User blog:Sirebel/Farewell and thanks for all the Petunia

I started playing RR3 over 4 years ago it was fun. It's the first game, let alone mobile game, that has held my attention this long. It's not been without it's ups and downs of course and I quit playing after about six months when I realised I needed a lot more gold than I was earning and the price of gold was ridiculous. About six months after that, my daughter started playing it so I revived my game to help her out. It had changed quite a lot in that time and I was even further away from completing the game. Needless to say my daughter lost interest quite quickly but I continued playing. Eventually, I went looking for hacks and cheats as the lack of gold was frustrating me. That is how I stumbled upon this wiki and never looked back.

Initially, the wiki helped me with understanding the game and optimising my gold spend, thanks mainly to RomGuyony's excellent strategy page, then it helped me to understand how to drive better and win cars without spending gold. I didn't get the special events initially and had been ignoring them, then when I realised they were the cheapest way to win new cars I spent gold getting them. It was only in the Le Mans: Pursuit to Victory update that I finally broke through into winning the cars without spending gold. That also opened up Endurance Champions for me and the game changed from playing for fun to actually trying to complete it again.

I created spreadsheets, compared notes with others and defined my strategy:
 * Win new cars
 * Maintain a float of 1000
 * Upgrade for WTTT
 * Buy cars in sales
 * Upgrade for career

It was slow going with lots of farming but progress was being made. I bought some gold at the beginning, to stop the pop up ads, and again in the 2016 January sale. It was also around this time that they changed the free daily ads so that those who had made IAP only got 5 ads rather than 20 ads. This means I had bought 1019 for £19.99 but that I was now losing 600 per month compared to those that hadn't bought any gold. To say I was less than happy was an understatement and set me back several months. I bought the gold because I was close to a full garage and it took me another 6 months, June 2016, before I finally achieved that goal. It's amazing how much easier the game got after that. I was close to 100% complete anyway but it all depended on the new updates as to whether I got closer or further away. I finally achieved this goal in January 2017, thanks to an uplift in gold earned over the christmas period.

Once you've hit 100% complete the game becomes much easier. If you've seen my last two blogs about tracking spend through an update you can see that if you can get into WTTT Group B each week, compete in a gold winning team and are an elite player then 100% completion appears to be roughly gold neutral each month. This doesn't help those that haven't reached it yet but it does mean that maintaining this position isn't too difficult. I'd realised the importance of WTTT Group B before making 100% complete and was spending gold upgrading the cars that were regularly in WTTT and that I needed to upgrade for 100% completion. This approach meant that I gained some of this gold back and progressed in the career.

I've had many people accuse me, and many others, of cheating on here. I made it very clear in a blog years ago what I thought constituted cheating. I draw a clear distinction between hacking, exploits and gameplay. It seems many don't have the same view. I don't particularly care what other people think of me but I'll state my position clearly once and for all. I reached a full garage without using any exploit that wasn't well known, I didn't get the unlimited ads in December 2015 and I was penalised by the IAP purchase as mentioned above. I also reached 100% in the same way. I'm very proud of this achievement and anyone that wants to challenge it is more than welcome as long as they appreciate that I really don't care.

Once I'd made 100% completion and had all the cars that were regularly in the WTTT fully upgraded there didn't seem much else left to aim for except a fully upgraded garage. This is a totally unrealistic goal requiring over 80,000 just in upgrades, let alone buying the cars. 100% completion only required about 33,000 so that's another 50,000 or more you need to find from somewhere. Given that none of these cars needed to be upgraded that far for either career or to keep me in Group B of the WTTT then it didn't seem worth doing. However, there is an exploit in this game that can be used to get almost unlimited gold and I decided to try it out and see if FM could detect blatent gold exploits. I added 50,000 to my total and upgraded all my cars in the course of about two updates (i.e. about 12 weeks). The only purpose it served was to prove that FM have very few controls monitoring gold. I get a small benefit if any of these cars do appear in WTTT or are added to the Exclusive series.

Now before you all start messaging me asking for information on this exploit, don't. I won't tell anyone how to use it for the simple reason that if it became common knowledge it would destroy FM's business model for RR3 and the game would have to be retired. Which would you rather have? Unlimited gold and no game or a game and limited gold? Using this exploit hasn't helped me in the game except that I now have a decent gold reserve and don't need to farm. Since doing that, I haven't used the exploit again because 100% completion is roughly gold neutral as explained above and I haven't maintained a fully upgraded garage. I expect this exploit is leaking out though and is the main cause of FM increasing the gold requirement in the game. It's self defeating to try to disrupt the business model of the game you are playing.

The wiki has changed over the years as different people have come and gone but there have been some constants, firstly this has been one of the most well mannered and well behaved forums I have ever been involved in. Most online communities suffer from flame wars every now and again but this one seems to avoid them. It's quite surprising considering that the game attracts petrol heads, can be frustrating at times and people post when high on adrenelin. However, most disagreements seem to die quite quickly and the community does tend to be an extremely generous one for helping out each other. The admins over the years have done an excellent job of keeping things flowing and their contribution should not be underestimated. Anyone who's every felt disgruntled when I've pulled them up for their language or behaviour should go read my wall. My first wall post was from RomGuyony telling me off for being rude and aggressive ;-).

I think it's time for me to move on though. The impending update should push my garage over 200 cars (if I can get the two back that have been stolen, it's starting to get a little grand theft auto around here) and I don't see the point in gathering more cars that aren't significantly different and driving them around the same tracks in slightly different ways. That said, recent updates haven't taken up much of my time and I may maintain my garage for a bit if I have the spare time. However, I probably won't be contributing here much any more.

Good luck and thanks for all the good times. I wish you all achieve whatever goals you set yourself in this game and in the immortal words of RR3DougB, Race On!