Thread: Forza 7
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Old 20 Sep 2017, 12:23 (Ref:3768773)   #10
Accident
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Accident should be qualifying in the top 3 on the gridAccident should be qualifying in the top 3 on the gridAccident should be qualifying in the top 3 on the grid
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Originally Posted by Akrapovic View Post
It's almost brilliant marketing by them that they're even seen as being in a lose lose situation. They created that situation, and the way to resolve it was to sell you old stuff that they made years ago. That's absolutely incredible marketing, because they've convinced the consumer they're doing something good by bringing back old stuff, and you have to pay to get it.

It's not just that the old cars were missing, it's not just that they sold you the old cars again. It's the fact they're raising the price of a game to have less content, then selling you the old unedited content from a previous game. They didn't even bother making new car models or textures for the majority of it - they just straight up converted it over, complete with all the little inaccuracies and old racing liveries, etc. I'm not bothered if cars aren't 100% accurate, but it was a dead give away that they're just selling you stuff from old games, at additional cost, whilst making it seem like they're doing good.

It doesn't require you to be a cynical person to understand that they're purposely cutting out content that they've already made, just so they can re-sell it to you. I am 100% for DLC. I believe a developer should get paid for their work. But I am 100% against developers cutting content from the next game, just so it can be re-sold as DLC. Forza is turning into the Sims.
Unless you have worked on the game I'm not so sure you can say it was just copy/pasted "unedited" cars from Forza 4... Some of them did have modelling errors (and still do in FM6) from their earlier scans, but they were touched up a bit and had to be adapted to the evolved physics engine. I'm not so sure any of us can really say how easy it was to put them into Forza 5, other than that it was obviously easier than making all new cars. It sure wasn't creative or exciting though either.

Again, I didn't like it either, and I didn't buy the game because of it... But just because they did it once for Forza 5 doesn't mean they are doing it every time. I am quite the cynic, but when Forza 6 came out and had somewhere around twice the car list of Forza 5 and the DLC brought a bunch of new interesting cars to the series (and admittedly a few really **** ones too), it seems like they were kinda "done" with that tactic.

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Again, that's incredible marketing from their stand point. They've convinced people that a car pass doesn't contain all the cars. Games now ship with 10+ versions of each game, with multiple different pass types. It's unreasonable to expect everybody to research every game to that level. There's even discussions on dedicated Forza forums about what the best way to actually buy all the content is - when you have people unsure how you actually get all the content, it's obvious something is wrong. You shouldn't need to research a game to understand what you're buying. A car pass doesn't contain all the cars.

Before, a pass was a pass. A DLC pass got you all the DLC. A car pass got you all the cars. Now it isn't that simple, and a car pass is only good for a little while.
I don't really like the pass system much either, and there are some games that do have different versions, but it really isn't hard to figure out for Forza. The "car pass" plainly states that it contains the first 6 packs. After that you buy the rest individually.

Maybe they should rename it? "First 6 car pack bundle" or something? The result is the same: you pay less for the first 6 car packs by committing to them for an upfront cost.

People should research what they are buying if they care. If someone is upset enough about it to complain about it afterwards and not buy future products, then that indicates they should have done their research before buying it the first time.

If they put everything for Forza 6 in a pass (10 car packs, 2 expansions) it probably would have cost somewhere around $80 and then people would have complained about how it costs as much/more than the game does... So I imagine it's a marketing thing again. I guess they figure the pass at $30 doesn't seem like too significant of an investment to scare people off/draw too many complaints.

Regardless of how it's named though I don't think it's hard to look at the content and decide whether you feel it's worth it or whether you want to wait for it to go on sale or just pass on it all together.

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I completely mistyped, my bad! I didn't mean every track is fictional, I meant "now it's all the fictional tracks", as in, all of the fictional tracks now follow this 'style' of being overly daft and unrealistic with long flowing corners and minimal braking zones. I am all for fictional tracks, but I much preferred the Gran Turismo route of fictional tracks (back in the day), where the majority of them were from a realistic environment. The Forza way of doing things just isn't fun for me. I prefer them to feel realistic, have sensible road layouts, good braking zones etc. These 'public' roads with high banked corners, not much fun.
I knew you didn't mean literally every course was, it's just that someone who hasn't been following the game closely to read that and be mislead into thinking it's mostly fantasy stuff instead of real tracks.

Fully agree otherwise though. I mean I like open-road rally stuff too, but I want to do that time-attack style on miles and miles of narrow twisty road, not in a loop on some wide-ass road with corners I barely need to brake for with other cars crashing into things.

It particularly frustrates me as Forza 1 had some great realistic fantasy tracks, and other than Maple Valley (one of the least good ones) they have all disappeared. Especially in the case of Rio, as the Forza 1 Rio was a realistic style street circuit, but our new Rio is garbage.

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I've never subscribed to the idea that ignoring it makes it ok. You spent £60 on a game, plus another £60+ on DLC, and then it's still asking you for money for in-game tokens/currency. We've normalised that, and it isn't ok. Since when it's fine to spend over £100 on a game, and then the asks you to spend money money on it?
It's not just ignoring it though as I generally agree on that point and it annoys me in other games... It's the fact that it can be 100% ignored without adversely affecting the game (there's even an option in the menu to turn off all acknowledgement of them) that makes me give it a pass.

Phone games and lots of other games are doing the microtransactions completely differently in that they push you towards them. Either limiting how many times you can play per day unless you buy more credits, or in some games making you use real money to buy "crates" that are basically gambling, those games are designed in a way to entice you into buying the credits/currency/tokens/whatever. Look at GTA for example... A new pack comes out, and a sports car is like $800k, new suit is $100k, new gun is $50k, have to buy a new office for $1.5m+ to access a warehouse that costs another $500k to $1.2m, to access new vehicles that are all $1m+ and it's obviously overpriced to push you into buying a Shark Card.

