Board Thread:Game Discussion/@comment-208.91.114.4-20180307015322

After doing quite a lot of binging on NASCAR recently (finishing the Richard Petty series pre-upgrade, then all or part of the 3 LTS's) I have come to realize that I don't fundamentally hate NASCAR. The opening sections of the race are actually quite fun - the jockeying for position and slingshotting ahead of competitors. But what I do hate (along with probably everyone else) is the endless monotony of going around in a circle on a wide-open track after you have already gained the lead (or after suffering a bit of a crash). And it's really just the NASCAR tracks too - racing the F1 tracks with the added element of drafting is actually a nice challenge.

I think if FM actually put some effort into it, they could turn the NASCAR events into a fun race. But they would need to actually make it a STOCK CAR racing event. If all the cars were actually limited to the same max speed then winning wouldn't be just about upgrading your car and bot slowing. The races would be more exciting because you wouldn't be able to get out front of the pack and then just coast for the rest of the race. If you ever started to pull away from the field, you would start to slow down and the pack would catch up because of drafting.

Of course the basic problem is that the game economy is focused around upgrades. Stock car + upgrades = contradiction in terms. There must be some kind of alternative mechanism to monetize the events that could make actual stock car racing viable in the game. E.g. maybe instead of offering a LTS to win the car for free (if you purchase X upgrades), they could just set the price at 500 gold and you can run the LTS for a chance to buy the car at a discount. The equivalent gold price of winning the car is the same, but now you can have an actual competitive series. 