On one hand, open world takes away the loading times. On the other hand, you have to wait for the rest of the people to meet up at the starting line of the next event, which takes at least 5x as long and usually ends with a time out plus forced start anyway.

Competing on specifically made tracks that flow correctly is more fun than random route #264 with akward corners and cutting accross fields. I can close my eyes and drive the Nordschleife, Spa, Sarthe, etc flawlessly in my mind. Can't remember a single ribbon from TDU (apart from the epic 1 hour around the island race), NFS Carbon, Midnight club LA, Burnout paradise, TDU2, NFS HP, NFS Most wanted, Forza Horizon, ETS2, NFS Rivals. Doesn't mean I didn't enjoy those games, just more for exploration and single player.

It's time to learn some new tracks and meet online. NFS shift was the last with some good track based racing. Shift 2 was unplayable due to input lag, I didn't like Grid and Ferrari challenge / TD Ferrari racing legends / WRC 3 were pretty deserted online. I'm craving track racing more atm than another open world racer.

Can people just go away with this open world forza horizon crap? When did this become a thing? Open world racing? Like seriously, what the fuck does that even mean? How is it great?

I play racing games to drive over a specific course/track/circuit... master that track to hell and back, then compete on said track with others that have masetred it just as well. Not to go through billboards and take short cuts. I want them to penalize people that even cut corners. Sigh....

And some people like freedom. I guess you have never played Burnout Paradise.

In the end there is only one perfect path you will have to drive. So not much difference.

That exactly is the thing. I agree with most of wht you are saying but some of what you say I couldn't agree with less.

Like you saying open world takes away load times. No, they don't. If you start a game and want to do a specific challenge/race on a game like driveclub (keep in mind that they said it takes no more than 10secs to load anything) or "corridor racers" as the term has ben conned; you start game, your car s already loaded up or yo ucan switch it if you want, select the evnt/race from a menu hit X and wait 10 secodns for the level to start and thats it. In open world games, you start game and your car basically comes out of a garage or a spawn point, then you drive for however long it will take to get to the event or race start point you want. That could in iteself take a solid 6mins to do depending on how big the world is.

But I agree with everything else, if theer is one thing I hate about open racers (though I loved burnout paradise), its how forgetful they are. I can remmebr by heart every single turn of laguna seca, high speed ring, suzuka circuit, swiss alps...etc. Just tackling a track and mastering it, playing it over and over and over again until you have it down to perfection adds a quality to a racer that you siply can never get from open world games.

I particularly like how they have tackled multiplayer in this game. The whole lobby system just doesn't work in racing games. But with the event set up, they can basically have a list of different types of events all with countdown timers and you just jump into whichever one you want. Rcae starts when th etimer finishes and you are automatically paired with which ever players are available. I reckon they will also have user created events on that list with their own timers too. Can't wait. 

Guess ur one of those that doesn't read an entire conversation and justs posts tuff, cause if you did you will see I said I loved burnout paradise. 

You say in the end there is only one perfect path you will have to drive, so thats no different from straight racers? No no no no, you are lying. That is just so untrue. 

And let the people that like freedome like their freedom. Thats all well and good for them. What is stupid is how these people seem to throw in FH2 in every DC thread like all of a suden all racers should be open world. You don't see me going into ANY FH2 thread talking about how it should be a straight racer do you?