refuse to get the game at all... I loved the freedom the previous games had, as you said, could bring an MR2 up to B-class for fun. Or see how crazy you could turn a poor Beetle into a monster. But this upgrade system, even if you are in love with a single car, I know I will get tired of driving x number of races with the same exact car, without ability to upgrade... I also want progression, but make me start in a beaten Beetle in E-class, and work my way up to R-class, or some other way, not this... Thanks for showing this, I'll save my money thanks to you!
It's funny how people were insistent that people who hated the Car XP system simply didn't know what they wanted from the developers, and that this is the only way we can get "progression". Turns out you can still buy the most expensive car in the game really early and all it does is just make you grind pointlessly. LOL
I think the reason why the car list feels empty is cuz they haven’t fully finished balancing some of the vehicles and/or modeling them, so they will come as weekly cars
Your thumbnail saying "What have they done...", and Rory Alexanders thumbnail saying "They nailed it..." 🤣 Makes no never mind to me, I'm firmly in the hardcore sim crowd, and I wouldn't get a Forza game in any case. But it'll be interesting to watch the YT battles. 😁
Honestly, when I heard about the upgrade system a couple weeks ago, I went from looking forward to this game for the last 6 years, to removing it from my must buy list altogether. I will wait and see if they change it, or I'll wait til I can get the game on a deep discount. Progression is easy. Just make the 'career' start with slow ass D class cars, and work your way up through winning championships. Also you discount after leveling idea is basically how (The best Forza) Forza 4 worked.
The Manufacturer Affinity level is what was brilliant in earlier FM. But you're right. The built not bought racecars were what was so great in FM. Maybe they're trying to make it more serious, so that a riced out MR2 isn't slapping an Audi R8 GT3 around the circuit, but the balancing of upgrades is not the same as removing all the fun. This game has potential but the current system feels similar to the one initially introduced for SWBF2 - minus actually buying the car levels (which I'm sure they'd offer if they could without getting berated by the community).GT7 launched with issues too with so hopefully FM learns quickly.
Car Mechanic Simulator 2018 does the sense of ownership thingy very well with all the cars in a parking garage, there's so many racing games that could take that approach.
Remember the giant wall of hundreds of squares of championships in FM4, each sometime being hours long of racing through a series? So now were down to like 12 of that equivalent? What were they doing for 6 years? I held out hope. I didnt expect it to be this bad.
The best way I can describe the car list is it feels like a live service car list. Just enough to not make you upset, but too few to be the "final product", but deadlines and such
This will be the first Forza since FM3 that I won't be getting unless they change the upgrade system... I've always been super hype for new Forza games, but I literally don't feel anything for this one purely because they completely destroyed the fundamental part of what makes a Forza game into a Forza game... Forza is all about freedom. The ability to buy a car and upgrade it however you want... Drag car, drift car, realistic track day car, or full on hardcore track car with engine swaps and AWD swaps etc. With this new FM they completely killed that freedom, locked it behind endless hours of grinding and therefore it doesn't even feel like a Forza game anymore to me.
We continue to be lacking a track racing sim with a decent single-player career since Project Cars 2, and the car list there was weak. Forza Motorsport doesn't have enough cars to fill out any particular 'class' in a race without huge numbers of identical repeat cars and the "career" mode is a bunch of weird short races thrown together seemingly at random. Gran Turismo just doesn't have enough of a composed career mode -- well behind even the classic Gran Turismo titles. Project Cars 3 is a totally different sort of game and is complete garbage. WRC Generations is actually quite good, but is obviously only the WRC series. I just want an updated version of a proper, hardcore, career track-racing sim on console. Something made by and for big motorsports fans. A spiritual successor to PC2 with a much bigger list of licensed cars.
Hey Alex, it has been about 10 months since this video. Has the car leveling system improved? My wife and I love Forza but have been hesitant to buy it due to the car leveling system. I know we could sign up for Xbox Live if we wanted to but I'd rather just buy the one game I want outright and be done paying Microsoft. Thank you for the years of entertainment.
The upgrade situation hasn`t been an issue for me so far, but I do see the potential of it becoming an issue for me in the future. It`s a system that in my opinion has been working well so far within the context of the career mode, but will potentially be a big hinderance once I finish that part of the game, and move on to other modes. I hope that they`ve left themselves the option to change the system down the road because, if nothing else, I would like for the car level to be model specific rather the individual car specific. I also hope that they add more events to the career mode as frequently as possible, and with championships that utilise as much as the car list as possible, and that leverages the quirky and oddball side of the car roster. Other than that, I`ve really been enjoying the game so far (other than the crashes between races, specificly while upgrading my Megane RS during the affordable performance cup), and none of the issues I`ve had (whether a bug, gameplay related, or due to the design choices they`ve made) have been more than a minor inconvenience to me so far, let alone a deal breaker
The few cars I'd love to see in Forza,aren't there still. The Corvair had *one* entry in the entire series. And I had a ton of fun back in the day racing classic Corvairs. They were a blast to drive even if they weren't the fastest.
the older motorsport games actually had something similar to the manufacturer system you described - the old affinity system! i've put so many hours into motorsport 4, and that was always something i quite liked. it included part discounts, prize money, and prize cars. it's no coincidence that motorsport 4 also had a much better campaign mode than any other forza game i've played.
Motorsport 4 was, and still is, the best Forza Motorsport to date, and every one since then for me has been striving to beat FM4 and has failed every time. FM7 came close, all it needed was a better mutliplayer lobby set up and it was golden.
(Back in FM3 and FM4 you could make open custom lobbies and do whatever, you could even make a closed custom lobby just to play around, but now you can't make a custom lobby at all unless you have a friend in your lobby beforehand. Not to mention, custom public lobbies are all removed, so no fun stuff. I also miss A Class Tag, which I guess by newer games PI would be B Class now.)
Plus if you wanted to, you could play individual events in the Events List if you don't want to do it in the order they want, you had that option to do it at your own leisure and that was probably one of the more enjoyable things in the entire Forza franchise
@@DaysofKnightcouldn't agree with you anymore!
@@DaysofKnightI have been screaming from the bleachers for years for them to bring back the old multi-player setup. What a shame they haven't done it :(
I knew I'd played Forza Motorsport game with an affinity system like that I couldn't remember which one until I saw this comment
The car list seems (not surprisingly) designed with intentional holes to be filled by paid DLC
They don't recycle cars from the XBO-era games for paid DLC. We'll see those added as the weekly event rewards
@@Elit3NickI think it’s more of a cars we already should’ve had will finally be added issue. For example, there’s no reason there’s no Ferrari 488 gt3 car at launch. But they’ll likely add one in an update and the 296 gt3 will be the paid DLC if we get one at all.
