The Biggest Problem with Modern Racing Games 

Bro the casuals have actually ruined open word racing games

I think this is pretty much correct. Sim racers don't really need an open world racing game when something like AC exists, we can get pretty much any car we want and drive on massive free roam maps. Something like SRP would never exist in one of these games because it requires a lot of attention to detail with one goal in mind, instead of open world games which lack that detail in order to pack it with the most content.

I agree. But players do also depend on what the market puts "at the front of their faces". I would say there is a mutual influence. But for me, the one I mention is more powerful.

Idk, I feel a lot of sim racers/enthusiasts would play an open world sim racing game, but it just doesn't exist. All open world racing games are too arcadey. Which is why AC mods that add open world maps are so popular. If a game came out like The Crew that let you drive all over America, had track/street racing, and had sim racing physics like AC, then it'd be pretty popular imo. Sort of like how Microsoft Flight Sim is popular.

And Simracers that want Open World play AC with mods

The good ol days of NFS. That's what made those games and Forza Horizon 2 and 3 so good. Progression and replayability. Gotta give people a reason to keep playing

Thats why i like nfs more. Forza and the crew toss out free bugattis like its candy

Nfs Rivals had an incredible progression system. I remember how hard it was to earn my Lamborghini Veneno, Pagani Huayra, Mclaren P1 and even harder on the cop side. The game was also really fun with absolute chaos and whenever I play it, it never fails to bring a smile on my face slamming racers into walls, flipping over cop cars and absolutely wrecking your rival

Absolutely not! Some of us don't have time to "earn" digital cars in a video game. Some of us have more important shit to do IRL and just wanna chill and cruise around in a supercar

NFS unbound has a nice progression system. It's that old cliche NFS story: you get a nice car, something happens to this nice car and you lose it, then some time later you end up having to buy a shit box to start over your career and get your car back. It's the total opposite of FH5 where you start as the owner of the festival and get a bunch of supercars thrown at you

I never got to play TDU1 because I was a bit late to the gaming scene but I saw so many videos and gameplays on YT. As soon as I was able to I bought TDU2 and to this day its my favourite racing game of all time. I've played that game for thousands of hours. I really hope Solarcrown lives up to its older games

TDU really delivered on "distracting" the player. I would call it more like "engaging". This is the GTA Effect - the entire map is alive around you and providing you with things to engage with. The whole point of an open world is to fill the void between "missions". Instead of a Menu delivering you from one mission to the next in an instant (like Goldeneye for example), you have to instead drive to Point A to meet this person, then drive to Point B to pick up something, and then Point C to "start" the mission. But if that map you're driving around on is completely lifeless with nothing to do, as the video says it just becomes "a chore" to drive from one "mission' to the next. Like, why am I doing this can I please skip it. You shouldn't want to skip the drive, the drive itself should be part of the fun. That's the problem with all these newer racing games - it's just a useless time-wasting chore to drive from one "mission" to the next. Like in GTA, maybe you get in an accident because lanes and traffic are tight in the city, and then you get in a fight with a pedestrian for causing the accident, and then suddenly you have 2 stars and are evading cops, engaged in a shootout and nearly dying before you even started the "mission". GTA is great at "distracting" you in this manner. Games need to realize, if you're going to put in an open world like that to "deliver" players from mission to mission, you better make it entertaining along the way. If not, just scrap it and go back to a Menu system and focus your time on improving the other gameplay instead.

@@Kingzzman Its still a lot of fun, despite it's dated look and goofy physics

THE BIGGEST PROBLEM IN MODERN RACING GAMES IS HANDLING!!!! WHY IN ALL GAMES CARS DRIVE LIKE ON ICE????

I love TDU but 2 always crashes for me, I'm gonna see if 1 does the same thing

I don’t want Rockstar to hand out a another remaster project to Grove Street Games. Give us a new Midnight Club instead.

@@ToaGresh300 true but they could at least put up the original games for download on the game store. I wouldn’t mind playing with the old graphics I just want some way to play those games without having to buy a ps2 and the discs.

Just play the games that already exist. They're good.

@@AcroxShadow yeah but I don’t have a ps2 or the game and I don’t wanna go out of my way just to play these games. They could easily just add them to the digital store as backwards compatible so I could play them on my ps5. Not to mention the one thing I don’t miss is the ps2 control lol

They’ll remake it, but destroy it in the process, you don’t want that lol

This 100% after 2 hours of playing forza horizon you have 20 cars, all with the same v12 lambo engine, max upgrades etc. All cars look different but drive and handle exactly the same. It feel so useless and dead and it ruins it completely. Let us grind for it and let us enjoy the grind together with friends, that’s all I’m asking for.

