(Gran Turismo 7) If you were to purchase the McLaren F1 '94 currently in Hagerty's with just purchased credits, the cost is quite an eye opener.

[AutumnalGlow]

The things that are supposed to be hard to obtain, are believe it or not, hard to obtain.

The grind isn't hard though, it's just time consuming. Personally, I don't believe it's worth my time. And I don't even place much value in my time.

 

[danowat]

No? It's just not very relevant if you're not on the bandwagon. The things that are supposed to be hard to obtain, are believe it or not, hard to obtain.


I play the game most days of the week and haven't finished it yet. If people finish it right away, then fine but either play other aspects of the game or wait. It's not even been out a month yet.

So 30 hours playtime for 1 car, 1 car that is deliberately given artificial scarcity by rotating out of being available, is an acceptable amount of time?

 

[Scaff]

Yes, $200 is a lot of money to pay for a car, but I also think PD would think you're crazy if you bought that many credits to buy a car. It's not the intention.

If that wasn't the intention then they wouldn't sell them, they also wouldn't engineer it to encourage you to buy the higher value MTX packs, rather they would cap how many credits you can own, or they would limit purchase per day/week/month, or they would make them cheaper, or they would provide higher pay-outs for races and championships, or let us sell cars, or any off the other facts around this that highlight an MTX driven design that you've ignored or handwaved away.

Why do you think a discount exists for bundles as they get more expensive? It's not as if any economy of scale exists here, these literally cost nothing to create. Yet the 'cost' to the buyer for the higher packs is significantly cheap per credit the higher you go. They fully intend for you to buy them and use them.

 

[jonathansp]

So 30 hours playtime for 1 car, 1 car that is deliberately given artificial scarcity by rotating out of being available, is an acceptable amount of time?

If everything was affordable after an hour, what's the point in money? There would be no sense of accomplishment.
Forza is an example of a game that hands out money and cars like they're nothing and it gets boring quick, in my opinion. Some people like that, which I understand. GT offers a sense of earning what you want.

 

[VinylRichie]

Where did you drag "forced" from? Them goalposts are growing legs.

You can think what you like about their intentions, but they have a microtransaction system that allows you to buy as many microtransactions as you like. That is intended functionality, they had to explicitly add it into the game. If they had simply done nothing, there wouldn't be microtransactions.

If they didn't want you to buy 10 credit packages, then you wouldn't be able to. There's a "free" credit cap of 20 million. If there was a cap on paid credits of 2 million you wouldn't be able to spend more than that on a single car. That would be an easy way to implement this intention that you claim they have.

But they didn't.
They let people buy as many credits as they want.
Because that's what they intended when they designed it.
It's working as intended.
That's the objective reality.
It's right there in the game.

I'm sorry that your hero turned out to be a greedy money grubber. It's a disappointment to a lot of us who had respect for Polyphony and Mr. Yamauchi. But that's how the world goes sometimes. People aren't who you thought they were.

What?? I mean really? This is getting nuts here.

„They let people buy as many credits as they want, because that’s what they intended when they designed it.“
I don’t really use microtransactions in games because I don’t like them, but can you Name me a Game where it just allows you to spend a specific amount of money on their in-Game currency?

You know your way of logic is really interesting. Eating Big Macs can give you a heartattack, so it is the intention of McDonalds for you to get a heartattack!

 

[danowat]

If everything was affordable after an hour, what's the point in money? There would be no sense of accomplishment.
Forza is an example of a game that hands out money and cars like they're nothing and it gets boring quick, in my opinion. Some people like that, which I understand. GT offers a sense of earning what you want.

I'm not convinced you aren't just playing devils advocate here.

A sense of earning what you want that wasn't in the previous games, and something that I don't think the player base was clamouring for?, especially when that sense of earning what you want can be over ridden with real money.

If they want a sense of earning what you want, why have microtransactions at all, remove them and let everyone has the sense of achievement of earning what you want.

 

[Rustyhole]

I don't think they intended you to add 10x £2m credit packages to your basket at once.

They want you to add them one at a time and feel the 'grind' noting your pride and accomplishment!

 

[Scaff]

People are saying the game is designed around having to buy credits with real money when it's clearly not.

No they haven't, so please don't use strawman arguments.

People have been saying that the game is designed around encouraging the purchase of credits with real money, and it clearly is.

To buy both of the Cr.18m+ car's in the L:egendary dealership right now, how many hours would you need to grind in order to obtain them before they cycle back out?