@@jamesharden3timedpoy466 I have doubts we'll see the 296 GT3 anytime soon with FIA GT licensing
@@Elit3Nick I’m not sure about all the licenses but I know forza is partnered with IMSA and there’s a 296 GTD car. Since other GTD IMSA cars like the Audi R8 and Acura NSX are there I hope there’s a 296 gt3 style car at any point in the game.
@@jamesharden3timedpoy466 partnering with an organization and acquiring permission to use the cars in the game are 2 completely different things bud
just because they partnered with IMSA doesn't mean anything however the only thing they gained from that are the new prototype cars but the FIA do have a lot of sway in things such as F1 and WRC which is why you don't see newer F1 cars but ultimately the manufactures still have the final say on the cars themselves given the obvious reasons
The "Short layout" of Laguna is the older layout that techically still exists but isn't used anymore. Neat to see it in this game...
Some of the old surface and curbing still exists, but I wouldn't call it raceable with a huge gravel trap and barriers blocking the way. I'm curious to see how it looks in-game, whether it's an authentic vintage version of the track or a sort of fantasy layout set in the current day. I'll try to find some gameplay to find out for sure.
edit: It's the latter.
@@nathanstroud2223 Now that is disappointing. It obviously would have been a lot more work to rebuild the environment to match the historic layout, but it would have been such a great way to embrace some of the history of motorsports, and share some of that story and evolution, particularly with such a prestigious track. Just another example of how T10 has completely flubbed this relaunch of a once great series. It's such a shame, they took so long to release this, and made it sound like they put in a great deal of effort, only to spent all that time on effort making the wrong decisions.
@@nathanstroud2223it’s sick hope we get some old Indy cars to run at the track, maybe a march or Buick from the mid 80s or a Reynard from the 90s
It absolutely Does Not still exist.
@@IntrepidRacer13gt 1-4 has the OG track layout so would've been super easy to do.
The Crazy part thing is Forza 4 had Alex's progression system in mind to an extend where you would have manufacture levels to earn discount on upgrades or credits, the entire game just feels by design to spruce up gamepass numbers or player count through its car level system, events coming in overtime and it won't surprise me if they pull a Horizon and do fear of missing out content with missing cars later
I like how you put the cart before the horse here lol. He's just got the idea from forza 4 not the other way around.
@@mervunit admittedly I jumped the gun with my comment as soon as I heard Alex's suggestion I was like the meme with the guy pointing lol
FM4 was too good. Free upgrades across an entire manufacturer by simply using their cars a bit. The event races that totaled to over 300 races, ontop of a campaign series twice the size of this one. More tracks and track variations at launch.
And as a player that enjoys A-B class racing, is personally fond of 90’s to early 00’s cars, and loved the Fujimi Kaido mountain climb track, this game just doesn’t bring anything interesting to the table other than ‘it looks pretty’. The best tracks, cars, and gameplay for me is still back in the FM4-5 era. 1v1 racing up the mountain was such a blast.
I miss Fujimi Kaido, I never played FM4, but I loved building A-B class cars to race my friends on the mountain. I'm also disappointed that the most expensive cars are ~400k Cr... In FM3 the cost of some cars were insane, from 1-10 million credits if I remember right. I remember throwing a 4 rotor in an RX8 which put it in R3 class and beating a Bugatti Veyron in a drag race for a fraction of the cost.
This might be an unpopular opinion, but I actually like the car upgrade system in FM8, 2-3 hours for level 50 doesn't even sound that bad, in maybe 400 hours of FH5 I spent a good majority of that in the MR2 SC turning it into the ultimate A class Volcano weapon.
@@Ikaros--- Fujimi Kaido was the best track. Wish they bring it back one day.
fujimi kaido was awensome and really hope they bring something like it [ fictional mountain track with a big variety of different curves/corners ] to new forza motorsport
imo this game doent even look that pretty, its so flat
Does it look pretty though?
Genuinely impressive how bad of a design decision the upgrade system is. It's gotta be some sort of scheme to drive up average playtime so it looks good in shareholder meetings or something
honestly i think it’s all gamepass necessitating constant engagement bc of its monthly payment model
Late-stage capitalism is killing everything. Video games are hardly very important in the grand scheme, but we see it here too. It's not enough to make a great and complete game, sell it at $60, sell millions of copies, and make a handsome profit. They have to try to leverage every single trick they can to squeeze every single cent out of it, and really every single cent out of 10% of the player base that are going to pay for lots of things that should have been in the game at launch, all to make corporate profits in total 2% higher. I don't think I'm buying this game until it is at least 60% off.
I share the same sentiment. While in FH5 the skills per car was something to unlock rather quickly as we get points for everything. In game that is more on a sim side I miss the days where upgrades were just bought with common credits earn in game by completing races.
Per car upgrades seems like a grind.
Stephanie Sterling put it best, they don't just want "some money", they want all of the money all of the time. @@MrChristopher0us
Per people making the decisions at T10 it was done to address the complaints people had of various cars being so much better than other cars in class racing even though this does nothing to actually address said issue.
You’d think that when every year the Forza community says Motorsport 3/4 were the best, they’d get a clue to model the new games in a similar way. They make changes that nobody wants or asked for
Then you have the knob gobblers that say this progression system feels so rewarding. No, it feels like a waste of fucking time. I installed the game, played a couple hours, and uninstalled the game. I'm just glad I didn't waste any money on this pile of shit.
We can say same for gran turismo.
I mean it is ok to do new things but when older game has a better features and campaign then new games then you know you fucked up.
Nobody asked for the FM3 career mode either, but the devs still made it.
@@evandaymon8303
Literally the entire GT community: We want a large fleshed out single player mode with free-form progression like in GT3 & GT4
Polyphony Digital: *_"WUZZAT!? YOU WANT A LINEAR SET OF SINGLE PLAYER RACES?"_*
@@1mariomaniac dont forget this too
community: we also want better payouts and improve the custom races and new tracks.
Pd: Ah you want 3/4 or 6 or whatever many cars instead as well as events that barely payout well and changes to legend car dealership prices?
Happy to hear that somebody else liked GRID's career modes. Super underrated original tracks in that series too.
Grid is mostly street curcuits and got boring
You know the showroom menu thing you described? That is literally my best memories of Project Gotham Racing 2. Another series lost to pursuit of bottomless wells of money.
Project Gotham Racing was such a good series, a rebooted version of PGR4 would absolutely rock!
Pgr2 good memories. Great game. KUDOS
PGR3/4 and FM3/4 was my favorite 360 games for sure
I'm keeping a keen eye on 360 emulation for those 4 games exclusively haha. Getting to re-enjoy PGR3/4 and FM3/4 all over again is all I really want nowadays.@@MrZyLeXx
You know why PGR was so good? The same people who worked on that also ended up working on some older Forza titles as well. Because those people actually cared!!!
Ride 5 has an affinity system similar to what you described, where you level up your manufacturer and bike affinity to get discounts and unlock liveries. To lock the best feature in Forza games away behind hours of grinding, and to reduce the MASSIVE FM7 championship series down to this, blows my mind.
