Open message to Polyphony Digital....

[ZevZoq]

I used to see "no it's not, I don't feel pressured to buy MTX!" A TON on the subreddit, but then again we all know redditors aren't the brightest.

MTX is always aimed at Whales and casuals. The in-between either stops playing or strategizes, in my experience. Although you're completely correct about many just shelving it. I often wonder how many of the TT entries are the only time each week someone fires up the game.

In terms of sales vs gameplay, also agree. Iirc someone around here broke down the trophy unlock %s and its not pretty lol

I mean just imagine if the game was designed such that a few hundred thousand (million?) more people kept playing it instead of shelving it and the mtx was priced at some sort of sensible level...or they just sold some nice dlc packs of cars and tracks for $12.99 a pop or something.

 

[Mafio]

I dont (still)feel pressured to purchase MTX, then again I'm not the type of person one could pressure into MTX. I'll go without.

 

[Nebuc72]

It really surprises me that people still don't understand the **** payouts are intentional.

Almost every other game fanbase I've been part of where MTX plays a role in the economy, has understood its effect on payouts and pricing. Yet I constantly see things like this, or people claiming that the pricing/payouts aren't due to MTX.

It's intentional. The game is designed to be tedious so that more casual players say **** it and press that "top up on ps store" button

Because it's not that bad in that specific regard.

Payouts aren't that bad. Not really. You can get over 1.5mil an hour fairly easily, there are multi million bonuses per week through time trials and weeklies and for the most part, 95% of cars will cost you barely anything or are a few million at most.
There's no situation, in that 95%, where I ever think the games economy is bad and that I'm being forced to buy MTX at every turn. Because I'm not.
The games economy isn't tedious at all and I don't think they're encouraging you to spend money on MTX because for most of the game, you earn good money, you're well rewarded, and things aren't that expensive.

It only comes to a head with the fact that the high paying events never match the payouts of any of the new content added, and the fact that the cost cap for cars is about a million miles outside of the scope of the rest of the economy. I don't even need a rate of 1.5million an hour if I am content blasting around in sports cars or race cars, which a lot of the game focuses on - and I can probably buy like half the cars in the game by doing a couple of hours racing, and probably 90% odd if I spend an afternoon focusing on the stuff that pays the most.

It's not like every turn you're faced with a barrier that makes you want to spend things, you just hit the end game economy looking at those nigh on useless 20 million cars and think "why the hell have they done this?" because it doesn't make any sense and the economy doesn't seem designed for cars to be that expensive.
Cut the cost cap down by half or equalise higher payouts and I think most complaints die, it's just those two elements creating a feedback loop of "wtf"

 

[Mafio]

Also, people don't waste time on business models that don't work. Instead of trying to talk crazy to developers, talk crazy to the people paying for MTX. If a model isn't generating income, there would be no reason to continue with said model.

 

[Ranchero66]

Because it's not that bad in that specific regard.

Payouts aren't that bad. Not really. You can get over 1.5mil an hour fairly easily, there are multi million bonuses per week through time trials and weeklies and for the most part, 95% of cars will cost you barely anything or are a few million at most.
There's no situation, in that 95%, where I ever think the games economy is bad and that I'm being forced to buy MTX at every turn. Because I'm not.
The games economy isn't tedious at all and I don't think they're encouraging you to spend money on MTX because for most of the game, you earn good money, you're well rewarded, and things aren't that expensive.

It only comes to a head with the fact that the high paying events never match any of the new content added, and the fact that the cost cap for cars is about a million miles outside of the scope of the rest of the economy. I don't even need a rate of 1.5million an hour if I am content blasting around in sports cars or race cars, which a lot of the game focuses on - and I can probably buy like half the cars in the game by doing a couple of hours racing, and probably 90% odd if I spend an afternoon focusing on the stuff that pays the most.

It's not like every turn you're faced with a barrier that makes you want to spend things, you just hit the end game economy looking at those nigh on useless 20 million cars and think "why the hell have they done this?" because it doesn't make any sense and the economy doesn't seem designed for cars to be that expensive.
Cut the cost cap down by half or equalise higher payouts and I think most complaints die, it's just those two elements creating a feedback loop of "wtf"

The cost isn't just in cars tho. Its everywhere.

