OCD Virtual Car Collectors who have partaken in this discussion have probably experienced my whining about the fact that some of you have cars that I don't ever see. I mean - I
have a huge amount of cars, almost all the models (sans the specials that came the way of DLC) but I never saw those oddities (to me) that others spoke about. Yellow FTOs. Spice Reflex Speed 12s. Red Midgets. (Not that I wanted any more Midgets; I could easily paint one of the dozen I have in any shade of red.) Still . . . why would others have a red Midget and I have only
green ones?
Okay, I acquired a black and a white through 1000 tickets - but that doesn't count when we're examining the UCD, right? Why didn't
my UCD have red Midgets?
In fact my UCD never matched those famous 'Master Lists' that were touted to have the selection engraved in stone as it recycled.
OH! No.
My UCD had a mind of its own.
Over 6000 days of Game Play, I kept faithfully written records of the UCD, noting down the cars that went by, and their locations in relation to the cars before and behind them. I also began to note my activity in relation to the cars that popped up. Gradually I began to get a picture of how the UCD worked. At least in the Original Version.
This was what I experienced:
#A conveyor belt moved in front of me, its movement forward dictated by certain events me or my AI Drivers took part in.
#The belt held slots in which were cars.
#Some slots were always filled with the same cars in relation to one another; even if you bought these cars, the slots were replaced with the same cars, but some slots changed only if you bought the car in it. This was sort of a bucket list. The colours never changed - the models came in some standard colour. For example, the Stratos road car came only in York Green.
No . . . other . . . colour.
Same with Midgets. Always green.
#Some cars in this bucket list would repeat shortly after first appearing - a few Game Days after the first appearance, usually with higher mileage and at a lesser price. The slots the repeaters used were anomalous slots; they were also used in other ways.
The anomalous slots worked as follows - and also works in tandem with the #1000 ticket, and the particular events you try.
Here's a picturesque example:
Your UCD is spinning as normal, but then you decide to try
Like the Wind. You try several times to win the event, but cannot due to the fact that you may have an under-powered car. If you do this long enough, the UCD - as if noting your play, and via the old "If P then Q" formula - will pop up the appropriate cars for winning
Like the Wind in the anomalous slots.
Conversely if you took the Vettel to
Like the Wind over and over to grind for money, that doesn't happen. But other things might, depending on the amount of money you have and the cars you lack. For example, you may have 12 Mil in the bank, a few Mil in cars collected (that actually
can be resold) and no way to make 3 Mil in 4 races - and the 2J will pop up at the top of your UCD as the latest bait.
Obviously more than hand/eye gaming skills are required at that point, in your decision making towards beating the game - this part of this great game being of course the 'collecting' part of the game - and can be said may have nothing to do with racing/driving. (Maybe photography - but that's just another choice of what you would do with your collection.)
At this point one must keep in mind that I was still Offline, and playing the Original Version, constantly getting my Bots to grind, or roaming the A-Spec Events, doing races to win money while watching the UCD like a hawk. This is ALL about collecting, remember. OCD collecting. By the 3000th Game Day I had began to see the pattern of expanding and contracting spirals as the UCD rotated, the fattest spiral being around the 1300 - 1500 Game Day period, finer circles spread out even as much as 1800 Game Days holding star cars, and 'less repetitive' cars.
A quick note on the 1000 Tickets: (From the Gran Turismo Wiki.)
A
1000 Ticket is a Gift Car Ticket in
Gran Turismo 5. It is awarded for completing 100 races in A-Spec or B-Spec mode of GT Life. It is awarded regardless of the outcome of those races. A 1000 Ticket is also awarded for each subsequent 100th race (200th, 300th, 400th, etc.). Each ticket allows the player to collect a random car from the "Car Delivery" Screen. This prize car is completely random and can be any car, Standard or Premium, from any level.