That's done cause of an average player, today's kids want everything and want it now. If they don't get it, they'll move to another game pretty quick

I don't like that approach, reminds me too much of real life. I don't wanna work my way up in a game as I already need to work my way up in real life.

@@Mr.Goldbar It's an instant gratification generation thing. Maybe I'm old but I like to work for something and feel rewarded. Makes me feel like I accomplished something.

@@Horneycorn working for something, acomplishing and feeling rewarded is something I like to save for real life, I absolutely don't look for that in video games when I have that IRL. You call it instant gratification, I call it an escape from real life's shortcomings. Acomplishing something in a video game doesn't help paying rent or college tuition, modern life needs its methods for escape.

I've been waiting for a game like this for almost two decades now. Test Drive Unlimited and The Crew are the closest we have gotten to that, and sadly both of those games are now focusing on extremely small maps that get boring extremely quick.

The closest thing to this right now is installing open world maps in Assetto Corsa on PC, which is a ton of fun.

The closest thing might be BeamNG IMO....

MSFS is different because plane companies aren't Car companies and licenses are way way different. Just as an example, if they were like car companies they'd write stuff in the contracts like "this plane can't go anywhere near a building or storm, because that may be negative to us, so you have to code them to be in a specific altitude, oh and also no air traffic or accidents". They are also way way cheaper. Wrote this above, so I'll paste it here as it's relevant but TLDR, it's near impossible for any studio to tackle that. I've been through a couple studios where there were talks about making a racing title with actual good physics in an open world setting. You know, community driven like AC modded but with an actual game mode for it. Or even proper sim racing titles with new tech since we all wonder why are racing games so behind in tech. But then always the same problem comes, marketing and licensing. Look at beamng, arguably the best racing game we ever had, barely anyone touches it, makes no renevue. It's not sustainable for a business, unless you have money and are doing it out of passion which isn't the case for most smaller studios that don't have to listen to publishers and whatnot, and if you're a bigger studio you're listening to them so no chance of doing a proper game either. Then how would you market that against the likes of The Crew and Horizon? You can't, especially if you take out the licenses like GTA did because if you make a game be about cars and you have no real cars, the community just doesn't care (and yes there were studios that tested this). But if you license the cars, suddenly half the crap you wanted to pull of is not possible due to contracts with car companies, most known, would be destruction and soft body physics, they just don't allow you. Not to mention you'll burned through your budget fast, and that means less RD, less development, etc. which result in less quality in the end product. This to say, this video and comment are great, but a proper game is impossible with the restrictions imposed either by the publisher/higher ups, the car companies, or the community. That's why you don't get good racing titles. Even in simracing, iRacing is still the best title because they got lucky, older licenses and they got big enough to make demands, and even so they burned money until covid. Rally? Damn richard burns is the only option when it comes to full Rally sim. Think about that, 20 years, we haven't made a proper rally game. Dirt rally 2 was okay for a simcade, and hopefully WRC will be fun, but they are not fully sims, and they cut corners everywhere. It pains me to say so, but from a dev perspective, racing games are a dead genre. It's all about spending tons on licenses and marketing, lying about building a ton of new tech, and then cutting costs everywhere while misleading the community so they can profit and move on. No matter what studio you're on, if you tackle the genre, that's what's expecting you, so why would any dev worth salt would accept that? We just steer away to genres where we actually have the possibility of doing something great.

With how big the sim racing community has become, and the fact that a lot of us grew up with the original NFS and Forza games, I can definitely see a market for a sim racing open world title. Sure, you won't get a portion of the market of casual console players, but you'd take the interest of every sim racer (and monopolise that market)

I agree, if the crew motorfest wasn't online only I would've purchased it day one. Don't get why there are still games that require an online service for single player use.

Fully agree. Video games used to be a solo hobby, if I wanted to talk to people I’d go outside. Just let me have access to all the content the game I payed for has on my own. Rockstar is the scummiest case of abandoning the singeplayer players.

Man there are so many racing games now even less older than 5 years that are totally single player. Maybe you stop being lazy and keep looking. I can't hear those lame excuses anymore. "Boohoo, in the past everything was better. Boohoo, in the past I was a kid without responsibilities."

Mario Kart 9. 😂

TDU 1 😂

looking forward to solar crown. Hope they deliver.

