Board Thread:Game Discussion/@comment-26388545-20150620170856/@comment-26715739-20151014151227

@Cas...

Yes - in a remarkably similar position to you in terms of level and cars, and being a bit "over it". Feel like I've been spinning my wheels a bit, churning, churning, churning, probably since the PoV release.

The "reward gap" (ie the gap between what you can win and what is needed to reach 100%) just seems to keep on increasing, and NASCAR took it to a whole new level.

I only did the sums for 3.5 (Lions) and 3.6 (NASCAR), but at least 3.5 allowed you to get slightly ahead (assuming you ran Le Mans every day with agent and you completed all the new content). Not far ahead, but a little bit.

This time round they've created a massive deficit - somewhere in excess of 1500 gold - or over £120 if we look at the cost to pay to make up the shortfall.

I've nothing against a deficit in principle - programmers have to get paid (although, for this game, with its current structure, I'm not going to be the one doing it, not directly anyway) - but for any release (a period of only 6 or 7 weeks) the deficit really shouldn't be more than about 200 gold (which is about £15). And it would be better if there was a surplus for "the obsessed" so that more casual gamers aren't left completely stranded. The thing is, once you get to a certain point, even the most expensive packs don't even put a dent in your gold requirements - you start to wonder why they even offer the cheaper ones.

As it stands, I know that if I walk away from the game then it would be extremely difficult to ever pick it back up again because I would have fallen so far behind (losing those free cars would be an absolute killer). That feels a bit of a silly move from FM/EA - making people pay because they haven't played. Then again, maybe their research shows that "whales" are also intermittent players, and will pay up to catch up.

But at the moment it feels more like the know they've got lots of long time players, and the only way they know how to "keep them playing" is force them to farm for longer and longer times. Multiplayer should have been an anti-dote, but it's a bit of a mess. Teams could have been another (for some long term players) - but it's just getting people to farm in a slightly different way.

They need to find something better than entropy to appeal to long term players.

In the meantime, I'll bow to entropy and see what the next couple of releases bring - I wouldn't expect the next release to be too big, because the pre Christmas one is usually the "major" release - but hopefully there'll be enough in it, and it won't push the goalposts too far again.