A 10atoKForza Motor Sports recently tweeted an interesting question with drifting matters: “Have you learned to drift with pinpoint precision?” And down came the floodgates. The official account was encouraging players to view Drift Rivals as a great place to learn drifting, but then the replies are evidence of how split this community is over just about everything: from the sim question to the lack of features that have hindered them for years.
So, what really is Drift Rivals, then? It’s Forza’s own dedicated drifting mode where players can simply slide sideways to practice their techniques and compete with others. Definitely, there’s an intention by the devs to promote players’ drifting skills, but it would appear not everyone is buying what they are putting down.
The responses to this innocent question about drifting speak volumes about the current standing of Forza Motorsport and its playerbase. A player who goes by the name Optimus Primark stated forthrightly, “It’s not really a sim so drifting is best learnt elsewhere,” which God knows stings for the devs. Then, we have Brian keeping it real with, “Hell no, that shit is tough,” and honestly, yeah, man; racing games and drifting can be absurdly hard to get good at.
But wait, the grievances go even deeper than just drifting. Several players raised the absence of stat tracking, which has been missing for years now. Austin said, “it’s 2 years old and I’d like to know what I’ve done the past 2 years in the game,” which is very reasonable. How can one say that they’re getting better at drifting but can’t see their own stats? Someone else even said that GT7 has stat tracking, which just makes the comparison all the more apparent.
Then there’s fixing the whole sim rig crowd envy. Shawn Turnbill went on to explain how he can’t enjoy Forza in his motion simulator because of the “lack of triple monitor support,” and that’s “the only thing keeping it from taking over PC sim racing world,” to be fair, that’s high praise mixed with high frustration.
And then the content requests keep raining down. Rafael Francisco bluntly demanded, “WHERE ARE THE New tracks?” while Mohamed wanted to know if drag racing tracks were going to be added. Dack begged for the Corvette Z06 GT3.R “Pretty please” along with a photo of the car. A lot more want to know about updates, with Kelsier asking if there will be “an update in December” and Zach_B_Fiddie simply wanting to know, “When’s the next major update?”
Not everyone was getting the hang of it though. Bad Kitty kept sharing photos of herself, claiming to have “mastered the art of drifting,” and getting some nice responses of others showing off their own skills. K5Ash was feeling confident, too, with an “of course!” plus a drifting photo. So, a few players are enjoying the drifting and showing off their skills.
But the topics got pretty ugly in some of the harsher realms. Leetorts targeted devs with the statement, “The way you pretend nothing is wrong is gross,” while Nick Chronic was complaining about the economy system: “i’m not a fan of wasting my time on a game that barely gives us 80K credits an hour doing races , its boring and no fun when we can’t buy the shit we want !!!!” Major rage over the progression system right there.
Platform loyalty definitely plays its role, as Tactical Daddy wishes “I wish I could play it on Playstation” as a testament to how some racing fans feel left out due to Forza’s Xbox and PC exclusivity.
Darkpet1981 came in quite dramatically, apologizing to Forza Motorsport for not having tried drifting yet and pleading for forgiveness in this strangely formal reply that just goes to show how passionate some players are about this racing franchise.
Now, where does that place Forza Motorsport? The devs are of course trying to make a splash about their drifting options, trying to help players hone their skills, but judging by the community responses, there are way bigger issues that players want addressed first, with simple basics like stat tracking that should have been there since day one, more complex simulation options next for the hardcore racing rig users, and then new content like fresh new tracks and more cars.
That innocent drifting question quickly turned into a much more significant issue about the current state of the game and its path forward; can blast updates, update content, and of course, fix the long-standing bugs. While some are happily drifting away their problems in Drift Rivals, many more are waiting for the devs to address these crucial issues so they may really start enjoying the content offered by the game today.
The Forza Motorsport is still the promised hype racing title with an intact support community. But this whole Twitter exchange acts as a sharp reminder of how the coming few days will be do-or-die for the dev team if they’re to hold on being a popular game. Drifting might be smooth, but the road heading in for the game looks anything but smooth.
