GTA Online's next DLC, Transform Races, is out next Tuesday. The update, which is seemingly the last non-dripfed, non-event and non-Adversary Mode update for the rest of 2017, is another take on the stunt race formula introduced by Cunning Stunts a year ago. It looks like great fun, but it also seems all too familiar.
More or less since the release of Further Adventures In Finance And Felony, GTA Online has struggled to innovate in any field outside of the constantly produced Adversary Modes. Rockstar has fallen into a comfortable schedule of alternating between two main DLC archetypes.
We have the "major" DLCs which usually add new kinds of businesses to the game, a system conceived by Finance and Felony. However, they all follow the same basic framework. Do mission to collect things to sell, take things back to specific property type, wait for a timer/until you collect enough, then do mission to sell thing. Acquire, wait, sell. It's always the same pattern, and while there are some variations, like different sourcing missions across the content of various DLCs, they still come across as being extremely similar.
The second archetype is the "mid" DLC, which is usually a new take on Cunning Stunts. It's not as small as a single vehicle or an Adversary Mode, but not as big as a major DLC, and is usually used to tide players over between two major ones. It's always a variant of stunt races with some small detail changed, or feature added, to make it feel like a new game mode.
