Gran Turismo 7 currency grind and rewards addressed in new patch

Gran Turismo 7’s patch 1.11 was released Thursday, bringing the first of the changes promised two weeks ago as developer Polyphony Digital sought to head off intense criticism of the game’s grindy reward economy (and its high-priced microtransactions).

This is the first of many changes that will be made. GT7’s late game more rewarding. Rewards for “the latter half” of the World Circuit campaign races have been increased, along with rewards for Arcade, Custom and online races, and Circuit Experience time trial challenges.

New high-level races with high rewards have been added to World Circuit. These are the Tokyo Expressway Le Mans, Sardegna and Le Mans circuits. Missions mode has been enhanced with endurance races that last for up to one hour. Each race will be worth up to 1.2 Million credits.

There are some steps that can be taken in order to help you collect the most valuable cars. In-game credits have been doubled to 100,000,000 credits. Manufacturer invitations to buy rare cars last for longer. The number of classic cars in Legend and Used car dealers has also been increased.

There are a bunch of other fixes and changes listed in the patch notes, including improvements to the game’s somewhat erratic off-road physics.

Kazunori Yamauchi, Polyphony’s head, first announced these changes late March. He said that there would be many more, such as the possibility to sell cars and 24-hour racing online, along with time trials using a scaled reward system.

Yamauchi had come in for fierce criticism after initially moving to decrease the rewards of races players were using to grind for credits in the game — this against the backdrop of extremely expensive in-game cars and high-priced microtransaction packs. Sony apparently heard the consternation expressed by the Gran Turismo community and prompted a quick change in heart. It’s just as well, because Gran Turismo 7Other than that, it is just as wonderful.