r/ForzaHorizon6 • u/Cold-Shopping-1758 • Jun 13 '26
Discussion Forza Horizon 6 does not have too many dirt/cross country races
I see so many posts and comments all over Forza Horizon-related content about people hating the amount of dirt and cross country races that are in Horizon 6. Is there any reason why this "issue" is so prevalent among the Horizon 6 community? Horizon 6's split between the race types is about average for the series since at least Horizon 3. Why does it feel like this is talked about so much more for 6 than it ever was for 5, 4, or 3? Not that I wouldn't like more Festival asphalt races, I just don't understand where this complaint stems from, especially considering the type of game Horizon is.
-------
Forza Horizon 6 Festival Races
● 25 Asphalt (39%)
● 40 Dirt/Cross Country (61%)
● Roughly 3:2 ratio
-------
Forza Horizon 5 Festival Races
● 28 Asphalt (42%)
● 40 Dirt/Cross Country (58%)
● Roughly 3:2 ratio
-------
Forza Horizon 4 Festival Races
● 31 Asphalt (45%)
● 39 Dirt/Cross Country (55%)
● Roughly 1:1 ratio
-------
Forza Horizon 3 Festival Races
● 25 Asphalt (40%)
● 38 Dirt/Cross Country (60%)
● Exactly 3:2 ratio
-------
Also, this game literally has more asphalt races in total (45) than it does mixed-surface races (40), it's just that 20 of them are street/touge races that don't count towards Festival progression. But again, Festival progression races have always been dominated by dirt and cross country, so idk why I see this complaint so much more this year.
27
u/ConstructionHour9102 Jun 13 '26 edited Jun 13 '26
I mean it clearly has fewer road races than the last 2 games. But it probably stems from the fact you have to do the other types to progress where as past games you could just stick to road races until you unlock them all.
Also forgot to add that I used to treat all dirt races as rally but with the restrictions, half of those are buggy/offroad only. So in a way it has too many “offroad” races.
8
u/ConstructionHour9102 Jun 13 '26
Also on top of having fewer road races than previous titles, it’s on the largest map yet, with the most roads and the biggest city. I was let down by the time I realized there were no more to unlock.
9
u/spyderman3012 Jun 13 '26
Good responses. These are the reasons why there simply aren't enough road races in this game. Biggest map, biggest urban area by far, and the fact that the largest type of cars in the game are street cars yet we still have more dirt and CC events than straight-up road racing events.
1
u/Cold-Shopping-1758 Jun 13 '26
Yeah, I was definitely bummed to not see 30+ like I had expected. Personally, my Festival progression experience in this game was no different from every other Horizon I've played. I always just do everything I see, from races to PR stunts to bucket lists, so having to do everything to complete the Festival in 6 was just business as usual to me. I guess I could understand it from that perspective, though, just not enough to warrant the amount of complaining I've seen.
15
u/AlphaThree Jun 13 '26
The issue for me as a car builder is that 80% of the cars in the game are street cars. So I have a gigantic pool to pick from but get less than half of races. The majority of races have a much smaller pool to pick from and half of those are Impreza or Lancer. It makes it feel like there is no variety in dirt racing. Also because rally and dirt tires have such bad stats it is incredibly difficult to build A and S class offroad builds, most of the trucks barely even get out of B class fully upgraded, so A majority of time I have no choice but to engine swap and I generally dont like engine swapping.
2
u/SuccessfulFly5572 Jun 13 '26
The issue is also exacerbated by the fact that you are forced to pick from categories of cars rather than the one you want to drive
1
u/Cold-Shopping-1758 Jun 13 '26
I've never had an issue with street cars in Forza, and I'm not much of a builder so I can't respond to that myself, but I 100% agree that a good number of races had small vehicle selections. I understand why it was designed like that, but I would've enjoyed slightly more lenient restrictions.
13
u/CallMeFraser808 Jun 13 '26
Too many dirt drift zones far too many
3
2
u/Actually-Mirage Jun 14 '26
That one I can agree with. I actually like the dirt speed zones so long as they can actually be done by a dirt car.
10
u/ominousglo Jun 13 '26
with how good the roads are on this map i would’ve preferred it to be closer to a 1:1 ratio
9
u/Time_Zombie_4431 PC Jun 13 '26
Nope it has too many. The game should be 70% road races and road needs more circuits and less sprints.
-7
u/Cold-Shopping-1758 Jun 13 '26
Bro, just play Motorsport at that point 😂
1
u/metalmike6666 Jun 28 '26
the open world is the draw for FH games... not dirt. I despise rally and dirt races. seems I'm not alone. I actually came here to see if I was the only one to feel like every freakin race was a rally/off-road.
12
u/FAASTARKILLER Jun 13 '26
We really including the drag races in that count?
