I've gotta admit, the people assuming because the traditional career mode had problems, the "obvious" solution is to basically eliminate it is like seeing early Street Fighter V players defending the lack of arcade mode because "who plays a fighting game single player."
The solution to a problem in an otherwise popular mode is not to gut it. Particularly for someone like me, who thought the career in GT6 ended up being a pleasant improvement from GT5, and a clear step up from GT4 and GT PSP.
Yea, I think a lot of the discussion about the game "not being reviewed for what it is", and comparisons being made to stuff like Titanfall or Overwatch are silly. GTS' online focus is really just a new mode with a new rating and matchmaking system. It's be like Leagues getting added to Forza Motorsport 6 resulting in the removal of most of its singleplayer component. It's not a justified tradeoff, because much like Street Fighter V's lack of arcade mode, it's not something that requires a completely set of content or gameplay from the mode that now being propped up as the focus. Adding significant singleplayer component to something like Titanfall or Overwatch (in the manner that Titanfall 2 actually did) requires a completely separate set of maps, enemy AI, story cutscene, etc. It's basically its own separate game that's just included in the package.
This
not the case with GTS, just as it wasn't with Street Fighter V. The tracks you race on are the same whether you're playing single or multi, the cars you race against are the same, the AI is no different from the already existing arcade mode. The differences between the various modes is basically just one of curation (and this includes the new Sport mode), just as the lack of arcade mode in Street Fighter V, despite the existence of the character story mode and survival modes removing any
good reason for it to be absent. The same goes for the VR mode not being playable in time trial. If you have 1v1 races on the various tracks, then you don't have a good reason to not have time trial on all of those courses either.
The term "focus" is being used to disguise what the real underlying issue it. A lack of overall content. Despite the game's "online focus" there's less content to play online than the competition offers in there own online modes, along with the obviously lacking singleplayer content. When you see other games that have actually shifted focus, and not just pretty much discarded existing elements (like say Rainbow Six Siege), then you can actually see how it's shift in focus has resulted in content being developed to facilitate that focus. That's not here with GTS... it's the same content that you'd have in the previous games.. only far less of it. It's not like everyone involved in the development of the game was tasked with contributing to the creation of the SR system.. so why is it an explanation for there just being less of everything?