It's 5:30, I have heartburn and can't sleep, and this topic has come up so many times that I somehow felt compelled to do this:
So, all Burnout Paradise complaint discussions have always been about a) Lack of Retry and b) Lack of local MP. I'm sure they have more of a legitimate reason why the second can't work, but the first one is and can be done (see any online game race), so why not Single Player? They are giant dicks and hate you.
No, not really. They really could give you a retry option, but they are doing a even bigger disservice to you by not forcing you to explore the depth of the world that exist.
I'll start with the map:
This is the map of the full game. I'll probably refer to this map over and over again, as I start coloring imprecisely over it with a touchpad.
This is the map of the major shortcuts that I can think of in 30 seconds. This list doesn't doesn't include other optimal routes that I would usually take because of stunt objects that I can boost off of, or optimal intersections where the conditions make it a more ideal route.
Allow the players to retry would be great, but I can be certain that all these routes can and will go to waste, which defeats the point for Criterion and their bigger bullet point for this game to explore the world.
You see that road on that cuts into the city on the right side? The second vertical line? That is a shortcut that cuts through a construction zone, over a park, into a building, then underneath two parking lots, and out into the lakeshore line. I found it when I was looking for gate smashs around 30 hours in the game.
30 hours! Most people won't even play this game for this long! It's a racing line so hidden most players who used retry, if given the option, will never find. I can be certain that I would have never found that it was an actual racing line if I didn't drive around aimlessly looking for events to do.
One thing I should note here, because it's pretty impossible to demonstrate on any map, is the level of layered complexity that the map has in giving choices on how to get to places. In any major landmarks, there are tons and tons of options on how you want to traverse through any two given roads. You see the dam at the middle of the map? There's the high road and the low road. Too often do I see online players drive around the dam in a race to the bottom of the map. What you don't see there is that on both sides of the map is two openings that allow players to drop down from the top road to the bottom road, cutting some 30 seconds off their race time. These are things you can never get without playing around.
I'll throw two route examples: Maps are labeled S for Start, F for finish. Green route is a route I've seen online players take, and Red is the route I take:
First race is the much dreaded observatory race. People hate this because there aren't much even once you are done up there, however, I'm treating this in the online setting, so you aren't stuck there. The lack of events to try up there is a discussion that I won't defend Criterion on as much.
The typical player I've seen takes the most obvious route; drive up north, either run the beach route (hit the split ramp + building for more boosting, then grind the rest of the way (which is what the green line shows), or take the slightly lower route, Lawerence Ave Tunnel, that cuts across to the lake on the left, then make their way up.
I, on the other hand, would stitch together the shortcuts that are available for me that cut diagonally across. First, head west on Glancy(?), then cut across the park towards the Times Square like area. Once I do hit Lawrence Ave, I have a choice, depending on how the race is going, to grind it out in the tunnel and head north, or take a even riskier route. The red line shows the other, longer, but straighter, faster route of the rail tracks. You branch off from the mountain road, and you can get right back on to another road that takes you to the observatory much much faster. I've seen races where I and a few others who knows the map well take over 1 minute leads on routes like these. And I can be for certain that if I had retry, I'd never used the route I'd described.
I feel at this point I've talked too much, but I did draw this already. You can guess what's going on.
I think at this point, I don't really care what they want to do with retry. After playing the game for more than 70 hours. I understand and respect their decision for not having retry. I won't say it's the right call or not, but I definitely feel that for me, it was more beneficial in knowing the map that much better.
Since I'm kind of a jerk, ideally, I would actually like them to run an experiment: Allow Retry as an option. Then compile stats on race times, both online and offline, on players who have retry vs players who don't. It might prove more insight into whether players truly benefit from learning the map more without a retry option.
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