FM4 had the manufacturer affinity too, no idea why they're so opposed to sticking with what works
This game seems to be crafted to have constant player engagement, what with the car grinding and having to wait around to do single player races. Microsoft's gotta bump up those player numbers to show off to investors that you made a successful game, doesnt help this is all online only...
If it's online only then I'm out. There is no reason for the game to require online unless it's multiplayer only. It doesn't even look as good as Horizon 5.
Constant player engagement of being pissed off
Yeah, modern AAA games are all about chasing metrics to show investors, instead of making it fun
@@Dark-qx8rk you legit are making a very idiotic move by comparing FH5 to this because they're 2 completely different styles of racing game
@@theunhingedgamer3762 You sure about that?
Cause the only difference I've seen in this video is water making things more slippery than in Horizon and the courses looking ungodly bland.
I agree with Alex on the manufacture level instead of car level
I wouldn't even mind if it's still for the 1 car, just get rid of the car level lock
@@damianclum2066IT'S JUST ONE CAR. How difficult is it for devs to do this? Just one car 😭.
nope. both are stupid.
Youve articulated my fears on the upgrade system to great effect in this video. Yet most of the people ive had the chance to speak with fully support this upgrade system because they want game progression with a small and intimate number of cars.
After watching this video i dont even get the impression that theyre getting what they hope for either.
Unfortunately it clashes with the game having over 500 cars at launch
Same for me. The concerns I had over it are why I'm not buying it at launch but instead giving it a month on GamePass, then deciding whether to buy it. I've seen others wash over it saying "See how easy and quick it is" while ignoring that it's only the first few levels, so of course it's easy and quick. I wonder how many of these folks will change their minds once the novelty of a new game passes. I seem to remember similar reactions to homologation in FM7 until reality came a knocking.
@@Elwaves2925the first few levels thing, already saw leveling guides, they're dumb, but appears to be no xp scaling, level 2 and level 50 take about a lap on monza
People are gonna have to wait and play for themselves instead of simply repeating what others say.
@@Sim-sq2hu Oh okay, that might make it better then. I'll find out for myself in a few days. Cheers. 🙂
Excellent points about using a car showroom or warehouse, loved that in the TDU games.
Good memories
Your idea of progression was in fm4 I think. I think when you maxed a manufacturer upgrades were free. I may be misremembering however lol
Nope FM4. Ya nailed it spot on. God that was a holy grail in the series
You didn’t even need to max them. Just hit level 4
@@UriaLordOfSearingFlames exactly. And that was easy
I completely agree with your take of the car upgrades and level system and progression. FM2 was the only Motorsport I had from 360 era but the career mode was amazing and with car affinity and levels giving you access to more exclusive cars it felt the most rewarding of any forza game I’ve played. You even got boosts with choosing your manufacturer continent. There were so many different races from what I remember even extreme endurance racing in a career mode. It’s a shame they haven’t decided to replicate what they’ve already done in the past and instead do something no one asked for.
not sure where you've been looking but plenty of people have complained about how easy Forza is to grind and that same set of people are now complaining because they got what they wanted with this game in particular
@@theunhingedgamer3762 Yeah I’m aware. The section of people who complain about the typical forza progression are simply put just anti-wheelspin, giving cars too early, and give us slower starter cars. Along with the issues in the PI system, meta cars, even auto upgrades and homologation. It seems like they tried to solve those issues with this system that no one wanted hence the backlash.
@@theunhingedgamer3762 That is only partialy true, almost everybody complained about how easily you obtain cars in Forza, but nobody wanted system like this.
@@theunhingedgamer3762 The issue isn't that recent Forza games were too easy to grind. It was that everything was getting thrown at you. Even that said this is not why T10 added this upgrade system. T10 added this upgrade system to address the complaints of unbalanced cars that dominated class racing. That is per T10's own heads of departments.
Replying to what you say about them not replicating the older games, it’s because they don’t need to. They will get insane amounts of money and insane amounts of players because of Game Pass/blind fans who just need something new. All they need is to do is the bare minimum and they make a shit-ton of money, and investors are happy.
You know where else I've seen a version of this upgrade system? World of Warships. A goddamn free to play game. And it does it better, for 2 reasons:
1: It is an actual progression. The ships are all in a tree per country, and to unlock a ship you spend xp from the previous, lower tier ship. That way, the people in tier 1-3 ships are all very new, the people in tier 4-7 ships are somewhat experienced, and the people in tier 8-10 ships have been playing for ages.
2: You get free xp equal to 10% of the ship xp you earn, so if you want to start using ships from a different country, you can use the free xp so you don't have to grind in the super low tiers so much.
I really want to know the chain of events that got the current progression system to be greenlit.
Get the players on at first, they try to tough out the grind for a while. Rack up a ton of playtime initially.
You present those numbers to investors. Get a bunch of money sent your way.
The players give up on this game. You shove it into a corner and let Horizon 5 maintain franchise popularity.
Extreme amount of play-time, making the game look good from the outside
@@bolbyballingeri doubt FH5 can maintain the franchise popularity at this point. PGG and Microsoft Studios have under-delivered in terms of long term playability. Everything is so cut and paste with no creativity and thouht put into championships. There are types of cars basically ignored. Even the series themes are neutered. Italian Automotive was sad (you reintroduce Lancia to Forza and they get a crappy trial with 10 PI to upgrade cars). For a few series, the PR stunts were S2 anything goes, regardless of series theme. I don't know how many big channels or (relatively) large streamers make this their main game (I'm a very small streamer and I'm moving away from it as it no longer brings in much in terms of views and followers, and bigger streamers than me I interact with have been moving away from it more).
If FM fails, this could be the end of Forza in it's entirety. I have been holding on with FH5 for the last few months only knowing Motorsport is being released soon (in getting it on Game Pass, so October 10 for me) because I enjoy driving games. I'm ready to see if I can find TDU on Game Pass to give it a go before committing money to it if FM is really going to be as bad with progression and career mode as it looks.
The idea behind the upgrade system is actually quite good. But I think it's just badly implemented. It might be fun at the beginning. But I think it quickly becomes boring to grind each car individually.
Haven't watched yet but that thumbnail is making me nervous. I have been desperate for this game to be good
Edit: Oh dear.
Just a doomer-baiting thumbnail. Other reviews like Hoki's definitely seem less downer.
I miss Test Drive Unlimited because of the Free-roam and the Dealership/House situation, I hope they don’t ruin it in the new one
Car level up unlocks should be unique to the car. It should be a special set of rims, paint color or livery, special wing that it’s cosmetic only. And brand levels should unlock other cars. Like for for example you should be allowed to buy the base mustang and focus but have to grind levels to get the GT
you know that nothing about a race car is for cosmetic purposes aside from the livery right? It's not car show tilty wheel simulator like horizon, it's a racing game. I get it's not for everybody and they kinda screwed up by giving horizon the same forza name.
