User blog:HV2308/WTTT borrowing ban - winners & losers

As from the february 2017 release, the common practice of borrowing upgrades for WTTT and cloud restoring after registering a time has been blocked by FM.

It's a fair move. And one that was coming.

It's fair to those who have invested gold to upgrade a car.

It's also fair to great drivers without fully upgraded cars playing by the rules, that were getting beaten by lesser drivers borrowing upgrades.

A level playing field (everyone having a FU car or one without upgrades) wouldn't be fair on those who have spent gold on upgrades.

FM have also been fair in the way they have plugged the loophole of borrowing. Before, you could be banned if you were caught. Now you can try all you like, your time will be scrapped every single time.

So, how about the winners and losers?

The prizes in WTTT haven’t changed. It’s just so that the right people are now getting them: the fastest drivers and the people who have invested the most gold in upgrading their cars. Two definite groups of winners (I’m not in either category by the way).

That leaves the rest of us with 2 choices.

1. Become such a good driver with manual settings / all assists off that you compensate for not having fully upgraded cars. This is most likely not going to get you there. Müllenbachschleife, Richmond or Melbourne maybe, power circuits with long straights not a chance. Try doing a WTTT ghostchallenge with a not fully upgraded car in say Daytona, Indianapolis, Le Mans etc. Leaving your opponent for dead in the twisty technical sections that require skill … only to be totally destroyed on the long straights. How frustrating is that? One change: at least now you will know you are being beaten by someone who chose to invest gold in his car. ''Your choice to do the same … or suffer! If you can’t join ‘em … get beaten by ‘em!''

2. Fully upgrade your cars. To be able to upgrade cars, you need hundreds of golds, thousands even. The way the game is developing, it’s impossible to win those amounts by regular gameplay. New cars nearly all have a ‘gold only’ price tag. An ever increasing number of upgrades are ‘gold only’ too. Due to rising ‘minimum PR levels’ completing challenges and special events also require stacks of gold. With the current releases, you will be doing well to finish a release with around the same amount of gold that you had at the beginning of the release. The way things are going, it will take only another small squeeze by FM and you will gradually start losing golds every release. It's pretty naive to think FM will say "OK, this is far enough, no more squeezing".

Your options: buy gold or stick to your principles … and suffer!

Should us average players not willing to pay gold consider ourselves a loser here? Not really. It was great while it lasted buy you can’t say it’s unfair all of a sudden.

Where does this leave the FireMonkeys? They've cleaned up the game a little, like they said they would do. Some people will now pay real money for golds. So this helps their business model. A lot of players will stick to their principles of not paying for RR3. And be gold-choked out of the game sooner or later. Or not even be bothered to start. It’s my estimation those last two groups will greatly outnumber the first. Winners? losers? You tell me ...