Forza Horizon 5: Aztec Boogaloo

[BeardFaceMan]

Anyone been doing the Tours? There's an accolade for doing a S2 Tour but there aren't any in the rotation, and the rotation seems to be about half-a-dozen different races so doing that gets boring quick. Not sure how a game like this can get through QC with this amount of bugs.

Much like the achievement for finding every bonus board, which triggers on 248 out of 250, as if they knew a few of them would be bugged.

It's the treasure chests, when you break one that counts as a bonus board, I've smashed 4 chests and I have 254/250 bonus boards smashed.

[Famous Mortimer]

I found it about ten minutes after posting that above (it was in between two pyramids, on the ground and very easy to get).

I do the tours, because it's a good way to try out new car builds, but there ought to be a few more and, indeed, one for S2 class cars. It's another of those things, though, where you wonder why they haven't fixed it yet.

[Famous Mortimer]

Not really anything to do with anything, but I was just doing the accolade for a cross-country race in a Willys Jeep. I usually try and keep cars at the same rank as the stock, so whacked the jeep up to..a class B, I think it was. Got absolutely murdered, couldn't get above 11th in pretty much any race. Put it up to A, won by so far that I couldn't see any of the other cars on the mini-map.

I didn't become a better driver in the thirty seconds between changing tunings, and they were both good tunings, so I've got no idea. Something to be aware of if you're struggling with a car, though.

[BeardFaceMan]

I would say that in FH5, moreso that the previous FH games, tunings mean everything. A good tuning is worth a lot more than a good car and some cars are only any good with a certain class tuning. That's why I always download tunings, it's confusing as fuck.

I was fucking furious to see that one of the challenges this week was to win an Open event. Not even a race, a whole event. Thought it was going to stop me getting the last achievement i need but thankfully it popped for me when doing the seasonal playground games, though I see it hasn't worked like that for everyone. They really put their foot down on the cunt pedal with some of the challenges this series.

[Famous Mortimer]

Just found this thing while driving around:



I'm not the first, and the sensible money seems to be on it being an artifact that wasn't loaded in properly.

[Zetetic]

I'm pretty sure those are real things in Mexico.

[Wonderful Butternut]

It's a box of drugs.

[Famous Mortimer]

A fun new bug - the "you've got a gift from another player" thing has often disappeared by the time you get to the barn, even if you fast travel there. I'd say it's 50/50 whether it'll be there or not.

And not really a bug, but I hope they sort out open events. I joined a session and just missed the start of a race, so I had the choice of driving round an entirely empty map for five minutes or just quitting. I could perhaps understand that if the game had been out for a few years and not many people were playing it, but they really ought to be able to have every player who wants to, join a new session.

[Famous Mortimer]

Looks like a huge update has just been sent out, fixing a lot of stuff.

https://updatecrazy.com/forza-horizon-5-fh5-update-patch-notes-official-february-1st-2022/

[BeardFaceMan]

That's an awful lot of bugs, isn't it? I know it's a big game and all but they should be frankly ashamed of themselves for releasing it like that.

[BeardFaceMan]

These are arcade accolades are fucking bullshit. That is all.

Actually, no, that's not all, taking away the wheelspins from the car mastery trees is also fucking bullshit.

Now that's all.

[Famous Mortimer]

I'm trying to do the Duck & Weave accolade this afternoon, which involves a "threading the needle" combo in a street race. This requires two non-drivatar cars to be alongside each other so you can drive through the middle of them, and from doing the Marathon street race twice, I drove past maybe a dozen cars, none of which were part of a pair.

Now, I don't mind some accolades having an RNG element, but if they're going to put it in there, then it would be nice to also give the players an occasional chance to get it. More than zero chances every half an hour of street racing time, ideally. But it's weird because almost all the other accolades are dependent on skill, or give you so many opportunities (like the "lucky escape" one, which you can do in pretty much any race at any time) that it's not an issue. But to make one dependent on traffic, then put almost no traffic in the game? 

