First of all, let me say that FH3 is one of my favorite driving games of all time. With that out of the way, let's get right to it.
The star attraction of a driving game are the cars. In FH3, the car values are meant to mimic their real life values such as a McLaren F1 GT will be 4mil+ Thus $1 = 1 in game credit. Pretty cool actually. However, there's a problem in how in game credits work:
- You get very limited credits from actually racing and playing the game
- Having completed the game and well beyond, I accumulated less than 10mil credits. You can spend this on a couple of cars in game for reference
- As you level up you get "perk points" which can be used for perks some of which include using the tokens for credits. A couple of of those max out at 100k credits before that resource is depleted
- There is no "winning" cars by advancing. After a certain amount of levels (like a RPG) you earn a free wheel spin. Within that spin you can either win credits or a car but it's a pretty random event like a wheel spin would be
- There are special "barn finds" which will gift you a car but those of these are gimmicky
The above are annoying but liveable. Now this is where it gets really unpleasant:
- While you buy cars via credits from the garage, there is no option to sell them back and reclaim any percentage of credits!
- You can only sell them to the auction house which is a major hit and miss and requires some time commitment on your end
- Because you cannot sell the cars ingame, the auction house gets flooded with commonly won cars from wheel spins thus it's not an effective means of credit accumulation
- This also means the more expensive cars which don't seem to show up in the wheelspin retain very high values even on the auction house
- There is no option to test drive cars to get your fill. You have to buy them to experience them
So why is all this designed the way it is? quite simple. FH3, outside of traditional DLC of cars, car packs and tracks, has microtransaction economy for buying cars also.
By artificially limiting your credit, not rewarding cars with any decent frequency and not allowing you to sell your cars to the in-game dealer, you're left with these options:
- Grinding for credits by running the same race over and over
- Hoping for the best at the Auction houses and spending a fair bit of time on it
- Paying for the cars via real currency which is the sole intent of setting up such a currency policy in game
As I have transitioned to a casual gamer, I'm not sure how standard this trend is across other genres. What does this mean for me? It'll make me not buy games day and date until I hear end user feedback. If the core game is artificially fenced in by microtransactions, I'll just skip it.
If any ex or current developers want to shed the light on this is being broadcasted internally, I'd be very curious to hear it.
The star attraction of a driving game are the cars. In FH3, the car values are meant to mimic their real life values such as a McLaren F1 GT will be 4mil+ Thus $1 = 1 in game credit. Pretty cool actually. However, there's a problem in how in game credits work:
- You get very limited credits from actually racing and playing the game
- Having completed the game and well beyond, I accumulated less than 10mil credits. You can spend this on a couple of cars in game for reference
- As you level up you get "perk points" which can be used for perks some of which include using the tokens for credits. A couple of of those max out at 100k credits before that resource is depleted
- There is no "winning" cars by advancing. After a certain amount of levels (like a RPG) you earn a free wheel spin. Within that spin you can either win credits or a car but it's a pretty random event like a wheel spin would be
- There are special "barn finds" which will gift you a car but those of these are gimmicky
The above are annoying but liveable. Now this is where it gets really unpleasant:
- While you buy cars via credits from the garage, there is no option to sell them back and reclaim any percentage of credits!
- You can only sell them to the auction house which is a major hit and miss and requires some time commitment on your end
- Because you cannot sell the cars ingame, the auction house gets flooded with commonly won cars from wheel spins thus it's not an effective means of credit accumulation
- This also means the more expensive cars which don't seem to show up in the wheelspin retain very high values even on the auction house
- There is no option to test drive cars to get your fill. You have to buy them to experience them
So why is all this designed the way it is? quite simple. FH3, outside of traditional DLC of cars, car packs and tracks, has microtransaction economy for buying cars also.
By artificially limiting your credit, not rewarding cars with any decent frequency and not allowing you to sell your cars to the in-game dealer, you're left with these options:
- Grinding for credits by running the same race over and over
- Hoping for the best at the Auction houses and spending a fair bit of time on it
- Paying for the cars via real currency which is the sole intent of setting up such a currency policy in game
As I have transitioned to a casual gamer, I'm not sure how standard this trend is across other genres. What does this mean for me? It'll make me not buy games day and date until I hear end user feedback. If the core game is artificially fenced in by microtransactions, I'll just skip it.
If any ex or current developers want to shed the light on this is being broadcasted internally, I'd be very curious to hear it.