Engine swaps are like $500k. You have to buy every set of tires separate vs most games giving you all the compounds when you buy the type. Parts are overpriced. Etc.

And then weeklies, and TTs, are over fairly quickly and yet you wait. While I have no issue getting gold, some do, and so they're waiting, what. A week? For $1mil. One mil that will be gone in a flash if you do anything besides race a handful of cheap sports cars.

Everything is about Nickel and diming you, or making you wait. That's before we get into the car pricing mechanics.

I'm not sure how much you know about other game's economics, but GT is really, really bad about it. Many other games have similar $/hour rates but the cost cap on cars is much lower. Others have lower rates but way, way lower prices on cars, or more "organic" and engaging ways to make money.

 

[Nebuc72]

The cost isn't just in cars tho. Its everywhere.

Engine swaps are like $500k. You have to buy every set of tires separate vs most games giving you all the compounds when you buy the type. Parts are overpriced. Etc.

And then weeklies, and TTs, are over fairly quickly and yet you wait. While I have no issue getting gold, some do, and so they're waiting, what. A week? For $1mil. One mil that will be gone in a flash if you do anything besides race a handful of cheap sports cars.

Everything is about Nickel and diming you, or making you wait. That's before we get into the car pricing mechanics.

I'm not sure how much you know about other game's economics, but GT is really, really bad about it. Many other games have similar $/hour rates but the cost cap on cars is much lower. Others have lower rates but way, way lower prices on cars, or more "organic" and engaging ways to make money.

My whole post was saying how it isn't that bad outside of the expensive end of things, but alright.

I've been sitting at about 18-25 million for quite literally months because I have no desire to spend it on anything ludicriously expensive and what I do spend gets quickly regenerated by what comes in through events, weeklies, and time trials. I buy like 6 of every car that comes out, I have multiple swapped copies of each car, etc. - and I don't think I have done a Le Mans 'grind' race for about half a year because the economy is scaled well until you get to that top end.
Absolutely nobody is writhing around crying and getting softlocked because they can't afford a set of tyres, because one early game event pays for that, and quite quickly after, even more.

I don't care about a 20 million Alfa or a 12 million whatever because they're useless cars and aren't justified by the games economy.

 

[Ranchero66]

My whole post was saying how it isn't that bad outside of the expensive end of things, but alright.

I've been sitting at about 18-25 million for quite literally months because I have no desire to spend it on anything ludicriously expensive and what I do spend gets quickly regenerated by what comes in through events, weeklies, and time trials. I buy like 6 of every car that comes out, I have multiple swapped copies of each car, etc. - and I don't think I have done a Le Mans 'grind' race for about half a year because the economy is scaled well until you get to that top end.

I don't care about a 20 million Alfa or a 12 million whatever because they're useless cars and aren't justified by the games economy.

The point is that you shouldn't have to justify a car in a game. It's a game. You should be buying things to enjoy and try them.

We can get into alot of GT's issues with this, but bottom line in a game you shouldn't be looking at cars going "yeah but I can't really make money with that". It should have events or a way to give it events, and the money shouldn't be such a pressing issue.

It again boils down to GT causing its players to constantly run into a money/time wall. Making that money uses up your REAL time and you often have to spend that money based on timed items on rhe store, because if you want them and you don't grab them, it again turns into Time.

A week waiting for payouts from TTs. Only having a small amount of again weekly events. What cars you buy being based on how much money/hour they can make. These should not be the focuses or a racing game. Am I fine with things like weekly challenges, or Competitions? Yes. But there also needs to be more content beyond that, or some other constant/daily income change. Otherwise it turns into what GT is - grinding and grinding 3 races if you want to buy anything remotely pricey quickly

It only happens post Cafe, because that's how it's designed.

 

[Nebuc72]

The point is that you shouldn't have to justify a car in a game. It's a game. You should be buying things to enjoy and try them.

Yeah that's what I've been saying? The top end of the economy doesn't scale to the rest of it and where it's fine for 95% of the game, those last few cars over the 10 million mark don't make any sense because the late game economy doesn't scale to their pricing.

I don't disagree they're priced badly, that's the whole thing I've been saying, but I don't think those few cars having awful pricing means that the whole economy is tedious and that money is always a pressing issue, because it isn't - it only is when you want a McLaren F1.

