In an era of “release it now, fix it later” Forza Horizon 5 has proven to be one of the most broken games since Cyberpunk 2077. Thankfully fixes are still coming in for the ailing racing game with a new hotfix now live.
The three main focuses of this hotfix are game stability, convoys and multiplayer. Given the fact that the game crashes more than the cars in it, and multiplayer makes up a huge portion of the experience, these are some big areas to address.
“On Dec. 7, we released a fix to tackle the ‘soft lock’ issue which caused Xbox Series X|S players to get stuck with an infinite spinner when saving data. Today’s new hotfix goes further and addresses the root cause of the problem. Xbox Series X|S players may have occasionally encountered issues with streaming and soft locks when loading into events, which are now resolved. We’ve also addressed other stability issues, including a top reported crash that was introduced with [Series 2],” reads the patch notes.
We’ve experience many soft locks, as well as hard crashes, on PC, so with no mention of it here we’re a bit worried that fixes for that won’t come for a bit.
While convoys are a relatively small part of the game the main issue affecting it – players simply disappearing without warning – is present in the rest of the game too. We can’t count how many times invisible players have ruined Horizon Arcade and the battle royale mode The Eliminator.
On the topic of multiplayer The Eliminator gets a specific mention.
“Improvements have been made to server bandwidth to ensure a better experience in multiplayer game modes like The Eliminator… We’ve included a fix for civilian traffic not being present in Horizon Life… We have enhanced the overall stability of our servers across the entire experience,” reads parts of the patch notes around multiplayer fixes.
It’s worth noting that Horizon Arcade and The Eliminator have been consciously chosen by Playground Games as something which needs to be completed for the Festival Playlist, a set of challenges that change every so often.
We have no idea as to what moon logic these developers are working on where some of the most broken parts of the game are included in limited-time events which have some much-wanted prizes for players.
It’s hilarious that, in the tweet below addressing this, it’s painted as some big mystery why all of this is happening and how it can be fixed. Just give all the players who log in the rewards and remove the troublesome areas of the game from the Festival Playlist. It’s not rocket science, Playground Games, come on.
The full hotfix patch notes can be found here but really the mess of Forza Horizon 5 discussed here is just the tip of the iceberg.
We’re aware that players have encountered challenges on the #ForzaHorizon5 Festival Playlist which they’ve been unable to complete. It can be frustrating to miss out on rewards or not have 100% completion. We are looking into a solution. Hotfix Blog: https://t.co/pT7MBNLJCQ
— Forza Support (@forza_support) December 14, 2021
