Horizon Open, FH5

I got frustrated with the drivatars in Forza Horizon 5. It’s why after over a year I’m still prestige 4. In Horizon 4 after my first year of playing the game, I’d reached prestige 6, but I can see it taking to the middle of 2023 before I achieve the same feat in FH5. The drivatars in Horizon 5 are frustrating because they’re contrary. Much of the time they’re not that big a nuisance, but it can be demoralising when in some races they seem to leap from Highly Skilled to Unbeatable, leaving you trailing in their wake. I’ve done 15-lap circuit races in which I’ve followed the lead drivatar for the bulk of the race before finally managing to take the lead.

In Horizon 4 I made progress against the drivatars. In Horizon 5 when I think it’s time to bump up the level of difficulty, I decide it’s not worth it as it’s likely to lead to more irritation.

But I was also getting bored with the game regardless of the drivatars. Even though I only started the series with Horizon 4, I suspected that I might not find Horizon 5 that engaging because the two weren’t going to be a lot different, and this has been roughly true. We keep getting recycled cars, and a lot of the genuinely new ones do nothing for me. I don’t mind that I lost most of the Extreme E vehicles because of the game’s appalling system of saves. I don’t care about another dreary, soulless EV.

I needed something new to do in FH5, which was why I started playing Horizon Open in late 2022. In this game mode the only parameters are the race type and class. After that, players can drive anything that’s in the class even though it might not suit the race type. It’s fairly appalling and even more demoralising than the contrary drivatars.

The biggest problem is the lack of balance. You can be mixed in with drivers who are considerably faster. You’re likely to be mixed in with cheaters and exploiters. The latter are the annoying clowns who turn up to dirt and off-road races in the Bone Shaker, the TVR Cerbera, the MB CLK GTR and the Maserati 8CTF (not to mention a host of other entirely unsuitable cars). The cheaters are likely to finish the race so quickly that you’re at risk of getting DNF’ed. Then there are the shovers who will knock you out of a checkpoint for daring to overtake them, and the high-speed collision abusers, who use this feature to pass. If you show someone some decency in the race, they’re likely to show you none in return.

It becomes depressing to do several series of races and see the same undeserving player winning over and over. It becomes depressing when races are either going round in circles or driving from A to B, but there’s no real contest. It’s depressing to see the same cheaters, exploiters and abusers over and over again.

I don’t know why PGG thought that it’d be such a spiffing idea to make the parameters for online races so vague. As the seasonal championships are limited to specific classes of cars, Open races could be limited in the same way. Dirt racing should be limited to rally cars; off-road races should be limited to off-road vehicles. Certain cars such as the Bone Shaker should be banned entirely.

The system could also do with some means of ranking (Elo system?) beyond counting how many races players have done. At the time of writing, I’m in the top 0.5% of players on the leader boards, but that’s because of the number of races I’ve done, not because of my overall results which I might politely describe as mediocre. Most of my wins in races or series have been technicalities such as being the last man standing. I also suspect that my rank is a consequence of being a clean driver and therefore earning more XP from races, but I’ve gone from zero to the dizzying heights in about two months or so.

In such a system, I’d be racing against (presumably) comparable drivers. The better ones would be immediately moved on, and perhaps the cheaters, exploiters and shovers would all end up ruining each other’s gaming experience.

Is this going to happen? No, of course not. I don’t need to win or get podiums, but I would like a better experience in the game. Perhaps a ban on anyone under the age of 45.