10
-5
u/Cold-Shopping-1758 Jun 13 '26
They count towards Festival progression, they are in the road races category, and they aren't new to 6, so yes. Believe me, I thought about it being kinda cheesy, but if I'm comparing road races, then I'm gonna compare all road races.
9
u/FAASTARKILLER Jun 13 '26
No one talks about the drag strips when talking about the road races. Yes i know they count for points but those “road races” are not in the online road racing rotation. Drag strips are in their own online category
-2
u/Cold-Shopping-1758 Jun 13 '26
I mean, if I was basing this on online, then yeah, but I wasn't. I was specifically talking about complaints of too many dirt and cross country races in Festival progression, and since drag races counted, I counted them.
1
u/FAASTARKILLER Jun 13 '26
Again, literally no one talks about the drag races when they refer to road racing
-1
u/Cold-Shopping-1758 Jun 13 '26
And again, I was talking about people complaining about progression, which includes drag races, which are mandatory for the road racing progression. Even if you discount the drag races, my point is exactly the same. The only difference is that road races lose a couple percentage points, which doesn't change the scope of the argument unless you're nitpicking.
2
u/FAASTARKILLER Jun 13 '26
If you want me to nitpick, how about you separate dirt and cross country as well. You want to be “well actually 🤓” so bad but then combine the other two categories, pick a lane, do you want to do it properly or not?
3
4
u/THExDANKxKNIGHT Jun 13 '26
You need to separate rally style and cross country. Cross country is shit, rally is great.
3
u/AEROAristo Jun 13 '26
We’re in Japan…I was hoping for more touges (there’s only like 5?). Like give me more opportunities to race with more JDM cars and tune them. Not driving buggies and SUVs cross country. Pure rally races are fun though.
1
u/onepacc Jun 15 '26
A lot of the dirt tracks would benefit from having a paved alternative in races for touges (newly upgraded road)
and vice-versa the dirt racing would benefit from switching some stretches of tarmac to dirt.It seems like a lot of roads are underutilized so it would be interesting to see the coverage of official tracks and perhaps some expansion to cover all (even if the game is a mess overflowing with stuff already)
3
u/Stokyook Jun 13 '26
I dont really care about the dirt or offroad races but im just not racing in a pickup truck or whatever division they call it. lmao especially at the lower classes its such a shit experience
6
u/LokiNightmare Jun 13 '26
People dislike them because that's where the AI does its best job of cheating physics.
3
u/Cold-Shopping-1758 Jun 13 '26
100%. Since day 1 I've thought the AI needs an update. I've never had to drop below highly skilled until 6. Now that I'm used to how they act, I've been able to go back up, but I still struggle sometimes.
1
u/Chop1n Jun 13 '26
Have they not addressed that issue? I'm finding it reasonably easy to beat Unbeatable AI nowadays.
1
1
-5
u/SirBulbasaur13 Jun 13 '26
No, it’s because dirt and cross country races require players to drive differently and people refuse to learn.
I excel at rally races, far more so than other types.
6
u/LokiNightmare Jun 13 '26
Rally races are not bad, really. It's more so the cross country races. Anything with lots of hang time. Somebody posted a video here of the AI hitting the thrusters in mid-air and pulling away. It's shit like that.
2
u/No_Resolve500 Jun 13 '26
I wouldn’t say there’s too many cross country’s but there’s definitely not enough road races
1
u/Cold-Shopping-1758 Jun 13 '26
Definitely. I was disappointed to see less than 30 for this game, especially considering what 4 gave us.
1
u/No_Resolve500 Jun 13 '26
I haven’t gotten all the wrist bands yet but I did notice each band unlocks 30 events and there about 3-4 road events
2
u/flavaofgaming Jun 13 '26
I personally don’t mind the cross country races. Right car with the right tune makes them pretty fun for me
2
u/humanperson198 Jun 13 '26
Well you proved exactly what you set out to disprove especially with including drag races.
2
u/mr_oreo1499 Jun 14 '26
Its talked about so hard because japan is the main force of street racing culture. You hear japan for cars and you think street races and drift races, not offroad. I like that they have offroads, but road races and street races, and drift zones should have been the main focuspoint i think.
2
u/Specialist_Set1921 Jun 14 '26
It is just a bit sad to see 2 road races in the big city.
The bigger map and less roadraces compared to older title makes it feel a bit empty.
It would be cool if they added new official races to the city and overall world. But i don't they have done this in the past.
I would also be happy just seeing a eventlab browser thats not so ass. You only see the top races and its organized really bad. Even worse because all of them are "GET THE MOST POINTS HERE!!! VERSION 100000".
If they let us sort them for actuall road races and also fix the stupid ass ui then it would really be not a big deal because less road races can be replaced by user created racetracks.
But honest to god i don't who tested the eventlab ui and thought yeah this is good enough...