Oh Laguna “short” is actually the old historic layout that they used to run. It’s pretty cool to see in a modern game but I don’t know why they treated it as a modern version of it because it doesn’t still exist IRL
Jesus to hear someone normally so positive about mostly everything just go full fucking scorched Earth HATE on the car upgrade system was... amazing tbh lol
It was incredibly cathartic to hear him literally rant about everything I typed on Reddit after the literal VERY FIRST MINUTES I seen this upgrade system and thought about the implications of it.
I watched some considerable amount of videos regarding this game by different youtubers and their 1st impressions + general thoughts. But none of them addresses these issues as vividly, accurately and ergonomically as Alex. So kudos to fail race chief Alex.
And I genuinely think, this game is going to be crap in terms of the player's game experience and their commitment to play further.
In terms of graphics, game engine performance, game physics and those kinds of things, this game made some good improvements, but they lost in game play and game ergonomics + player feeling and enthusiasm.
The way gran turismo 3/4 worked were perfect certain events for certain cars earn credits to tune a car or buy one and licenses to open up new events
This just looks over complicated
Let s stop comparing masterpieces with average new games, especially in career progression terms.
theDrive my favorite car news website says: "Forza Motorsport Review: A Solid Reboot Strictly for the Racers Six years in the making, Forza Motorsport’s return chases the thrill of competition at the expense of all else."
This series keeps going backwards since FM4.
Maybe in 5 more years we'll get a properly amazing Motorsport game...
I'm waiting for a Motorsport that's as good as, or better than, Motorsport 4.
FM4 in my opinion was, and still is, the *best* Forza Motorsport to date
We probably never will
Will never happen. Gaming has taken the DLC / season pass route and it has killed everything
I (very) sadly doubt it. Unless this truly bombs and teaches them a lesson about how they need to make an actually good game again.
Back to ACC
The Car List feels like they just got a random generator to pick it, some cool picks and some very weird ones too
Their philosophy of getting rid of the “boring/quirky” cars didn’t really work out that well, AND got rid of a shit-ton of actually good cars.
As someone who has a full time job and not the time to dedicate hours to a single car just to go have fun with it, I won't be getting this game until that's fixed, if it ever is. So thank you Alex, from saving me from wasting my money
I mean it's free on gamepass so you didn't have to buy it anyway.
@@mervunit Why to people keep giving a pass to gamepass? It's a cope of all copes. And no, it's not free, never was.
On gamepass, otherwise i wouldn't buy it either
Hallejulah! They've got Rivals mode correct from the start this time - hotlapping is my main joy so great news!
This is the video ive been waiting for from you, mainly because i had a feeling you wouldn't like the new upgrade system and im so glad you called out the new bloody awful upgrade system that as you say completely gets rid of any freedom like in previous motorsport games, I'm praying that the devs see this video and change this system im begging they do, don't get me wrong im still excited to play the game next week on the 10th, but this video has just solidified that this system does not work.
They will only listen to the big streamer who all say they like it..
In how many circumstances it would make the diference in t he first couple of hours? I mean, until you learn the car and learn 2-3 tracks you have grinded quite a bit, right? Or is there another problem i miss?
This guy is absolutely right, it's absolutely frustrating!! The more I play this game the more I want too play GT7 or Asetto Corsa. You can't restrict your players like this, we want fun variety, freedom, choices, realism where you buy upgrades with the money you earned not based on how much driving you do. In real life people don't modify and tune their cars based on how many miles they put on it. They upgrade, tune and modify their cars base on the looks, and performance their going for and they do this with money, period!!
I think alot of the issues you've described are related to modern gaming in general - it's almost ALL moving to online play as the main feature. Forza has always had massive shortages of cars at launch that are filled with DLC's over time and even a few "Unicorn" cars that are handed out through competitions that are run mainly online (sometimes even through Twitter or whatever). The upgrade system being free was great, I don't know why they've changed it so much... I used to test drive on Forza Motorsport for one of the communities relatively well known tuners (not the top but pretty competitive) and half the fun for us was making and tuning different non leaderboard cars and racing them against everyone that ran the leaderboard cars (if you saw an unusual, non leaderboard, vehicle in the top 200 on the leaderboards there's a good chance it'd be one of us in a DNA tuned car doing tesing runs)... you can't do that without an opened up upgrade system.
While I haven't played this game and won't buy it either, you are 100% right. The main reason I enjoy forza was always the huge variety of cars combined with the PI system so everything could stay somewhat competitive.
I remember bringing my own homebrewed cars in Forza 4 and beating many other players using top "meta" cars. It was a blast, you had the David vs Goliath feeling. I did spend hours fine-tuning the right upgrades for specific tracks and also tuning to shave off every millisecond possible from my lap times. That wasn't grind, that was fun and my competitive nature to always improve that made me do it. The you saw other people doing the same and they earned my respect. That was what made forza so fun for me back in the day. Looks like they completely ditched that aspect, for no reason really, what a shame.
They didnt even need to make a new FM, they could have genuinely just rereleased FM4 'enhanced for X/S' and made a bazillion pounds
Gran Tuirsmo 7 had (and arguably still has) a woeful number of career mode events and it looks like Forza has the same issue. I'm not sure why developers have a hard time making events when it should be the easiest thing to do since you've already made the cars and tracks.
yea it at least looks like FM has a rotating list of different series that come into the single player experience. Also there's class races where you can just race in that class just not E class. GT7 they released a new car I think it was the Beat that I really wanted to race it but there was absolutely no races it would qualify for. Like why release the car and then not have a way to race it?
GT7? Hah, even the first Gran Turismo's career mode feels better.
@@STRIDER_503 Agreed. Honestly the worst part of it, for me, is how restrictive the game is with the events it has, too. In previous mainline GT games, events like the FF, FR, and 4WD-specific races were a small-is slice of the event total, and there were fewer racecar-specific events that DIDN'T just let you build your own monstrosity to take the race cars down.
The vast majority of GT7's events, on the other hand, restrict you to cars from a certain region or of a certain design or origin. A lot of the appeal of older GTs is taking one car and being able to do a metric fuckton of different things with it. This was often to the point of comedy, but being able to bring an 88C-V to a road car event is better than searching to find ANY events for it to race in. GT7 misses out on that both due to the short length of the career and due to the lack of event variety and freedom of car choice from event to event.
With the exception of the Brickyard, Monaco, and the Top Gear Test Track, there are no real-life circuits in GT5 that don't exist in GT7 in some form. Then there's all the ones that have been added in since, like Spa, Goodwood, and Brands Hatch. THEN there are the added fictional venues of Maggiore, Sardegna Road. If they could just copy-paste GT5's career into GT7 with minor adjustments (AI improvements, proper grid starts) that'd have been enough to wipe Forza off the face of the Earth, given the crazy depth of the customization system.
So true.i feell it's because everything is focused on online multiplier nowadays.