The option you have is to either leave them and not know when they will cycle back in (and they may go up in price), grind and hope you have the time to obtain them, or pay real money.

It's a mechanism designed to push people, not all people, they don't need all players doing it, towards the MXTs.

 

[Samus]

If everything was affordable after an hour, what's the point in money? There would be no sense of accomplishment.
Forza is an example of a game that hands out money and cars like they're nothing and it gets boring quick, in my opinion. Some people like that, which I understand. GT offers a sense of earning what you want.

Why do people constantly jump from one extreme to the other in trying to defend this? He took issue with 30 hours for one car, you've jumped to everything in an hour, as if that is what people want and are asking for?

Why can none of you understand that there are timeframes between the two extremes, and that is what people are asking for?

Everyone has their own idea of what they want specifically but past GT games would be complete and you earned all cars in anywhere from 100 to 300 hours. That is a not insignificant amount of play time, and most people aren't even going to do that. That is still very much earning everything, but it's reasonable. For busy people that would be spread over a few months but if someone with 8 free hours a day to play video games does that in a couple of weeks, so what? That's their choice, they've still got their 200 hours worth.

So when we're talking about GT7 taking upwards of 1600 hours to earn everything, surely you can see where we're coming from. Not to mention that 99% of that gameplay time is outside the completion of the game itself because it's so short.

 

[danowat]

No they haven't, so please don't use strawman arguments.

People have been saying that the game is designed around encouraging the purchase of credits with real money, and it clearly is.

To buy both of the Cr.18m+ car's in the L:egendary dealership right now, how many hours would you need to grind in order to obtain them before they cycle back out?

The option you have is to either leave them and not know when they will cycle back in (and they may go up in price), grind and hope you have the time to obtain them, or pay real money.

It's a mechanism designed to push people, not all people, they don't need all players doing it, towards the MXTs.

To coin a phrase made popular in a document about psychology in games, "how to turn players into payers"

 

[Scaff]

If everything was affordable after an hour, what's the point in money?

This argument is literally undone by the fact that if you have a big enough real world wallet any car is affordable the second it appears!

You can't argue for accomplishment as a game mechanic when it can be bypassed by those willing to pay real money.

However, let's take you issue with an hour per car, and assume that was the case, based on a progressive game design, to earn each car. GT7 has 424 cars, so that's 424 hours of gameplay. well actually it's more, because widebodies and other modifications can't be reversed, so most people will want more than one of some cars. However, lets stick at 424 hours. if you play for 1 to 2 hours a day, every day, that's between one and three years of activity!

Strikes me that an earn of an hour per car, for a title with 424 cars, that people will want to dupe, would be a solid balance to strike!

 

[Imari]

I play the game most days of the week and haven't finished it yet. If people finish it right away, then fine but either play other aspects of the game or wait. It's not even been out a month yet.

"I haven't finished it, so it's fine." Do you even know what people are complaining about? Or did you just just jump straight into Polyphony Defence mode?

Finish the cafe, and then tell us that you're happy with the rate at which you earn credits in the game. Take as long as you like, because the cafe is the fun bit of the game. It's pretty good. It's a steep drop off after that though, and it's very possible to go through the cafe pretty quickly if you don't fluff around too much.

After that, you have the choice of earning credits incredibly slowly online, pretty slowly in random races offline, or just normal slowly in a handful of optimal races. I hope you like GT7s dirt physics.

If everything was affordable after an hour, what's the point in money? There would be no sense of accomplishment.
Forza is an example of a game that hands out money and cars like they're nothing and it gets boring quick, in my opinion. Some people like that, which I understand. GT offers a sense of earning what you want.

You get that there's a balance there though, right? Do you think that 30 hours of grinding to afford a car is reasonable? Why not 40 hours? Why not 100 hours? Why let people afford cars at all?

The point is to give people a sense of achievement for earning something valuable, while not wasting their time repeatedly doing trivial tasks. That requires careful design, and while individuals will disagree on the exact number most people tend to be happy with the most expensive cars in the game taking between 4 and 10 hours of continuous gameplay to save for. That's not a trivial amount of work.

Funny story, the most expensive cars in Gran Turismo 1 took about an hour to grind for.

What?? I mean really? This is getting nuts here.

„They let people buy as many credits as they want, because that’s what they intended when they designed it.“
I don’t really use microtransactions in games because I don’t like them, but can you Name me a Game where it just allows you to spend a specific amount of money on their in-Game currency?

You know your way of logic is really interesting. Eating Big Macs can give you a heartattack, so it is the intention of McDonalds for you to get a heartattack!

