Most of what you posted backs up the OP, except that you say that engine and drivetrain swaps are possible, there are leaderboards and that the tuning storefront does exist, but it has been revamped. Anybody want to chime in on this?
Everything else you describe as "correct" or have no comment or else you agree with the OP but have reservations, like "free play" being limited. Describing Free Play support in Forza 5 as limited is still correct and not in any way misleading as far as I can tell.
No need for my approval to post it here ;P
so here it is. left media quotes and marked parts as "personal opinions" out of it.
its 1:1 from the PM so keep that in mind: i talked to a person, not about the subject and you start reading it in the middle of the write up.
my parts are bold, rest from OT
@ Cipher Soze quote
Decimated car and track count, and the whole 'built from the ground up' talk is nothing but PR hot air.
> first topic is a very tough one. old tracks have been redone. that is a fact. but they re not redone from zero. they have overhauled them. bad cars from before haven't been taken to fm5 1:1. they have definitely put work into them.
so what is the point?
t10s PR by employees "we started from scratch" is BS. but also they didn't take things over from fm4.
No Public lobbies
> correct. no public custom lobbies. worst feature cut. they did that already in fm3! (another discussion: why do they laser scan tracks to become a better sim, if they cut such features out?)
No Clubs
> correct
No gifting of cars or paints (say goodbye to collabs)
> 1) no gifting cars is correct
> 2) paints are free now. not correct (see below)
Free Play has been stripped.
> tough one...
free play before: go onto a track, take any car. thats it
free play now: free customization of racing! like starting a multiplayer lobby.
BUT some cars are not available for rent (for free) like the modern F1 lotus. indy cars, classic F1, LMP1 cars are all available! special cars (defined by t10) are not available.
- so this is half an opinion by Cipher Soze and half a wrong assumption/ fact.
No Auction House or Storefront.
> 1) auction house is out. correct
> 2) storefront is revamped! you can still get designs and tunings from others player. but you dont buy them anymore. they are free. the seller gets cash every time his stuff is being used by others.
- its not a feature cut. its a system redone
Tuning has been dumbed down to an extent ( engine and drive swaps )
> I don't get this part. you can still swap engines and drive trains. maybe some special things at some manufactures are meant. but it is still ingame and every car i bought gave me the possibility to do so.
No community leaderboards. ( offset somewhat by rivals leaderboards )
- I don't understand this part. leaderboards are even integrated into the career mode. you can go to rivals and do hot laps (which was cut in FM3 & FM4) for every track & class. leaderboars are still a big part of the game
No affinity for car parts. ( WTF )
> correct
Intrusive monetizing offers which are eight times more expensive than FM4.
> never did the maths.
@ your note "(Note: There *is* free play support, but it seems to be limited)"
as said, its rather optimized and just cut by some car models.
@ Seanspeed quote
- Manufacturer affinity is gone. This was something that also could have used some tweaking, but was otherwise a very good idea. Before, you could basically get free upgrades quite quickly. That could have used changing. It was definitely too quick. But again, people liked the system and it didn't warrant taking out. The fact that you can use tokens to buy upgrades now makes it blatantly obvious what the intentions were here.
> it is not gone! with every level of manufacturer affinity you gain, you gain more % of income.
- Free Play no longer allows you to drive any car in the game. Before, while some cars were quite expensive, it didn't stop people from the enjoyment of driving them if they wanted to. You just wouldn't own the car, couldn't customize it or race it in career. This was a fantastic compromise, as you could test drive anything you wanted and even if you couldn't afford an expensive car you really liked, you could still get to experience it out on-track. With that gone, it really pushes at the car collector types to pay real money.
> correct. see my text before. most of the cars are still available.
- No buying/selling paints/setups/vinyls. You can still make some money off of this, but there will clearly not be any sort of ecosystem built around this like before. No reason for this to have happened. People *loved* the way it was.
> 1) no more buying of paints, setups, vynils. everything is for free.
> 1.1) selling of the told things is done on another way (as already said)
>2) personal opinion
- Buying cars and upgrades, the game definitely treats 'car tokens' as an equally viable way of bartering. Every step of the way, prices are given in credits and tokens, with equal font size and all, even going as far as having a little pop-up menu to 'confirm' whether you're going to buy with credits or tokens.
> i dont understand this part. yes, you can alway pay with credits or tokens. for everything. cerdit price is alway lower.