Midnight club LA exists

​@@Fylo-Kalistin my opinion it will be average. From what I've seen it's going to miss some stuff. But hopefully it will be good enough to earn them enough money to develop a second game

a comprimized Europe-openworld? well Euro Truck Simulator 2 exist

You have GTA 5 RP

@@TanggonJodiIsmana ETS2 with FH5's multiplayer system does sounds like a nice idea... 🤔

It looks much more cozy than FH5 for sure

yeah i used to actually like that map especially when itd change in all the different seasons, fh5s map is like 70% desert and the rest of its just empty, the only cool parts were the volcano and the big bridge

I agree. Im from the UK but have lived in Japan for 20 years , so driving through the open world almost makes me weep! Just wish I could go in the pub instead of trashing the garden though.

It’s a little surreal to hear people say this about that game considering how much complaining I used to hear about the game. I guess hindsight is really strong huh

​@@yareyaredawacozy is definitely a great word to describe the fh4 map. And it was brilliant.

Seriously! Midtown Madness takes me back to simpler times

Tokyo extreme racer!

​@@SlicesUSAThose games are great. Tokyo Extreme Racer 2 for the Dreamcast is still a great game and can be played on a phone (emulators like redream)

Look up Night Runners man.

@@lonestar4233 I never see that game but looking great. Thx for reccomendation

Juiced Eliminator has Pink Slips via Contact

I love that game. The only racing game that allows you to completely disassemble and reassemble the engine. It was really unbalanced though, taking a cheap car, selling all unnecessary body parts like doors, windshields and seats slapping in turbo turned it into an unbeatable drag monster lol

Boooooring

THANK YOU. People really don't appreciate Unbound enough, saying how they hate it by throwing around buzzwords like 'anime effects' lol wtf does that even mean, which isnt even the correct term for it. And most of the criticism don't even address what part of the gameplay they don't like. Not to mention some who do criticize the gameplay, are doing it with rose-tinted glasses as they compare it to the older games (e.g. complaining there's no 'sense of speed' as they compare B-class in Unbound with end-game cars in MW05). I feel NFS is the only game that's not been neutered like the rest by daring to stick with an aggressive handling model thats different from the rest (I'm really tired of arcade racers driving like boats & not really differing from one another). Aside from separating campaign & online progression (and annoyance of too many cops in campaign), it does the grind pretty well. I also especially love how it addresses the problem of people only playing maxed out cars that's plaguing older NFS & most of other racing games by introducing the performance class system. If I have to say, the devs behind recent NFS (Heat & Unbound) are really about the only ones left that dare to make a difference. Honestly the biggest problem is because they're held back by EA's suits, which have been on a wild goose chase for money all this while ignoring what great devs they have under them. I'm also sad to hear the recent news of them moving Criterion to help develop Battlefield YET AGAIN, with a news that written like how they're gonna abandon Unbound soon. EA is friggin rich, how hard is it to hire a new studio that's more fitting to help develop the BF they love so much & let their racing game developers work on NFS???

@@Don_Akane89 You're hearing what you want to hear and projecting the worst arguments to seem like your opinion is more valid. I've not heard a lot of people complaining about 'anime effects'. What they did complain about was design dissonance and inconsistencies. The anime effects were "cool" but off-base and fit about as well as a mismatched sock. You may enjoy the mismatched sock aesthetic, but that's not for everyone. The devs said you could disable them, you couldn't. They said XYZ, and instead we got XYZ Lite. In terms of gameplay and design, it's a downgrade in almost every respect to its nearest predecessor NFS Heat on which it is based. Also, newsflash. Heat and Unbound are NOT made by the same devs/studios, just in case you didn't know, since you're lumping them together. The ONLY saving grace for Unbound over Heat is that it got more post-release support (which HEAT should have gotten more of, if Ghost Games didn't get canned by EA out of left field). If not for that, I'd recommend Heat over Unbound 99 times out of 100. Instead I only recommend it 90% of the time now.

@ZackydomPoy Took me about 300 hours total to complete all challenges for both solo and online before the Vol. 3 update was released. You will be busy for awhile.