No, it's McDonald's intention for you to buy Big Macs. That's all I'm saying. McDonalds will sell you as many Big Macs as you want.
The implication of a heart attack is all yours. There's no similar implication in what I was saying.

It's Polyphony's intention to sell you credit packs. They will sell you as many credit packs as you want. What happens after you buy I doubt either Polyphony or McDonalds much care, although I assume McDonalds would prefer you didn't have a heart attack as it will reduce the amount of Big Macs you might buy in the future.

 

[chromatic9]

I wonder if GT Sport was a loss or at least broke even or massively off in profits and this is them trying to recoup? It wasn't long after release that GT Sport was selling for around 10 euro/$.

Seems like Sony let Kaz take GT in a new direction, it took them 4 years into the PS4's lifecycle to launch a bare bones GT Sport that was heavily updated for free. Even with the outsourcing, development is moving at a glacial pace, probably at great cost. With Kaz saying it pains why he can't do such and such it makes me think there's more to it.

The game is really GT Sport 2 with a seductive GT7 promise.

 

[VinylRichie]

This is the second time today I've seen this argument, and I've still not got an answer to my question around it, so let's see if you know.

If it's not intended that we one these cars in the first two weeks I have two questions.

Why have they cycled into the Legendry Car Dealership?
Why is it perfectly possible to buy them with real money?

You see PD most certainly do intend for people to own them, they've even given people a route to do so, it will just cost you around $400!

Man What is this here, are you serious with these questions?
Why they have cycled into the dealership? Because the game has launched and they will cycle from then on all the time till the servers go down (hopefully they don’t).
You think it would’ve been better to close the legendary dealer for the first 2 months or something, would that have been a good decision that fans would accept?

The thing with the real money I can’t answer, in GT Sport you weren’t able to buy these High-Valued cars in the Store at this was better to in my opinion. But the question itself isn’t really smart and roots itself in a very questionable understanding of logic.
When something like this is possible, it doesn’t directly mean or proof (like you think it seems) that PD wants you to spend 200$ on one car.
PD wouldn’t be sad about it if you do that for sure, but saying that it must be like that because it’s possible is ridiculous and just comes from angryness and disappointment over PDs bad decisions.

 

[NLxAROSA]

You can't argue for accomplishment as a game mechanic when it can be bypassed by those willing to pay real money.

I would like to add here that 'accomplishment' in this case means 'spend x amount of time' and not 'doing something that requires a certain amount of talents or skills' (like having cars gated behind difficult events or other criteria). It's literally just time or money.

 

[Rustyhole]

Interesting that credits acquired in game are named "free credits". Make no mistake, they are not free, but EARNED credits in both time and effort; then PD caps your ability to earn them. Then sits them beside low payout/high repetition events which tell me that while my MTX $ is important to them, my time and effort is not. Unless you're willing to play the "long timeframe" game Kaz has planned.

This game is seriously experiencing Kayne levels of ludicrous.

 

[Scaff]

Man What is this here, are you serious with these questions?
Why they have cycled into the dealership? Because the game has launched and they will cycle from then on all the time till the servers go down (hopefully they don’t).

Your answer clearly indicates you didn't bother to read the claim I was responding to, which was PD doesn't intent for people to be able to buy either the F1 or the 917K two weeks after launch.

You think it would’ve been better to close the legendary dealer for the first 2 months or something, would that have been a good decision that fans would accept?

No, I expect a title I've paid £70+ for to have a well designed economy that respects my time and has sufficient, curated content to not require a mindless, absurdly time-demanding grind in order to experience the content. That's not an unreasonable expectation, and plenty of other titles have managed.

I also don't expect a studio to hear these issues from players and respond by doubling down and making that economy worse!

The thing with the real money I can’t answer, in GT Sport you weren’t able to buy these High-Valued cars in the Store at this was better to in my opinion. But the question itself isn’t really smart and roots itself in a very questionable understanding of logic.
When something like this is possible, it doesn’t directly mean or proof (like you think it seems) that PD wants you to spend 200$ on one car.
PD wouldn’t be sad about it if you do that for sure, but saying that it must be like that because it’s possible is ridiculous and just comes from angryness and disappointment over PDs bad decisions.

No it really isn't at all, the overall design and changes to GT7, from past titles, all strongly indicate a title with an economy build around MXT's.

It's also incredible naïve to believe that a multi-billion dollar company and it's subsidiary wouldn't be aware that people will do this, after all the research on it is freely available, and they have priced the MXT's to encourage you to buy the bigger packs.

