Why are you encountering so many more gamers in Forza Horizon 5?

Exploring Mexico in the Playground arcade will bring you closer to other players than in previous installments, thanks to improvements in the environment and server systems.

In Forza Horizon 5, you'll meet other players who are doing the same thing in their games as you walk through the roads, deserts, jungles, villages, and volcanoes of Mexico. It's not a brand-new feature in the game, but it occurs far more frequently than it did in Forza Horizon 4. In a Zoom interview, Ben Thaker-Fell, head designer of gameplay at Playground Games, revealed why: "A change in the open world and enhanced servers that allows the game to be more full of life."

"In terms of server technology, in Forza Horizon 4, we made the bold choice of bringing the game online by default, which I believe was a huge success. The entire world was engulfed in a server with 72 players, and as you drove, you could see these players "Thaker-Fell elucidates. They've added functions "with the same values of being a pleasant and inviting world" for the upcoming installment, such as ghost car, which stops those players from colliding with you and vice versa, but the notion has been "extended."

"Instead of one server covering the entire world with 72 players, there are now many servers with up to 96 players. As you drive past him, the number of servers has climbed many times, implying that the universe now connects hundreds of gamers "explains the programmer

"Now, instead of having 72 players spread out unevenly throughout the world (perhaps there are a lot of people at the festival, others engaging in Forza Horizon Live, and others drifting in Edinburgh), you connect to multiple servers as you drive, resulting in a much larger group of players."

According to Thaker-Fell, this causes "the world to appear more busy, there is more life, there are more intriguing things to observe." "There will be more opportunities to join together with other players in game types that take place in the open world, such as Horizon Arcade, and the sessions will be complete without affecting the other game modes."

""In short, you connect with a lot more people, and the environment feels more complete and dense," the game designer says. There are additional options to engage socially and meet new people by using the Forza Link chat system. With the new server technology, I believe we have realized genuine gains."

Now on sale and available through Xbox Game Pass.

Other subjects discussed in the conversation with Playground Games included the game design philosophy behind multiplayer and why they decided there is no full stop for the campaign. We gave the game an exceptional rating in our review, which Xbox Game Pass subscribers and those who purchase the normal version of the game can already see.