My thoughts after playing for a while. As a point of reference, I just unlocked International A.
I have to backtrack on what I said earlier about the game's economy being unchanged from previous games, because it certainly has. The difference is that it's not done via credits, but rather via cars. In earlier games, you ended up with so much money so quickly because you never had to buy any cars. The game was practically throwing them at you every other race. While race payouts in GT6 are about on par with previous entries, the car prizes are all but gone.. you have to actually buy the cars you race in. And I find myself in a bit of a dearth of credits as a result, moreso than I ever was previously.
The game cheats. I've seen numerous occasions where a race will feature a car that's not actually eligible for that race. One of the MR races, limited to 500pp cars or less, had one of the Zondas in it (none of which are even close to 500pp), that quickly took the lead and left the rest of us damn near a half a lap back. You could argue that the game uses the "power reduction" feature to drop the car to 500pp, but my experience says they don't... it was too damned fast, I was never going to catch it.
And "road car" or not, the GT40 is a LeMans race car. Don't put it in a "classic muscle car" race against my Charger. Not exactly on the same level. Seriously, they're making me go out and spend millions of credits on a car that can outrun a Mustang.
The rubber-band AI is a concern along these lines, too. And not in the classic sense of the cars behind you magically playing catch-up, but against the cars ahead of you. On races where I've plowed from 10th to 2nd in a half a lap, the #1 car is so far ahead that it's flat-out impossible to catch. And they're in the same car I am. But if you move up slowly, keeping a steady pace and only getting in the top three on the last lap, the lead car is inexplicably no longer a half a lap ahead. That was two races in a row with identical cars, and completely different behavior from the lead car.
Why is the ZZII only 65K, but able to handily beat both an Enzo and Veyron in a championship? I out-accelerated a Veyron on a straightaway at Bathurst. Short of an LMP or F1, there's not a car in the game that should be able to do that, much less this little thing. I've kept it out of the Supercar races on principle, I'd rather win with something more recognizable, but they're all so damned expensive.
The DeLorean, which IRL only goes for about $40K brand new, somehow costs a half million credits. It's like the Japanese pricing got stuck on that one. I know, it's nothing special, really, but it's a personal favorite.
All in all, though, I'm playing the shit out of this game. It's going to be a grind to get the cars I need for the end-game races, but I guess that's how it's going to work ('cause I'm not buying my way in).
I need chrome paint chips. Mostly for wheels. Someone needs to figure out where the basic silver and gold ones can be got.
Any ideas on the release schedule for the Vision GT cars? They've got twenty-six more to go... if they spread them out too thin, no one will be playing the game by the time the last ones are released.
