Has anyone played it through the Early Access yet?

I've seen some pretty negative feedback and people refunding their money, but the details are thin. Sounds like the game is really buggy, and there is something with homologation in single player limiting freedom or something.

has anyone played it, I was really interested in this game. not so sure now...

I have to throw in a disclaimer here: I work for Microsoft, though not for the Xbox group. These opinions are my own and not those of Microsoft.

I'm quite enjoying the racing, and of course it's flarkin' gorgeous. I won't go into detail about the good parts, because obvious bias is obvious. Just keep in mind that I do strongly recommend the game.

That recommendation aside, here are the parts that have rubbed me the wrong way early on.

• This is a big game, and it takes a long time to install. Very early on in the install process, it will say "Ready to start!" If you are like me, you will say "Nice" and start playing. And the first three races of the single-player campaign -- where you're racing on predetermined tracks with predetermined cars -- worked fine. Then I got to the part where you actually get to start choosing things, and almost immediately ran into several very weird user-interface issues, followed by a crash. Needless to say, that wasn't good. But there was something about it that led me to say 'This is the way a user interface behaves when it doesn't have the resources it needs.' So I waited for the installation to complete before launching it again, and after that everything worked fine. Now of course this is a sample size of one and so is nearly meaningless; but if you run Forza 7 before the install completes and see bugginess, consider letting the install complete before continuing.
• I don't much like the way that loot boxes have been incorporated into the progression.
• The assist settings no longer affect the amount of credits you get per race, unless you've played a mod that locks in that setting. (The difficulty of the AI drivers still does affect the credit rewards.) I liked getting rewarded for playing on a harder difficulty, so I was semi-irked by this change.

I've played every Forza since Forza 1, and I've been buying the top Limited/Ultimate edition since 3. I was on the fence for Horizon 3. I was on the fence for Forza 7. This is my last Forza. I'm done.

I've just been refunded through Amazon.

It's one of the buggiest games I've ever played. The AI Drivatars(Crashatars?) (I was played on Expert) drives in a way that your car doesn't exist to them. They don't give a hoot that you're on track by any means, not just "rubbin is racing" style.

Gone are the days of buying a car and driving it up through several classes/divisions. Upgrading & Tuning, while still there is now dead. There's no reason for it. Use a car once, that it. At least for the career mode.

VIP has always been an unlimited thing, double xp, double cash. A neat perk if you like to buy a ton of cars. The wordage for this wasn't changed in the marketplace until a few hours ago, probably on account of the refunds.

Previously it read:

Exclusive cars Mods Driver Gear and more await with Forza Motorsport 7 VIP membership! Forza Motorsport 7 VIP members receive exclusive VIP cars. VIPs will receive additional benefits including 100% CR bonus Mods VIP Driver Gear and more. Get your VIP membership today!

Now it's been updated to read:

Forza Motorsport 7 VIP membership features exclusive rewards you can’t get anywhere else! Forza Motorsport VIPs receive exclusive VIP cars, VIP Driver Gear Suits, as well as five 100% CR bonus Mod cards (five uses each per card), and more. Get your VIP membership today!

Car purchase prices have been jacked WAY up, race rewards have been cut way back. They encourage long races, which in itself is fine, but if it's a series a person doesn't really want to trudge through, and the cheapest car to get in the series was 300,000cr, and you win 60,000cr back by not using mods or the double bonus, that suuuuucks. Everything about it screams free to play phone game. Currently you can't use cash to buy credits, which they had already announced. But on launch day clarified that microtransactions were indeed coming. Spending additional real world money is absolutely necessary if you like to own a lot of cars in Forza.

I was playing on PC, a great PC at that. While playing much smoother than Forza 6 Apex, and FH3 at launch, we now get CONSTANT crashing, textures disappear and never come back.

As a long time fan, fanboy even? I really don't recommend this as a buy for anyone. I'm not even sure Turn 10 can attempt to change my mind by fixing this in any coherent way.

Forza probably overtook Halo as my most keenly followed gaming franchise sometime in the Halo 4/Forza 4 era. The annual releases are tent-poles in my gaming calendar and I've been buying practically all the DLC for years now.

The racing itself in Forza 7 looks, sounds and plays better than ever before. Finally being able to play the game on PC is convenient and the resulting graphical quality is fantastic. Driving around in old F1 cars in the game was one of the best gaming moments for me so far this year. However...

