GatorDeb

36 hours. Over two and a half hours today I love this game so much. I'm STILL finding new stuff I am SO much better prepared for next Season! So I decided I'm going to use the tokens for the season unlocks, going to wait until the last day of each (they're like 2 months long) and then what I can't unlock on my own gonna finish out with tokens, I have enough tokens for 3 seasons so that's half a year. That should get me through the F2P opening. I can't wait to see what they offer up when they open it up since I benefit also. This is the only game I've ever played over a month every single day at least 10 minutes.What's funny it's that like many racers this game employs "rubberbanding" which it puts the other racers closer to you to give an artificial sense of a competition and I didn't know I could win 4 out of 5 difficulties I thought I could only win the first two. The third difficulty more times than not and the fourth now and then. No chance on the fifth but I just need higher levels on everything so eventually. But I was surprised how much better I am than I thought

GatorDeb

So they're guessing and it looks like 10 bucks per 1k tokens. I'm 7k tokens away from topping out the season, waiting for the last day. I still got xp to get so the final tally will be less. And next season I can get a lot more xp doing the daily sessions, took me a few weeks to get my bearings on the game. But worse case scenario 70 bucks and the shortest season will be six weeks so about $52.50 a month (and the token cost is purely a guess based on the season pass has been confirmed to be 1k tokens and they guess ten bucks a season it's what it's going to cost). I'm averaging 1.175 hours a day so about 35 hours a month so it comes out to 1.50 an hour. For a $60 game that'd be 40 hours. I'm OK with that conversion. And who knows what they'll give out when it's f2p I'm sure there will be event extravaganza and now I'm better and have better racers. My initial outlay to play the game is covering this season and I still have left over. I ended up buying it three times on the pc xbox and switch so that's $210 and will cover 5 seasons or 30 weeks or 6.66 months or less than 32 a month for half a year. I'm not sure if I'll spend money once the tokens are gone but I do know I've played this game almost as much as any other game and definitely more than most. I think I'll just keep this and Diablo and instead of buying more games just throw money at these two for more hours.

I view it as AMC Value. I cancelled my AMC membership but including cost of gas it came out to 3 bucks an hour if all I saw were 3 hour movies. More cost per hour for shorter movies. So for every 70 bucks I only need 23.4 hours or 34 minutes a day based on 6 week seasons.

Yes I enjoy number crunching as much or more than video games. I'm going to start running again on Monday on a couch to marathon 6 month training program so that I have more numbers to crunch and because I want to listen to my running playlists again.

But I think I've decided I'd rather just play DSS and Diablo and throw money at them periodically that would equal or be less than me buying new games and playing those.

And all this is because I suck terribly at this game. Good people get it all for free. And because I do want the items to level up my racers. It would be interesting if all my level 25 racers now make season 2 easier.

I'm watching YouTube videos to see how people take the cornering on certain tracks. I've gone around on my own on the tracks in local play so that I can get muscle memory on track layout. Etc.

GatorDeb

New week unlocked 19 mins ago so I had to stay up already put in 30 mins since midnight. Gotta do the regulated ranked and now they added an extra level. Tomorrow the last of the season tour unlocks! At 1a dailies unlock, at 5p the loot boxes unlock, at 3p the daily xp unlocks, and weekly xp unlocks on Tuesdays

tanman

Wow, couch to marathon? That's great Deb! I've got a 5K in January that I'm already dreading.

GatorDeb

First run today, went great! I've done marathons before, getting back to it, love running.

So the last week of possible xp was released and it's going to cost me $55 bucks (not really since I already paid $210 so I will use those tokens but is that the believed value) and I'm going to have about 55 hours this season, so that's a very good gaming value for me. And I found out I could have done the daily xp all along and not have to have spent any tokens at all. I have 15 out of 18 racers, and some of them high level. But now I can't wait to grind next season and get all tiers without spending tokens. I'll spend the 5500 tokens now since I have 39k tokens and get the rest of the tiers (on the last day, gotta grind the xp until then). If the rest of the seasons were the same (which they won't, I'll be able to get even more xp through grinding) the 39k tokens would last 7 seasons, at about 50 hours a season at least that's 350 hours for the $210 or an average of 100 hours per $60 game. I'm good with that. But I think after this one time I'll be able to max out the rest of the seasons without dipping into tokens again. I got 36000 tokens through buying the games so I've already made 3k tokens so next season I may be able to "pay myself back" what I spent due to not knowing I could have been grinding daily xp all along.