[BeardFaceMan]

Yeah I had a fucking nightmare of a time with that one, those connection difficulties meant there's barely any traffic. I had better luck doing it on low skill level, I think novice, doing the Marathon and then you can get it with drivatars. Once you've overtaken the pack, if you didn't get it you can just slow down to let them all pass and then they difficulty level is low enough you can catch up to them and try again. I don't know what the speed requirement is exactly but you do need to be going pretty fast for it to pop and you don't just have to drive through the middle of two cars either, you can get threading the needle to pop by passing two cars quickly, weaving in and out of them (pass the first car on it's right side and then pass the next car on it's left side). Unless I'm thinking of a different accolade I'm sure it pops with drivatars.

[Famous Mortimer]

Fuck it, fuck it, fuck it. I have passed through a small space between cars about 10 times in the last few races, and no accolade. Done the thing with passing one on the left, then the other on the right...

[BeardFaceMan]

That's the problem with the game in its current state, there's no way of telling if you're doing it wrong or if the accolade is bugged.

[BeardFaceMan]

How is it that we are this far into the game and there people with 300+ levels of xp and they *still* don't fucking know how to play playground games?

[Huxleys Babkins]

Because you can gain a level just by buying a few cars, making decals, taking a couple of photos or crashing into a load of cacti. It's basically meaningless, which makes it all the more annoying they use it to rank people when matchmaking Playground and Trial. It seemingly can't tell the difference between people who've been really competitive online and people who've spent hours XP and skill farming with gimmick blueprints.

I've barely touched the multiplayer stuff because it's been so buggy and I'm over level 200 already just from doing story stuff and three starring all the PR stunts.

[BeardFaceMan]

Don't you just love stumbling across a great car/tune combo? I have a Bone Shaker with an A class tune that works on every circuit type (only the water on cross country slows it down) and is so good to the point it shouldn't be allowed, it tears unbeatable drivatars to pieces. And now I've just found a Donkervoort D8 GTO with an S1 dirt tune that has allowed me to win my first ever Horizon Open championship, I'm just going through some Rivals tracks with it now and it's a lot of fun to drive and I'm getting some great times. My other fave car is a Subaru Impreza 22B-STi Version with a B dirt tune.

What are your favourite go-to cars, anyone have any good recommendations?

[Famous Mortimer]

Looks like they've rolled out a whole lot of new events and suchlike, presumably to compete in whatever way with "Gran Turismo 7" (which I won't be playing unless someone gives me a PS5 and a copy of it).

And of course, the game crashes every 30 seconds or so. It says "update available" but it won't let me update...ho hum.

[BeardFaceMan]

Just when I was about to stop playing this too. Doesn't look like theres a whole lot of new stuff, accolades are still broken, Horizon Tour still has no S2 races etc. Still no word on the DLC though, that's what I'm waiting for, there's not really enough there to keep me interested any more. Which is fair enough, I suppose, I've played it more or less daily since launch.

[Famous Mortimer]

Ha, they've added a 1,000 CR option to the wheelspin. It seems more of an insult than a reward.

[BeardFaceMan]

That's been there for a while now, they said it was to balance out some of the other prizes. Lost count of the number of times I got a superwheelspin and got 3 green prizes totalling less than 10 grand, not feeling so super any more. And they took most of the wheelspins out of the car upgrade trees too, they made them rarer and worth less. Finally had to sack this off last week, most of what i have left to do is bugged so I'm off it until the first dlc comes out.

[Famous Mortimer]

I popped it on for an hour or so today and noticed they've started doing stunt races in the weekly reward thingie.

Not a bad idea, to increase the things to do in the game, but the Forza mechanics just don't work, I feel, in those sorts of races. The reason they're so much fun in GTA Online is that the physics are nice and zippy, and you can do some pretty fun jumps and so on. But in Forza, your car is a bit more realistic-feeling, and the blocks they build the courses out of aren't always flush, so you'll get issues that a game of this level shouldn't really have.

Still very good fun to drive round, of course, but I think they need to build their stunt races a bit better.

[Huxleys Babkins]

Yeah, lots of getting stuck on the barriers in those stunt races. Also annoying if you have the wrong car and it wants to flip off jumps. I generally pick a small, relatively neutral handling class B car and bland my way through.

The game is in a lot better shape than it was a few weeks back and I feel confident to get stuck in to the seasons now. Just a couple of things that are grinding my literal gears;

Horizon Arcade - Scaling the targets to get past each round depending on the number of cars was a great idea. However, utter wankers have realised they can troll folks by turning up to an Arcade event and just sitting there, doing nothing. It makes it impossible to complete all three rounds and the twats get to bank any points you do manage to get.

