I don't know where to begin..
Asphalt 9 suddenly feels a worse form of Gacha game at this point. I have been playing this game since launch and it felt generous 'til the point of LP crap that was introduced in 2021 (I don't remember tbh). I don't want to stretch the discussion much longer than it needs to be but over the years,the upgrade costs along with credits availability getting reduced every six months to 1 year at this point is making it harder to go for any new cars.
The only reason people stress over the new cars and its upgrades each season is because they are mostly needed in future events. This doesn't seem fun now at all. Sure cars like Venom, Absolut, Jesko, and Chiron make the gameplay fun but unlocking them is getting harder and so much time consuming that it just doesn't seem so worth it.
A perfect example is gauntlet and its division configurations. Many people got screwed over because they upgraded one or two cars way more than others and got placed with people higher than their league. Sure they tried to fix it by increasing all lower divisions' threshold by 1k but it kinda became useless by other features (EVO). Me being one of them as I was literally on the Div 4 threshold with good cars at feasible ranks (almost all around 4400) but now with EVO, this upgrade configuration became useless as people who grinded high level cars like (Nevera TA and other SH cars) and kept low ranked cars like Vanda, 9x8 upgrades on hold and performance deficit cars like centenario,ZR1,Senna GTR and even SF90 (although it is great) getting EVO benefited the highest. Now if someone who is a little low level than me or similar people will get future benefits of Gauntlet races because whenever I enter Gauntlet in initial 4 days of Gauntlet, I get matched up against people with said configurations which reduces my chances of ending up in TOP 1-3 which offers me more tokens.
Club Clash (although it gave lower tokens) at least tested my skills and also kept the fun without having me stress over each day playing 5 players with 5 races each (if I get matched up against alien or a really really good player, then I have to practice in private lobbies in order to keep somewhat of a shot in position of TOP 2 or higher). Not to mention, I have to remind myself to turn off EVO of Lykan in order to not end up in DIV 5 (which is so much worse).
I don't have any other EVO car except this one so I am feeling the shorter end of the stick but others who don't even have that are having much..much worse in DIV 4. With the new MP system, matchmaking is so rigid that people are mostly playing EVO cars or closely performant cars in the hopes of ending up in a higher position. This is the same as the Vanda problem we were facing for years except it continues in higher leagues too. With rewards getting locked behind paywall and game environment getting worse and worse with every six months at this rate, there is literally no point keeping up with this bullshit. On top of that, the other "rewarding" events like Spotlight and DS are getting worse too so there is literally no point why we are playing this.. we went from getting multiple bread slices to crying for bread crumbs, it's just so insane I don't even know how to put it properly in words.
This is overall a really bad year I am facing because of other bad factors along with this game getting worse each season. Also this F1 season is just sad to watch because of regulations that I am losing motive in both this game and that sport. Now I am starting to understand why many youtubers left the game..