As you can imagine I was floating in 1000 Tickets. I got the most amazing cars out of the 1000 Tickets, all 0/0/0, from a TAKATA DOME NSX, to a Lancia Blue Stratos. Whenever a Stratos came up I bought it - after the 3rd York Green beat-up Stratos was snatched up from the UCD, the next 1000 Ticket gave me this brand new Stratos - I could have screamed. In fact I must have yelled "Kaz! You bastard! I love you!" or something to that effect.
(Hopefully the honourable san is getting all this stuff filtered through some savvy marketing R&D chaps.
)
Once, (though I did this several times) I had to sell a few cars frantically, to get a car that I knew wouldn't cycle back quickly - and that sale required me to get rid of my 8c Competizione, too, the car I was using at the time - since there are not too many cars with high resale value - and Premiums are easier to recover - just buy them again.
The next 1000 Ticket gave me a brand new 8c.
After awhile, I realised I wasn't playing a lone video-game on a discrete console - but playing against a team of minds, remotely - a great and inventive team, almost incorrigible in their mischievousness, as passionate about developing one's racing and driving skills, as rewarding the automotive lover with a plethora of morsels, one after the other, spinning in front of ones's eyes, to be grabbed and savoured, but only if the skills used were worthy of reward.
There was some of this mischievous play in GT4. But GT5 took it to another level. It was like GT4 was the domestic news, and GT5 went worldwide.
So while I managed to get almost all of the cars that were promised to be there in the Original Game, as advertised, and in fact multiples of what were taken to be 'rare' cars, I never got all those variations, all those strange colours, all those red and yellow Midgets and so on. Why was I being treated this way - as an outcast and not worthy of red Midgets? You'd think after watching the UCD for over 6000 days, I'd know if there was a red Midget in there, wouldn't you?
Now, I used to read over and over in the Forums, about the UCDs that everybody else had, and we've discussed the pros and cons of collecting in here enough to have whetted my appetite - so it was time to take my own domesticated cat off its leash and go Online.
First thing I see when I go to the Online Dealer (and, no, it's not the OCD, it's the OD
) is this:
WTF? A Midget? Right away? First bloody vehicle in the slots? Did the bastards even
know I was coming online that week?
And tick-marks!
I had to use my mental skills to keep track of all the cars I bought, so I could grow my collection, as well as remember not to buy duplicates by accident.
Tick marks. How convenient. So easy. I may as well have the game played for me and just receive all the cars in a package. Here's the cash.
Well, where's the fun in that.
But, I didn't need another Midget, I told myself. One more Midget to spend sleepless nights over and I would actually be looking for
more than a couple of girlfriends, as
stormbringer recommended, let me tell you.
Of course, it was a
black Midget.
Not the usual green one.
I had only
one black Midget, and this one in the OD was a 0/0/0, too. You know.. .
That other part of me - that
mens sana part that watches over the
corpore's
sano, told me to get the hell away from the Online Dealer. Which I did; I was a good boy and left the black Midget alone.
Then I played some more Online - various Seasonals, catching up with what I had missed (all these details and more in the discussion taking place in another thread about the comparison between the Original and 2.00+) but I began making money hand over fist, and more . . .my
UCD started changing! My UCD was trapped in a vicious cycle because I'd kept it Offline - and it yet managed to give me all the different models as promised. If there was a Midget to be had then there was a Midget to be had - it came in green. How you got the black and white was up to you. But that was it - no reds, yellows and so on. Love the Stratos? Here you go - it comes in York Green, or alternatively York Green.
Oh! You love the Stratos, and keep buying it? Grinding, too, to keep buying it? Well, here's a brand new one in Lancia Blue, then.
Well, now that my UCD seems to have got a complete overhaul after 6000 days of being housebound, it keeps spitting out new cars like an un-burped baby projectile-puking the foolish person standing in front of their greenish face. My collection has soared in the last few weeks, and I have to keep spending, though I want to keep racing, and not running around shopping.
Red Midget? Nothing to it. I got my Tess, too:
Kaz tried to trick me, though. Huh. He put a tick-mark next to the red Midget when it finally came up in the UCD:
Like I was going to believe that tick-mark. What a trick. I
never had a red Midget before.
)