In Forza 6 the cars are priced reasonably (even ones that should be super expensive ones like 250 GTO and such) and the game throws money and free cars at you like crazy.

Again, I don't like microtransactions either and I don't want to see them pushed, but I wouldn't want someone who hasn't done research to read this thread and think "oh if this game is going to try to make me buy money like GTA (or whatever), then I don't need that" as Forza 6 did not do that at all other than the option existing. Basically, the game wasn't built around microtransactions, they were an afterthought in case someone was (and I can't put enough emphasis on this) extremely impatient, as it is super easy to make money in the game and own all the cars you want without them.

When they build the game around them and everything is priced to try to push you down that route then I too will be most likely looking for another series. As long as they continue like they are, I won't get upset over it.

Watch, they will completely re-work the economy in Forza 7 and it will actually make it hard to get money so it does push people towards the microtransactions, just to spite me.

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No you don't sound argumentative of aggressive at all, and I certainly didn't read it that way. It appears we have different ideas on what we find acceptable in games (not saying my idea is right, just that we differ).

I agree that the game has a lot of technical issues that need solved, and that is a job for the developers. But the route Forza has gone down is worth complaining about as that's a marketing and financial strategy from the bosses. Forza has taken the route of "cut things out, sell it later" and purchasable in-game currency. A route popularised by the Sims* and phone games. Neither of those sets of games should be considered the standard to aim for - those are the bottom of the bottom. Forzas ambition appears to be to go downwards, rather than upwards, and create a user experience which is designed to get even more cash from the customer, rather than create the best user experience. THAT is my problem with it. The development process is more about "Can we monetise this?" rather than "Is this the best possible experience for the user?" In-game currency is a particularly impressive scam, because unlike DLC is requires no continued development from the team. So you're paying for, literally, nothing.

*The Sims is the best example to use as they reset the content every release. Sims 2 comes out, and then you buy DLC for wallpaper, carpet, pets, social clubs, college courses. Then the Sims 3 comes out, all that DLC gets wiped, and then re-sold to you. So you then by DLC for wallpaper, carpet, pets, social clubs and college courses. But they put a sticker on it saying "YOUR FAVOURITE STUFF IS BACK!" and you pay money to get the same thing, copy and pasted into the next game.

Turn10/Microsoft are not the only ones guilty of this. Ubisoft is currently doing it to Rainbow 6, with Season Passes which are only for a year. They class a calendar year as a season, so you need multiple season passes. The amount of mini-DLC packs in that is horrendous too. The only reason they're getting away with it without being slaughtered is that the major DLC is actually free (maps and characters), whilst the season pass doesn't get you anything except a weeks early access, and the mini-DLC is cosmetic only. There are lots of examples of this sort of practice and I don't think it's a good route for games to be going down. So I don't want it to seem like I'm singling out Forza here, just that the thread was about Forza.
I agree on all the pay-for-cosmetic stuff that games are doing and the "resets" and so on... I just don't feel that Forza is a gross offender for this yet. They might become one down the road, but it doesn't seem like that day is here yet.

The "cut things out, sell them again later" thing really only happened with Forza 5. There were only a couple out of the 70~ DLC cars we received in Forza 6 that were older cars. While the car packs aren't the most inspired DLC, they do offer a fair amount of value depending on how you play the game and your taste for the cars in the individual pack.

I see Forza's bigger offense being that it is focusing too hard on appearing "shiny" for marketing rather than working on improving the core product. They do all this stuff with fancy graphics, dramatic looking things that will "wow" people who don't normally play video games, getting Top Gear on board for marketing stuff, getting the latest "hot" cars and so on... Meanwhile, they don't give us the control over tire wear, precise car balancing, and so on that I mentioned before. Rather than focusing on the making the most in-depth product and using the quality and depth to attract people to the game, they do stuff that will sound really cool to random people when they see it on a cardboard standup at Walmart.

Something that is being done very much by other games as well... Ignoring the serious loyal fans and focusing on doing flashy things to draw in new fans, while making sure everything is so simple that anyone can pick it up and play it. We end up with shallow games that are made easier/simpler to accommodate the lowest common denominator.

That being said, the Forza series games are still quite enjoyable to play and a great value in terms of $/hour despite their weaknesses.

Again, I'm not trying to say they are the greatest thing ever, just that if anyone out there is considering it, I encourage them to look into it a bit more, or if you already have an Xbox One, give it a try. It's not the most realistic or in-depth, but it has a huge amount of variety and a big community. Whether you want to replicate past liveries, be a photographer, build crazy vehicles and use them for time-attacks, or whatever, if you are a car enthusiast with a basic interest in circuit racing it would be hard not to find something to do to amuse yourself.

I've got a lot of hours of enjoyment out of them spent with car/racing-loving friends doing our own vintage race series and painting replicas of old liveries and "Top Gear-ing" the new cars into comparison tests and the like...

I help run a racing league and we have 20 or so regulars and another 30-ish part-timers... Not every one of them is amazing company or whatever, and we have to compromise a bit on the realism to accommodate all skill levels, but if anyone is getting the game and wants to give some organized (and semi-organized) racing a try let me know.


Edit: Jeeze what a wall of text...

TL;DR: I just felt the first post was a bit misleading as it made it sound as if every Forza game was a stripped down sell-you-cut-content product that pushed you into spending money on microtransactions with mostly fantasy tracks. Forza 5 was and it sucked, but that's not representative of all of them as Forza 6 was good and it looks like Forza 7 isn't falling back to Forza 5 ways either.
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