• This is by far the buggiest game Turn 10 has ever put out. Pretty regular crashes to desktop, sudden disappearances of textures (including the road), weird jerks and slowdowns in the frame rate, lost photos in the photo mode, unable to buy cars for some reason and on and on and on.
• The menus look and feel cheap and poorly thought out. And the music playing throughout is grating.
• The joy of progression has pretty much been killed, and getting a new car in your garage feels pretty hollow now.
• The load times are very lengthy, to the point where it makes you suspect if the purpose is to make people buy the mod packs during loading screens.
• A lot of features have simply been taken out, like car clubs and loads of multiplayer options.
• In many ways this game feels like a rushed out console launch title.

Forza 5 was thus far probably the lowpoint in the series for me because of how it tried to change the progression structure and due to the paired down amount of features. Turn 10 course-corrected themselves with Forza 6 pretty well, but this game feels like a huge leap backwards to and over the line that Forza 5 was trying to tow.

It's hard to know where things went wrong exactly. Did the development of the new Xbox One X and PC versions take up too many resources? Have a lot of the people who were involved with the previous games left and been replaced by new folks? Or did Turn 10 have some sort of grand plan in place which they were forced to abandon at the last moment and hobble together a very different thing?

Again, I'm still enjoying the racing and sort of can't wait to fire up the game again after I've finished writing this. I'm still having loads of fun and I know I'm going to sink tens of hours into the game.

Turn 10 essentially bragged about how easy it was to get Forza running on the One X, so that can't be it. And with the release of Apex and Horizon 3 on PC, there's zero excuse for them to have so many bugs on PC. (I've seen multiple people say Forza 7 doesn't use multiple cores properly, which is insane that's still a problem because that was already fixed in Horizon 3.) I'd also imagine the people working on the engine aren't the same people working on game mechanics/economy.

This isn't the first time Turn 10 has tried to fuck over players by messing with the in game economy. Forza 5 was so egregious that Turn 10 eventually gutted the economy in that game by slashing prices across the board.

I haven't gotten the chance to play FM7 yet for myself. I typically buy the Limited Edition, or Ultimate Edition in the Xbone era, of all Forza games. I intended to get the Deluxe edition this time around, not caring for car packs anymore. But with VIP being a limited consumable I'm now getting the Standard edition. If it wasn't for the fact that Forza is still a really good driving game at its core, I'd be completely out.

Micro-transactions in games, specifically Xbox exclusives, is something mandated/highly encouraged by Microsoft's games division. Cost of AAA development is so high, etc etc. Halo 5's REQ system was probably Microsoft's first not universally hated/"success" of doing it. I have my issues with it, but also feel like it didn't get in the way of me enjoying the game. Gears of War 4 tried to emulate H5's REQ system in some ways for their micro-transaction stuff, and that completely blew up in the Coalition's face. Someone here on GB did a good blog post on that.

If Tokens in Forza 7 end up being anywhere near as bad as Forza 5's use of them, you bet your ass I'll be doing some math again. The important thing is to keep the heat on Turn 10. They buckled with Forza Motorsport 5. If Forza 7 is bad too, then they will hopefully buckle again.

Forza 5 had a few bad ideas that were easy enough to undo and make right.

Forza 7 is a dumpster fire of bad ideas, and implemented in a way that the game has been built around. They want that microtransaction money in the grossest way.

Think I should just go back and play some more F6/Horizon 3 for the time being then.

Is this early access or just early release? If its early access isnt the point to test it for bugs? Sorry i dont know much about forza but i find it odd to refund for bugs in an early access game.

@oursin_360: early release if you buy the Ultimate Edition, like with Forza Horizon 3. Play a few days before those getting the Standard Edition.

I've put some more hours into the game now. The menus and mods continue to be annoying, but at least the load times got better once I moved the game onto my SSD.

Even with all the issues, when you get that moment where things click and you're hurtling down the track in a beautiful car, it can all still put a huge grin on my face.

I was trying to decide between this and Project CARS 2 as my new PC racing game to play when I don't feel like playing DiRT, and I guess I'll go with Project CARS 2.

I wasn't a fan of the Drivatar stuff in Forza 6, and it sounds like it's much worse here than it was there. That combined with what sounds like a pretty broken economy makes the game completely unappealing to me.

And I say all this as a person who play hundreds of hours of Forza 3 and 4 (I still have and use the Forza 3 keychain from the VIP edition or whatever it was called!) and was looking forward to playing Forza 7 on PC a great deal.

I had that too, it recently broke off though. I still use that usb stick all the time, not sure if i that with 3 or 4.

