Gran Turismo 7’s patch 1.11 was released Thursday, bringing the first of the changes promised two weeks ago as developer Polyphony Digital sought to head off intense criticism of the game’s grindy reward economy (and its high-priced microtransactions).
This first round of changes go quite a long way toward making GT7’s late game more rewarding. Rewards for “the latter half” of the World Circuit campaign races have been increased, along with rewards for Arcade, Custom and online races, and Circuit Experience time trial challenges.
Three new high-level, high-reward races have been added to the World Circuit, at the Tokyo Expressway, Le Mans, and Sardegna circuits. Additionally, a series of one-hour endurance races has been added the Missions mode, and these will award up to 1.2 million credits each time they are taken on.
Away from new events and direct increases to rewards, a few steps have also been taken to make it easier to collect high-value cars in the game. The cap for credits earned in-game has been raised to 100 million credits, invitations from manufacturers to purchase rare cars will last longer, and the number of classic cars available in the Legend and Used car dealerships at any one time has been increased.
There are a bunch of other fixes and changes listed in the patch notes, including improvements to the game’s somewhat erratic off-road physics.
First announcing these changes in late March, Polyphony head Kazunori Yamauchi said there would be more to follow, including the ability to sell cars, 24-hour racing, and online time trials with a scaling reward system.
Yamauchi had come in for fierce criticism after initially moving to decrease the rewards of races players were using to grind for credits in the game — this against the backdrop of extremely expensive in-game cars and high-priced microtransaction packs. It seems the general consternation of the Gran Turismo community has registered with Sony and instigated a swift change of heart. It’s just as well, because Gran Turismo 7 is otherwise kind of wonderful.
Source: Polygon
