I personally don't get why the graphics are such a sticking point. I'm not saying I think they are the "best" and there are other games I like the overall looks of a little bit better than the Forza series in general, so I can see not loving the style or whatever, but can't see thinking they look so bad you need to make a bunch of posts and get into condescending, snarky arguments over them. Note that I'm not saying everyone being critical is guilty of that, it's not necessarily the person putting down the graphics that is being the condescending/snarky one. Whether or not they fit your preference, I just don't see the difference in style to some other games being such a big deal.
A lot of what we saw looked generally "fine" but most of it really wasn't what I'm interested in.
The practice mode thing with sector marks could be an interesting tool, as one area Forza has really lacked is options for info and tools to help you improve as a driver. Even basic things like sector times have been missing, and while a tool like what we saw isn't really a replacement for those simple ones, it could still be very useful, especially if we have the option to save specific ghosts/times to revisit later and don't have to worry about overwriting them with another car.
It's nice that the AI won't be cheating, but it's too early to say anything else about them as we barely saw half a lap with them from the perspective of a guy driving super slowly/poorly for a presentation. It's easy for them to look "fine" in what we saw, but the real test will be how they try to overtake, how they handle being squeezed, how aware they are, whether they make believable mistakes, whether they pit properly during longer races, and so on.
The worrying thing though is this car XP grind... I know GTPlanet is a pretty single-player oriented place generally, particularly on the Forza side of things it seems, but this car upgrading system sounds like a nightmare for multiplayer.
On the public lobby side of things, let's say you want to upgrade your C460 car up to A700 because A-class is your favorite hopper where you and your friends normally race... Well too bad. I guess you can take it to the C-class hopper, where it will be 40PI below the cap and uncompetitive until you level it up enough to get some parts. Even if you unlock enough parts to throw at it to get it up to A-class after an hour or so, you still won't have all the build options available until you max the car. So 3 hours of driving a car in single player or in a class you don't want to race in just so you can put a proper build on it for the class you want... but then what happens if the car sucks and isn't really viable in that class? Time wasted.
For organized leagues it is even worse though. Series that run multiple cars require hours (and hours, and hours, depending on how many cars are desired) of testing builds for balance, but now you will need to spend 3 hours per car just getting the parts so that you can start trying to put builds together. Then when your work is done, everyone who is going to race the league needs to spend 3 hours driving one of them to get the parts for the correct build. Since those 3 hours can't be spent with the right build on the car, you can't even use those 3 hours as practice or test and tune time for the league. Then you get the parts, build the car the way it is supposed to be for the league race, but find out you struggle tuning it to your driving style or whatever and want to choose one of the other cars? Well go spend another 3 hours unlocking the parts for that car. A lot of people turn to league racing because they have limited time to spend, and want to spend the few hours they have each week racing against friends who they know will race clean in fairly balanced cars, so "oh well, grind more" won't be an option for some of them.
Also, what will this do for tune sharing? Will you just not be able to install a tune that has a part you don't have unlocked yet? I know the tuning community hasn't been a thing as much since the old "storefront" system went away, but it will be tough to get downloads for your tunes if they are limited. Alternatively, if you can download tunes with parts you don't have unlocked, then that is actually a huge positive as it would fix some of the above issues.
I personally don't get it just in the name of "progression." All racing games have a built-in progression system: getting better at driving, learning new tracks, and learning to drive different types of cars. I've always felt driving/racing has had 2 key "angles" that attract and engage people and make them fall in love with it, either the thrill of competition and the self-improvement it takes to compete, or simply the joy of building a dream car and throwing it around, and I don't really see how either of those are enhanced by an additional grind (getting better itself is a bit of a grind though of course, turning a lot of laps). If people just want to watch little stat bars go up there are tons of MMORPGs that do that and are constantly criticized for being grindy and having unoriginal/boring grindy goals/quests... but somehow when that grinding is put in a racing game it's cool?
As someone who has organized community events since FM1, and is still organizing weekly community races on FM7 despite so many people moving on to other games and how old and shallow FM7 is, and planned on continuing to do so with FM8, this might be the dealbreaker for me. Building balanced cars for a season is already a lot of work, but having to put in 6+ hours before I can even start on the process? Yeah... I dunno about that. Maybe the manufacturer bonus that was mentioned somewhere makes a big difference though.
The rest of what we saw though? I dunno, it's fine I guess, maybe. Maybe info about how strategy stuff will work, whether or not the draft actually works right, and what kind of lobby controls we have will make me feel more positive about it. Well thought out/balanced strategy options, a draft that isn't broken and ideally has some options for strength in lobby settings, the ability to multiply tire wear/fuel burn in lobby settings, being able to limit tire compounds and force people use certain compounds and so on could all make the racing itself interesting and exciting enough to be worth the additional grinding.
I think most people won't realize just how fast they'll get through some cars when racing online or just playing career.
You might buy and use a car for a career event and end up leveling it most of the way. 2-3 hours seems like a lot at first but that is going to go by pretty quickly when you actually race.
Not to mention, I'm personally into the idea of having a reason to use intermediate upgrades that I have otherwise completely ignored in any other Forza title. Going to be a lot of enjoyment out of, "Hey I just unlocked exhaust and a intake manifold", and then get to see the improvement it made to your car in the next race. Since AI will just match your PI now, you don't have to worry about maintaining a certain PI.
When you are in online lobbies you will know that a person has at least a certain amount of hours behind the wheel of a car to be at a certain PI. People won't be able to just buy a car, drop a bunch of credits on upgrades, and proceed to wreck into everyone else.
While I agree that the AI matching your PI is a good move (and one I loved in the Horizon games, and made AI racing more tolerable), that won't happen in multiplayer, so your options for spending time with the car in multiplayer lobbies will be very limited for a lot of cars, especially if you want to be even somewhat competitive.
It also won't have any impact on wrecking, as people who want to crash will crash regardless of what they drive, or more likely will just buy a car that already starts off close to the PI limit for their chosen class. With the safety rating system that has been mentioned elsewhere (also a very positive thing, assuming it works right), this hopefully won't be a big deal though anyways.
It just works and is also my favourite game of the series. Until the new FM comes out that is 
