The Gran Turismo series has always been a grind for players to get all the cars, but the latest changes to payouts for many races in GT7 have left the community infuriated.
Image credit: Polyphony Digital
Just over a week ago, we put together a money making guide for Gran Turismo 7 with the most effective method being a one lap dash around Fishermans Ranch in Gr.B rally cars against one competitor. The races would take about three and a quarter minutes and players could earn just short of 100,000 credits.
Well with the ability to buy in-game credits with real world cash, it seems Polyphony didn’t like players constantly replaying this race over and over again as in the latest patch v1.08, the payouts for this and many other races have been significantly reduced. Before the update players could earn in the region of 1,700,000 credits per hour, but it’s now been halved which has left many players feeling despondent.
Low cr. payout bug?😏
— Gran Turismo 7🏁 (@ShareGamePlay) March 17, 2022
As has become more and more apparent in the last few years, the gaming industry has constantly pushed microtransactions. Many mainstream video games that have an in-game economy and methods of earning money to then exchange for various in-game items, have constantly attempted to reduce payouts of activities in games in attempt to persuade players into buying in-game currency with actual cash.
Unwilling to pay
This is a practice that players have caught onto in recent times. As is the case with Gran Turismo 7, where if players are willing to part with €2.49 they can have 100,000 credits, for €4.99 it gives them 250,000 credits, for €9.99 they get 750,000 and for the grand old sum of €19.99 players can expect 2,000,000 credits.
The majority of the playerbase believe they shouldn’t have to pay more money then they already have for the game, which even at its lowest price (the Standard Edition on PlayStation 4) is €69.99, and giving in to the temptation to spend more money will just tell Polyphony and all other game developers and publishers that players are willing to part with the cash. The gaming industry like all industries responds to wallets being opened.
Nevertheless, in protest of the changes, Gran Turismo 7‘s Metacritic page has seen its user rating plummet to a 2.5 star rating at the time of writing.
Time consuming grinding
As it stands – according to calculations from GTPlanet.net – GT7 is the third worst Gran Turismo series game for earning credits using the most effective method with 850,000 credits per hour. The first game of the Gran Turismo series to include microtransactions was Gran Turismo 6 and GTPlanet determined that the series was actually by far and away the best for earning credits.
When GT7 had its 1.7 million per hour method it was the third most effective, GT6 trounced it with 3.5 million per hour which was quite far ahead of the second most effective game for earning credits, that being Gran Turismo Sport at just over 2 million per hour.
Plenty of the highest performing cars in the game thankfully cost 1,000,000 credits but there are cars in the game that are well above that. The likes of most Gr.1 category cars are around 3 million credits, the Ferrari FXX K, McLaren P1 GTR and Lamborghini Veneno are more expensive than that and the Ford GT Mark IV costs 4.6 million credits.
Players can have a maximum of 20,000,000 credits which would cost them €200 if they were to start from zero. We haven’t found out what the most expensive car in the game is yet but we’ve seen the McLaren F1 in the Legends Car showroom go for 18,500,000 credits. That will take players 22 consecutive hours to non-stop replay the most effective method to earn credits providing they get the clean race bonus.
Even the biggest names are unhappy
The money making situation in Gran Turismo 7 is so bad, it’s even getting the top competitive players and content creators to express their discontent. Many top competitors from the Gran Turismo championships – who even make an appearance in the game – have been doing just that, as has leading Gran Turismo content creator Steve ‘Super GT’ Alvarez Brown.
As a matter of principle, I will never do a single microtransaction EVER on GT7.
— Steve Alvarez Brown (@_SuperGT) March 17, 2022
The game has definitely got a to a point whereby it’s unreasonably time consuming for the average player to gain credits.
Don’t get me started on the roulette spins either 💀
In a statement released on Gran Turismo‘s official website, Polyphony Digital CEO and Gran Turismo series producer Kazunori Yamauchi had this to say:
In GT7 I would like to have users enjoy lots of cars and races even without microtransactions.
At the same time the pricing of cars is an important element that conveys their value and rarity, so I do think it’s important for it to be linked with the real world prices.
I want to make GT7 a game in which you can enjoy a variety of cars lots of different ways, and if possible would like to try to avoid a situation where a player must mechanically keep replaying certain events over and over again.
Unfortunately, players often have to play the same race over and over again because they want the money to get a load of different cars. It’s bad enough when there’s not one particular method that pays a lot of money, but when factoring in a lot of the newest elements in GT7, how difficult it is being made to earn money becomes all the more blatant.
There are the pitiful roulette spins that, more often than not, provide players with the option for the lowest amount of money (mostly 2,000 credits). There’s also the fact that cars which have been bought in-game can no longer be sold, even for a fraction of the original cost. It’s proving difficult for many players to remain motivated to play the game now.
What should Polyphony do?
It’s unfortunately the case that game publishers want as much money out of their consumers as possible. But it’s not impossible to go too far. Just look at what happened when EA made the eco-system in Star Wars Battlefront II next to impossible, even after not learning their lesson from charging $60 for their first Battlefront game followed by a $50 season pass.
But if enough players speak with their wallet, Polyphony and many other game developers/publishers like EA, Activision, Rockstar etc. will have to rethink. Thankfully, in the same statement in which Yamauchi explained the choices behind the cost reductions, he did state that they intend to add more types of races and features in the future. But it may take more than that to win back the trust of longtime players and fans.
What do you think of the reductions to Gran Turismo 7 race payouts? Tell us on Twitter at @OverTake_gg or in the comments down below!
