Ok played a couple more races and figured out a couple things. One, by doing another Boxter race, that got replaced by an event that was available for my GT-R. But still - only that one out of six was available (though after doing it, it was replaced by another one I could do with the GT-R). Of course the race I did with the GT-R was against all other GT-Rs as well lol (even though it wasn't a race specifically for that car). Second, it's not the club level that needs to get to 7 for the next upgrades - it's player level, which increases much more quickly. So I was able to unlock those just now. Still though, it's a pretty slow upgrade progression, just not as ridiculously slow as I thought.
About the slow progression. The only way to upgrade a workshop is to mark it as a favorite? Considering there’s 6 workshops and you can upgrade only one of them at a time is painfully slow. I’m level 13, bought all available 6 cars, upgraded what I could. Btw, you eventually ran out of spare parts (those bronze, silver and gold gears) for upgrades by racing a lot so you can get only a limited amount per day. What’s up with that? Seems kinda restrictive.
I’m no expert at racers and not familiar with how quickly they upgrade. Tried Asphalt 8 but didn’t get on with it. Doing better with Stradale. Not done much upgrading as I borrow other members’ better cars to race with. I should do more with my own Boxter though. Regarding content, I can understand Eden Games not spending a load of dosh on a fully specced game till they know what sort of revenue AA generates for them. I note many other Arcade games getting substantial content updates every few months, so will be interesting to see how this one goes. Welcome back to the forums @macplash. Thought maybe you’d fallen down a hole.
I didn't play much racers either with the exception of Grid Autosport so I'm not sure how a usual progression looks like. But progression aside, I'm really confused about upgrades, specifically their impact on a car itself. Because as of right now I can't feel any difference. Upgrading seems to be aimed for increasing max speed only. But even after multiple upgrade stages at the mechanic and wind tunel etc the car doesn't feel faster. On the contrary. I finished a fair amount of races and it seems like the only time I can build up an edge over my opponents is by cornering and "doing good" during steering - hence the races with higher amount of turns are easier to win. On the other hand no matter how many times I upgrade my car, on the straight road it looks like everyone is always capable of catching up with me. What I'm trying to say is the upgrading doesn't feel very rewarding and I lack any impact on a car. But what bothers me the most is the way how workshops are being upgraded. As I mentioned it in my previous post. Looks like the only workshop that's being upgraded after each race is the one marked as favorite. If that's correct, it'll require some serious grinding to progress comfortably. But with upgrades of a little to no impact on a car what's the point anyway? I'm currently upgrading my paint workshop so I can at least alter the visuals. I got mixed feelings about this game. It looks gorgeous, it runs smooth as butter, controls are very responsive, music is great (the song about the virus gives me chuckles everytime it plays). On the other hand it lacks a satisfying sense of progression and proper roster of cars. I don't understand the limitions of getting certain amount of gears a day for upgrades. There's seems to be a very little variety to environment as well (only the difference between the vineyard and dirty desert-like countryside is evident at first glance). Being able to buy only a handful of cars every 24-48 hours seems restrictive too (e.g. I'd like to play only during the weekends when I'm free - not to be forced to log in every day). I understand there was a free to play version of this game earlier which I never had a chance to try so I can't compare, but it looks like there's a lot of F2P mechanics left in current version and it's not great. But it's pretty common for many other AA games marked with + behind their titles, although it's for a different discussion in other thread. I guess we'll see over time what direction this game takes eventually. It's too soon to judge. @Asp thanks. Was busy with life, lacking a free time and didn't have a dedicated gaming device on top of that. I bought myself an iPad Mini 6th gen lately for a sole purpose of gaming so I guess I got some catching up to do. Hopefully I'll be seen around here more often again. ---- EDIT: what's with all the girls beating me? If I lose occasionally it's always to Kim, Liz or Abby. Is it some sort of #metoo movement implementation? I've been to Italy and I don't believe girls there are such better drivers... just saying.