I could unlock a character right now for 2000 tokens but I think that's $20 and there's no way I'm spending that. All characters will be unlockable through grinding eventually and I can wait.

fujishig

This is like the F2P game makers dream right here.

GatorDeb

I missed out on stuff this season (each one is about six weeks) so next season I prob won't have to spend tokens to max out the tiers (or from now on, period), I missed out because I didn't know, and I can make the tokens back. I don't spend tokens on the daily shop, so after this first season I'm prob done spending money on it, it can be done just grinding it out.

fujishig

This is usually the rationale, until you realize that by spending a little money you can save hours on the grind, and if you save hours on the grind you can make more progression, and you're spending so much time on the game anyway what's a little money that I would've probably spent on something else? Trust me, I've been down this road before, and I'm not even saying it's not worth it, just be careful because at the end of the day something like this is going to go away and be unplayable.

GatorDeb

Nah, I like the grind I like playing the game and earning stuff. I like slowly but surely. I haven't spent any tokens in the store and don't plan to.

nickdawgy

A buddy of mine spends hundreds a month on a mobile game. I told him he’s crazy. They can shut the game down at any time and he’d have nothing to show for it.

GatorDeb

No matter the type of game, I always bring it back to AMC value, $3 an hour. For a $60 game that's 20 hours. I actually bump it up a bit to about 35 hours per $60. If that amount of money is bringing me that amount of hours, I'm good. But it looks like I won't have to spend a cent on it now that I fully know how the game works. I woke up at 4a and couldn't go back to bed and I had to take the kid to therapy and wait an hour for him so I've played 2.5 hours today

I've only spent money on Pokemon Go and I think I spent $1,000 on it over a period of 6 years. For the amount of time I played that, it was worth it. That's less than $14 a month. That's two cups of coffee. It brought me hours and hours and hours of entertainment. Only reason I quit is because I had kids. It's one thing to play a video game at home while they're sleeping or playing the Switch in a waiting room, another one to be walking or driving around.

Towards the end I learned how to buy Pokecoins with Turkish currency through my U.S. credit card (without foreign transaction fee) so I was paying 15 cents on the dollar

GatorDeb

I had insomnia early on and a lot of time waiting for people so I put in over 4 hours today Finished all the weekly new xp in a day and the daily xp and the 3 dailies. Less than a week and I get to cash out the tiers and get a ton of stuff. The store is crazy, though, with the tokens needed to do stuff that everyone will get to do eventually just playing.

I can't wait for f2p release and have 8 months playtime on people. New season starting in a week! The bare minimum for dailies takes about 20 minutes a day but there's the regulated multiplayer which takes about 1:15 a week and then there's the weekly xp which took me over 3 hours today and then there's just random events and I have to get 15 racers to platinum for guaranteed rewards. There's no dearth of content. And it's not just win, it's stun 3 people, drift 2k miles, grind a pipe for 3 seconds, use your charged skill 3 times, do 4 aerial stunts, etc. There's driving skill but there's also choosing the right racer for the circumstances. Baloo even though he's only level 15 vs. my 25s made the stun 3 opponents in one race 3x a piece of cake.

GatorDeb

So this is pretty cool. I posted before that I was going to have to use premium currency (which you can't buy yet and you get as part of buying the game) to finish out the season because I found about the dailies too late. Well I raced the hard races and I raced and raced and restarted and restarted which I never do and I did it!! 11 days until the end of the season and I only have one tier left which I'll be able to obtain with just grinding daily, the 3 objectives are fairly easy. It is such a sense of accomplishment finished out the season all on my own. 62 hours so far in the game. I upped some characters that I shouldn't have to use resources on others so I'm better prepared for next season.

Trust me on this if *I* can do this game, anyone can do this game lol

GatorDeb

So I needed one last racer to unlock. They released an event to upgrade him but you had to have him already. So I went back to the toughest races and restarted fell restarted fell restarted fell I got yeeted so many times just whooooosh. But I did it. I'm still playing the event for 10 more days but I got all the biggies out of it, without spending one cent of currency (except by mistake I almost bought something with tokens by clicking on the wrong thing because I was distracted ). It really is a sense of accomplishment to pass something hard in a video game.