If they didn't want you to do this they could have put numerous mechanisms in place to stop you doing it.

 

[Rich S]

No they haven't, so please don't use strawman arguments.

People have been saying that the game is designed around encouraging the purchase of credits with real money, and it clearly is.

To buy both of the Cr.18m+ car's in the L:egendary dealership right now, how many hours would you need to grind in order to obtain them before they cycle back out?

The option you have is to either leave them and not know when they will cycle back in (and they may go up in price), grind and hope you have the time to obtain them, or pay real money.

It's a mechanism designed to push people, not all people, they don't need all players doing it, towards the MXTs.

I remember in gt5 the only cars I really had to grind for a bit was the Ferrari f10 and f2007 which were 7.5mil and 10mil each, but of course it was with the millions in credit rewards the single player gave then. Where gt 7 is at now is some partially developed stage compared to what gt 5 and 6 had in the end.

I guess what is about to be released as dlc on single player and even as daily races could go a long ways towards getting the gift cars/ credits people want now.

But for me, having played for a couple weeks I've now got 78 cars which is already more than I bothered keep in gt5 which was mostly f1s and lmp1s anyways. No micro transactions for me as I've already got my f1500, super formula, red bull, etc. We are missing the red bull fan car, Mercedes F1, and lotus 98T very sadly. Deliberate content omissions mean most of my friends aren't online in gt7 yet...

 

[jonathansp]

If you want the most expensive content in the game three weeks after launch, you should probably expect to grind.
Micro transactions aren't shoved in your face.
Wait for extra content which is promised. What's the rush?
Enjoy what the game has to offer, which is more than buying expensive cars.

 

[Rustyhole]

I hope you like GT7s dirt physics.

Hahaha 🤣 Does anyone?
Never seen so many bunny hops in a game. 🐇

 

[AutumnalGlow]

Micro transactions aren't shoved in your face.

????????

???????????

????????????????
(to be clear, that's 25th anniversary edition credits, which i put most of it into the other cover car because i thought that'd be a cool thing to do with it)

 

[jonathansp]

View attachment 1127075
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View attachment 1127077
???????????
View attachment 1127078
????????????????
(to be clear, that's 25th anniversary edition credits, which i put most of it into the other cover car because i thought that'd be a cool thing to do with it)

I said they're not shoved in your face.
Look how small the button is on the balance card. I hadn't even read what the button said before because it's so unnoticable.
Yep, I've seen the 100,000c button on the dashboard but it's not in the way, I don't have to cancel it and it's not exactly tempting. If you don't have to actively get it off the screen, it's not forcing you to do anything.

 

[Scaff]

it's not forcing you to do anything.

And no one has said it is, so please stop with this strawman argument.

If you want the most expensive content in the game three weeks after launch, you should probably expect to grind.

No. I should expect to play and progress (which a grind is not).

Micro transactions aren't shoved in your face.

Factually untrue, just because you ignore them doesn't make them disappear. For a full price title they are incredibly present.

Wait for extra content which is promised. What's the rush?

When's that comeing then? Oh and why does a title with over 400 cars not have enough curated events in it to make use of them or keep even modest playing activity going beyond three weeks?

Enjoy what the game has to offer, which is more than buying expensive cars.

Which outside of the Cafe is actually not that much, particularly in comparison to every other full GT title past the very first one (that had a quarter of the car count).

 

[Lomic]

Developers that aren't pushing microtransactions aren't worried about their players earning enough credits to buy a McLaren F1 in under 10 hours. How much of the design focus was on microtransactions is up for debate, but there's strong evidence that it's a pretty big part of their economy.

The low earning rate offline.
The incredibly low earning rate online.
The limited amount of races to use to earn in, meaning earning money is boring.
The high cost of tuning parts.
The high cost of the most desirable cars.
The limited time to purchase the most desirable cars.
The unknown availability of the most desirable cars.
The inability to sell cars. (Edit: Thanks @Tornado )
The credit cap to encourage spending instead of saving.
The online only saves to ensure people can't go offline and mod their own games (and thereby avoid MTXs).
The really high MTX prices designed to extract the maximum profit from whales.

You forgot to mention that they carefully placed reminders and easily accessible buttons to get MTX every where it was possible.

On that aspect, they really worker on the UI

 

[Safoo]

Just want to chime in here... you all know these extremely high car prices would be a moot point if the cars didn't cycle and actually stayed in the dealership.

Why they do not create a legendary dealership that stored more than 5 cars is pretty obvious now... MTX

Just let the new cars appear for a discounted price for a few days, then put them into the dealership at a higher price... BUT leave the damn cars in there for future goals.

