Doesn't anyone think it's odd that this system has been set up whereby players can get rewarded with extra credits simply by spending hours and hours of their lives doing a boring, meaningless and repetitive task like buying the same car over and over and over again? It seems ridiculous. Why not have it so that you're rewarded instead for overtaking X number of cars, or running X number of clean laps? With this particular 'reward' Turn 10 are actively encouraging their users not to play the actual game, and instead spend valuable free time on some soul-destroying, annoying and monotonous grind like some punishment handed out at a Victorian school. It's like "prove how hard core you are, prove how much you want these points by doing something that nobody in their right mind would ever choose to do". It's borderline psychological torture.
Well, tbh, it follows their philosophy/focus of the game being centered on car collecting. If it were racing focused the bonus offerings would be related to doing racing related things.
They never said anything about turning gamers into racing lovers or racing lovers into gamers...."car" lovers.
For me it's been an ok trade-off with the auction house, but that is gone now. With the lack of choosing race length or qualifying, I don't think I can stomach another iteration with 90% of the races being 3-5 lap sprints.
I think it's such a waste to spend all the time and resources on time of day, rain, "3d modeled" puddles, etc. when we can't even have proper qualifying which would take a fraction of time and resources to implement.
It takes a lap or more to get heat in the tires, so you're often left with 1.5-2 laps to physically push your way to the front, since you must start from the back. This causes most people to just bully their way through the AI to win or place.
Forcing this type of mentality in single player causes most to take this same attitude online as well, which used to be fine with custom public lobbies. Since we're forced to race with these people race-in, race-out with T10 hopper matchmaking, it's typically an exercise in frustration.
The above coupled with omission of some of the best (and my personal fav) tracks such as Mugello, Maple Valley, Suzuka, Tsukuba, etc. etc. I'm going to sit this one out, at least a while, which is a first for me with this series.