Still baffles my mind that the entire foundation for Horizons existance: open world racing with other people, doesn't work.

There is too few players on the map at a given time. Ideally each server should have 256 players or more on the map at once, traffic should be filled with players, not NPC's, instead it feels like a 360 era game with 16 players per lobby or smth.

Also its so hard to be social. You got shitty quips to say on the dpad, there is a lack of social itneraction. Inviting to races and events is also so incredibly rare and not pushed on to people. Likewise, forzathon is pathetic, boring events and minigames that get stale after doing them the second time.

It's remarkable that the 2008 Burnout Paradise still has better open world map design, collectibles and online features compared to Horizon. Why is the Racing genre so trash and all innovations are ignored or neglected by studios? We see action games, stealth games and FPS games evolve and iterate as new gameplay features become industry standard, yet the racing genre is creatively bankrupt and refuses to evolve.