Haven’t explored New York much, but I did do the Everything Bagel yesterday, and I concur with most folks that there just really isn’t much going on. The surface road is nice with a few rolling sections and turns, but the sky roads can meet a wrecking ball. The arbitrary steep sections are needless, and that KOM is awful with numerous 10-16% sections so close together. With so many routes of redundancy, once I complete the badges, I don’t have any inclination to return.
France is also on my “Get it over with…” list. Fewer roads, which go on forever with minimal gradient changes (can’t speak for the balloon fields road, as I haven’t ridden there yet) aside from the aqueduct and Petit KOM, and the map basically only has two loops to ride which leads to six routes of redundancy. Unless you ride Ventoux, which by all accounts is a horrible, masochistic slog of a venture from any source if read. And for the map overall, the scenery hardly ever significantly changes much. Just bleh.
On Tuesday morning I was sat in the pen in Watopia waiting for the race to start, rain hammering down and sky black as night, just like it was outdoors. No-one needs that in a fantasy world!
By far, the worst world is now Makuri Islands. Half of it is Neokyo, which might have some appeal to the nocturnal, but I find the ever-present darkness to be depressing. Out in the daylight, there is way too much dirt. And, of course, the frame rate is appallingly low throughout!
Hmm … so will the new expansion get New York to no longer be the worst world? There’s a lot to overcome, but I’ll remain optimistic for now. Besides, even if they are in New York, new roads are always welcome. Hopefully we’ll get to see some maps and images in advance of the release at the end of October.
I’m one of the weirdos who likes NYC. I was hoping the expansion would go down through Manhattan and then have some futuristic roads out over the bay to the statue of liberty, but it sounds like it will be subway tunnels out to prospect park in a different section of long island.
Yeah, subway tunnels instead of surface streets sounds like a cheapskate solution and probably extra boring and flat (except for the up and down of the East River crossing via bridge or tunnel) compared to all the nice rolling hills on the Central Park loop. At least the Prospect Park loop has more rolling hills.
Paris is the worst by far, and Richmond not far behind. NY has a lot of great racing routes, we pick them often for 5v5 club ladder. Looking forward to the expansion because all new roads are good.
Though this a geographically true statement those of us who live here don’t generally refer to the borough of Brooklyn as a different section of Long Island, lol.
