Yesterday we reported on the news that not only would Real Racing 3 be arriving on February 28th, 2013 but that EA would be doing a simultaneous release of the game on Android and iOS, shocking some of us weaker folk here on the Android side of thing. Then came the news that Real Racing 3 would be a free-to-play game, much to the chagrin of a lot of people.
Some people don’t care either way, whether it’s a premium paid game or a free-to-play game, but plenty of people are a bit tired of the free-to-play model and found this news to be a let down. That is why plenty of people at last night’s Real Racing 3 premier event who got a hands-on with the game also got to see how the free-to-play model will work.
In Real Racing 3 your car can sustain damage during a race which can range from a broken headlight to having an entire engine needing to be rebuilt and everything in between. Aside from cosmetic damage, which is displayed in rather high detail, the damage you sustain also affect your vehicle’s performance. Damage can reduce your car’s top speed, acceleration, and other performance statistics.
Repairs cost money that you earn through races. Depending on the damage, the amount of time your car is needing to be in the repair shop could be a minute (for a broken headlight) or 3 hours (for a rebuilt engine) or longer. By now you are problem guessing as to how the free-to-model may work in this game and you could very well be right, or completely wrong.
There are other features that take time as well such as doing upgrades to your car or unlocking a new vehicle. As you do more advanced upgrades, the time gets longer and longer. For those of you guessing as to how the free-to-play model will work from the above information, if you guessed that you’ll be able to speed up repairs using real money, then you were correct.
There is a second in-game currency in Real Racing 3 called Gold Coins. These can be used to speed up repairs and upgrade times as well as how long it takes to unlock a new car. EA has promised though that all content is available for anyone who doesn’t want to spend money, nothing is locked away from them. It just means you need to be patient during repairs since they will take time. Of course this won’t really be much of a big deal further into the game when you have a bigger garage with more cars, unless of course you beat the crap out of all your cars each race.
So there you have it, that is how the free-to-play model will work in Real Racing 3. Some people will be alright with this while others will hate it, especially at the beginning of the game when you only have one car. All of this information came from folks like Justin Davis at IGN, Jared Nelson at Touch Arcade, and Roger Cheng at CNET who were at last night’s event. Thanks for finding this all out.
Website Referenced: PocketGamer
