Dirt 3 let's you opt for HeadCam, Manual, and settings -- this is the same as Dirt 2. And that's pretty much how I preferred to play Dirt 2 and same with Dirt 3 now.
Dirt 3, however, has a bunch of automatic stuff available under a new "Assists" category. Now you can sit there and set the "Assists" so that your car will brake automatically in to turns, run with some kind of "stability control", and back off the throttle if the wheels slip. It also lets you turn ABS on or off -- actually the one good thing about Assists.
I don't have a gripe with "Assists" or people that don't want to play headcam, manual, and track settings, but trying to find any multiplayer game of Dirt 3 (or Dirt 2 - minus "Assists") that a given "king" hasn't set to rock-bottom, anything-goes, car-drives-itself-and-probably-calls-On-Star-if-you-crash is getting kind of ridiculous.
Tonight I was like: "manual, headcam, settings...come on dudes !" But this particular "race-king" goes: "I hate headcam."
So, I play "race-king" and set it up like I want, but then a f-ing hour goes by during what I would consider prime-time on the US west coast, but nobody joins. Or if they do, they bail about 10 seconds in (as in: "Oh no, whadya mean push buttons to shift gears? And it's on headcam and there's no stability control, either!? I'm outta here!") Me:
then
then
then
Probably going to check the Codemasters forum and see if there are any groups that regularly play on the settings was looking for.