I can’t get my head round the controls unfortunately. I don’t really like tilt on any games though I do appreciate this is well done, and while the steering touch controls are good the brakes in the middle just is unplayable on an iPad. Shame as I really quite fancied this.
@orangecan at this moment it lacks a lot of customization in general. No graphics settings, no controls adjustments etc. Hopefully it’ll get some updates over time. btw, we get an extra 250 influence points per race from racing with shared car. So if anyone wants to join my club, I’m sharing all my cars (although it’s possible to do so just by 2 at a time - not all of them all the time). Makes leveling up a bit faster. I’d appreciate if I could drive your cars as well. Hopefully it takes upgrades installed into consideration so it’s possible to choose between the same cars from different club members. Code to join: HJMTHHXE
Glad you’re back and thanks for sharing such a detailed assessment. One quick note about progression and the original FTP game: this is definitely not just an AA version of the original game. Standard Gear Club was a way bigger game, with racing across a fictionalized European continent. Progression was based on a garage setting that requires you to physically expand your space and add upgrade bays — both of which required in game currency and sometimes ridiculously long waits. You would often have enough cash to buy a car, but no place to park in on your garage. And, of course, premium currency would take care of both. Apple is being secretive about how they gauge success in AA, but it’s pretty clear that extended engagement is a big part of the formula. That’s why you see these “every 24 hours” systems in some games — they’re designed to keep you coming back day after day. Frankly, I’m okay with it, since the game is not designed around IAPs.
I'm curious what happens if I miss an opportunity to buy a certain car during such short available window. Will that offer eventually circle back? I'm not a big fan of being forced to come back into a game everyday. It feels like a necessity after a moment and for me it takes some free will away. I just like to play games on my own terms. But I get it, especially after you explained it from the Apple's perspective. On an unrelated note, I eventually figured out upgrading - meaning increasing max speed is a feature of one or two of the workshops (or certain vehicle parts) only. Other one decreases the weight of the car, makes the grip stronger, the other one increases acceleration etc. Unfortunatelly this makes me circle back to my original complain: since we can upgrade only one workshop at a time, this is gonna take quite a while to progress. But yeah, I guess it's designed that way so we can / have to keep coming back.
@macplash have joined your club. Thanks for the loan of your Alfa 4C. I can actually win races now! Game Centre name is Ganjin. Can’t see any way to change it in game. I’ve also wondered how my £5 per month gets distributed to developers, presumably after 30% Apple deduction. I would guess the formula relates to number of minutes played for each game. Seems like the fairest way, and would also explain the daily play structure becoming more common.
No problem. My favorite so far is Fiat (Abarth 695) for handling and having fun. Nissan GT-R seems the fastest and every race with it feels nerve wracking and I love it. Alfa Romeo Giulia Quadrifoglio feels the most difficult to handle. If you want me to share a specific car, just let me know. Anyway, with 3+ members there are changes to sharing cars. With 3 members and less every one of them can share 2 cars at a time, but with 3+ everyone gets just one slot available. But it increases the multiplayer reward. Not the best solution considering the clubs are limited to 6 members only. What are the chances being online at the same time?
Guys, I'm telling you - if you like the gameplay/driving and visuals of this game and don't care about realtime multiplayer, go play Gear.Club True Racing instead. Much better game with WAY more content and better progression (with everything - cars, upgrades, races, tracks).
Ok, the Fiat sounds great if you could share that too! Thanks for explaining how the club works, and yes, I was surprised at only 6 members per club. Around 25 would have better chance of people being online at the same time. Doesn’t that have loads of ads though? I don’t do ads anymore which is why I moved to AA.
Tried the arrow controls and agree they’re impossible with a central brake. They need to improve it for iPads.
No ads that I remember. There are promotion screens for selling premium currency, but i think that's it. Yes, but once you have a couple cars, it's not a big deal - you have one getting serviced while racing the other. I'd rather have some timers than have to play the same events/tracks over and over and have little choice in what cars or events I can play.
