As a long time Forza Motorsport fan, I have mixed feelings about this. I made the switch from GT to FM, when waiting for GT5 was hopeless and I was really surprised what FM2 offered. I was hooked. But the features that created the strong community around the game (public lobbies, auction house), have been chopped up, changed or deleted over the years. It went a similar way as the Battlefield franchise. BF 1942 and BF2 had such great communites. You still play the new ones today, but it is a way different experience. Same goes for Forza Motorsport.
Forza Horizon became a juggernaut in the racing world and nothing will change that. But I dont see FM to rise to a similar position again. The competition is tough and many moved to AC or more hardcore sims.
There are three points FM needs to have a strong and lasting playerbase. First they need to get their graphics and lighting as close to realism as possible. Nobody wants "cardboard trees" or a colour plalette from the Xbox 360 days. Second they need to offer a simulation of serious racing (racing rules, driver ratings, flag system, pitstops, qualifying) to interest the hardcore audience. That also includes an overhaul in the ffb and physics department. And last, they need to offer a similar or better experience than Assetto Corsa to get the players back who are just passionate car guys. Those who got a racing wheel and cruise a bit at Shutoko Wangan, the Nordschleife tourist drivers and the drift community. You can catch those with the right content and features.
But that is just wishful thinking. Turn 10 became so distanced from their fans over the years. Unlike Playground Games. It has been so obvious what the community wanted over the years and they didnt do anything to please them. Their "vision" always went strange ways. It was always sad to see, because the base game and physics are very good. But they have to prove themselves, because the trust from the players has left a long time ago.
Absolutely!
Just when I think Turn 10 is starting to make progress, they somehow screw it up. Forza has been miles ahead of everyone else when it comes to drifting. Games that are more arcade such as NFS could never get it right. For everything the sim racers get right, none of them have anything close to realistic drifting. For all Forza's faults... Turn 10 I assume just got lucky, and created an engine that just nailed drifting.
And after the masterpiece that was Forza 4 what did Turn 10 do to capitalize on their luck? Absolutely nothing. Both Forza 5 and 6 added nothing new for drifting, while making sure Fujimi Kaido was nowhere to be found.
Then... Almost as an afterthought to Forza 7, Turn 10 finally seemed to turn things around. They added plenty of drift inspired cars, as well as tweaking the physics a bit, and adding drift suspension setups. Drifters rejoiced. Seeing that their work was being praised, Turn 10 must have decided that they didn't want that kind of attention. So they immediately made it so that drifting scores were tied to the racing line. Drifters who previously would look at every hairpin or chicane, and practice to perfection the best way to attack them in order to maximize their drift score were now reduced to following the same line that was used for beginner racers. All the creativity and practice couldn't compete with a player with half the skill that simply stuck to the line.
Forza also set the standard for it's paint and livery editor. Once you figured out how to manipulate the editor, the only limit was your imagination. From anime to cartoony to realistic landscapes. You could paint your car any which way you liked and then race with it in online.
Never to let a good feature go to work, Turn 10 decided to test the whole "Go woke, go broke" theory. Someone who spent the last decade racing a 69 charger painted like the Dukes of Hazzard, suddenly found himself banned because of the flag on top. Breasts a bit too big on that anime character? Banned. There were even a few instances of people that were banned for having cars with Japan's rising sun on it... Only it was discovered that those people were driving cars that they had never painted at all. They just happened to be cars that came with a liberty walk body kit and livery, with their logo being the rising sun. So people using in game assets created by Turn 10... Were banned for it.
The last development that Turn 10 did for Forza 7 was to address the ramming and driving habits of online play. They went back through the game and created boundaries for all tracks so that time deductions could be implemented for those who tended to cut corners. They tweaked the collision physics so that salty players couldn't punt others into another dimension. Really good work overall.
Did Turn 10 activate any of those features at large scale? No. Instead, they included them into only a couple of classes. To make sure they completely wasted all their efforts though, they made sure to advertise their all new reporting function, and announced that it would be entirely run by Forza community members, and then turned out the lights and left. Somebody salty that you ran faster laps, and decided to report you? Banned. Just to stick it to players even harder, their newly implemented ban system was strict and nonnegotiable. 1st ban= 7 days, 2nd ban= 1 month, 3rd ban= 1 year. People who had waited for a sale to buy the game, were buying the game and trying to race online. Seeing as Forza has no beginner lobbies populated anymore, and with no skill based matchmaking... New players had no choice but to learn in the same lobbies as everyone else. As soon as they bumped someone who decided to report them... Banned. There were people who bought the game, and within a couple of days had been reported 2 or 3 times. Seeing as it often takes a couple of days for a community member to view the report. They'd issue a 7 day ban on the first one, only for another community member to see the second report the next day, and issue a 1 month ban. There were people who were already banned for an entire year mere days after purchasing the game. Mind you there's no in game communication that tells you this. To get banned on literally every other game out there, you have to intentionally cheat, mod, or knowingly break the rules to get banned. Forza 7 requires only that you play and get reported by someone.
I'm a long time Forza fan, but Turn 10 has almost completely turned me off of having anything to do with them.