 

[ZevZoq]

Sure, but the F1 is one of my favorite cars. lol.

 

[TumeK5]

And let us not forget, the prices aren't designed for the game's economy. Mostly because the price evaluations are actually courtesy of Hagerty. People need to keep this in mind, kind of accepting the Legend Cars dealership as "the sacred place"

Edit: Time to grind some money, mate! Real life or game.

 

[Nebuc72]

Sure, but the F1 is one of my favorite cars. lol.

Yes, and it is bad that it costs that much in comparison to how the rest of the economy and car pricing is scaled.

I'd put the car cost cap at about 7mil and then I think noone would have an issue with the economy, because it is really only the high value Hagerty stuff that creates these problems.

 

[Ranchero66]

Yeah that's what I've been saying? The top end of the economy doesn't scale to the rest of it and where it's fine for 95% of the game, those last few cars over the 10 million mark don't make any sense because the late game economy doesn't scale to their pricing.

I don't disagree they're priced badly, that's the whole thing I've been saying, but I don't think those few cars having awful pricing means that the whole economy is tedious and that money is always a pressing issue, because it isn't - it only is when you want a McLaren F1.

My point is that its not just "those few cars". The cost is throughout. It's not a few cars either, a significant number of cars cost more than a healthy day of gaming's time.

Unless you live on this game, grinding constantly, and don't want to try alot of cars, money will generally be pressing. That's just a given.

This goes quadruple if you start messing with custom race. Ever calculated the price of something like a group C grid?

I made a 650PP class to mess around with and it cost me about $15 million

 

[ZevZoq]

Yes, and it is bad that it costs that much in comparison to how the rest of the economy and car pricing is scaled.

I'd put the car cost cap at about 7mil and then I think noone would have an issue with the economy, because it is really only the high value Hagerty stuff that creates these problems.

yeah, I basically agree with that. The whole "Haggerty's real world pricing" thing is a completely bogus, un-essential design element that does virtually nothing to add anything to the game.

 

[Ranchero66]

And let us not forget, the prices aren't designed for the game's economy. Mostly because the price evaluations are actually courtesy of Hagerty. People need to keep this in mind, kind of accepting the Legend Cars dealership as "the sacred place"

PD chose to use this model for the game. The decision to make expensive, rare and important cars have crazy real world prices, and then make them available on a timer for a week every 2 months or so, was PD's.

PD also chose to not scale the in game economy to match these cars.

 

[TumeK5]

PD chose to use this model for the game. The decision to make expensive, rare and important cars have crazy real world prices, and then make them available on a timer for a week every 2 months or so, was PD's.

PD also chose to not scale the in game economy to match these cars.

Well...my reply to this will be the same as in the edit.

 

[Mafio]

I made a 650PP class to mess around with and it cost me about $15 million

What part of the game is this? Serious question.

 

[eran0004]

in a game you shouldn't be looking at cars going "yeah but I can't really make money with that".

So don’t. If you already have a car to use for the high paying events, why would you need another one for the same purpose? Or better yet, why would you need every single car in your garage to be eligible for those events? It makes no sense, having twenty cars for WTC 700 doesn’t earn you credits any faster than having one.

 

[Ranchero66]

Well...my reply to this will be the same as in the edit.

Not something to be proud of, my guy.

I just bought 300 rounds of 5.56 so my GT MTX money is all used up 😘

What part of the game is this? Serious question.

Custom race, pick your own cars for the grid.

I made a bunch of 650PP cars, all rwd from the mid-late 2000s. Race hards, aero, a little more power and handling etc.

AI kind of ruins it but it was my last attempt at making GT7 fun

So don’t. If you already have a car to use for the high paying events, why would you need another one for the same purpose? Or better yet, why would you need every single car in your garage to be eligible for those events? It makes no sense, having twenty cars for WTC 700 doesn’t earn you credits any faster than having one.

Why would there ever need to be an argument against trying a variety of cars in a racing game?

 

[eran0004]

Why would there ever need to be an argument against trying a variety of cars in a racing game?

What need?

 

[Ranchero66]

What need?

You felt a need to argue for it. Why?

 

[Tommy_D]

Oh god, now it's turned into an MTX debate. It's like puke married turd and this thread is the afterparty.

