User blog:ShinnyShin/The Problems with Elite Cars

My fellow players.

I'm going to give my 2 cents about one of the burning issues that came with v2.4.0 of Asphalt 8: The Elite Cars.

Now, those who know me, know that I avoided Elite Cars like the plague when they were released over a year ago. Then Gameloft threw a curve-ball and forced one upon us, with the release of the BMW M2 Coupe. It's the first Elite Car I've ever owned and since I've used it for a while now, I figured it was time to write a blog on this.

I've stayed away from Elite Cars purely out of principle until now, really, well when I decided to go for the Lamborghini Aventador SV only because it's one of my favorite cars, but even that doesn't excuse the glaring issues that this system has.

Before you start thinking this will be a rant-fest, I'm not just pointing out the flaws, I'm also going to talk about the good things that came with that update, because while it's not all that bad, it could be a LOT better.

😠 STARTING OUT? : Good luck with that!
If you're new to this game, then these are probably not a great choice to start out with. To begin with, a lot of these cars will set you back a few thousand Tokens. The cheapest Elite Car at the moment, the nanoFlowcell QUANTINO, will cost about 975 Tokens and even then, that's a lot. Normally, you can't get these the legit way unless you part with real life money [or if you're a hacker, in which case you'd be the absolute WORST].

Some of the cars can be bought with Credits, but even then you're talking hundreds of thousands or even millions, like in the case of the Jaguar XJ220S.

So really, these are not cars for beginners. Your only options are either grind the game and save for a few years, or surrender your bank account details to Gameloft.

Even then, you're not missing out on a whole lot.

😠 THE PRICES : Good things don't come cheap!
Like I mentioned earlier, these cars ain't cheap. Not saying that they should be, but if it takes years to save up Tokens to afford even 3 of these, then they're a real kick in the teeth to the enjoyment you'd get from the game.

5000 Tokens is already a costly amount, but anything over 10,000+ is just plain ridiculous.

That aside, you buy your Elite Car and it doesn't stop there!

Let's compare with, say, a Lamborghini Asterion, that costs 500k Credits. That car is a very good investment that pays for itself and you can easily earn that 500k back in a few hours, and then some. And the best part is, you only have to pay for upgrades and that can be done at your leisure.

Now, Elite Cars are just the opposite of this. These cars do NOT give good returns on your racing gains, and instead are a Credits/Tokens/real life money vacuum.

You shell out Tokens [or Credits for a select few cars], take said car out for a spin, and surprise, surprise! You now have to pay to maintain and upgrade the car because its condition has degraded from the race you've just had. So you pay a few more Credits for the repairs and race again, and guess what happens?

Your car's condition has gone into the red zone again! And since races only offer a meager +/- 5000 Credits for placing 1st, you're essentially paying 3/4 of your winnings to just maintain the car, and your overall gains don't really increase by much [especially if you rely on boosters a lot].

'''NOTE : These cars are really only good for 3 or 4 races before they require tuning. You can choose to ignore the warnings, but your car's performance will suffer horribly and it will delay the tuning process.'''

So basically, you buy the Elite Car and have to keep paying for it even when you already own it. And especially if you want to keep using it in the future, be prepared to keep on shelling out. Also, you can FORGET about farming with these cars, since you will lose more than you can gain in the same amount of time and races with a non-Elite car.

Which brings me to this next point ...

😠 WAITING TIMES : Ain't nobody got time for that!
You thought things like Season Tickets, R&D Keys, Tires and what-not were bad enough? Guess again, fellow players!

Gameloft decided to bestow upon us yet another wait-based game mechanic - basically, you have to kill some time until your upgrades take effect. And that could take HOURS at a time [I counted nearly 3 hours, on average].

Yes, you heard me right - you can't just whip out the car after tuning. This feature is taken from games like Real Racing and CSR Racing and it's such a drag [see what I did there?].

One of the things that really set Asphalt 8 apart from other racing games was the ability to use whatever car you want, whenever you want and how often you want. And god help you if you suffer from a bad Internet connection/your game crashes/adverts get in your way, because that's already one use you'll have lost out on and the results can really cost you big time.

But of course, you can always pay your way through the lengthy waiting times with - yes, you guessed it - your hard-earned Tokens! About 250 per skip, last time I checked.

