The only use I found for the pencil so far is to draw on the map in the factory. BTW I almost rage quit when I went outside the factory with the coin and sent the guy to buy something. When he came back with boots. LOL. That was too good.
I would say the best way to know if you should switch to a team or not is to try to remember the top 6 or 7 teams. If one of those are the team you should switch unless your team is better.
I think it would be fun to have a multiplayer mode where multiple players control cars (ghostlike so trolling) and one player control the road and try to get all the cars to die.
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There's a use for it early in the game, but beyond that, yeah it doesn't do much this time around.