Although the gameplay of Gran Turismo 7 is convincing, frustration is building up among fans. The reason: the microtransactions. Because if you want a legendary car, you are almost forced to pay with real money. Developer Polyphony Digital is already reacting.
GT fans had to wait five years for the new game, and after release it looked like the patience had paid off – Gran Turismo 7 is a strong return for the series. But then disappointment quickly set in.
On the game rating site “metacritic.com”, Gran Turismo 7 has a user score of 1.7 at the current time. More than 7,000 votes are included in this result – for Sony this is a historic negative record, because never before has a Sony game been rated so poorly. But why is the community so upset?
For one thing, there is the stability of the online connections. In the days after release, the servers didn’t work properly, which meant that the joy of online racing or the career mode gave way to frustration.
30 hours of play or 190 euros for a race car
But the biggest criticism of GT7 is probably the microtransactions, which fans find particularly bad. In Gran Turismo games, the player receives in-game currency in the form of credits after each event raced, which are used to unlock cars of the various classes and brands.
A metacritic.com user writes: “In patch 1.07, Polyphony simply made it harder to earn in-game credits by reducing the rewards for races in the hope of forcing people to pay real money for them. […] despite Sony’s many money-grabbing decisions this generation, this is a new low.”
A recent example is the McLaren F1 ’94, a legendary car that is only available in the shop for a limited time. The McLaren costs 18,500,000 credits, the equivalent of 190 euros, would the user purchase the credits with real money.
As with the predecessors, the car can be unlocked. Through various challenges, the wallet fills up with credits – but until the 18,500,000 are collected, it takes quite some time and almost perfect gameplay. After all, Sony cannot be accused of pay-to-win when it comes to microtransactions. Whether it’s a legendary car or a used car – it doesn’t bring any significant advantage on the track.
Sony responds to fan frustration
But with the upcoming and further patches, the problems should be eliminated. Accordingly, the developer studio is aiming for the rewards of the events in the second half of the world races to increase by 100 percent. In addition, there will be new, “high” rewards for completing the race track experience with all gold/bronze results. Also skyrocketing are the rewards in online races.
To create more earning opportunities as well, the missions are getting growth – from eight new one-hour endurance races – also with higher rewards. Those who earn a lot will also be able to top up in future, because: The credit limit in the wallet increases from 20 million to 100 million. And suitably for casual players, there will be more used and legendary vehicles on offer at all times.
“In addition, other changes are planned for which there is no fixed timeframe yet. These include more new world race events, more endurance races in missions, including 24-hour races, and more online timed races and a change in rewards. In addition, cars will finally be able to be sold,” explains Polyphony Digital. The first patch is scheduled to be released in April.