I don't know why so many people in these communities can't see in grey. Feeling like a lack of pitstops is a deal breaker doesn't mean someone wants the game to be iRacing, just as not caring if they are gone doesn't mean someone wants it to be Burnout.
Myself, I was actually interested in how another sim-cade title like Forza could do, and seeing as Forza is beyond stale at this point, figured it might inject some life into things and offer an interesting alternative. The plain truth of the matter though, is that tire wear, fuel burn, pit stops and strategy are key parts of circuit racing, and completely abandoning them is eliminating several dynamics from the title, making it a shallower experience overall.
As someone who has been hosting/helping host weekly community events since FM1, and FM8 being total question mark at this point, I was looking at a more sim-cade oriented PC3 as a potential title to move events to, thinking that it would offer all the excellent options from PC2 (as Ian stated) but with a friendlier handling model that wouldn't be as daunting for some of the regulars we have in our series. A sim-cade title offers a great way to have somewhat serious racing without the aggressive learning curves and mandatory expensive peripherals and all that stuff that the more serious sims offer.
Forza has been that platform for years, but their titles are very limited in terms of the racing they provide. Even with pitstops present, their pitstops are super simple with no choice of tire compounds or fuel loads and so on, tire wear is generally inconsequential as very few cars burn tires up faster than fuel, and cars that can't run around 40mins on a tank are somewhat rare.
The result of the lacking strategy options in Forza means that the game has turned into a pure pace affair, with predictable results since you can often figure out who is going to win the race 2 laps in because they are rocketing off to a lead and you know that they aren't going to destroy their tires and need to pit or anything like that. Aggression has to be high because the race won't "come back to you" so you see a lot of unnecessary divebombs and impatient moves being made.
Those who feel pitstops get in the way of good racing likely do not actually watch racing, or care enough about racing to pay $60 for a new title in a series of (previously) sim racing games when they can get all the racing of the kind they want in GTA 5. Many of the most exciting finishes and late-race charges are born out of cars on different strategies converging near the end of the race. As someone who doesn't even bother to watch much eSports stuff or have a PS4 to play GTS, the GT World Final stuff has been captivating largely due to the exciting pit strategies making for nail-biter finishes. On the real world side of things, V8 Supercars and BTCC have had some fascinating races just in the last few years thanks to some cars taking a pit for rain tires when it starts sprinkling while others stay out and try to brave it on slicks.
I get that the strategy stuff can be off-putting to less experienced drivers and can feel shoe-horned into shorter hopper-style races, and on the other side, sometimes even for experienced drivers it's nice to just have a race where you attack and not worry about that stuff... The issue with this decision for PC3 is that it flat out kills one whole side of it. It's severely limiting, killing a bunch of potential (and previously optional) depth. It's a sad statement when Forza offers a deeper racing experience than your title...
The trailer looked awful, but I was still trying to be optimistic, and imagining the ability to run proper timed races with multiple tire compounds and interesting weather options throughout their beautiful time of day cycles was actually tipping me towards being fairly excited. While I probably wasn't going to pre-order anyway, this has turned this game into a "maybe buy if I can find it for $10 or less" for me as I just can't justify forking out $60 for a shallow pace-is-everything racing game when I already own one of those that at least has pit stops (as lame and often inconsequential as they are).
The only hope I have now is that this pressure forces a change, but given the general indifference Codemasters has shown for their playerbase and the attitude shown from Ian Bell on certain issues with previous games... my hopes aren't high.
Project C.A.R.S... Community Alienating Racing Sham? Setback? ****show?
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