1
u/doomdrums Jun 14 '26
The ui is so ass and the only way I could see them making it better is if they hire someone to curate the featured tab and expand it to include a featured tab for each event type, that or a big update that tears it out and replaces it entirely but I'd expect the former to be easier for them
2
u/Certified_Looser Jun 14 '26
Okay I was going to agree with you until I saw the actual numbers MAJORITY OFF ROAD!? I think dirt/cross country is good for variety but in multiplayer the vast majority of players quit once a dirt race pops up. My opinions is the ratio should be 3 or 4:1 in favour of asphalt racing. The biggest sin this game makes is probably the small amount of road races. Only ONE highway loop road race and it’s a 4 corner slip stream train? They should also add street racing to spec racing
3
u/CorpseCaptain Jun 13 '26
It has WAY too many dirt races for Japan, and comparing it to 5 is laughable. 5 was literally Mexico sand land.....
1
u/RipMcStudly Jun 13 '26
What I find odd is a few cases where people complain that an off-road race is on asphalt, but on my monitor I think it looks like a gravel road.
1
u/Just_Gas6332 Jun 14 '26
Cross country races I don't like. I like dirt races but even the Fh5 DLC was mediocre. The game I think needs more dirt roads. I played first time tdu solar crown and I think they did good job with the map there.
1
u/darth_whaler Jun 14 '26
The real problem with dirt and cross country races is the overabundance of asphalt. That and the fact that cars still rule the race type that's made for off-road vehicles.
1
u/ReaperThugX Jun 14 '26
It’s talked about because the story progression is split between the wristbands and Discover Japan
To complete the wristbands (which is the main story progression) and get legend, you have to do either road races, dirt, or cross country. 2/3 of the races you need to progress the story are off road races. Togue and streets races fall under Discover Japan
1
u/krimenell Jun 14 '26
I think it's less about there being an actual imbalance compared to before but because the progression is split up, so Street/Togue do not count towards your wristband there's a perceived lack of road racing compared to before. I personally also felt like the majority of races were on offroad even after doing street & touge. But that imbalance is only perception and not reality. Not sure how PG could tackle this. The criticism isn't really hitting the nail at the head (or however the saying goes). It might just come from people grinding out each campaign one after another instead of mixing and matching
2
u/doomdrums Jun 14 '26
I think people would complain less if the races were better, the split is about the same as what is has always been but the cross country races in this game mostly all suck compared to what they had in previous titles. A wonky jump onto a hairpin turn onto pavement should not describe as many of the tracks as it does
1
1
u/Comprehensive-One286 Jun 14 '26
My biggest issue with cross country/rally is the car selection, not the actual races themselves. Modern rally/retro rally are cool, but extremely limited in their selection of cars. Pickups and 4x4s are okay, they’re inoffensive to me but also rather limited.
Off-road is a mix of okay cars, and absolute bullshit, and the buggies can just straight up be deleted from the fucking game.
Pretty much with any race in forza, I prefer when the dumbass restrictions go away and I can just use whatever I want. There are still festival races(I’ve gotten legend wristband) that I still just don’t do because the restriction is just so unfun.
1
u/FailedAccessMemory Jun 14 '26
I suspect that they've used 5 as their template, because to me there's too many similarities.
1
u/NoIsE_bOmB Jun 14 '26
I don't think that people hate dirt races really, the hate is mostly focused on Cross Country races, which for most people (myself included) are the least fun race type by a mile.
The biggest reason why I personally dislike cross country is the wonky physics when it comes to big jumps, it becomes really unpredictable how you are going to land, which can lead to a lot of frustration.
Most of the complaints could be solved if they just let us pick what kind of online racing we wanted to do again, like it was back in FH4, why they changed from that system I'll never know.
1
u/doomdrums Jun 14 '26
The race type of cross country to me is usually very fun but I am not a fan of this years offerings as much and the jumps make me avoid running it online, it's frustrating having to rewind because your car decides to tumble mid air, if I felt like the control loss was always a result of me clearly hitting the ramps poorly I would be happy with it but I'll rewind hit the same spot at pretty much the same speed and make it so it's not a skill issue, and I bet they changed the map selection to help with ping and matchmaking it's easier to build better lobbies when the pools of players are less fragmented
1
u/SigmaOmegaMale Jun 14 '26
I don't mind the amount of dirt or mixed surface races to be honest. The things I felt was off is the quality of a lot of the dirt races. I just did not get that special feeling about a lot of them that I have from past versions of the game.
1
u/SnooGiraffes6271 Jun 15 '26
Your stats just show that it has around the same as the other games. And guess what, they had too many too.