Or better yet: real life, cold hard cash! And that's for EVERY TIME you want to tune and use the car and not have to waste time waiting. You could just watch free videos instead to reduce the wait timer, but they don't always work and will sometimes crash the game.

So essentially, you're wasting time AND money if you subscribe to this model.

😠 NO CONNECTION? : No game for you!
Imagine this. You buy a much-hyped car from the car dealership. You discover it's an electric model and it's tethered to the dealership.

If the dealership closes, you can't  drive the car. If you stray too far away from the dealership, you can't drive the car. The car breaks down after every 3-4 uses. AND you still have to pay for its upkeep!

It can impact you quite badly if you main that type of car for wins and points in Season Ticket races, and if your wi-fi goes ... so does any chance of a % boost and any chance of using said car.

Why Gameloft configured these cars this way, I'll never know. I mean, since Elite Cars can't be used without an Internet connection, how is this ANY different to the dealership scenario?

😠 NICE CAR YOU HAVE THERE : It would be a shame if something 'happened' to it!
This section is about a major glitch that me and many other players have come across. I noticed that the Elite Car doesn't even have to be used for its condition to degrade. Picture this, I tuned up the car in the morning, went to school and came back in the evening only to discover that the car had degraded! And that was after I'd spent the day waiting!

On the other hand, and perhaps more rarely, the Elite Car's condition might switch from the ideal settings to Perfect without any explanation.

Worse yet, sometimes you'll tune your car and it only partially refills the bar, then your performance suffers during the race. These things only happen half the time, but it's frustrating.

You could try and race without the obligatory repeated tuning, but your car will be pretty much useless unless you do so. If you're especially unlucky with the now much worse Car Ranking bracket, you will face opponent cars ranked at least your rank to 150+ over yours, and their performance, unlike yours, will not suffer, and will totally destroy you even if you're triple-boosted.

And again, the only way to remedy this is to forfeit your Credits and possibly your Tokens. Or take it further with Gameloft's Customer Care team, who will be more than happy to lay the blame on you/your device/your wi-fi/your pet.

The gremlins are surely having a field day up in here.

Like I said before, this blog is also going to mention some of the good points that this update brought along.

😄 FLEXIBLE TUNING : To upgrade, or not to upgrade?
You know, in some ways this was a feature we'd all been longing for. The ability to not just upgrade our cars, but adjust the tuning to suit our needs where necessary. Typically, once you MAX and PRO a car, the upgrades are permanent, and your car eventually falls out of the rank brackets where it would be useful in MP. Now, Elite Cars allow players to do just that, and that's a welcome feature. Still, the way Gameloft did this could have been much, much better.

Here's how they could improve the Elite Cars for all the players out there : - make the Elite Cars cost no more than 10,000 Tokens or put them out as Enduro or R&D cars [NOT VIP cars as it makes for everyone getting a fair chance at winning the car]

- have players pay just the one time when they buy the Cars, no more after that

- remove the lengthy waiting times and Perfect/Red Conditions

- allow unlimited uses of the car

and you'll have a winner. Just sayin.

😄 MORE CARS : Always a nice touch!
Nice, yes, but they'd have been good too even if they weren't Elite Cars. But more variety is always welcome, and one hopes that newer cars will at least be more affordable to buy and maintain if need be.

On the plus side, I won the Aventador SV in an Enduro Challenge and it just so happens to be an Elite Car, which is the only downside. It was, for me at least, the only Elite Car worth getting other than the free BMW M2.

But as is the norm nowadays, Gameloft giveth with one hand, and taketh away with the other.

'ERM ... THAT'S ABOUT IT, I GUESS'

Overall, I'm not sold on the concept of Elite Cars. They aren't all that much better than ordinary cars except for the flexible tuning. I get the distinct impression that Gameloft want to discourage lengthy Free play in a lot of ways and this is one of them.

Unless things change for the better, this doesn't inspire me to buy any more Elite Cars in the future, unless they give them away dirt-cheap or even for free like they did with the BMW M2 Coupe. It would at least make things even to get them for free, especially if we have to keep paying to use them afterwards.

Any other observations, fellow racers? Maybe you have different opinions? Share your experiences !!

- ShinnyShin