I bought this on pc since the download is 95GB and i only have a max speed of 5MB/s it's gonna take a while to download. I really hope i don't have any problems but hearing from this thread it seems i am probably gonna have some. What's the refund policy for the Windows store again ? i heard it was fair ?? Also you gotta love it when they didn't build in the microtransactions in the review build its such a lame and sleezy dirt bag thing to do. Also i never agreed with the games are to expensive to make so we need the micro transactions to stay a float. If that's true then first your business model is fraud and maybe should think why your game isn't selling well / to expensive, also the tools for making videogames have become way more easier. Doom for example ( the old one is made by a small team. Coding and the weird 2d/3d thing was really hard to do at the time it required some John Carmack coding genius to get that shit done and it was a huge succes + it didn't need microtransactions to use the BFG. Or maybe move your team or studio out of the US and put it in Poland, The Witcher III is a great example of why videogame studios don't always have to be in the US but this dumb rant is getting way to long. I just hate there dumb excuse of videogames are expensive so we need micro transactions to make them.

This has just landed through my letterbox but I'm kinda bummed after reading through this thread and watching the quick look. It just feels like turn10 don't listen to the community when developing these games, or they do, but then forget about it in favour of a new revenue stream for them.

I'll give it a bash however. I just wish they'd think of a way to bring the series back to life and put a bit of fun and passion in there, it's so sterile these days in comparison with the Horizon series.

I must admit, I am a little confused. A review article on another site had a comment (in the public comments section) saying that cars are got via loot crates. Is this accurate (as in, will I only access new cars by buying into crates, or can I do the traditional method of earning race credits to get a new car/win new cars from events etc)?

Feel really torn on this game, I really want to play it as I really like the Forza series and the handling/race craft is fantastic. But, if the part of me being able to access new cars is locked behind a pay wall or really excessive grind to be able to get new cars of a higher class category, then I would be put off. I did not mind Forza 5 at launch (I stuck with a couple of cars at first and played a lot of C class multiplayer races) but I noticed the grind on that game when wanting to buy into the Indy Car/F1 car to give them a go so if this game in the same and is basically trying to force you into buying cars with real money, that would be a problem. Also hearing really negative views on the VIP this year, seems like you only get a few races worth of double credits unlike the previous games where it was double credits on all races/events and was not a "use this item and its gone for good" consumable type deal.

@johnlocke: You can get cars from loot crates, but you can also just buy them like normal.... if your collection rating is high enough. That is raised by buying cars, so you'll have to buy a bunch of cars you might not want in order to have the privilege of buying the cars you do actually want. It sucks.

VIP gives you five mod cards good for six races each worth of double credits. This is worse because they also removed the credit bonus you used to be able to get for turning off assists. That's all now locked up behind random mod card drops from loot crates, which you have to buy with non-trivial amounts of credits, making it feel like a pointless zero-sum game. Oh but don't worry, they'll let you buy this shit with real money via tokens soon enough.

The driving is good and it looks great, but everything else about the game is such a huge bummer that I think this might be the last Forza I bother with.

Turn 10 have announced changes to the VIP system, based on negative customer feedback. On top of four free cars and 1 million credits, the VIP system will be turned back into a constant credit doubler like it was in Forza 6. It's nice they're doing it, but kind of frustrating that we had to go through the same rigmarole at the launch of Forza 5 without Turn 10 learning their lesson.

The first patch has also been released, and the menu stuff did seem to run a bit smoother on my end last night.

@ben_h: Project Cars 2 is good but if you use a controller it might not be a good choice. It is playable with a controller but it is build more for steering wheels. There also isn't a lot in the way of car collecting or tuning cars in PC2.

This sounds like a good move, although, like what you say, I do not understand why they have not learnt from the launch of Forza Motorsport 5. At least this is a step in the right direction though and admitting there are issues makes me hopeful they can get the game back into a great way. I wonder why they are pushing the mod side so much, whether its their decision or if Microsoft are really trying to force micro transactions into their big games (i.e. Gears of War, Halo, Halo Wars, previous Forza games all have them).

I've put in 54 hours in Forza 7 already and just finished the Forza driver's cup, the "final" championship series in the game.

I can safely say the people complaining about the new reward systems they implemented are those who haven't played the game at all or much of it. They've already decided any "blind box" system is the devil's doing, before even understanding how it behaves specifically in F7.

In fact, how those same people seem to be appeased by the apology gifts from T10 is yet another example of their lack of useful insight regarding the game, considering the cars they gave out like the NSX Forza Edition is received through natural progression and 1 mil isn't actually that much.