They should have done the upgrade system to have all parts unlocked, yet you just use your CP to unlock points still. That's the only drawback that I have found with the upgrade system, is parts being locked behind a level. That being said, I've raced the first 3 races in builders cup and am already car level 9. But I'm sure they'll fix it like the past 3 games in the motorsports series for the career mode.
What struck me as especially odd is that there is no Bugatti Veyron, despite it being in damn near every racing game, despite there being the Divo, Chiron, EB110, and even a prewar racer. I don't really mind, as I don't really care for the Veyron, but of all the Bugattis, you'd think the Veyron would be top of the list. Maybe there's gonna be some "Legends of Speed" DLC pack or something, but for the base game, to have four Bugattis, including two very similar ones, but no Veyron, just strikes me as, like Alex said, bizarre.
From what I've heard, the AI in the review copies does not represent the AI at launch. Basically the drivatar system is turned off until release.
They need an option to keep DrivAtars off entirely. I *hated* when they added those stupid AI. Constantly crashing into me, taking corners wrong, not driving fast enough, braking for no reason, and smashing against me around corners. It's fucking annoying.
I like my AI that stuck to a line, not stupid "AI" that can't fucking drive.
I have had my damage on cosmetic only ever since DrivAtars were added because they're absolutely stupid and always wreck my car.
Fuck DrivAtars
This is the full release. That was the 'demo' from a month ago.
Why do people make this lying PR excuse? Just because the game is in "Early Access" for 5 days doesn't mean its not the full release. It is and anybody making this excuse is either a complete dumbass or willfully lying to make excuses for their bad purchase.
Another issue: there will be that one track, one event that gets you a little bit more Car EXP than others, and that's all everyone will ever do. Fun, exciting, creative events, tracks and themes will lay dormant because they're not good for grinding car EXP and that's all anyone will want to do.
Maybe if your focus is just leveling cars instead of you know...what the game is made for... racing...
@@mervunit Alright. Let's say the game has 800 cars. If you play 3 hours a day, getting every car to the point where it is usable in events will take TWO YEARS. If you see an event you want to participate in, you need to buy AND level the car first, by which time the event might well be over. We reach a point where everyone will just have 1-5 focus vehicles that they grind, ignoring the entire rest of the game, and being able to participate in maybe 5% of the overall events. This is absurd.
@@sandwitch1613 why would i want every car in the game let alone to level up every car in the game. If I did why would i complain that the game is giving me two years of things to do?
@@mervunit I play Horizon 5 and one of my goals was always to own every single car in the game in order to be able to participate in every event that comes my way. If you're happy with 5 or 10 cars, that's good for you, but then isn't it a bit of a waste to only use a few cars in a game with hundreds? The time scope is also personal preference; I don't want to wait years just to get access to all of the game's features, so to speak.
They're just trading one kind of grinding for another. Instead of (like in GT7) doing the same mind-numbing GT3 race for hours on end to make money, you now do time trials with your car of choice for 3 hours to unlock upgrades. Personally, I don't think I'll mind it too much, I like using stock or lightly modified cars. The appeal of the racing game for me is weird and wonderful cars, and actually being able to drive them. I love classic Le Mans racers, but I'll never get to drive one in GT7 because they cost 20 million moneys, and I don't have the time or mental fortitude to grind that out.
I think its GT7 that has made it this way, they screwed the pooch so badly forza can get away with something such as this
and let it still be less time to get a Le Mans Car
@@kyonbrace5487 No. It is Forza/T10 trying to address complaints from players of unbalanced cars. The proper answer to fix said problem is a better working PI system. Turn 10's answer is this even though it doesn't address the actual problem at all.
I think a part that you're missing is that if u already have a MX5 that you've upgraded and like in say A class and you wanna make one for B class, you have to start all over again no CP or Car level gets sent over to the other MX5, this is actually just insanity.
5:42 this was my biggest issue with motorsport 7. The cars up front aren't making mistakes and are pulling away while the back markers are practically stopping on apexes. It makes it very difficult to follow and race them because their driving is so erratic. The number of times ive slammed into the back of cars because i didn't expect them to brake (because there was no reason to) shame to see thats still the case
It's the exact same as FM7 on this, the midfielders will brake check you all the time, as the first 2 or 3 cars will pull away really fast. Playing on difficult 7 or 8 is pretty much annoying bacause of this.
I feel like the idea behind the upgrade system has more to do with a short-sighted idea, with the end goal being going to the boardroom and going "look how much engagement we're getting!" I don't think that's going to happen, but you have to impress the suits somehow, I suppose. "What are YOU doing to contribute to our sales growth?"
so corporate. Just so...corporate, and I feel so, so bad for this. I know how much this series means to you and the FR community. I do hope it gets fixed and soon, for your sake, and for those who love this series of games.
Thank you for this review, Alex. I've never been so disappointed in the Forza franchise.
They turned into a cash grab company
I feel incredibly strange now, because it was the upgrade system that convinced me to get this game in the first place. In FH5 I never drove any cars stock because I could just upgrade them however I wanted, which was fun, except arguably I never really tried those cars out how they were meant to be, so the new Motorsport appeals to me because you have to spend more time with only a few cars, getting a feel for how they drive as you slowly upgrade them.
It's pretty obvious how this would suck for much of the community though. I hope they tweak the upgrade system in two important ways - first, have the car level stay the same across at the very least the same make of car (such that two of the exact same car should have the same level), and second, ditching linear part unlock (but keeping the car upgrade points system so that you still need to level up the car a bit before you can max out all the upgrades - but if you want weight reduction right away then you should be able to.) But I'm definitely a minority in liking the basic concept of the system.
I like your points. One thing that I'd personally like for them to add is some form of scaling over time.
I know your whole point is wanting to drive the cars as stock. However, 1 or 2+ years down the road or so I don't want to still be grinding out car levels at the exact same rate. If I've been playing that long I want the game to open up and offer me the freedom to play as desired.
one way to balance that is to have spec races where only stock cars are allowed (which was a feature in some of the early games)
The idea behind the upgrade system is actually quite good. But I think it's just badly implemented. It might be fun at the beginning. But I think it quickly becomes boring to grind each car individually.
"except arguably I never really tried those cars out how they were meant to be"
In no Forza game were you ever meant to drive the cars stock outside of specific events. Forza has always been a proverbial sandbox that allowed you to take a car and modify it how you want, within certain limits. That was it's one selling point and this change completely butchered that. The entire point of Forza games was easy, accessible car modding. With that gone in this FM it has become a very, very underwhelming driving game compared to what else is out there.
"the new Motorsport appeals to me because you have to spend more time with only a few cars, getting a feel for how they drive as you slowly upgrade them."
They showed how to do this in a great way in FH5. An event that had you start stock, do a race and then slightly upgrade the car as you did more races in the event.
