Gran Turismo 7's latest update is a substantial one, with improved Credit rewards and new race events taking the spotlight. Hopefully, the changes mean racers can purchase those million-Credit hypercars in a much timelier fashion.
Released today, surprisingly ahead of the weekly Sport Mode Daily Race reset, the latest Gran Turismo 7 update not only boosts Credit rewards for World Circuit and online Lobby and Sport races, it also introduces new events including hour-long Endurance races and a litany of tweaks and bug fixes.
The official GT7 patch notes don't specify just how big of an increase to Credit rewards we're getting in the PS5 racing sim, but users on the Gran Turismo subreddit have noted much larger payouts than before. The linked example shows a huge 485,000 Cr. reward for a first place finish on a 15-lap touring car race. Additionally, the patch notes state that the new Endurance races "will award up to 1.2 million Cr. per event."
It's worth talking about these Endurance races on their own. Found in GT7's Mission mode menu under the moniker of 'The Human Comedy' (which we can only assume is an intentional quip from the devs), these monolithic races will take roughly one hour to complete, meaning your focus will have to be razor-sharp, especially if you plan on walking away with a first-place Clean Race bonus.
Other notable changes made as part of the update include a bump to the maximum number of Credits a player can hold to 100 million, new rewards tied to the time trial-focused Circuit Experience races, improved car physics on dirt tracks and an expansion to the amount of vehicles purchasable in the Used and Legendary Cars menu.
A great start, but let's keep the momentum going
This latest Gran Turismo 7 patch is chock-full of positive changes for the game, the rocky launch of which led it to being review-bombed on Metacritic largely due to low Credit rewards and days-long maintenance times that rendered the online-required racer entirely unplayable.
The update is a fairly substantial improvement to the game's quality overall, but developer Polyphony Digital isn't quite out of the woods yet, and there's still plenty of work to be done. For one, Driver and Sportsmanship Ranks earned in the online Sport mode are still frustratingly vague. Better visual indications as to which actions are raising or lowering our ranks would be very welcome.
The penalty system also feels like it needs more refinement. In our experience, we've been slapped with 4-5 second penalties for incredibly meager bumps and scrapes against other racers. On the flip side, we've witnessed offending drivers deliberately force others off-track while getting away scot-free.
And personally, we'd love the opportunity to revisit GT7's incredibly charming Café with the addition of more Menu Books. These single-player objectives really invested us in the game's World Circuit events and allowed us to collect tons of cars and bags of Credits as we did so. We'd love more of these Menu Books to plow through, especially as Polyphony plans to continually add more World Circuit races to the game.