Basically people made a fuss about nothing and got nearly nothing for it, but at least they seem happier. Maybe they'll actually play the game now and make legitimate complaints like how the AI seems to have gotten dumber than before.

I mostly have the same feelings you did, especially the last point about assist settings no longer affecting credits. This is what has distinguished Forza from other racing games-the risk vs. reward of "turning off the training wheels". Not to e-peen, but I generally play with no assists, sim steering, sim damage, no racing line and manual tran. On previous Forza games, I would rack up serious bonus credits at the end of races, and before long had more money than I could spend. Have said that, I think the drivatar AI difficulty has been tweeked, as this is the only way (outside of card modifiers) to earn bonus credits. It seems easier overall, so I have been able to race at a higher difficulty and earn more bonus credits.

I did not experience install thingy, as I preordered the digital version, so it was ready to go when I turned on my Box late on the 30th.

I really do not like some of the modifiers, especially the ones that give you bonuses for playing with assists. This does not seem to be in the spirit of prior Forza games that subtly encouraged you to turn off assists as you got better.

Overall, I am still enjoying the game and seem to have more than enough money to buy the cars I want. This game looks incredible, even on my Xbox One S. The weather effects are spectacular.

I couldn't agree more, they're a bunch of cry babies. I don't know maybe Horizon 3 was better with initial rewards (I haven't played H3) but seriously, 50 hours to complete every event in Forza?! That's nothing, I remember Forza 4 taking hundreds of hours and I didn't complain.

Sushi I tried joining you for race night but Forza had problems loading... if they weren't wasting time handing out gift baskets to cry babies maybe they could've prevented it.

Although I think the Forza message boards are going a little crazy right now, as someone who bought the Ultimate Ed. of the game I felt pretty disappointed that the extra money I paid included a bonus that after multiple uses was gone. This, in combination with the removal of no-assist rewards, was kind of a bummer. I think them giving out some bonus credits and cars, with the promise that VIPs get back the 2x credit boost that's permanent, is a nice enough gesture.

Now, having said that, even without the credit boost I haven't had that much trouble buying the cars I wanted. I've been playing since they unlocked it for Ultimate members, at least several hours a day, and money doesn't seem as much of an issue, especially when running longer races. And it doesn't seem like any of the cars really go above 1.5 million anyway so most of it all feels affordable.

I think the biggest complaints I have so far is that I'm completely missing the process of buying a slow car in the career, putting mods on it, getting it up through several championships/events and honing it into a real racer. The 'career' has sort of automated most of it, and all you really end up doing is picking a car and then racing it, and then moving on to another car/event. None of the cars really 'feel' like my car, at the moment. Aside from that, I feel the game is super buggy and I've had numerous crashes and hang-ups (to the point of it messing up hot laps I was running), the not-yet-complete set of features that will be added in the future, and the questionable choices in lighting (I can't even see rims in the pre-race upgrade section!), it all kinda adds up to where I feel a little bummed out about the release of this new Forza.

Having said *that*, the game looks gorgeous, the racing and control over the cars is amazing (it's definitely never felt better flinging cars around the track!), the amount and diversity of cars and tracks is stellar (although I miss Toyota!) and it definitely inspires a lot of car lust in me once again.

One thumb up, one thumb down - so far!

@anthman: XBox Live was suffering some issues during Race Night; we got a few races in but people on XBox couldn't get on. Invites and such barely worked as well.

And it wasn't every event I completed, just the ones to win the trophies. The game then tells you to finish every single event, where it starts rewarding you with more Forza Edition cars. I've spent a decent amount of time in Rivals also.

There are definitely many bugs they need to get on such as the random hangs, disappearing track after rewinds, names not displaying properly in multiplayer, few graphical glitches, etc.

I love the sound of slower progression because the newer titles have been stupid easy to get cars in. Neat if you don’t have a lot of time but it really cut down on my feeling of accomplishment and did not encourage me to really learn a car. In Forza 2 I probably spent the majority of my time in like 5 cars that’s I kitted out and tuned over time, got to know how hey handled, etc.

But if that still doesn’t enhance upgrading and stuff and somehow makes it worse that’s sort of a moot point I guess.

I played Project Cars 2 at PAX as well as Forza 7 and I have to say, Project Cars really did something for me. I know it doesn’t have that progression style of old Forza games but the handling was something else. I’ve never seen a game that looked so much like cars on a track. The way the suspension worked and such, the cars actually looked and felt like they were on the track. For all their talk, Forza wasn’t quite there for me. I may just give PC2 a shot in a little bit and see how that goes.