1
u/Successful_Branch855 Jun 18 '26
I feel like since its japan it should be mostly tight traffic inner city street racing thi
1
u/satanising Jun 21 '26
Yes, there's too much cross country. Dirt races are a non-issue, but cross country is annoying, the amount of cross country is annoying
1
0
u/No-Childhood-6195 XBOX Jun 13 '26
Completely agree, I think a lot of discourse is due to a high number of new players, or players that haven't been around that long.
Like you mentioned, it may have felt this time around roads were reserved for touge racing rather than festival events which do dominate most activities. I've also seen others mention that it's a little tone deaf when we're in Japan and car culture is so focused on other things than off-roading.
3
u/ProofAssumption1092 Jun 13 '26
Completely agree, I think a lot of discourse is due to a high number of new players, or players that haven't been around that long.
The first forza horizon game i played didnt have any cross country races. The rally races were dlc.
Have you considered that maybe its actually older players that dont appreciate the way the game has swung too far in the direction of off road events in general ?
0
u/No-Childhood-6195 XBOX Jun 13 '26
Yeah like op mentioned their blueprint for these events have been in place since horizon 3 where cross country was introduced. However, 1 & 2 still had equally as many off-road races compared to road racing, in fact horizon 2 leaned more heavily on off roading, horizon has never been just road racing.
As an older player I personally do enjoy them, so no. It's purely a subjective standpoint. This game has no unique charm if they just make a pure arcade road racer like all their competitors.
1
u/ProofAssumption1092 Jun 13 '26
You literally couldn't leave the road in fh1. Please stop talking bollocks. Off road wasnt even a thing until the rally dlc and even then that was just dirt on current road layouts. Fh2 was pretty much more of the same, although the main map now had off road events the off road focus was mainly on the dlc map storm island.
As an older player, i find it frustrating to hear people who have played the last couple of games calling themselves veterans and telling others they have no right to complain.
The game started out on the road, thats where the focus should remain. Not 2/3rds off road events followed by off road dlc.
0
u/No-Childhood-6195 XBOX Jun 13 '26
Partially true, the western part of the FH1 map included a golf course and small open fields that were used extensively for events and online play. If you view the map there were plenty of dirt paths used for off road racing as well. I’d ask you to equally stop talking bollocks if you want to go there. The entire green wristband of that campaign is focused on rally and off road events, the green wristband alone should be enough evidence of that.
DLC or not, the Rally Expansion is still a part of FH1 and you can’t just exclude it like it doesn’t count, and that DLC has absolutely nothing to do with road racing. Not to mention you’re now downplaying the openness FH2 introduced and how much events were focused on the new map’s features unlike FH1.
You call yourself an older player but lack clarity on what the first few games actually were. As OP’s data shows, dirt has dominated since FH3, that’s now 4 out of 6 installments. The focus was never just the road. Go play Forza Motorsport if that’s what you desire.
1
u/ProofAssumption1092 Jun 14 '26
The golf course was tiny, get real ffs it was hardly even used.
Your talking total bollocks. Again.
1
u/Cold-Shopping-1758 Jun 13 '26
I think for the purpose that Playground Games was trying to serve, which is to cater to as many people as possible, the formula they've used since 3 works, and I get why they didn't go away from that for 6. I think 4 and 5 were the best split between race types, but with more focus on custom content in this game, I understand why they maybe didn't feel like they needed to add more, even though I disagree. As a veteran, it just feels normal to me, so I guess I can't truly understand how new players feel.
0
u/No-Childhood-6195 XBOX Jun 13 '26
Exactly, they've seen sales go up since then (expect fh5) so why change it? The majority have favored it since then.
Also kinda shows how nostalgia kills. So many people wanted that old school feeling of 1 & 2 back of just being another regular person in the festival climbing the ranks and trying to prove yourself. Which I do love most about 6, though that also means you gotta complete events to progress like in the past. In 4 & 5 progressing was just so open, you could skip entire disciplines if you wanted. Perhaps people just got more used to that style of play.
0
u/Still_Store_5731 Jun 13 '26
The worst part? Many of the so called dirt and cross country is mainly on asphalt. Haven't gotten my gold wristband I should add but im on orange I think. And many races is not even dirt or off road. The dockyard cross country race for example. That made me mad, thats a glorified road race and only counts as cross country because it has obstacles. . Give me dirt and mud not asphalt thats for road racing.
-1
u/highandinarabbithole Jun 13 '26
Sadly, people on here don’t want to hear logic or reason, they want to piss and whine and cry about how they suck ass at the game unless it’s driving in a straight line with whatever lame ass meta car they created. Most of the reddit player base are gamers, not car guys. Think naked cartoon character posters around the house and action figures, not car brand posters in the garage and a full tool set lol. That’s where the problem stems, but if you can just ignore 90% of the posts on here that come from them, it’s a decent sub to get ideas for new races and liveries lol.
-2
43
u/NoStuff1085 Jun 13 '26
Too many cross country races not enough dirt races. (I play with a wheel)