The first patch of FH5 aims to fix servers and keep you from cheating

Screenshot: Adam Ismail

Forza Horizon 5 Start was pretty stellar, all in all. Sure, the servers have been spotty since it was fully released about a week ago, but that’s what happens if you claim 6 million players just a few days after launch. Incredible, more than 1 million of them US $ 100 donated for Early Access Ultimate Edition.

The stress the network has been under has made it difficult to establish and maintain connections with friends. Hence, Wednesday’s news that Playground Games released its first patch for the title will surely be appreciated by fans. The hotfix is ​​live for gamers on Xbox and PC at the time of writing, and you can read the full notes below Forza support site.

As a PC gamer, I’m happy to see that the aggressive detail pop has been smoothed out in the plagued Ultra settings. But for the most part, the big updates are related to multiplayer integrity. Playground says it’s “improved” [the] Horizon Life Connectivity Stability “, fixes the incessant vehicle stopping that would occur if players were disconnected, and” disabled Convoy voice chat to track down the long loading times in online events “.

Screenshot: Adam Ismail

The stopping mistake was an annoying mistake, especially if you had a huge chain of skills built upon hitting it. Losing connection with Horizon Life would immediately stop your car and end your combination. As for Convoy’s voice chat, the wording there is interesting – I wonder how long it will take to reactivate it, although its absence shouldn’t be a huge loss to players considering that most people are partying. Chat or a third party app use communication anyway.

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I can’t judge the effectiveness of these fixes as the patch has just come out and I haven’t tried playing online with friends yet. What I can confirm, and what you’ve probably expected if you’ve enjoyed FH5 so far, is that Playground also took this opportunity to destroy several exploits that used to give people vehicles, super wheelspins, and effortless XP and credits.

First, the breakdown in the car collection. This was one I did just yesterday to get hold of the Impreza 22B STi, which should just be something you should be able to win by doing wheelspins and completing the festival playlist. It worked due to a bug in the design of the Car Collection screen. This menu is where you can keep an eye on your garage by viewing maps for every vehicle in the game. If a car is available for purchase through the auto show, like 95 percent of it, you can just press the Y button to buy it locally.

Screenshot: Adam Ismail

This is not supposed to work for vehicles that are not sold through the auto show; However, thanks to a bug, the purchase option appeared for every card that the player’s cursor highlighted when opening the menu, regardless of whether that vehicle was designed for the auto show. By default, the cursor always starts on the map at the top left – the first vehicle in a manufacturer’s list. It also retains its place in the manufacturer’s list when you withdraw and re-enter the menu.

Should the player move the cursor, the request to buy such rare vehicles disappeared. But in some cases – as in the case of the 22B and the short-tail McLaren F1 – the first car on the roster happened to be a rare model. The screenshot above shows what I’m talking about, but since I’ve already bought the Impreza and the exploit has since been patched, I won’t be able to demonstrate it in action anyway. Honestly, I have no regrets if I caught the 22B this way – just like the Celica GT-Four ST205, it’s not a car that you can simply buy, and that was a particularly nasty thing to do with it Sega Rally 2 Fan.

The Super Wheelspin exploit is probably the most infamous. It was the 1945 Willys MB Jeep and it was less of a mistake than simply a major developer oversight that is frankly inevitable in a game the size of FH5.

The Willys costs only 40,000 credits – a starvation wage in the Forza economy of the Weimar Republic – and with it you could unlock a super wheelspin price roulette with only five skill points, a currency that you get by performing driving maneuvers. Every car’s skill mastery tree is different and – something I never knew until last week – the same tree doesn’t apply to multiple models in your garage. This prompted people to buy dozen of Willy’s Jeeps and get the Super Wheelspin for each one throw them at the auction house.

As you can see, the spot that used to be part of the Super Wheelspin in the Willys tree has now been replaced by a sad point boost:

Screenshot: Adam Ismail

The last one I hadn’t tried, but our friends at Kotaku Reported earlier this week included the Goliath street race – one of the longest in the game – and using the built-in automatic steering assist to make it basically play itself out for you. Build a rubber band to hold the throttle down, set the event to 50 laps, and voila – only when you finish the run, even with no competitors, can you win shiploads of XP and money.

All of those heroics are gone now, which I honestly don’t particularly like. They should be patched because they weren’t meant to be there in the first place. On the flip side, I find it hard to admonish scammers for farming XP and claiming an abundance of prizes because FH5 is a game that literally brings you three of its most sought-after new ones from the moment you start playing Gives models. Last year, many Forza Horizon 4 players were surprised when they happened to receive 200 Super Wheelspins. It turned out to be a bug by Playground, but the fact that no one was exactly sure until the developer confirmed it says a lot about the nonexistent nature of the Forza Horizon economy.

Whatever you want to do to have fun at Horizon Festival, do it. That’s what the game is about. I’m just happy to be able to cruise with my friends again.