Slightly on topic: fuck that VIP shit. Had it in Horizon 3 and it was just too easy to gain credits. Randomly spinning and getting over 100k most of the time meant all you had to do to buy a car was so donuts in a field for like 5 minutes. I would have preferred no spin at all but it was extra annoying when it was worth so much money.

It seems scummy to have it in there at all. It’s one thing to sell a coin doubler for those with limited time resources, it’s another to build it in to the expensive version of a full retail release.

@opusofthemagnum: VIP can be purchased separately. I got the standard edition, then bought VIP when the announcement was made they were fixing it.

My only real complaints so far are:

• Locking cars behind walls is a dumb, player-unfriendly decision that does nothing to enhance the game in any way whatsoever.
• Just give me a straight-up list of events I can choose from. I had the same complaint about Horizon 3. Just let me pick a race and go.

Beyond that, it's great! Not having any problem with bugs so far, but there's a bit of a wait when I want to start racing. Seems like the sort of thing that could get ironed out with future patches.

@sparky_buzzsaw: Why is unlocking cars dumb? Doesn't practically every game have unlockable items as an incentive to reward progression based on level requirements?

The idea that you should be able hop into any car and compete in any race - which you absolutely can in 'Free Play' - is a strange demand from the single player career experience imo - rather than enhancing the game I think it would take the 'game' out of it, especially since many players seem to play for the sake of completion rather than actually getting faster around a track.

@sushix: Let me rephrase - having tiers of locked cars is dumb. Actually earning the credits to unlock them is slightly less so.

Why is there an achievement for buying 700 cars?! Completely opposite of the Forza philosophy of buying and upgrading a few select favourites

Played +/- 5 hours of the game so far. I don't have the knowledge or the expertise to dive deeply into tuning setups, but I find the homologation system completely impenetrable. Perhaps I'm just a dolt, but I've read and reread the homologation information a half-dozen times and still find myself confused by the specifics of the whole thing. It's a system that has left me simply buying/unlocking cars and using them without ever trying to tune or upgrade them, which feels like a tacit undermining of the larger Forza philosophy. Even if I don't know what the hell I'm doing, I still appreciate the process of swapping out parts for better parts.

While the loot box economy doesn't infuriate me the way it probably should, I am frustrated with the general lack of snappiness, organization, and clarity of the menus in the game. Entire menu options will take minutes to load (while others are accessible immediately--including the loot box menu, go figure); there are menu buttons seemingly everywhere, each going two or three pages deep; and sometimes, while I'm looking at menu options between career mode races, a loading screen for the next course will wipe the screen clean for minutes at a time as the next event loads.

Now, granted, these are two large qualms. But these are basically my only qualms after a sliver of time with the game. The driving rocks. Not many other driving games feels as physical as Forza Motorsport. After stepping away to play only the Forza Horizon games for a few years, I've come to crave the technicality of Motorsport's more track-focused racing. Here, I want to make as few mistakes as possible, drive as optimal a line as possible, and shave as many milliseconds off lap times as possible.

It's been a largely great experience so far, playing this game. I'm just hoping the whole thing holds together at the seams.

I'm interested in this game so I'll use this thread to ask: Is worth it to try to get good at a sim game like this with a controller? What sort of precision is really possible with a DualShock 4? I enjoy the purist approach to driving to the point of modifying FH3's steering settings in order to mitigate the arcadiness of that game (and I seriously hate the stupid generic engine sounds they use), but I also don't see myself buying a wheel in the near future. I'm pretty inexperienced with sim driving beyond watching a lot of videos and knowing the basics. What I've seen of Forza 7 looks cool but it would take some convincing for me to put down the money for a new game.

You know, I basically play these Forza games exclusively with a controller. I've never felt the need to purchase a wheel to make my driving more precise or to improve my results. Wheels and pedals benefit immersion, I'd say, more than they do performance.

Motorsport and Horizon handle pretty differently on the road. But Motorsport finds a way to provide a simulation-style experiencewithout being completely inaccessible. Unless you really, really know what you're doing, you wont be powersliding around hairpins or drifting through s-curves in Motorsport. That said, it gives a staggering about of difficulty options, so if you're struggling you can make the game as relentless or as simple as you like.

I'm eyeing this game and GT Sport. My only option for this game for me would be PC and I tried the demo which contained a lot of bad microstutter, even tho the game could handle 60+ FPS (I hear it only utilizes one CPU Core) so I might wait for GT Sport. Been getting into Sim racing recently.