Polyphony Digital studio head Kazunori Yamauchi has made a special post on the PlayStation Blog in which he has given more information about near-future updates coming to Gran Turismo 7, as well as an in-game boost for those affected by the recent server outage.
In the statement Yamauchi apologizes for “frustration and confusion” following the bugged 1.07 patch on March 17 which resulted in the game servers being taken offline for 34 hours until a replacement patch could roll out. The patch also adjusted game payouts to make earning money a lot more difficult — causing widespread anger.
Yamauchi notes that this latter action was intended to re-balance the game’s economy ahead of the updates he has now detailed in the blog post.
Firstly, there’s set to be a “considerable” patch at the beginning of April. This will bring new events, including eight Endurance Races in the Missions section of the game, each lasting an hour, with higher rewards. New and higher rewards for clearing Circuit Experience with all-gold and all-bronze results will also be implemented — though it’s not clear how this affects players who have already done so.
In addition the existing rewards for events in “the latter half” of World Circuits — more difficult and longer races such as those in the WTC800 championship — will increase to an average of double what they were before.
This early April update will also bring in an increase to the number of Used and Legends car dealer vehicles available at any given time, from the current 15 and five respectively. Notably the cap for player “free credits” (those earned in the game rather than bought via Microtransactions) will increase from 20 million to 100 million.
Alongside the major update, Polyphony will be rolling out further patches before the end of April which will add new game content, with new cars and tracks coming to the game over the next five weeks.
Finally Yamauchi covers briefly — although he cannot confirm timing or more specific information — updates that will also be coming in the “near-term”. These will add more World Circuit events, bring 24-hour endurance races to Missions, and add Online Time Trials with player rewards depending on how close the player is to the top times.
One curious note states that an update will “increase the payout value of limited time rewards as we develop as a live service”. We haven’t seen limited-time rewards yet, so this may hint at seasonal events returning from Gran Turismo 6.
Finally there’s a line that will come as particularly good news: one of these updates will add the ability to sell cars again.
There’s no timeline or roadmap yet for all of this to come to pass, but with the “considerable” update set to arrive within the next two weeks and new content arriving shortly after, GT7 should start to evolve into a more player-friendly experience.
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