I’m certainly happier, but not 100%. I think the economy is passable for now, it may improve with future content drops, particularly with more circuit experiences and missions. This was certainly the first big important step, and I welcome it. At least some legends cars are attainable, but collecting many/all of them may still yet be an ugly process. I think we’re getting an initial sugar rush from all the CE and Mission payouts. Once everyone spends all those millions from the one-shot rewards I think we’ll see where the economy stands, and if it’s still as unpleasant of a grind for acquiring further expensive cars.
While the higher volume in LCD/UCD is better, the frequency that it updates is still primarily what I think is wrong with it. I think it should be cycling a couple cars every hour/few hours, not locking us to the list day by day. I still don’t have a Celica GT-FOUR and I have no clue when I’ll have another opportunity to get one.
Fundamentally the campaign structure is still bad and it’s hard to fix without a complete redo.
-Early game locks too much
-The design itself makes the game forced to be played linearly with little room for diversifying your path and exploring
-There’s too many single race events relative to championships/race weekends
-The “win one race win one car” format throws too many cars at you too fast, there isn’t time to try enough of them
-Hardly any optional races
-Everything is tied to the world map, making it a clunky process to select tracks, further worsened by being unable to change your car without backing all the way out to your garage
-Once the menus are done progression is done, and it’s just scattered random events for you to select if you haven’t already beaten them all
I don’t know how PD can fix the sense of progression. The one-race-one-car format is so intertwined with the menu system that even adding future menu books I don’t think would be able solve much if anything. Unless they don’t simultaneously add events that award the menu cars for future progression, instead having you seek out the cars for entry into a theoretical new slew of menus and races yourself (like Gr. 1 for example), any expansion to the main campaign is likely to feel forced and boring.
Example:
Menu 52: Buy a prototype race car
Menu 53: Get top 3 in Gr. 1 Championship
Menu 54: Collect these 3 modern prototypes (908, R18, TS050)
Then, also have Gr. 1/Prototype 30min-4hr endurance races/missions available after 53 to use your cars you’re buying for the menu, giving you the chance to try everything out if you want to. You could inadvertently have bought one of the menu cars already for the initial entry, and maybe you could win yet another from the championship. This kind of discovery and exploration is sorely missing, and PD could’ve done this with the menu system already but instead they decided to make the campaign so shockingly small and confined, with this “WIN THESE MUSTANGS! WIN THESE PORSCHES!” type stuff relentlessly back to back to back, extenuated by the botched economy never letting you slow down and try it all out. It seems like a total antithesis to the objective they had of making the menus look deeper into the detail and history of interesting cars and the industry as a whole, and it really bums me out.
I realize this kinda went on a tangent, but I think the next big step PD needs to make is to add a very large amount of extra events for almost every stage in the campaign. This won’t really benefit people who’ve already completed everything nearly as much as it will new players just now hopping in, but I think it would be the best thing to patch up the (IMO) shoddy campaign GT7 has. It just needs more to do at every level, especially the lower ones.
At least the championships aren't that far behind in payout, assuming the final sum was doubled as well? 1,050K for WTC 800 with CRBs?
