izigame.me

We waited 6 years… for this? It’s crazy that Microsoft managed to undercook a cake that has been in the oven for 6 years. What’s supposed to be the definitive Motorsport experience is now walking on the same path as Halo Infinite: Release it buggy & incomplete, finish the game later.

“BUILT FROM THE GROUND UP”

Build from the ground up this, built from the ground up that.... It was by far the most stressed quote during Forza Motorsport’s marketing. Here’s what’s improved:

- Massively improved physics & handling model, including 8-point contacts for tires with 360hz update rate & better wheel support
- Fuel & Tire Strategy
- A new penalty system (which sometimes punishes the rammed instead of rammers)
- Challenge the grid for singleplayer, where you can choose the starting position before a race.
- Improved multiplayer with practice laps, qualifiers, Safety & Skill rating, spec races where everyone drives the same featured car with same upgrades & tuning.
- Skip lap in Rivals
- FOV slider for PC & XBOX
- And more…

And here are what's not:

- Over 450 cars missing from Forza 7. I guess they're gonna reintroduce them as "new content" for their live service
- Always online for single player. If the servers have issues then no one will be able to play the game. Plus, by doing this, Turn10 has put an invisible expiration date to their game. If one day Microsoft decides to shut down the servers, your game is unplayable.
- Forced 60 FPS lock in multiplayer. It’s 2023 & physics are still being tied to framerate. Not even the biggest esports like CS, Valorant, R6, League dares to force FPS lock for everyone.
- No drift events, No Drag racing.
- Many outdated car models that hasn’t been updated since original Xbox/360 games.
- 360 degrees cockpit wheel turn.
- No drift tires
- No rear wheel steering
- No Auction House
- No digital speedometer. Only option is Analog
- Missing car color customization options
- And more…


HORRIBLE PERFORMANCE, BUGS & GLITCHES EVERYWHERE

My RTX 3060 laptop is struggling to maintain a stable 60 FPS even on lowest setting with DLSS on quality, meanwhile this mid-tier laptop has no problem getting 120+ FPS on the same lowest setting with no frame drops or stutters in FH5. And it’s not just my issue. People have been posting images where their RTX 4090 even fails to reach 40 FPS.
Even if I pretended that the game is well optimized & this is the max performance my laptop could produce, it’s still unacceptable. Not everyone has access to a RTX4090 & I9-13900K, and they shouldn’t cause even the mid-tier PCs to suffer even on lowest settings, just to make their game 10% more beautiful like Starfield. Remember, “diminishing returns” exists.
Visit Turn10’s official known issues list, you’ll be stunned with the incredibly long list of issues. From the buggy replay system, infinite loading screen, to career mode not saving progress, people have been posting bugs & glitches everywhere on social media for the last few days. It makes me beg a question: What the hell have they been doing during the last 6 years? Where’s quality control?

WHO ASKED FOR CAR LEVELING?

Forza players have been asking for better career progression for years. They want to start with low-level/economy cars then slowly work towards high-end hypercars. Instead of that, Turn 10 gave us a Call of Duty-esque CarPG progression, Where instead of buying upgrades with credits, you have to level up to earn Car Points for upgrades. It’s a very controversial system. Some like it, while many others (including me) don’t.
Here's the good:

- You can reset upgrades without credit cost, and all car points are refunded when resetting upgrades.
- It frees the headache of making finacial decisions between upgrading a car & buying a new one.

So why is it bad?

- The new progression system does not give what players want. They asked for zero-to-hero type of progression, and this system fails to deliver that. Everyone can just buy a hypercar from the start if they have enough in-game credits. Heck, high-end cars are now much cheaper than before (highest ~500K credits).
- It’s repetitive. All upgrades’ unlock requirements are the same for 500+ cars.
- Once a car reaches level 50, you earn no progress towards upgrades. Now you have to make a decision between leveling up a different stock car, or stick with your max level cars.
- It straight up discourages players from trying different cars. Why bother spending 4-6 hours leveling a car just to find it not as good as others, when you can just max level a meta car & stick with it instead?
- It hurts tuners & photographers a lot. Their fun is all about customizing cars, and having to spend 3-5 hours leveling a car before being able to tinker around with it isn’t fun. Now repeat the same routine for 500+ cars…. Ugh.
- Since the time investment for leveling cars is enormous, hosting private races & tournaments is much more difficult now. Players will face major disadvantages if their cars aren’t levelled up, and It’ll be a nightmare for organizers to test a lot of cars in order to create proper rules & restrictions.

CarPG must've been made not to be fun & engaging, but with the sole intention to please investors by having players always repeating the same grind and prolonging the player numbers, hours played or whatever metric they aim for to present it to their investors.

AN EXAMPLE OF BAD LIVE SERVICE GAMES

Forza Motorsport is literally a great example of bad live-service games: release an early access buggy mess that meets the bare minimum of being playable, then improve it later with updates. While the core gameplay is still intact & incredibly fun, almost everything else is half-baked. It’s like a gem covered in stinky poo poo, when the owner doesn't respect its value. I recommend not giving them money & not pampering them for just passing the bare minimum, but instead buying this game 1 year later while on a sale, when the game is fixed.
3.5 built from the ground up/10