If the game was free to begin with I would get the MTX thing... but it wasn't...

 

[jonathansp]

And no one has said it is, so please stop with this strawman argument.


No. I should expect to play and progress (which a grind is not).

Factually untrue, just because you ignore them doesn't make them disappear. For a full price title they are incredibly present.

When's that comeing then? Oh and why does a title with over 400 cars not have enough curated events in it to make use of them or keep even modest playing activity going beyond three weeks?

Which outside of the Cafe is actually not that much, particularly in comparison to every other full GT title past the very first one (that had a quarter of the car count).

I don't know when it's coming. I'm not a genie am I? It is coming though, obviously.

It's down to impatience and the need to finish games as soon as possible. It's not ideal that all the content isn't out yet, but deal with it.

I'm going to save people the hassle and stop commenting now.

 

[NLxAROSA]

Interesting that credits acquired in game are named "free credits".

This and the screenshots above (clearly designed to separate free from paid credits) are another hint that MTX aren't just slapped on, but designed to be integrated straight from the start. Making it 100% certain that they hid this on purpose during reviews because they knew there would be backlash.

 

[Imari]

You forgot to mention that they carefully placed reminders and easily accessible buttons to get MTX every where it was possible.

On that aspect, they really worker on the UI

Added.

I don't know when it's coming. I'm not a genie am I? It is coming though, obviously.

The end of the world is coming too. Obviously.

It's down to impatience and the need to finish games as soon as possible.

Lol. How short would the game have to be before you were disappointed? 20 hours? 10? 5?

God forbid people want to play the games they paid money for. They must be doing it wrong, having fun and spending hours playing the game. They should have played it less so that there would be more content left that they could not play so that they don't finish the game too soon.

It's funny how all the other mainline GT games didn't have this problem. It's almost like that would have created some sort of expectation for Gran Turismo games.

 

[Scaff]

I don't know when it's coming. I'm not a genie am I? It is coming though, obviously.

And so you highlight the issue perfectly.

It's down to impatience and the need to finish games as soon as possible. It's not ideal that all the content isn't out yet, but deal with it.

It's got nothing at all to do with impatience and everything to do with a title packed with content, but offering very little in terms of what to do with it.

I've used this comparison before, because while they are different titles, it works well.

One week before GT7 released we got Grid Legends, it's an arcade title, but it has a number of structural similarities and differences that make for a good comparisons (aside from both celebrating 25 year anniversaries).

They both offer a dedicated game mode that serves as a form of tutorial, GT Cafe for GT7 and the main story mode for Legends. Completion of these then opens up the rest of the game, however in GT7's case not enough events exist to even come close to obtaining all the content available, while Legends is massive and completion of it will allow you to obtain the vast, vast majority of the content. In Legends if you're not sure which car to buy for an event (or you can't yet afford it) you can rent it for that race/championship, you get less of a pay-out, but you get to try it. This works in the career mode, customer race generator or on-line. Oh and it has exactly zero microtransactions, offering a self-contained core game that you can add DLC to if you want.

Now you may argue that we just need to wait, as GT7 will be getting more events, well Legends will be doing just the same, more career events, but this will also tie in with the new content that will be coming. The model CM use for this is already well known, and using Grid 2019 as an example, each DLC pack contained four cars, an average of 33 new events for those cars and existing cars, and while tracks were also added these were never chargeable, so the player base doesn't get split in multi-player. One car in each DLC could also be used as a loan car, even if you had not bought the DLC, so you could give it a try.

The difference is quite stark between the two, and highlights the difference between a structured and curated single player experience that has been designed to utilise the content within the game, and GT7 which doesn't come close to doing so.

 

[NICKname]

The low earning rate offline.
The incredibly low earning rate online.
The limited amount of races to use to earn in, meaning earning money is boring.
The high cost of tuning parts.
The high cost of the most desirable cars.
The limited time to purchase the most desirable cars.
The unknown availability of the most desirable cars.
The inability to sell cars. (Edit: Thanks @Tornado )
The credit cap to encourage spending instead of saving.
The online only saves to ensure people can't go offline and mod their own games (and thereby avoid MTXs).
The really high MTX prices designed to extract the maximum profit from whales.
The numerous reminders and links to buy MTX. (Edit: Thanks @Lomic )

The way they updated the game to reduce payouts for races across the board, because they noticed people were grinding them to avoid having to buy microtransactions, less than two weeks after the game released.