The Forza games can improve on the actual racing experience a great deal because I think the actual races in those games fall well short of acceptable considering what features have already been added to each edition of the series to date. Turn 10 has done everything to make a car handle realistically as possible and that's fine. I also like the inclusion of punishing penalty/red time for whenever a car goes off track, though I admit the penalty lap time system could be lenient whenever a tire or two goes over the curbing. Now Turn 10 needs to redirect that focus to improve what would make the racing better and more fun to compete in. Here's a start:
First off, include the option to have a free practice session, qualifying sessions, or both prior to starting an offline or an online race. Include all types of race flags during a race -- even the blue ones that comes out to signal lap traffic to move aside for drivers on the lead lap to go by. Include pit stops. Give the option to make specific changes to the car during a pit stop similar to what the vintage TOCA Race Driver games have. Make it possible to save and load a certain number of car setups for online races.
The level of attention to detail of all the cars in the Forza goes without saying. But how about paying more attention to the actual track that the race is taking place on. The look of the track stays the same on every Forza game to date, no matter what. There could be black rubber traces coming from car tires that create higher-grip level paths on the track for the duration of a dry weather endurance race. Race cars participating in endurance races over damp tracks would create dry paths instead of black trails. Why this issue hasn't been addressed is beyond me when one considers how detailed the background, trackside objects and everything else
except for the track surface itself looks on this game. And this issue somewhat relates to my next point...
Add random weather changes. For instance, it could be sunny or cloudy/overcast during an early free practice session then pouring rain during the following qualifying session at the same race weekend. That would make one completely change the approach of how he/she would drive the car and make frequent pit stops to modify the car setup (wet/intermediate tires, etc.) to accommodate for the wet road, among other things. Plus include possible wet/damp track situations as a result of a major downpour that has moved on. Or maybe there's a scenario during a race weekend where the weather doesn't change and thus the track gets soaked all weekend long. Now I'm not stressing that weather changes have to be dynamic to the point where changes can actually occur
during a race (though it would be absolutely incredible to witness something like that), but changes between various sessions shouldn't be tough to ask for.
Make it possible to have the car severely damaged to the point where it's not functional during any free pracitice and qualifying sessions. For instance, if the driver's car suffers a high speed head-on collision to a trackside guard rail on a street circuit during a free practice session, then chances are that car would not fixed to the point where it would be ready to go when it's race time. This would make a driver think twice about pushing a car too much and basically driving recklessly during a pre-race session when trying to experiment with a new/upgraded component that's been added to the car.
The AI for CPU cars in Forza 3 is lacking and makes races even more dull. They need to look at how CPU cars race and behave in Race Pro. They're aggressive yet fair. They will pass you up if you're too slow coming out of an exit and did not hold an inside/defensive line tight enough. And they're not beyond making mistakes that makes them go off track on occasion.
And I hate to sound like a broken record since I've mentioned this well before Forza
2 came out, but include more 'effin cars in a race. Having only eight cars this day in age for racing games is borderline laughable when there are other racing games that has no problem with including more of them in a race.
Improve on these issues, and then I will think differently about the Forza series as racing games. I'm not interested in playing long, drawn out CarPGs.
Kruza