We're introducing seasonal rewards that scale with PVP activity to Top Drives.

The first season, Mount Fuji Ascent, will run for 28 days from April 10th to May 7th and is accessible to all who are above 175 RQ. Enter events within the 28-day window and perform well to accumulate as many Flags as possible. This is in addition to the Expo Collection that will run during the same window of time.

We want you to have more of an opportunity to build your garage every month. These milestone prizes will make joining events, competing in events, and playing Top Drives frequently much more rewarding.

The PVP Season is a simple implementation. Events (including matchmaking) are unchanged from how they’ve been. Except, you also win Flags from every core event (found within any pack you win), including Daily Events if you’re high enough RQ to unlock them. Flags are spent/consumed in the Challenges section for rewards.

At this time, level up events (a scheduled set of repeated events for 330 RQ and below) are not included, and do not award flags.

At the end of each season, your progress will be reset, but your performance will determine your starting point for the following season. This means that players who perform well consistently will have a distinct advantage when new seasons begin, as they will be able to progress further and reach the higher reward tiers sooner.

The Flags are spent in league challenges to progress through the stages and unlock valuable rewards. The rewards for each challenge tier will become more attractive as you advance. You will receive cash and card packs as you move from Bronze IV to Bronze I and eventually to the larger Frontier challenge.

• In Season I, if you complete Bronze II, you will be able to start at Bronze III next season, allowing you to skip Bronze IV.

• If you complete Bronze I, you will be able to start at Bronze II next season.

• If you reach the Frontier and complete 20 rounds there, you will be able to start at Bronze I next season.

Expect around 28x 48h events (1 per day), 28x 24h events (if 495-500 RQ), 6 Tri Series events, and 1x 72 hour event. This may be slightly different as we play out the month, but it should be 95% correct.

Notes

• Minimum race requirements will be implemented. Once you have raced the minimum number of races to get into Tier 9, you will earn Flags, so this is a great incentive make sure you’ve raced at least the minimum required for Tier 9

• Flags increase with each tier, so you’re incentivised to do as well as you can. Roughly there’s a 15-20% increase in flags in each tier, but there’s a 50% jump between Tier 7 and Tier 6, so Tier 6+ makes for a great target in each event.

• A 500 RQ player who enters every event, but does badly will still earn around 400-500 Flags, earning them a good injection of cash and a few Ceramics. So even if an even is particularly tough, it’s still worth showing up and doing as well as you can.

• The total maximum Flags is likely around 2,700, prizes stretch beyond that just in case, but rewards just repeat at that level.

• Flags aren’t visible in the event itself, you’ll have to refer to the chart for now. But after 19.0, you can tap on a pack in an event to see the number of Flags awarded.

• Each round is trivial to beat - they’re not challenging rounds.

Flags per event are as follows:

Note in the early days, there may be errors here, we run around 25 prize tiers for the different matchmaking events we run, many of which are very similar, and as of 10th April, we’ve only rolled out a fraction of those. 

Overall, it’s simple - higher RQ, higher trophy, and longer events award more Flags.

Rewards are as follows:

As a general disclaimer, things can and will likely go wrong at some point. The tech all used here has been used a bunch in our Expo Collection monthly passes, so it gives us confidence that things will work well, but it’s still the biggest endeavour I can remember us doing without it being an actual coded feature. There could be an issue where we have to change Flags or rewards for this month. Hopefully, overall, you’re earning a great deal of rewards that makes any bumpiness worthwhile.

Frontier will be replaced by more granular leagues over time, which will offer more ‘save points’ to continue from next season.

Q) Is this a new thing that will be around forever?

A) Who knows? I’d take it a month at a time. If it doesn’t engage players in the way we’d expect, we’ll have to rethink it. Due to the structure of progress partially carrying over to the next month, we have to award entry tokens for next season in season 1, so we’ll do that regardless of its future. I’m quietly confident this will be a hit though.

Q) Flags are a little confusing

A) Yeah, this is a PVP reward system without a line of code, just using our current tools. It’s amazing to be able to put this in-game, but it means there are no supporting structures. The advantage is that we are able to do this at all, and if and when we want to add code support, we’ll know what things are more important to improve first

That said in 19.0, by coincidence, you’ll be able to tap packs in events to learn their contents

Q) Why can you start at Bronze IV again in season 2?

A) A limitation of the current tools. It’s particularly annoying because the red dot will beckon you to play these races, when you probably should save your flags for the furthest challenge you’ve unlocked. This is probably one of the first changes we’ll do in future – hiding challenges that are ‘worse’ than your highest rank

Q) Are the prizes the same each month

A) I would expect Flag thresholds and rewards to change significantly in future months as we balance the data around how easy or difficult it is to earn particular rewards