@@darksunDS I gotta disagree with you on Heat being better than Unbound in every aspect. Heat is a great game, but for me, no replayability. I complete the story, build a few cars and that's it, no reason to keep playing. Unbound has loads of replayability for the grind I just mentioned. Then there's the handling. Heats drift handling is twitchy and frustrating, while grip handling is ok, but the cars tend to understeer like hell, then snap like hell in high speed. I much prefer Unbounded handling, where drift is easy to pick up, hard to master, grip feels good and the car will actually turn, but you still need to brake and can snap if pushed too hard. Then u have the NOS. I hate the NOS in Heat, u pick between no power x5 or uncontrollable rocket. No in between. Unbound has 2 NOS at once that involves management and strategy, it's the most innovative NOS I ever seen in a game, it's freaking awesome. Cops are subjective, some people prefer Heat cops, I prefer Unbound cops. Heat cops just make me rage. I have friends who quit Heat because of the cops (giving me even less reasons to go back to Heat) while Unbound cops are manageable but still challenging at Heat 5. Actually fun to evade cuz I feel slick to evade cops in Unbound rather than "find jump" tactic in Heat. And as the other commenter pointed out, the class system is great. I get to drive a variety of cars instead of maxed out highway traffic dodgems all the time. S+ class is my least favourite class to play because the races are boring and frustrating. But that's most of the races in Heat, everyone just drives 400+ cars. Not saying Heat was a bad game, and Unbound sure has its flaws, but to say Unbound is inferior in every way is false, I will call Unbound a better game than Heat and die on this hill.

@ZackydomPoy do you play single player or MP? Both?

Naw i think overtake is out of touch af Some of these takes couldn't be worse

Motorfests map is awsome idk wat this guy is talking about. He's talking about adding rpg and charecter game elements to a racing game. A racing game is about the car, the race and the drive and Motorfest does exactly wat a racing game should do. Tdu was special but say evry racing game from the past 20 years did wat tdu did then ud have ppl sick of it because its all they get. Its no different here its one thing for him to say its his opinion but to day no1 looks at Motorfests map and enjoys driving in it is just false and trying to push his annoyance with wat he dislikes on others. He needs to suck it up and realize not evry1 sees it like him.

@@Drkfire_Yt hah mate what things that TDU did are things we haven't seen in anygame ever since and not even before i must say tho now with new TDUSC i waited years but honestly it looks way worse than Motorfest i would love little bigger map for Mfest but hey atleast it's not again in states.

@julius_eemil3188 o ik it hasnt been done b4 or since but i was saying if it had become the norm instead of wat is the norm ppl woulda complained because they just cant b happy. And ye from the last thing i saw of the new td it looks worse but i also believe its going for a more realistic feel and look so its goina b a duller colour pallet then motorfest. I also think motorfest will get a map expansion at som point.

@@julius_eemil if tdu was so good then why did it take so long for it to get another installment and why did the game shut down? Why does it have mediocre reviews? It has barely any customization tdu is highly overrated if I wanted to buy a stock car and change the trim of it I would do it in real life. The driving physics in tdu are literally arcade physics so what are you even talking about? Tdu is literally just an open world arcade racing game just like every other arcade open world racing game.

It wasnt really a grind, thats just nostalgia. Iirc you could make something like 100k a minute easily with a speed trap race. And given that car prices in the game reflected the irl prices, Ferraris for example cost anywhere between 100k to 1 million (or even more, cant remember the special ones). So do the math, how often you could have bought a car. TDU 2 sure it was a little bit more grindy, thats true.

Well, on the same not e, GT is grindy, and peopleare complaining. Are we impossible to please?

@@andipajeroking i loved the gt7 grind. I absolutely hate how easy it is to get good cars in games.

Regardless im enjoying the crew motofest tgat seems to have test drive elements

You are talking about BeamNG when it releases fully sometime in the next 20 years. TDU Solar Crown isn´t going to be very close to a sim.

You guys won't shut up about "realistic" don't you

@@qwerty975 Realistic in a way Gran Turismo does it, a simcade is good enough :)

It's weird that people complain about it when Mexico's weather is literally a hot desert, or the rainy season. Every winter north of the border gets flooded with Mexicans anywhere there's an inch of snow. Like would people have expected Horizon 3 to also be covered in snow every other week?

We have NFS Heat and Unbound... both surprisingly good, in fact leagues above Forza Horizon IMO. Then again, those may have too arcade handling for some. But for me anything more realistic than Grid would not be fun for street racing. Tried to get into street scene in Horizon 4, wasn't fun. Tho that might just be the horrendous AI.

Police are impossible for FH5 and for *all* future Horizon Games, in 2019, Microsoft made it corporate Policy that *all* future Forza games *have* to carry a PEGI 3 Age Rating. This is problem for Police Chases as, in 2018, the PEGI changed their Ratings system to be *considerably stricter* , under the new, post 2018, Regulations, the *minimal* Age Rating for Games with Police Chases is now a PEGI 12! As Microsoft will *not* Permit any Forza Game made after 2019 to Exceed a PEGI 3 Rating, this makes adding the Police to Horizon *impossible* ! Good, as Police Chases *RUIN* Games for Me!

