After a few months of grinding away at Open racing building up a list of things I wish would get fixed in my head, I’ve stumbled across to Horizon Tour and am surprised how much fun I’m having. I think the biggest thing is that it loads way quicker. You find out what sort of a race you are heading into, have a bit of time to choose a car and then you’re off. No watching your car being infinitely rotated on the damn podium. Driving from race to race is kinda silly but so much better than watching whatever emote you once thought was funny over and over and over.
The racing is admittedly a bit weird. The drivatars are really easy to beat (unlike in the trial) so you kind of skip through picking up accolades for winning everything. Then it’s usually a race between about 4 humans for podium spots. And here’s the weird thing is that’s often a fun race. unlike in The Trial where I am convinced some people just show up to troll by smashing you off the edge, the racing is not so dirty. A sense of being on the same team maybe? When you do get smashed you kind of don’t mind as much because the whole thing feels like an arcade free for all with wall rides being a thing you can and therefore do do.
Over in Open Racing I find my self working hard to race the cleanest most legit race possible and get a tiny bit better one race at a time. When some bozo in 7th thinks its hilarious to spend the race just ramming people off the edge repeatedly it really really ruins it. What’s the deal with this? Is there any kind of actual rule? Should we all just descend into Lord Of The Flies?
Something needs to happen. I keep thinking it would be nice if there were 2 streams you could enter, one that’s full arcade where you do as you please and another where collisions are more policed. Perhaps colliding with other cars slows you in the same way as wall collisions do or perhaps ghosting happens. Of course all kinds of streams to choose from would be great. Imagine if you could choose to just go road racing or cross country. Then jump into a tour that cycles event types and throws up vehicle restrictions that force you to drive a variety of car types rather than just fastest in class.
Not very likely to happen because of course the server cant seem to funnel us efficiently and quickly into the current very basic set up. But I mean there is 16 Million of us. The player pool for multiple events is definitely there. I suspect the sheer number of people is the problem but also how much money is that??? A lot of money. So much money. You would think enough money that Microsoft could build a server capable of hosting this game. Surely.