The MTX debate is flat out wrong. You can play (and beat) the entire game from beginning to end, every single race, mission, license test and circuit experience by buying less than 10 cars. The most expensive one of them is the 787b at 3.5M credits, but you earn so many credits from playing that 3.5M credits means nothing.

 

[Mafio]

Custom race, pick your own cars for the grid.

I made a bunch of 650PP cars, all rwd from the mid-late 2000s. Race hards, aero, a little more power and handling etc.

AI kind of ruins it but it was my last attempt at making GT7 fun

So you took a task upon yourself and it's PD fault the game doesn't cater to the way you decided to play?

 

[Niko-H]

~87% of cars in GT7 can be acquired in ~1 hour of game time.

Oh, but I'm sick of the big three events. ~67% of cars can be acquired after one completion of the "embarrassing, slap in the face" Le Mans race which takes 40 minutes.

Oh, but I hate Le Mans. ~67% of cars can still be acquired after any 2 regular WTC 800 races with whatever Gr.3 car you want. And you have your choice of a dozen different tracks.

Oh, but I hate Gr.3 cars. Fine, you can get ~70% of cars after doing an hour or two of weekly challenges. Which may give out an even more expensive car you need, or you can flip and buy something else you want.

Gran Turismo always has been a sort of "RPG-style" racing game. A million ways to play it with a lot of content readily available, and some remaining content that takes a lot of effort to access.

You can play the game like Tommy_D mentioned, speeding through the main campaign and only doing the sort of minimum. You can play my "winding road" style which is a mix of racing, grinding, buying and tuning cars and engines, testing random cars, etc. You can try to collect every single car or recreate all kinds of fun historic racing grids. The catch is that you need to decide what you want to do with the game and frame everything you do around that. Do you want 20 copies of the Ferrari 250 GTO? Then you need to grind. Just like that "RPG" will take a ton of grinding to max out every character/critter/dragon/whatever.

I guess all the spineless members defending the poor game design may prefer that "RPG-style" over the Forza style of 600 cars readily available (remember too, the Forza games are guilty of the FOMO/time-locked content as well). There's nothing wrong with either approach, they're just different.

 

[Ranchero66]

~87% of cars in GT7 can be acquired in ~1 hour of game time.

Oh, but I'm sick of the big three events. ~67% of cars can be acquired after one completion of the "embarrassing, slap in the face" Le Mans race which takes 40 minutes.

Oh, but I hate Le Mans. ~67% of cars can still be acquired after any 2 regular WTC 800 races with whatever Gr.3 car you want. And you have your choice of a dozen different tracks.

Oh, but I hate Gr.3 cars. Fine, you can get ~70% of cars after doing an hour or two of weekly challenges. Which may give out an even more expensive car you need, or you can flip and buy something else you want.

Gran Turismo always has been a sort of "RPG-style" racing game. A million ways to play it with a lot of content readily available, and some remaining content that takes a lot of effort to access.

You can play the game like Tommy_D mentioned, speeding through the main campaign and only doing the sort of minimum. You can play my "winding road" style which is a mix of racing, grinding, buying and tuning cars and engines, testing random cars, etc. You can try to collect every single car or recreate all kinds of fun historic racing grids. The catch is that you need to decide what you want to do with the game and frame everything you do around that. Do you want 20 copies of the Ferrari 250 GTO? Then you need to grind. Just like that "RPG" will take a ton of grinding to max out every character/critter/dragon/whatever.

I guess all the spineless members defending the poor game design may prefer that "RPG-style" over the Forza style of 600 cars readily available (remember too, the Forza games are guilty of the FOMO/time-locked content as well). There's nothing wrong with either approach, they're just different.

Completely moot because gt7 lacks the rpg elements of the old games. The "car adventure" is gone.

Gt1-6 I'd agree with you. 7 not so much

7 is very clearly based around the MTX structure. Anyone with experience in other games like that can see it. It's almost a carbon copy of GTA Online

 

[Tommy_D]

Why would anyone play a gt game in thus manner?

You mean, play the game and win the races in all sorts of different cars? How stupid of someone. My 2nd account has 129 cars in the garage. I've purchased 13 of them. A few have been for the special weekly races, but unnecessary towards beating the main races in the game. You think people can't have fun with 130 cars? You need 500 cars to have fun? My main account has every car in the game and there are probably 200 that I've never even driven. The 20M credit cars all suck. I own then, I've driven them. They are not impressive.

