shrugs in being a gran turismo fan because i have a lot of conflicting emotions about the state of the game right now in addition to the community
spec ii was a step in the right direction but it's still evident there still needs to be more work done to really make it better, but all the momentum from it has kinda died down due to the three month wait between that it and the upcoming january 2024 update, which seems to be a return to the usual trend of "three cars and possibly a small handful of events to go with it; maybe a track if we're lucky".
i'm just a little bit conflicted right now because on the one hand i'm tired of certain video essayists continuing to dogpile on the game with videos that reiterate the same few points over and over again (who i've already done a rant on before), but on the other hand i feel like the gran turismo community almost has a cult-like behavior to them where if you say anything even remotely negative, the fans will immediately try to get on your case about it.
it's a bit weird to me; i feel like spec ii has made the community comfortable somewhat - i get not every update will be as huge as it was, but the average update generally feels like they put in the bare minimum and call it a day, made worse by the increasingly irregular pattern they release at. i feel like it should be safe to at least expect more after three months of radio silence but i guess that goes against the community hivemind?
addendum: letting all of this out is just making me realize i'm probably in an extreme fringe part of the gran turismo community.
i want this game to continue getting better and i want them to keep improving rather than regressing back to the model of minimum-effort stinkers of updates that plagued this game's 2023. i'm willing to be critical of that, but i don't want to be destructive and defeatist about it and slag this off as just "this game is an unsalvageable mess and anyone who likes it is stupid". i'm not a cult-like fangirl nor am i a destructive "critic", just someone completely stuck in the middle.
i'm probably being really overdramatic about this issue, but i dunno. it's just a bit disheartening when you feel like nobody else seems to see eye-to-eye with you from either side of the community.