But I still fail to see how is this related to freeroam and not the road design. Let's take a look at HP2010. All the roads fit the map perfectly but there's no free roam. Now can someone explain to me how would freeroam harm the racing component of this game.
You guys also like to mention Nordschleife like it's the ultimate course, but then when you drive on it you notice that almost half of the course is just straight roads. Don't get me wrong, I love it too, but prefer the GP course for racing. You know why I will always choose the open world over closed routes? Because it's not only about racing. I like to just drive the cars around ordinary roads, with traffic, intersections, parking lots ecc. I was in a convoy in FH4 and we drove from one lot to another. Each one had a different car theme that the leader choose. We just park our cars there for 5-10 minutes and than slowly moved to another location. It was a unique experience that I will gladly redo anytime. Or that time when I met 2 other bikers in the Crew and we just cruised around the map for 2 hours straight. Maybe the best road trip experience I ever had. How about spending days/months trying to complete all the online activities in Paradise? All those extra activities are impossible to recreate in a closed route game.
Sorry for the late reply.
As RX8 Racer said, HP 2010
does feature free roam. But it's undercooked feature and basically just "there". I never even used freeroam in that game until the last day when I finished all the races and just wanna see what it's like. It's so boring, I turned it off after 10 minutes. The racing in HP 2010 is still good because the map is designed with wide open roads and the frequency of junctions are minimal. It's not like Payback/Heat's map which also tries to fit some urban areas into it. And I would argue that, if HP 2010 had individual courses made a la PS1 era NFSes, it will be an even better game in terms of the racing.
Nordschleife is an old school high speed road course. It might look like half of it are straights, but with the exception of Dottinger, none of the straights are your typical flat dead boring straight. They have kinks, bumps, crests and blind fast corners. Taken as a whole there is no other track like it, with the exception of IOM TT maybe. Yes it's terrible for passing opportunities, but if we're talking driving enjoyment it beats the GP circuit (especially the mickey mouse stadium section). What I was trying to say when comparing it to NFS is, organic corners that flow provide better driving enjoyment than geometric designed corners or city intersections.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not slagging open world completely here. Burnout Paradise is my top 3 racer on PS3. It's my first platinum and I completed all 500 freeburn challenges in that game. Loved every second of it. I also love cruising in FUEL (2.5 hour from edge to edge), Driver San Francisco, Most Wanted 2012, and even going back to Driver 1/2 on PS1. I love the feeling of freedom open world gives, but in the end, your remember the world, not the tracks. The racing is just there to have something to do to unlock stuff. It's not memorable in itself. Whereas I still remember all the intense 2 player races I had with my uncle in Hometown in NFS III: HP. Even now 20 years later I can still tell your corner by corner of that track. That special curated track design is what's missing in freeroam.
At the end of the day, both closed and freeroam game designs can coexist. They both supplement each other and none are inherently "better" than the other. But it would be a sad day if arcade racers all decide to become open world (or vice versa).
Anyway, I've said everything I want about this topic and I don't want to take this thread off topic any further. Happy to leave this here
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but I have to admit it is quite addictive recently 
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