The whole panic is definitely justified and is what turns me away from the new FM game. They tried to fix something that many of us in the Forza community think is not broken, and even if they wanted to make a better progression this is indeed the wrong approach. I do feel they betrayed a big part of the community that I'm also a part of with that move

@@Mr.Goldbar Agreed, but I’m still glad to see that they tried something instead of nothing. Forza has been stagnant since FM5, and while this change was obviously a complete flop in the eyes of most fans, I’m still happy to see the initiative taken to, at the very least, alter the experience in some way from the previous games. Though, if they really wanted this style of progression to be at the core of the game, what they should have done was incentivize the player to stick with a car through some other means, instead of outright restricting the upgrade path. I absolutely agree with the car leveling system, as it’s a nice reflection of just how much time you’ve put into a car, but maybe T10 could have associated some special events with each car that progressively become accessible as you move through the levels. A mini campaign for each car, so to speak. I might be idealistic, and I have no idea if this would require a monumental effort from the team, but I honestly can’t imagine it would be too different from the way that they seemingly slap events together and throw them out the door, nowadays.

@@djentrification1631 I remember in NFS Most Wanted 2012 each car had its own events that were shared between specific cars, I liked that mechanic. If I liked it when NFS had that with less than 100 cars I can't imagine how amazing it's gonna be in Forza with more than 700. There are many ways to spice up gameplay that don't make the game grindy. They should've looked at how Gran Turismo 7 is so criticized and done the opposite but instead the car xp thing kinda one-ups it XD

Dare to Dream!

So beamng

AC/BeamNG-levels of Physics + Super great customization + Well-made openworld One can only dream....

I completely agree with you, drifting along dirt roads in a rally focus whilst hunting for collectable/photo locations has been the most fun I've had in a racing game for a long time

since when? and besides the actual ground map of msfs is too rough to interact with other than airports and airstrips.

As a fan of endurance racing on open roads, wish they could do more events, even ones spanning 24 hours.

Grinding Heat for Cars I can sort of agree, but I feel Day sort of bores a tad bit whereas Night with cops and traffic is where the map shines, especially in tighter parts of the map in Heat 3/5 races where a few blind spots and traffic being close together as well as dodging Cops and Rhinos make it a fun time. Also finding yourself knowing the gas stations locations when you're out of repair kits or a safe house to end the night when low on health makes it more engaging to me.

@@wingedangel6030 yeah I'm mostly talking about night and the missions to unlocks cars as well as the idea to have ultimate parts on high heat races which makes interacting with the map more needed. Also the collectibles and activities that also give your cars and hidden vanity items. Adding to it the hidden jumps/hidden locations that don't exactly have an indicator in the map, like the mall in the middle for example or the jumps in downtown. Pretty well made if you ask me

Forza Horizon is horrible for that. The last one I bought was Horizon 3 and I barely touched any of the actual races, yet my garage would make Jay Leno envious. All I've ever really done in that game is just cruise around aimlessly for something to do while listening to music or podcasts, occasionally challenging an AI driver to race. Yet practically every few minutes I'll level up again, get another free car thrown at me, or a barn find, or another hundred grand just materialises out of thin air. The laughable thing is you actually earn more XP by driving badly... It gives you no incentive to actually get good at the game.

Ey, A MT5DX+ player! I played the game a handful of times since MT5 got release in the states in 2017 and trying to get a racing meter from that game but the bullshit Ai really started to piss me off and keep breaking my streak... But if you keep winning without breaking your streak it's one of the most adrenaline rush of dopamine hit that I ever experienced, "Phantom of blue" was playing at the last race of the last chapter as my body was shaking the entire time not even letting go of the wheel besides power-shifting!

At first glance, the comparison with Sims 4 is far-fetched. But unfortunately it is true...

Well it’s a game lol 😂 .. all I heard was the games don’t have what I want

Oh come on, this is such a garbage made up list. " Starter cars are not super cars" Nissan Silvia, Shelby GT350, Holden Maloo (or whatever its full name is) now compare that to FH4 Audi TTS, Dodge Charger '69, Ford Focus RS "Barn finds are a great incentive to explore " FH4 and FH5 has literally the same concept when it comes to barn finds. Has it not? "The map is very fun to explore" It is one of the flattest map in horizon history. FH4 had very colorful seasons, whereas FH5 has more diversity and a mountain road. (and dont forget about the rally dlc) Your favourite might be FH3, but just as many people like other horizon maps.