I like the basic idea, especially for special events like I said above from FH5. I don't like not being able to use money to buy and having upgrades locked behind grinding. That is just anti-gamer changes.
Fully agree with you here and I'm really enjoying the game because of it, but I do get the anger from the more veteran racer groups that know what they are doing and want to get into what they want to do right away. I really like the system but it could definitely be tweaked to improve the experience for the hardcore groups.
I like the idea of manufacturer leveling versus car leveling and also the discounts. Make it so you sort of hold off on some uogrades because it's a lot of money and you're not sure you're going to like this car, but once you've played with it a while and you know you like it, you're free to spend less money on every upgrade.
Level per manufacturer is really good if this has to be the new way forward. As then, a reward (for example for reaching level 51) can be a one make race in a car you haven't might have never driven to which you can quickly build where to stand an chance you need to do the engine swap which unlocks at level 50.
I still think it would've been a far more enjoyable experience if they just went with something like manafacturer affinity. Like what FM4 did, just with the upgrade system. That way you'd get to try a variety of cars while still retaining that ever so-important progression they're constantly going on about.
And lock the classes in career behind progression the FH5 Hot Wheels DLC so start in E and work up so you still start with slower cars
I've played every FM since the og. Have about 20 hours in this new one, and I couldn't agree more with your takes in this video. I respect how you pointed out both the positives and negatives.
Really nailed it in the review for me. That upgrade system is a terrible idea.
The only reason the upgrades system is the way it is, is so that they can force people to play the game longer to earn more money from gamepass
I hope the Forza devs see this and either implement it into this game or take notes for the next Motorsport
Yeah in 6 years
@@andrettransformer true... maybe a better late than never scenario hopefully
All us fans have been doing for the past 6 years is telling them how to make a better game, yet they just don’t care to listen
Its micro$oft I wouldn't bet on them fixing anything. F1 had to do vr mode because fans protested and said they would not buy a new f1 game that didn't have a vr mode so the dev were forced to do it. Thats the only way you'll stop game development from milking games is to protest and effect their profits. Why can't forza and other race sims 3d scan race tracks now? I racing has done this for almost a decade now. Can't really claim to be race sims if you can't do basics like 3d scanning tracks. Its the simplest way to make race tracks and make them true with all the bumps and what not of the real tracks
Yeah, what a great idea. Make everyone buy the next game to get things we asked for in this game... 🙄
They really said "people want progression in Forza, instead of making it more rewarding to get higher level cars, how about we make it hard to upgrade every car?"
honestly starting to feel like sim/real world racing games are just becoming a dead genre. the monetization inherent in motorsport is just gonna eat new games alive
I don't check out this channel as often as I'd like. Shane on me. But i always come here when theres a new racing game I'm excited for. You always test thise games in whats most important for me! Fun! So thank you!
what pisses me off about forza is how they intentionally cut cars to add later as a "free update". horizon 4 ended with 700 something cars, and horizon 5 releases with 500 cars. over time, it is now back up to 700, but now motorsport is coming out with.... 500 cars. obviously it makes no sense to add offroaders, but the rest of the cars being missing on launch is just silly. It's also extremely silly to launch without nurburgring. one of the worlds most famous race tracks, and they are promising it in a free update months after launch? im sure the game will be good in a year and thats when im waiting to buy it.
PGR3 had enormous picturesque parking areas you could place your customized garage cars in. You could walk around and take photos. It was stellar.
Man I wish PGR would come back but I doubt it'll with Bizarre Creations not existing anymore and with Forza popularity.
As you said, they could have just made it really expensive to purchase upgrades unless your car was a certain level, at which point it would be either really cheap or outright free. Encourage the idea of driving a certain car (or manufacture) frequently to avoid breaking the bank, or allowing players to bypass that if they have the cash to spare. It's not rocket-science.
It's impressive that they had all this time to analysis the good and bad of Gran Turismo 7, and they decided to take the most absurd route possible.
I'm also disappointed that the "stupid" cars seem to be missing. Things like the Cadillac Limousine, GMC Vandura, Ford Transit Supervan, HUMMER H1, Willys Jeep, Volkswagen Beetle, DeLorean DMC-12... It seems shitboxes in general are missing. That's disappointing, because I always found it fun to take a shitbox and see how high I could upgrade it before it became undriveable.
We waited six years for this. And they somehow made a game WORSE than Forza 7...
go play horizon if that's what you want to do. that game already exists and is boring.
@@mervunit I find the "stupid" cars tend to be some of the most fun to race. FH is all well and good, but I think I should be allowed to race official tracks if I so please.
Plus pit stops aren't a thing in FH, which means extended races aren't possible.
@@Dat-Mudkip yea i mean two different games that have different appeals. I'd rather not have a hummer ramming everyone off the track in a race like it used to be. Beetle, delorean and shitboxes like that are fine and will probably come along through the course of the game with it being a "live" game. I think there's still plenty of shitboxes here as they haven't removed ferrari from the game tho.
What you're saying, in this video, is exactly what longtime Forza fans have been saying for more than a decade. They should just remake Forza 4 with upgraded graphics, cars, tracks and conditions. They don't make this game for car people anymore, they make it for people who don't know what they're doing in real life. Thank you for saving me money on this game. I've given up on this franchise because they've lost their way.
The upgrading system is a joke. If they really wanted to lock them behind doing stuff then they should have made them unlockable through the campaign. And of course make the campaign better. This game is just a skeleton that might become good at some point but why not at the start? I'm fed up with modern gaming
All of you are misunderstanding Forza this is a games as a service game there are no DLCs they're planning on 10 years of updates and track editions car editions and they're also fighting several legal battles with several European car manufacturers who have refused to give them the license to put the cars in the game because of the more realistic damage modeling
There are already DLC's, what are you talking about? I also can guarantee you there will be microtransactions down the road, it's clearly built for it. Also devs should stop making every game GaaS, it's a model where the bubble is already about to burts and there is only a place for a handful of those games. There is only so much time in the day for people, a lot of them are not interested in a GaaS game and the others are already invested in other franchises. Stop trying to shoehorn games into that model, it won't work for 99% of them. But it makes it more clear why it is missing so much content (but not why it took 6 years, I have a feeling this game went through development hell).
The MFR level sounds so great compared to the per car level. I would love that. I would also be somewhat okay with the upgrade system as is IF the career mode was longer. I still have not finished FM7 career because there is so much to do and it is fantastic. Completing one of the cups had so much pride and achievement for me. Seeing the limited career mode here made me very sad as I just don't really race multiplayer. Like you said, I don't have a large community to just do races with and I also don't want to drive in the average forza lobby.
I was looking forward to this game and now I am a bit put off it... I might go back and finish FM7 while waiting to see if they change anything on the new FM.
Hey, do you know where to download the FM7?
I like the upgrade because it trains you on a vehicle and you can see the benefits of each individual upgrade.
Exactly, sounds great. Like Grid 3.
