H34drush

I've played GRAN Turismo since GT1 in 97'. I love this series. GT7 has made me hate this game. I can almost forgive the stretched & artificially elongated grinding for credits to get cars, even though it worked fine in GT4 which is still arguably better in almost every way. What killed this game for me, was a few things. First, the developers polyphony digital catering to the hardest of the hardcore fringe fans, demanding they make the game as insanity level difficult as possible. I don't think I've ever gotten even silver medal on any weekly races, & I'm literally 10-15+ seconds off the top time. I can barely - BARELY - make bronze. The challenge missions are just ludicrous. I don't know who they think the game is for, but it's not for the normal, regular racing game fan now. If you don't quit your job, but a $20,000 simulation rig, and dedicate 14+ hours a day to practice every day, you WILL NOT even do well in the game. I'm convinced some of those mission challenges demand you do 10+ laps with a slower car, with cheating faster AI, & demand you hit every corner & every apex perfectly. Perfect. Miss one? Might as well restart, because that just cost you gold time. They keep lowering & lowering & lowering the times of license tests & circuit segments, under the guise of "rebalanced driving mechanics". BS. They just made the times harder, so you'd grind more, so you'd keep playing the game. Unfortunately, for many like me, it's doing the exact opposite - I DON'T want to play this for 80 hours a week, & now I have ZERO desire or intention to buy (or even play if I got it for free) GT8. This game killed the series to me. Also, the community is either toxic & hateful, or a brainwashed cult. If you dare even THINK about saying something constructive, or (heaven forbid) negative about the game, you'll be met with the mindless droning predictable chants of, "skill issue" & "git gud". The GT7 subreddit is filled with fluff & substanceless pointless boring garbage, and gtplanet - holy cow don't even start with gtplanet. That place is out of control mod ban central if you dare say anything non-positive about the game. It's one of the most brainwashed toxic cult fan bases I've ever seen in gaming. It ****, because the graphics are pretty good and the car selection isn't terrible. It's extremely annoying that they paywall lots of cars & try to force you to buy credits with real money instead of either 1) let you sell cars, or 2) don't make the game so grindey. They lowered payouts of races that people figured out "credit exploits" for, or patched those REALLY quick. Other bugs & issues? Those can wait for the patch every 4-6 months. The keep making the game harder & harder, whole lowering & lowering the payouts for races, making the grinding even more tedious. It's awful what they've done to this series, & I will not be continuing to support it by either playing or spending a single penny more on it. I'll go back to GT2-5, before things got really bad. This game deserves a 0, simply due to its ability to kill one of the best racing games ever, & to somehow become one of the most anti-gamer/anti-consumer games ever made. If you wanted to make the "dark souls" of racing, do it with the difficulty slider. Setting it to medium or easy has no effect. Rage gaming isn't fun - I play to have fun & chill, not to sweat buckets & play a circuit 5,000 times just to get enough good runs ON ONE HAND. If I need to play the game for 2,000 hours before you start "getting gud", needing to explain why that's fking insane is part of the problem. No more polyphony digital, no more gran turismo. Time for something - Anything - else. 0/10