Manufacturer affinity exists. It increases the payout for every successive race you win in your career while using cars from that manufacturer. Free play allows you to "rent" basically any car in the game. It's also better than Forza 4's free play because you gain credits and levels while racing which you didn't before. You're going to be able to sell vinyls/paints/tunes eventually. The store just isn't implemented yet.
Also, if you read the Neogaf thread you'll see that he has never played the game and was basing his post off early screenshots of Forza. The last few pages of that thread have pretty much denounced the OP as FUD.
I haven't gotten all the way to the end of the thread yet, I'll admit. Regarding Affinity, it doesn't drive down the cost of parts as it did previously from what I understand and is what he/others were pointing out. I also, last time I was reading it, didn't recall reading that Affinity gave extra cash for winning career races. Was this recently patched in or had it been there from the beginning?
I also do remember him and others coming back and stating that free play was there but neutered. As in you couldn't race all the cars (only select ones) and that you did not get exp/$/levels from doing free play. Perhaps they were wrong in that you couldn't get exp/levels/$ at the time.
What about these other issues:
Decimated car and track count.
are they adding more tracks? If so free, DLC or MTA? I know cars, like other Forza games, will be released as DLC.
No Public lobbies, No Clubs, No gifting of cars or paints
are these being implemented at a later time? If so is it only due to player complaints/feedback?
No Auction House or Storefront.
You state this is being implemented at some point. Again, due to player feedback/complaints?
Intrusive monetizing offers: "Press Y to accelerate" at the beginning/end of races. Little pop-up menu to 'confirm' whether you're going to buy with credits or tokens.
Are these (other messages perhaps?) as intrusive as some are stating?
Skipped to the end of thread to go over last few pages.
pg 42 (current last page)
not having the free play mode or ability to test drive cars before purchasing
I'm assuming they mean you can't test drive cars in free play any longer w/o owning them?
GrizzleBoy pg 40
Well, here's my input into this whole debacle.
I've played Forza 5 for about 15 hours in total and earned about 1,000,000 credits. I also play with no assists and hardest drivatars.
< snip >
Yes its more of a grind, but longer progression systems aren't inherently bad and in my case its done some good for me I'm terms of how I treat Forza games and the cars I have.
His whole post made for a good read, however, it still comes down to "it's more of a grind". The grind is longer than previous, perhaps not by much but as I first stated it's a slippery slope. It keeps getting worse and people keep saying "well it's not that bad/much worse than before" but eventually you're fucked.
Below addresses a good portion of my concerns with MTA's as well.
pg 41
I see it as a hugeconflict of interest.Developers insert a way to make money from people who want to bypass the grind for cars so developers make additional money. Developers are also in charge of figuring out how long the grind should be.Should developers make the grind totally fine and cause nearly all players to avoid giving them more money, or should developers make the grind slower to entice more people to give them more money?
I'm not saying they absolutely slowed it down, but I'm saying when the same team who has put in a way to make money from transactions is also in charge of figuring out how quickly someone should progress in their game without transactions, it's a conflict of interest. It is easily corruptible. "If we lengthen the grind by 20% over the last game, we have projected that 10% of buyers will opt to buy tokens and will net us X dollars, should we do it?"
What's the answer going to be for people who labored on a game and have the possibility of making X dollars more? Will they champion the gamer and avoid making more money to maintain a faster pace of advancement? Will they champion their wallets and make more money by slowing down the pace of advancement?