I think the tyre physics, weather and progression system all look pretty good, but there’s no where near enough innovation or progression here considering they’ve had 6 years to work on this.
Horizon 5 has the same A.I. issue. First and second place A.I. basically drives on rails. Everyone else is a basically a slow moving pylon. And once you're in first, everyone just gives up and you win with a huge lead.
Some very bizarre decisions been made there, with that restrictive career mode, and baffling car leveling upgrades system. They had a system that worked perfectly well, was fun, and allowed great experimentation with cars and classes... and yeeted it out of the window...
They don't want you to have fun, they want to keep you on the game for as long as possible.
@@Bmxchrome This is exactly why, the bean counters want to trot out all the hours wasted as "player engagement" to their shareholders.
Because the game is being included on Gamespass they want to keep people playing as long as possible, it is a truly disappointing time to be into gaming, Forza Motorsport 4 was my favorite game growing up, all of these these games are a shadow of their former selves :(
@@vaughanjanczik1558 That's very true. Thankfully on PC we still have solid indies but AAA gaming is in such a pathetic state now.
agreed, love a good indie game
@@Asytra
Sega GT 2002. That game did the 'owning a car' feeling just the right way.
Ooh I had forgotten about sega GT, god that was an excellent game
Honestly the situation with alfa, lancia and fiat is so weird. I would write it off as a licensing issue like in horizon 5, if not for the fact that the presence of the giulietta suggests that they do indeed hold the rights. Maybe they added it last minute and the other cars are coming back in a future update, but man if it’s not disappointing to have another forza game launching without these brands
Laguna Short = The original Laguna layout from the 60's. This layout does not exist anymore IRL (the portion that cuts out Andretti Hairpin is where RVs park now).
I wonder if their vision was to have horizon for more freedom (not only for the world itself but upgrades etc as well) and motorsports for something more realistic/serious (could be improved quite a bit still)
Just a thought
But then there's not enough classes to race with if we're going to focus on motorsports. They don't have a full field of LM HyperCars, GTEs, GT3s, GT4s, BTCC, WTCC etc. I understand wanting to make it more serious....but then If I can't race against a full field of modern GT3s why would I bother with FM, when iRacing or ACC do the same?
The whole point of FM was that you could build your own racecar to their classes and then race them. Safe to say I won't be buying this one.
@@sameermohideen4913 Exactly. And ACC doesn't have nearly enough variety and lacks any real career mode, and iRacing is a paid monthly online subscription, which is a total non-starter for many. I'm dying for a proper/serious track motorsports game with a serious and substantial career mode and a good variety of cars with realistic grids available on console/playable offline. Those games were my bread and butter growing up, and there just aren't any left.
@@sameermohideen4913it's on gamepass so you don't have to buy it, just play it for them to make money. Are you not going to play it either or are you going to try it out and realize that things change and change is okay? Or are you one of those people who play madden every year because it's the same game?
Well, it sounds like I wasted my money on a pre-order for this one (yes, that's on me) and it was the first one where I really wasn't sure about it for years now because it sounded like they were building something that felt like a modern online game. I should have trusted my gut (I told myself a couple of years ago to not pre-order this one) but I couldn't help myself with how much I have enjoyed the series over the years.
I also really hope they are not going to bait-and-switch microtransactions, but who am I kidding (this game is made for microtransactions, I give them a month or 2 to put them in). Forza Motorsport 4 was my favourite one and everything after that has gone downhill imo. I have a feeling this game was originally meant to have been a purely online game and they refactored it and quickly put in some single player, it looks like it isn't done yet. The fact that they are going to release more content over the coming months makes it feel like a mobile game or battle royal game, it's somewhat pathetic.
I mainly go through career mode in these games as I generally don't enjoy driving online, so I will probably be done in a week. I have also always loved the collecting aspect, but if there is no content that's going to be impossible to do. Chances are this is going to be the last time I give them money for Forza Motorsport, it also feels like this is supposed to be their last attempt and they are trying to make this go on forever. I will stick to Horizon from now on.
I’ve been itching for a new simcade circuit racer, so I was hoping FM8 would fill that void. The career mode being this bad is brutal, I’ll think I’ll just go back and replay FM3 or 4 instead.
REALLY wish the old Motorsports were backwards compatible. I almost wonder if they just won’t bother adding them ever because they know people will play them and call T10 out for their bullshit
another option for progression would be locking cosmetic aero bits behind car level. so when you join a multiplayer hopper you can tell who has put in time on a car and who’s just following the meta.
sucks that you have to grind a car in unfun events to get to the fun bits
I just finished watching the video and thank you Alex for being completely honest about the frustrations you have about the game.
Honestly I'd just suggest sticking with FH5 since it's that bad
Sticking with fh5 seems more like a punishment
i actually despise the need to level up every car to be able to fully modify it!
It's insane that Starfield doesn't have some kind of rover to get around a planet with additional storage capacity. That's a massive oversight.
If i remember correctly PGR4 had different garages that you could place your cars in and walk around, it was brilliant, i spent ages arranging them and looking around
Ive been passing on these driving games lately after watching your reviews. They all seem to have downsides that over shadow what a fun racing game is supposed to be. another pass. Thanks for the honesty!
So as a kid I played Forza 2 as my intro to the series and spent hours learning the new language of automotive engineering and mechanics and translating those physical principles into track speed was the core gameplay loop, every iteration of the game since has been more streamlined with autoupgrades, free downloadable user reviewed tuning setups and silly gigantic vehicles that lie outside the gamephysics accuracy range, botching their default tune and thus PI, they optimised out this core gameplay loop.
Introducing a new currency just for upgrades reminds me of GW Warhammer's balancing scheme with points, and allows you to restrict cars based on how close they are to stock, as well as the existing PI system, adding another dimension of balance. Builders cups remind me of deck building games, MOBAs and AOEii (the best game ;)) which adds progress through the stages as yet another dimension for balance. These changes all work to rid the franchise of the pervasive, vapid, childish bonecrusher (or whatever next meta car) and redirect the series away from GTAV (which I love btw) and closer to something that resembles a racing game.
thanks for this review Alex, i wanted to buy the game but for now im gonna skip it. please let us know when the fix their mistakes
Buy it anyway
All I want to do in Forza Motorsport is Rivals.
They killed experimentation with this progression.
And yes, career is too short, and you can't change race length. No endurance races either!
That whole upgrade shit SUCKS. Like the whole thing about Forza, the FUN in Forza, is upgrading cars to compete with others, like taking a Lotus Elan to R class, and having fun battling a Lexus saloon and an SUV for track position. Not just in single-player, but ESPECIALLY online. Builds and tunes are what make the game, and to have it locked behind such a rigorous system that one could only hope to tune a few select cars that you grind out for too long of a time completely ruins it.
I hugely respect the honest and in depth review.
