Forza Horizon 5’s Horizon Arcade feature is, on paper, an exciting idea. Horizon Arcade events are within the open world, allowing players to cooperatively complete escalating challenges. It’s exactly the kind of feature thatForza Horizon 5is built to offer. Yet, somehow, of allForza Horizon 5’s many game modes and activities, Horizon Arcade is one of the few that’s worked out the worst. Players within theForza Horizon 5community are already pushing Playground Games to make changes.
TheForza Horizonsubreddit has many different topics posted regarding Horizon Arcade since launch, but the days since Playground’s hotfix have created a new surge of activity. The most popular post is a simple enough message, with a headline reading “Horizon 5arcades right now” attached to a gif ofThe Fresh Prince of Bel-Airlooking around an empty room. This is the most common sentiment surrounding Horizon Arcade. Players believe that no one is participating in the event.
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Other posts on theForza Horizonsubreddit delve into some of the reasons why players think Horizon Arcade isn’t working out well. Theories include that participation inHorizon Arcade doesn’t provide enough rewards, particularly since events so often fail halfway through. A bigger recommendation is altering Horizon Arcade to scale with the number of players participating in each event, so that they can be completed regardless of how many people are involved.
As should be clear, there’s no one obvious solution to the problem with Horizon Arcade because no one’s sure what exactly the problem is. At skin depth, it looks like not enough players are participating in events. However, it could be deeper than that.Forza Horizon 5could be having problems with matchmakingor spawning other players in for events. It could be having technical issues keeping players matched together through the course of a full Horizon Arcade event. In other words, It’s possible Playground could fix this issue with patches.
In the recentForza Horizon 5update, Playground does mention some notable fixes. It says “improvements” were made to Horizon Arcade for “other player visibility” as well as “joining and leaving arcade events.” Of course, there remains a notable unresolved issue within Playground’s frequently updated list of problems, too, that says Horizon Arcade events are starting “without a full group” or with “too small of a group” of players.
Playground is, at the very least, aware of the issues regarding Horizon Arcade. If the answer to those issues was simple, it’d likely be fixed by now. It’s just a shame that Horizon Arcade is part of the weekly seasonal objectives, because players are constantly reminded of how difficult it is to complete a Horizon Arcade event each time they open up the Festival menu. Expect updates on this problem fromPlaygroundin the weeks, or potentially months, to come.
Forza Horizon 5is available now on PC, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S.