I've been playing yesterday and today for quite a few hours. For me, the game has vibes of Gran Turismo PSP, where you had several cars to purchase and they changed every 2 game days (and that game had a ton of cars, so good luck getting the same one appear twice...). For me, all the "club multiplayer" makes full sense if you think of this game as a family racer. I have a club in which my wife and 2 young children are in it, and we play all together multiplayer races. All of the races have had zero issues with slowdowns, hiccups, and we've only had 1-2 ipad crashes out of hundreds of races. If I want to compete on a worldwide leaderboard and play multiplayer against people from all around the world, I go to Asphalt 8+. As for buying new cars, yes, you have to come to the game daily to see what cars are for sale (in a similar way to Gran Turismo PSP), and you have a limited amount of resources won in races daily (not coins, you can win as many coins as you want), but I guess it's the way Eden Games makes money out of Apple Arcade. I'm driver level 17 approximately, and I've unlocked several tracks. I think I've unlocked around 4-5 full tracks (lake, mountain, village, desert,...), and from them, the game makes around 4-5 races from each: segments of each track, as well as the full track. I hope I get more tracks as I play, but I'm having a great time with the races. The best part is that winning or losing, you only race each event once. As soon as the race finishes, it gets changed to another different one, so there's always 6 different races to choose from. Someone said that club members have to be online to use their cars, but that's not true. Even in offline, you can play with the cars they last shared. Unfortunately you can only share 1 at a time if you have >3 members, which is a real pity. I wish they allowed to share at least 2 per player. Maybe if the villa is updated after X level updates, we might get more car slots per player, but for now, only 1 car can be shared at a time. All in all, I'm enjoying this game a lot, and the best part is that there's no timers which force me to stop playing, so I can play whenever I want. I hope it gets updates which add more content throughout the months.
Well, it looks like with leveling up there's some serious increase in difficulty as well. So far I got races marked as "hard" that were actually difficulty 3 or 4 tops. Now that I'm level 24, all I have is 5 and 6, even if they're marked as easy. And it's getting pretty competitive to say the least. And considering there are upgrades that require player level 60, I'm kinda worried about the difficulty in the endgame. But we'll see. Yesterday after buying everything available I saved over 600.000 coins with the thought I'll be set for at least a few days. Until this morning with the Porsche 911 GT2 RS available for measly 400.000 LOL. But it's a beast. It's shared in my club if anyone's interested. Question about the upgrades. With workshops upgraded it looks like I can skip lower stages and go straight for the highest available. For example, my mechanic workshop is level 5 so with non-upgraded car I can skip stages 1-4 and purchase the stage 5 directly. Is it a bug or a feature? On one occasion (I think it was a body part workshop) I purchased the stage 3, but after coming back it stated I'm still at stage 1 even though stage 3 was properly purchased. It didn't occur at the mechanics though. So I'm confused. Another question. Is there a way to see all my cars in some sort of garage? Like when you're purchasing new cars there's this eye icon in the lower right corner so you can fly around the car. It disappears the moment you purchase the car and there's no way going back. The closest to move freely around the car is in the shared vehicle gallery, but it's very limited in comparison to the option in the shop. Am I missing something? Is the garage hidden somewhere or is it seriously not there at all? That'd be a major bummer.
Ok I downloaded True Racing as well, and it’s interesting to compare the two. I see there’s more going on in the original, and ads are optional to double rewards. It does seem like Stradale is an extension of the first game so maybe they could have made this a ‘plus’ version to incorporate everything. I do prefer the sunnier vistas of Tuscany just to drive around and listen to the music. @macplash there doesn’t appear to be a garage view cars. Would make a nice addition.
In case anyone's interested, here's my club ID: EDIT: achievement received, thanks a lot Macplash. I've done 100% of the Lotus 220 challenge and I need help with the "6 members" achievement. If anyone goes through my Club (even if they leave it afterwards) I'd appreciate it a lot. Thanks.
@VirtualBoyFreak I made a separate save file and joined your club, so when you get the desired achievement, just let me know so I can leave and free up a space for someone else who’d be willing to stick around. I’d stay but I don’t wanna start over again.