Super 7 - Almost every single card I get is "hold accelerator, drive in straight line until finish/ramp". I can understand why; you get a Super Wheelspin if you complete a set. But it needs fixing because it's fucking tedious if you want to play it the way it was intended.

I could go on about The Trial and people not understanding that you cannot win if you racer hard with and wreck your team mates, but I'm like a broken record at this point.

[BeardFaceMan]

Has there been any mention of the future dlc, what they will be, release dates etc?

[Famous Mortimer]

Horizon Arcade - Scaling the targets to get past each round depending on the number of cars was a great idea. However, utter wankers have realised they can troll folks by turning up to an Arcade event and just sitting there, doing nothing. It makes it impossible to complete all three rounds and the twats get to bank any points you do manage to get.

I encountered that the other day and my main thought was "what are you, the person doing nothing, gaining from this experience? Did you just pop to the toilet?"

Super 7 - Almost every single card I get is "hold accelerator, drive in straight line until finish/ramp". I can understand why; you get a Super Wheelspin if you complete a set. But it needs fixing because it's fucking tedious if you want to play it the way it was intended.

A lot of them are even named stuff like "easy points". Sourcing this to the users was a bad idea, definitely. This was a slight problem in FH4, but nowhere near as bad as it is now. Heck, the pro Super 7 in 4 was genuinely difficult.

I could go on about The Trial and people not understanding that you cannot win if you race hard with and wreck your team mates, but I'm like a broken record at this point.

By a distance my least favourite aspect of the game. Well, that and having no traffic about half the times you play, rendering some of the accolades impossible (and some of the races too easy). I've even taken to using a "teammate, please don't ram" paint job for those races, fat lot of good it does.

[Huxleys Babkins]

I encountered that the other day and my main thought was "what are you, the person doing nothing, gaining from this experience? Did you just pop to the toilet?"

That's what I thought first time it happened, but once I managed to finish round 1, they took off after me and parked up again at the destination to register their presence. It's deliberate trolling.

[Famous Mortimer]

What a curious waste of time. With most trolls, at least they're doing something; this is just dull for everyone involved.

The Eliminator is a weird one, too. Every time I try it (not that often) there are always a handful of people who get one of the car drops pretty much instantly, yet when I've tried spawning at a spot I've seen drops in the past, nothing. Are they just different people getting lucky every time, or is there a mod?

[Huxleys Babkins]

What a curious waste of time. With most trolls, at least they're doing something; this is just dull for everyone involved.

The Eliminator is a weird one, too. Every time I try it (not that often) there are always a handful of people who get one of the car drops pretty much instantly, yet when I've tried spawning at a spot I've seen drops in the past, nothing. Are they just different people getting lucky every time, or is there a mod?

I guess the appeal is fucking up someone's game whilst simultaneously profiting to the tune of 10 or 20 Forzathon points depending on how much the victim can grind out.

The Eliminator is proper fuckery and I'm not sure quite how it works on a mechanical level. I've tried spawning near towns, memorised places where I've picked up cars and, like you say, it seems entirely random. I've watched people doing successful runs on YouTube and it looks far more down to luck than judgement. Hope that you're near the right drops in the right places against the right people in the right cars. I also wouldn't be surprised if the netcode for it is still broken to some degree and there's some combination of bots, rollback, etc. being used to hide the seams.

[BeardFaceMan]

I guess the appeal is fucking up someone's game whilst simultaneously profiting to the tune of 10 or 20 Forzathon points depending on how much the victim can grind out.

The Eliminator is proper fuckery and I'm not sure quite how it works on a mechanical level. I've tried spawning near towns, memorised places where I've picked up cars and, like you say, it seems entirely random. I've watched people doing successful runs on YouTube and it looks far more down to luck than judgement. Hope that you're near the right drops in the right places against the right people in the right cars. I also wouldn't be surprised if the netcode for it is still broken to some degree and there's some combination of bots, rollback, etc. being used to hide the seams.

That's always been the problem with the Eliminator, all you need to do to win head-to-heads or the final showdown is be traveling in the right direction when it starts. I used to regularly beat players in a car 5 levels higher than me simply because I was going at full speed towards where the finish marker ended up being and they had to stop and turn around, which of course is total luck. Then it's just drive in a straight line and try not to hit a tree.