Honestly looks like an expansion for FM7
I lost a challenge and I need a forfeit can you name ten foods and ten sauces to go on my head please make sure it's messy and disgusting thanks for your help
You beat me to it...or what fm7 should have been
I agree 100% about the car points I wish Forza never messed with it I also HATE the Bathurst isn’t in the game yet, it’s a crime for someone who lives in Australia
V8 Supercars and no Mt Panorama. What the hell man.
@@Solomon_Grundy the v8 Supercars we have are all out dated anyway, the FGX, vf holden, and the Nissan Altima with no livery
A car list that seems designed to make you pay for DLC 6 months after release
Terrible AI
Horrendus upgrade system.
Yep. There goes my hype for this game.
How could both Forza and GT drop the ball so badly on their career modes? It seems like arguably the easiest thing to get right. Just make sure that every car can compete in AT LEAST two events. Give them a purpose
Nobody cares about career modes. Play gran turismo for that. Not being a dick but idk why anyone expected them to make a good career when the starter car is a 500hp car
@@unrealmagic6519
Speak for yourself, it's basically the only reason why I play the Forza games (same for GT and most racing games). I know a lot of people mainly play it for online racing, but I don'[t care about that as it only makes me angry when some idiot rams me of the road. Been there, done that, I am done with racing online in these games. To be fair I have dabbled in some online races with the Horizon games the last couple of years, but not a lot as it's not something I am really looking for.
So the main reason why I play these is to go through career mode and to collect cars. I get plenty of time and enjoyment out of that typically, but this is probably going to first Forza game (with the exception of the first Horizon) where I am not going to get even close to 100 hours. FM5 might have been a little less as well because I really didn't like that one that much either (don't remember why). And yes, they are going to add more events, but they have worked on it for 6 years, I would assume them to deliver a finished product instead of a free to play style game while charging for it.
I was really considering getting this game, and first minutes of this video made me really want it. But that upgrade system made me refuse to get the game at all... I loved the freedom the previous games had, as you said, could bring an MR2 up to B-class for fun. Or see how crazy you could turn a poor Beetle into a monster.
But this upgrade system, even if you are in love with a single car, I know I will get tired of driving x number of races with the same exact car, without ability to upgrade...
I also want progression, but make me start in a beaten Beetle in E-class, and work my way up to R-class, or some other way, not this...
Thanks for showing this, I'll save my money thanks to you!
It's funny how people were insistent that people who hated the Car XP system simply didn't know what they wanted from the developers, and that this is the only way we can get "progression". Turns out you can still buy the most expensive car in the game really early and all it does is just make you grind pointlessly. LOL
I think the reason why the car list feels empty is cuz they haven’t fully finished balancing some of the vehicles and/or modeling them, so they will come as weekly cars
Your thumbnail saying "What have they done...", and Rory Alexanders thumbnail saying "They nailed it..." 🤣
Makes no never mind to me, I'm firmly in the hardcore sim crowd, and I wouldn't get a Forza game in any case.
But it'll be interesting to watch the YT battles. 😁
Honestly, when I heard about the upgrade system a couple weeks ago, I went from looking forward to this game for the last 6 years, to removing it from my must buy list altogether. I will wait and see if they change it, or I'll wait til I can get the game on a deep discount.
Progression is easy. Just make the 'career' start with slow ass D class cars, and work your way up through winning championships.
Also you discount after leveling idea is basically how (The best Forza) Forza 4 worked.
The Manufacturer Affinity level is what was brilliant in earlier FM. But you're right. The built not bought racecars were what was so great in FM. Maybe they're trying to make it more serious, so that a riced out MR2 isn't slapping an Audi R8 GT3 around the circuit, but the balancing of upgrades is not the same as removing all the fun. This game has potential but the current system feels similar to the one initially introduced for SWBF2 - minus actually buying the car levels (which I'm sure they'd offer if they could without getting berated by the community).GT7 launched with issues too with so hopefully FM learns quickly.
Car Mechanic Simulator 2018 does the sense of ownership thingy very well with all the cars in a parking garage, there's so many racing games that could take that approach.
Test drive unlimited. We will have a new One Next year, i hope its good
Remember the giant wall of hundreds of squares of championships in FM4, each sometime being hours long of racing through a series? So now were down to like 12 of that equivalent? What were they doing for 6 years? I held out hope. I didnt expect it to be this bad.
The best way I can describe the car list is it feels like a live service car list. Just enough to not make you upset, but too few to be the "final product", but deadlines and such
This will be the first Forza since FM3 that I won't be getting unless they change the upgrade system...
I've always been super hype for new Forza games, but I literally don't feel anything for this one purely because they completely destroyed the fundamental part of what makes a Forza game into a Forza game...
Forza is all about freedom. The ability to buy a car and upgrade it however you want... Drag car, drift car, realistic track day car, or full on hardcore track car with engine swaps and AWD swaps etc.
With this new FM they completely killed that freedom, locked it behind endless hours of grinding and therefore it doesn't even feel like a Forza game anymore to me.
We continue to be lacking a track racing sim with a decent single-player career since Project Cars 2, and the car list there was weak.
Forza Motorsport doesn't have enough cars to fill out any particular 'class' in a race without huge numbers of identical repeat cars and the "career" mode is a bunch of weird short races thrown together seemingly at random.
Gran Turismo just doesn't have enough of a composed career mode -- well behind even the classic Gran Turismo titles. Project Cars 3 is a totally different sort of game and is complete garbage.
WRC Generations is actually quite good, but is obviously only the WRC series.
I just want an updated version of a proper, hardcore, career track-racing sim on console. Something made by and for big motorsports fans. A spiritual successor to PC2 with a much bigger list of licensed cars.
Hey Alex, it has been about 10 months since this video. Has the car leveling system improved? My wife and I love Forza but have been hesitant to buy it due to the car leveling system. I know we could sign up for Xbox Live if we wanted to but I'd rather just buy the one game I want outright and be done paying Microsoft. Thank you for the years of entertainment.
The upgrade situation hasn`t been an issue for me so far, but I do see the potential of it becoming an issue for me in the future. It`s a system that in my opinion has been working well so far within the context of the career mode, but will potentially be a big hinderance once I finish that part of the game, and move on to other modes. I hope that they`ve left themselves the option to change the system down the road because, if nothing else, I would like for the car level to be model specific rather the individual car specific. I also hope that they add more events to the career mode as frequently as possible, and with championships that utilise as much as the car list as possible, and that leverages the quirky and oddball side of the car roster.
Other than that, I`ve really been enjoying the game so far (other than the crashes between races, specificly while upgrading my Megane RS during the affordable performance cup), and none of the issues I`ve had (whether a bug, gameplay related, or due to the design choices they`ve made) have been more than a minor inconvenience to me so far, let alone a deal breaker
The few cars I'd love to see in Forza,aren't there still. The Corvair had *one* entry in the entire series. And I had a ton of fun back in the day racing classic Corvairs. They were a blast to drive even if they weren't the fastest.