GatorDeb

Just passed the 90 played hours mark. They released the new season at 3a and I've been playing since then (2 hours 35 minutes minus some work around the house). I set the alarm for this. Finished the first two chapters, next two released in two days. They fixed a TON of stuff and the rubberbanding in the first three levels out of five total is completely gone.

I ended up spending $342.50 on this game (hey the Starlight collector's edition is 300). I came up with AMC hours which is based on gas and a 3 hours movie and it's $3 per hour, so at 115 hours I'll have meet AMC hours as if I was paying $20 a month for the AMC pass and watching one 3 hours movie a week. At 210 hours I'll have hit New Release hours, calculated at 6 x $60 new releases and 35 hours of play each. I'll hit that easily. There's a ton of new games I want to play but I'm just shoving everything into my Steam wish list because I don't have time for any other game other than this. If I'm going to be playing video games, it's going to be this one. I've logged in daily for at least 10 minutes a day for 56 days straight and I can't wait to play more.

Most importantly, this is the most fun I've had on a game ever. I love participating in the discord while I play.

They had 3 tiers and you can buy one tier per platform, so I bought the top two tiers on Switch, XBOX, and PC. The bottom tier wasn't a good value. And they had six character unlocks which also came with an event that gave each of them tons of in-game upgrade stuff, and they don't seem to have a time limit on it. Six was the sweet spot. It also came with 15 Season Pass Gold tier unlocks which at a minumim of six weeks each as they have stated, it's 90 weeks worth of content. It also came with 59,000 of the premium currency. They've stated the season passed will cost 990 tokens and people are guessing that's $9.90 so 59,000 is $590 worth. I knew I was in for the long haul and it was the best value for premium currency.

I haven't spent any of the premium currency and I don't plan to. It's crazy because in the shop it costs like 1200 to 2000 tokens to star up a character... that's $12 to $20 bucks, that's insane. And for cosmetics. No, thanks. I only have used the season currency which is free and handed out like candy to buy stuff but I like their gambling box better. And I LOVE grinding vs having insta-unlocks. I love finally hitting that tier through gameplay.

I have over eight years of season passes if I use the premium currency on that, and each season brings new characters that can earn you 105 tokens guaranteed so I have over a decade of "free" content available. Not as good a deal as Diablo which is $100 for about a decade of seasons, but I'd rather play this.

nickdawgy

I don’t even know where to begin with what you just said…

GatorDeb

Everyone on Xbox Gold can play it for free 7/27-7/30. Also it's coming out f2p 9/28/2023 could a mod update the title? Thanks! I have over 150 hours clocked in last 3 months. Log in every day.

fujishig

I honestly have no idea, but why would anyone buy it now instead of just waiting for 9/28?

Decker

GatorDeb

There's founders packs which give you stuff for the game which won't be available once it hits f2p. And you get to play it early. If you're gonna pay anyway better to pay 4/18 and play it 5 months early than a week before it hits f2p. But it's not just the game it's tons of stuff for the game. Those who played from day one will be massively overpowered over someone who started in f2p even if they just spent 30 bucks total for the standard 4/18. And got to play 5 months early.

fujishig

Right, I'm saying if I wasn't compelled to buy it yet, why wouldn't I just wait a few more months?

GatorDeb

You want the founders pack, buy it now, you don't, don't buy it and wait til f2p.

The Questyen

I don't think that's fair. From her posts she's gotten a ton of enjoyment and hours of gametime out of her purchase so as long as she's happy with her purchase that's all that matters. I'll take her positivity and exuberance for the games she enjoys over the complaining and negativity which is rampant on these forums any day of the week.

Decker

That's fair. I wasn't impressed with my brief time with it, but if someone enjoys a game, that's great.
I just have issues with the F2P model in general, because you can end up paying way more than the cost of a new game (or a game + DLC), and can get hooked. Plus the concerns about pay-to-win, which no game should really do.

GatorDeb

In this game you can either have everything eventually over years by grinding or right now right now by paying. I found out I enjoy the grind immensely. There's a lot of upgrade parts management, and having a character high up of each franchise, and of each racer type (so far there are four), and it's as much about racing as about racer management. It's actually a deep and complex game. Who to take to tackle which objective. I don't plan to P2W, I love the grinding. I will play until they turn the last server off. I paid in but I figured whatever the tokens cost this will be the cheapest they will be, the founder's pack, so I'm done spending. I should have 200+ hours by f2p release. This is my top most game of all time.