Rally racing, insane speed weaving down narrow dirt roads, precision application of power to negotiate a turn. love it all.
Then it all comes crashing down when the benny hill theme song plays, and free roam rush begins. I have played a lot of racing games over the years, and while I have enjoyed horizon 4 overall, this absolute skill-less joke of a racing mode is easily the most soul sucking, undignified, insult to wanting to have a nice clean competitive dirt race I have ever seen.
Please just remove it entirely, or at minimum give us the option to not have to suffer through it, Its literally making not want to play online anymore.
Learn the map, and you’ll learn the best routes (which many times include a good deal of asphalt).
Or, don’t…. Nowhere does it say for FRR you have to go off-road at all; if you’ve an aversion to dirt and grass, stay on the pavement all day long if you like.
Or, and hear me out here, we remove the parts that have nothing to do with dirt racing from dirt racing competitions. Cutting edge thinking, I know, but I think it might work.
first here, only other players read you, second this game is long time dead from update stand point.
Like Squryl said, best is to learn the paths for freeroams, there are not so many of these.
To improve on a FR, let’s pick Farm circuit to glenn rannock trail as an example
Go To Farm circuit start
create a custom track
To begin your track you just start by going the total opposite way of glenn rannock, then make a big loop so that drivatars will go away from your testing in the very first seconds
now head to glenn rannock race start ( through the tunnel, down the hill ) and put finish line there
test your track to be sure that drivatars are not blocking you ( all should turn the opposite way you go
save your track
create custom race with the conditions you want to test ( optimal route can be different depending on season and class )
Here start the actual training, activate rewind and test the best route de finish line. Compare your times on different routes.
The best route has to be with minimum trees and jumps and with things you can recognize easily like left from the big tree, left from the house then straight to between the two twin trees …
Another method is just to look at anyone with quite few stars and try to follow.
Once you have determine the best way for you, it’s just like a track without the checkpoints.
I consider FRR is ok with dirt and CC but I would have liked to have FRR championships and having all the championships 3 races.
Not interested in trying to win. The mode is not a race, its a joke. Races have race tracks, Boundaries, predefined curves and straights. FRR is NOT RACING.
This game is all about adapting. They probably won’t be removing freeroam because there is a small bunch of us that actually enjoy it. Back when it was in all lobbies I was very fond of street racing and cross country, never did like dirt lobbies. Now that they’ve removed freeroam from certain lobbies, I had to adjust my playing style. Still not a big fan of dirt rooms but I deal with it. No one is forcing anyone to play a certain way. What matters is if you wanna just enjoy the game or win in the game. You have to decide.
If you loathe it that much, its best to stick to road/street racing lobbies because the reason freeroam is enjoyable: there are no boundaries, no set route, nothing predefined. If you aren’t familiar with the map, you will not be successful because GPS lines will be your demise.
Devs were very clear about this from the very beginning, reinforcing this dogma throughout the seasonal preview videos w dev commentary. Game was not designed/intended for players to only drive Bugatti Chirons or whatever exclusively from start to finish (at least not successfully). Devs intended and expected players to adapt to the ever-changing environment, which means switching to the appropriate car for any given track at any given time. If you want carbon copy racing experiences in static bubbles, fine, that’s what Motorsport is for. This is not that game.
I’m with you DaReo. I miss the FR in circuit and street racing lobbies. There’s so few FR courses now that if you play regularly it doesn’t take long to remember them. I remember trying to keep up with you unsuccessfully when the game came out. I have no idea how you managed to learn the map in just a few days. Good skill to have though.
Hey buddy! I remember our battles. It’s a shame I have to stick to dirt and cross country now because I absolutely loved the street races. Street and cross country were my thing in the beginning. I didn’t even like the dirt rooms. I live for no walls but they don’t do enough to discourage or prevent ramming and one bad finish can ruin the lobby.
Photographic memory goes a long way to remembering the map and certain routes. It’ll be a slightly bigger task cause of a larger map in the next game but over time I’ll nail it down.
@luckeydoug knows exactly what I mean. In freeroam, or story races or even eliminator takes a bit of strategy, there’s more to it other than gas, turn, brake.
I absolutely LOVE Free Roam as well. These are some of my most favorite activities, along with the story event where you have to think out of the box and discover your own route in order to get to the destination within the time limits.
For me, there are plenty of races where the route is defined. If I want more of this type of races, I would either blue. print my own, or play FMS. (Neither of which are overly appealing)
So perhaps unpopular opinion here but I enjoy the Freeroam races even though I’m not all that good at them. I can never remember the routes so I start out trying to follow a seasoned driver. I will take the “random obstacles” that are always in the same location every season over the moving obstacles in a Street race. Coming from Forza Motorsport, the selling point to me of Horizon was the open world concept. Go anywhere by any route aspect was highly appealing. That is one of the fundamentals of Horizon so it is natural it is put in to a race format. Now I agree, it should be its own thing. Street Racing, Road Racing, Dirt Racing, and Cross-country aka Freeroam. That will not change for Horizon 4, but with enough awareness, they may see the need for change in the future titles.
Most every car I have tuned has a setup for Cross-country and that includes such natural off-road machines such as the Bentley 8-liter, Lambo Huracan, and of course, the Cadillac XTS Limousine. Most of my driving time is actually spent just cruising around the map, doing hill-climbs and finding new ways to launch the car into orbit. lol
So the benefit to Horizon is its diversity. Offering something for nearly everyone. Play what you want, leave what you don’t.
If you’re ‘not interested in trying to win,’ then why bother us with any of this? Just drive around in circles until next race. Weird, though, advocating the removal of something you can’t be bothered to engage in anyway because ‘principles.’
Races are whatever we (or the devs, rather) decide them to be. The only constant in any race is the clock, that’s the only true defining factor. Time is primary opponent, other players secondary. Surface type, incidental. Boundaries, arbitrary. You may not have noticed, but these races are made up of checkpoints…point a to point b to point c, pure geometry, thus eliminating ‘predefined’ constructs.
Why not just put the drive to events back instead? Maybe he isn’t interested in learning the map. I’m not. I’m interested in learning the tracks. That’s what people need to learn not where some random obstacle is. Driving on the road is generally a sure way to lose FRR in most cases not all.
Some people in this thread are missing the point. Freeroam Rush is, for all intents and purposes, a Cross Country event. Putting random Cross Country events in the middle of a Dirt Championship is senseless. OP wants Dirt championships to just be Dirt races. I think it’s a reasonable ask.
Completely reasonable but also unlikely to change at this stage of the game, so people are giving some advice as to how to get better at it. It really isn’t worth getting stressed about in any event unless you are desperately trying to improve your rank at FFA adventure. Otherwise, you can just follow Leetorts’ suggested approach and cruise to the next race, without caring if you win or lose that “race” as it’s only FRR.
Completely agree. Everytime online racing comes with free roam rush, I place my Xbox to home, set timer for 3 minutes after which I come back and begin a search for another lobby. Can’t stand FRR.
. Nowhere does it say for FRR you have to go off-road at all; if you’ve an aversion to dirt and grass, stay on the pavement all day long if you like.