Update 1.07 has rolled out across Gran Turismo 7 today. It's bought fixes to several bugs that have frustrated players, but also crippled the ability for players to earn credits from their racing.
The World Circuit races with the biggest credit rewards and best per hour returns have all been crushed by the update. Polyphony has done this to "[Adjust] according to driving time and difficulty" but the result is that it will be even harder to afford those 3+ million cars in Legend Cars and complete your garage.
It's a naked attempt to push players toward microtransactions.
Credit grinding nerfs
The most profitable races, the Dirt Champions trio at Fisherman's Ranch, Sardenga Windmills, and Colorado Springs have been drastically cut.
The first-place prize of 65,000 credits has dropped to just 30,000. Our favourite grind, the Clubman Cup Plus at Goodwood is now just 12,000 credits, down from 35,000.
It's a similar story for the GT Cup Gr.3 & Gr.4 races, along with the American Clubman Cup 700 at Special Stage X (30k to 15k).
A microtransaction world
During out GT7 review we mentioned that while present, there was a good balance for microtransactions. You could buy credits with real money if you wanted, but you could also get them at a reasonable rate from races.
That balance seems to have been blown out of the water now.
While the price of credits hasn't moved on the PSN Store, the rate at which you can earn them has been demolished.
What are the best credit grinds now?
The only place rewards have gone up is the World Touring Car 800 races at Le Mans and Monza. These have gone from 5,000 to 70,000 credits but they are also long races.
With GT7 servers still offline fixing issues with update 1.07 we cannot currently get on to test these races out.
From a per minute return the Dirt Champions series still look like your best bet. a 60k max payout (you'll need the clean race bonus for this) in a few minutes is better than the 20-25 minutes those Touring Car races will probably take.
We will update our guides once we have had a chance to test the new meta of Gran Turismo 7.
Either way this seems like a brazen attempt to frustrate players into opening up their wallets to afford cars. When you consider the time-limited Invitations and rotation of Legend Cars meaning you need to buy immediately rather than wait, players are left with little choice but to sink more time into the game or spend real money if they want that Ferrari F40 or Aston Martin DB5 of their dreams.