FH6, Series 1, Week 2

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Once again, the location of the treasure was obvious. Middle of the north-west part of the golf course.

I got my free SWS – yes, only one a week in FH6 –, which I’m mentioning because BlackPanthaa got exactly the same SWS in the video in which he was grinding away to unlock the FE BMW M2, viz. Colin McRae’s Ford Focus, the BMW 850 CSi, and some petty cash.

The car for the weekly challenge was the Nissan Silvia K’S. I still have no idea what the K’S is supposed to stand for. Kiss? (Because vowels are devoiced in Japanese between voiceless consonants.) I felt the drag meets were #ForcedEngagement, but I supposed it spared us the bollocks of Bowie Knife99 and his wretched friends being impossible to beat regardless of the level of difficulty.

The photo has to be done at the base of Tokyo Tower.

I PB’ed the TB in spite of an absolutely dreadful run across the golf course. For the DS, a slightly built Honda Trophy Truck ended up being the way to go, and I one-shotted the SZ. And what did I get from the wheel spins for my efforts? Bugger-all.

Well, second week of the playlist and the first, dreaded B class modern rally seasonal (Trail Mix) has arrived. Now that we can pretty much neuter the drivatars, I took the lazy option, hence I don’t(/shouldn’t) need to start with one car, find it wanting, and switch to a different one in the same class in the hope that it’ll do better.

Stadium Cross-Country and Edogawa Cross-Country, which both featured in Country Living, don’t really seem to be cross-country races. The former is like a stunt park, and the latter is a random route round Tokyo that includes an annoying hairpin that looks like it was inspired by an Eventlab race.

In Majestic Domestics, I decided to use the Be-1. I was half expecting the drivatars to behave badly, but nothing much happened, and these cars suited Soni and Shimanoyama quite well.

I took me some time to do the touge race because I mostly connected only to get kicked almost immediately because no one else was trying to do the same race. I was lucky that when I did connect, I was able to use a Mazda in the race, otherwise you might have to do several race series before that would be possible. I was in my mazdaspeed MX-5 and managed to win the first two races because I was a better driver. My opponent, who took a rapid lead in the first race, slid off the edge of the road, and then seems to have given up; in the second race, I was more competent through the corners. Since there’s no way of controlling what this mode serves up, I thought this was a bad idea.

I worked my way through some more Raku Raku activities and got another Be-1. The glitch which players have been complaining about seems to be an xbox issue.

Roads

Like many others I’m on the annoying 670/671 roads. I found two more dirt roads, including one to the west of the golf course which I thought might count as the final two because it was a loop, but it didn’t. As for the final one, I’m damned if I know where it might be. Probably not Tokyo; possibly something very, very short.

Drivatars

Last weekend I did all the dirt races in the game with the drivatars set to Highly Skilled to see how they behaved. I started with Taiyaki Scramble, which is a non-technical course and kept getting passed by a couple of the drivatars, who would accelerate past me round certain curves. The solution was to take the same line, thus blocking them. My hypothesis was that they’d be fast on anything that was non-technical, but when I went to the Stadium Scramble, I was ten seconds ahead by the end of the race. Mostly I was seconds ahead of the drivatars, but in two races it was by a mere 2/10ths of a second.

I took the Furai round the Legend Island Circuit for 15 laps, expecting the drivatars to be painful as they are with anything fast. I had no problems finishing well ahead of them. Brilliant car which I tuned, but otherwise left alone.

Overall, it’s the PGG drivatars that are the biggest pains in the arse to deal with. Mostly the drivatars are like they are in FH5, but a bit more so. The experience hasn’t been entirely consistent, but it’s a familiar pattern in that I’m usually well ahead in circuit races and struggling to establish an effective gap in sprints and trail races.

Races

I appreciate the addition of motorsport-style races in the game and some intermediate-length races. There are still karting tracks such as Soni where, no doubt, we’ll have a seasonal in R-class cars sooner or later because that’ll be such fun. There’s a distinct lack of technical road-racing circuits, there being no equivalent of Plaza or Cathedral Circuits in FH6. Several circuits have narrow layouts with sometimes quite annoying hairpins at either end.

Spec racing

I’ve tried it; I’m not enamoured of it. I suspect that controller players have a distinct advantage with stock cars that I just don’t have, although I did survive one of the karting tracks much better in the MC12 Corsa than most of the field. I also get the impression that there’s not much of a range of events. I think it’s been all road racing so far and often the same events over and over.

Houses

Mostly not worth the expense until you’re so rich, you don’t care. The houses don’t confer any great advantages except as a vector for #ForcedEngagement if players want to take advantage of their bonuses.

Car mastery

I already have over 200pts, and like FH5, but worse, the masteries are mostly worthless. I’ve yet to find a car with a 100%, 150% or 200% bonus, and SWSs are one-offs that may not yield anything decent. Perhaps the major bonuses no longer exist. I’m likely to max my points out and rarely ever use them.

Progression

Grindy. I don’t mean the wristbands, but general progression in the game such as only being awarded wheel spins every third level. So far, the wheel spins have tended to be misses as they land between a decent car or a decent amount of money on a regular basis. There are fairly frequent random wheel spins, although what generates them (XP?), I don’t know.

It’s not as bad as FM8, but impeding the flow of useful rewards makes the cost-value ratio worse like those dailies which take half an hour to complete. Those 15 laps of Legend Island in the Furai didn’t get me a single wheel spin.

The accolades (i.e., the collection journal) is another grindy element of the game. I finished off the photos yesterday, but am still working on Horizon Promo. There’s a bunch of stuff which I’ll eventually do when I’m bored with other things (e.g., stories), but otherwise just don’t care about a lot of it.

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