 

[Ranchero66]

You mean, play the game and win the races in all sorts of different cars? How stupid of someone. My 2nd account has 129 cars in the garage. I've purchased 13 of them. A few have been for the special weekly races, but unnecessary towards beating the main races in the game. You think people can't have fun with 130 cars? You need 500 cars to have fun? My main account has every car in the game and there are probably 200 that I've never even driven. The 20M credit cars all suck. I own then, I've driven them. They are not impressive.

So your logic is that because you consider most of the car list useless, it doesn't matter that others want to se them?

Has it ever occurred to you that maybe some of the more expensive cars are interesting to people? Or something they'd like to race more than a different car?

I'm gunna assume you're a Gr3 only type, also the 20 million dollar cars suck? Just no, some of expensive cars are phenomenal

 

[jrbabbitt]

gee, how this thread drifted so far away from the original post...
To give the players incentive to run this race would be a decent endurance race with appropriate outcome of the winning rewards. I love a good endurance race like the Spa 1 hour and the WTC700 at Le Mans, and the payouts are good and when the latest WTC900 arrived with 10 laps at Le Mans I'm thinking a good 40 minute race with a acceptable winning prize amount and then I saw it wasn't, I felt like PD just didn't care about the player base and my OP was created in hopes that someone from PD reads it.

 

[wheelhp]

This just underlines that PD has practically no game designers. Mainly a technology company. Most races feels very AI-generated.

AI generated races you say?

I think its the staleness of racing against the AI in GT7...

And a combination of the times we live in where everyone talks about AI and things like chatgpt doing all the work for you

Whereas in the days of GT4.... AI wasnt as big a thing in our everyday life and it was a simpler time... With less people on their smartphones or flip phones.....Back then..We paid for a game that would give us nothing but delight and its exactly what we got. Cant say that today

Today we cant say that games are straightforward in their approach to giving the user fun, progression or even a complete game at launch. Todays videogames are complex in more areas because game design and the game industry as a whole is more complex now. We are more aware about this today too. Which doesnt make the racing against AI aspects more interesting once you know what needs improving. Rather they should be more interesting than they are. And we know better now. We expect more from our racing games than a sub-par racing experience with prettied up graphics.

 

[KAlex122]

Experienced GT and GTPlanet folks know, not to click such a threat title any more. Only timeloss and frustration to be found, no sanity in sight.

 

[wheelhp]

Go on and ignore but I still firmly believe that PD has done the user base wrong that wanted decent endurance races, I can accept the lower payout but to add one race that is just nearly minutes over the 30 minute race we have at that very same track, it's inconceivable!

Your mistake is thinking that everything PD do via updates is fan-centric

It is not.


If it was theyd first give the community what its been begging for to keep the fans happy. But as it stands they just do whatever the crap they planned to do since day 1 of their roadmap (which nobody can predict what that looks like)


Like the only things they seem to be listening to is the addition of a few cars that were requested and some engine swaps which are so atypical for GT that someone, a gt fan perhaps MUST have requested it at some point . yet even for the requested cars They were always given much later than the fans would have expected. So timing wasnt exactly "on point" to begin with.

Literally everything else in updates is done without a care in the world for timing or relevance.

Also yes it makes zero sense for the 900 race to pay less but the only realistic reason i can think of is this:

A new race will be played as long as theres still some incentive to play it. They dont want people playing the races that pay better over and over and cant lower the prices of those or theyll get backlash again for making the game more grindy. So what do they do instead? Theyll add a bunch more races to the game that dont pay as well as they should. Meaning players get the excuse of more "new" content (so theyre happy) but they pay less (sony is happy with this agenda moving forwards).

thats a hypothetical.. just assuming they even understand the progression of their own game as well as a fan does...which seems almost doubtful at this point. I mean they could easily add more cosmetic rims to the game and charge each new for 20k and people would still buy them...yet theyre not doing that.. Modelling rims is quite easy. Theres no reason not to add more unless its not part of their strict drip feed content roadmap. A roadmap so boring that you just know its just.... business as usual.