Not spending any on upgrades basically. Plus I have found since the update with time trials I have been able to collect them again re-completing series. Before the update I had 100% completed about 85 - 90% or so of the series. So I've bee time trialling through them to gain some gold again. It's funny but even with its drawbacks, which I readily acknowledge I just can't put this game down.
Just on the endurance, I also sometimes go offline to complete them but substantially less than previous to update. It was heavily adjusted but the average is still very high on some. But in what I've played so far they hover around the 8 - 14 mile mark on the ones I've tried that friends have played (online). Plus if you're lucky enough to have one with no friends in there only about 3 or 4 miles. In relation to AI and easy races. Those are behind me now as my friends list has populated and the difficulty has ramped up substantially. And when I say substantially, I mean it. People should be starting to see usernames on the race list now as opposed to the AI names. If you still have bots mixed with usernames in a race, they're still pretty easy. But its worth noting that with 30 million downloads and 2.5 million daily users, storing and synching all that data is not an overnight process and does take a bit of time. To me, the update is exactly the same as the soft launch difficulty level. So a small bit of patience is necessary. Plus you do have to put in a good few races for the AI to give you a skill level and scale accordingly. Once it scales, you might be wishing it was a bit easier. I myself targeted some races that I couldn't get gold in previously before the difficulty ramped up. And finally, on the servicing and repairs thing. The servicing is not a just a little bit cheaper, its a lot cheaper. A full service now is cheaper than a change of tyres used to cost. Or a door for the Agera R. That's a substantial saving. The clean race bonus removes all the money you would have spent on repairs. So even if your bonus is low, it was still very possible to spend 15,000 - 20,000 to repair the top cars and that's before servicing where new tyres alone could be up to 2500 and a full service could hit 15,000. I know its different when you factor the lower cost cars but the middle to high range supercars were very expensive to run. The savings alone, ie the money you don't have to spend, are very big. Its worth noting tweaks are ongoing. Balancing of clean race impact on service frequency for example. Driving a clean race does have an impact on service frequency but its balance is a bit off so that will get a tweak. Same with race base prize money. It is being looked at how to adjust it. The new friend bonus won't be affected for particular reasons (people with small friends lists) but its still a multiplier basically and once the prize money is adjusted, it'll appease some people. I do believe some tweaks have already gone on but I don't know what area they've been done in but it seems as if some prize money has already been increased a small bit. I think bonus related as well as I seem to be getting a lot of ranking bonuses in time trials for no particular reason that I can see. Oh and the unlocking of cars thing is actually essential to the new format if you look at it. It is a progression system now and your target is to unlock championships and cars. The previous system was a bit too random and did cause players to lose a bit of focus and get bored. This way you always have so something to target for. In the long term its a better system. Plus any car you buy or unlock, you will have to race more than once due to the unlocking system so it negates people calling any car useless because every car has more purpose to it than just a single showcase race. You may not like the car but you will have to use it frequently. Edit. And definitely finally this time, since the update, I've earned enough to buy all the new cars and still have over 600,000 in the bank (Bugatti next) and 70 gold sitting there with nothing to buy and much more gold left to earn on gold few series. I only had a couple of hundred thousand when it came out in cash and 90 in gold. So I earned enough to buys all the new cars (new cars only and can't remember their prices), do full first level upgrades on four out of the five, earn 50 more gold to buy gt3 SLS (140 I think it cost) and then go on to get another 100% completion on previously completed series from the added time trials, which is 110 gold earned. All earned very easily. And substantially less spent on repairs and servicing. For me at least (not everybody from what I've read), its all working out very well. Plus nobody seems to have noticed that to complete a service with gold (if you must race it straight away again) is massively reduced
Well I've tried, I really have; but the easy bots, inflation and PR based money sink have made be go back to a previous build I had on my ITunes. I get the sound of breaking glass again but there is a challenge, I get a decent amount of xp, money and the wait/costings are much more palatable.
I have twice been clearly beat to finish line on DragRaces; but still awarded 1st Gold. Further easy-moding it?
I understand the unlocking actually makes the game a more focused affair, but honestly the grind is OTT. I used to race pretty cleanly so never got much by the way of repair costs (sometimes I even didn't repair), and as for servicing, I usually held out till my engine went bust. So, for me personally, the loss in revenue is jarring. Difficulty is also pretty mixed now. I am getting some difficult but some awfully easy races too.
The unlocking is the worse thing in the update, say u have to win 14 races in a earlier cup but hey guess what u need to do a bunch of upgrades (which arent cheap) to win them and then u wont even have the money to buy the car u wanted.
This is exactly what I meant. My thinking is that rip73 was well advanced into the game pre-update so he isn't feeling as much a pinch as the rest of us are.
Wait that it goes on showcase sale, if possible. It performs a lot better than the Zonda in large courses like Mount Panorama.
So... I save up the 250-ish k for the currently discounted Nissan. Once saved up I find out that I need to complete x amount of trophies in one often race series. Checking in those series in both cases this Nissan is the third car of four and in both cases I don't own the second car for either. I m left with a decision. Get in there, race up the trophies, lose whatever discount the second car may of offered and get my discounted Nissan. Or save up the cash for the second car at its discount price, screw this weeks discounted Nissan and hope that when I reach the Nissan in the series proper that its discount is something I can afford and have the cash for at the time. That's annoying.
When the game was released in Feb i quit playing after a very short time cause the waiting times really annoyed me.So,just out of curiosity,i started a new game now and while i really enjoyed the first 3-4 hours (cause the repairs are very cheap in the beginning and the waiting time for the repairs are just a minute for the Nissan Silva)i started to hit a paywall now.The game starts to force me to buy cars i don't want and that i have to upgrade and use them in just 1-2 races to unlock one more car and a 3 more cups.Then i have to buy and uprade this car to use it in another handful of cups.And so on.There's simply not enough money i can earn (3-5k from cups compared to up to 100k for an upgraded car) to move forward in a more or less relaxed way other than celebrating a H.U.G.E grindfest.EA totally destroyed every fun i could have with this game.What greedy bastards they are and i can imagine Firemonkey didn't know (or couldn't imagine)all aspects of their new business model before they signed the contract of hell.Paying real money doesn't help cause you would hit the same paywall a day later again.They don't want me to play,so be it...i'll free up some space now.Such a shame,the core of the game is quite nice...
I was well advanced beforehand. Soft launch day one downloader. Level 120. 50 cars (55 now). I'm not feeling any pinch. That doesn't change the fact that the new system is better. Many, many people complained about boredom. This is what the unlocking/progression system is designed to tackle. It is far more satisfying to achieve (perceived or actual) trophies to unlock something rather than just buying it. It is something new players will do better with. Similar levelling/upgrade/unlock systems are present in just about any and all games ( well, the vast majority anyway). It adds a perception of depth of campaign and progression. Necessary to combat boredom and repetition. And anyway, if all you have to do is race to unlock, what really is the problem? In a racing game. (Rhetorical, no need to answer, I've heard em all already.)
Well we all don't want to race a slow boring car 15 times to unlock a funner type car. Thats how I look at it anyway.
Lol...the AI in this game is downright horrible now. I just won a four lap race with my mclaren F1 on Indianapolis road track with a distance of 4100 meters between me and the second place car. I even overtook the entire 21 other cars in the fourth lap. They were moving almost as they do in the endurance races. Lol. TIme to back up and reinstall previous version.
