The game is pretty fun when you first start but as you progress in the game it becomes more of a grind. The issue is that there are two economies in the game. There are race dollars (R$) and gold. You earn R$ directly by your performance in races plus there are some daily bonuses and progress awards. Gold is earned indirectly. You earn fame in races and once you accumulate enough fame then you level up and earn some gold. You can also earn some gold in progress awards, viewing ads, and daily bonuses. Gold is kept pretty scarce. The reason is the game developers want you to pay real cash to buy game gold. Some example prices offered to me right now are 42 gold for $4.99, 87 gold for $9.99, 183 gold for $19.99, and 1019 gold for $99.99. The game has 146 cars in the system now. There is one that would cost $199.98 to buy all the gold to purchase and fully upgrade the car. I could spend $1,000 on the game and get less than 10 cars purchased and fully upgraded. Sure, most cars are not that expensive but if I dropped $1,000 or actually even $100 on a game, I would expect that would get me all the goodies.
OK, but games are for playing and entertainment and not just buying your way to the top. Well, here is an example. I recently updated the game. One new feature is that they added a new race series. There are five cars that run in the series. I already had four of them and had completed some upgrades to them. I have to get trophies in 28 races to unlock for purchase the car I did not have. When you first unlock a car, you can purchase it for a discount but if you do not have the gold or R$ then you have to buy what you need or lose the discount. So I only ran 27 races to keep from unlocking the car before I had enough resources to buy the car. I wanted to make sure I earned the resources in the game so I would not have to spend real cash for the car. So in running those 27 events, collecting daily bonuses, viewing ads for gold and progressing through the series, I earned 24 gold and about 150,000 R$. How close to the purchase price of the car would you think that got me? Well first the developers did not show the price of the car before it is unlocked. They show the price for many cars before they are unlocked but they did not for this one and many others. I had to go to an external web site to find it costs 160 gold full price and I should be able to pick it up for 128 gold by getting the discount when I unlock it. So I was 104 gold short after taking 1st in 27 races and collecting the other bonuses. If I want to earn the gold by just leveling, I would need to go up 4 levels. I estimate that I can level by winning a 15 minute race about 7 times. So it would take 28 times to go up four levels which would take 7 hours of racing the same track in the same car over and over again. Is that entertainment or is that just a grind? So why don’t I just spend the $15 to buy the gold and get it over with? Well, because I will only need the car for one showcase that is typically three events and one time trial. It does not show up in any other series. The price of $15 is too much for such an unimportant car in the game.