VOL. 7 END OF VOLUME REPORT

The time is now. With Vol. 7 coming to a close, we wanted to take a moment to share back some insights and feedback that we’ve collected over the course of the volume. 

As mentioned in our Y2 Roadmap Blog, your feedback during this year will help shape the future of the franchise, and part of our commitment back to you is being transparent about what we’re hearing along the way to ensure that it’s accurate, and sharing our point of view in response.

But first, let’s take a look at some gameplay stats observed during Vol. 7:

Some really impressive Drift and Drag stats over the course of Vol. 7, particularly with Drift Mode. The difference between the Largest Drift Score in a Single Combo and Largest Total Drift Score is quite small, meaning that was seriously one hell of a combo. 

Fastest Drag time is pretty impressive too. Average real life street racers can expect about 10 to 12 seconds for a quarter mile drag race, while top fuel dragsters and funny cars run them in about 3.6-4.0 seconds. 

Finally, it’s clear that Drift playlists win out over Drag playlists in your PVP selection, and it’s also worth noting that the top playlist cars are almost all the stock bases for NFS Legends and other Customs in the volume!

Head over to the community-run Subreddit and Discord channel to let us know your thoughts on the data. We’d also love to hear what else you’d like to see in future End of Volume Report infographics.

Now, onto your feedback. There are a few important disclaimers we need to share before getting into it:

1. The majority of your feedback won’t be addressed during this year of live service. We’re a small team on a tight schedule and are working hard to bring you everything we’ve promised. We’ll make updates and refine features where possible, but most of the feedback is being collected to inform how we approach things in the future.
2. We will only be including feedback in these reports that relates to what we’re doing in NFS Unbound. There are certain frequent community requests that are outside of the scope of this project, and making any short statement about them would be unhelpful. Know that it’s heard and that your enthusiasm is appreciated, but we won’t be addressing those requests in these End of Volume Reports.   

If you’re new to the game and want a recap of the features we’re discussing below, please visit the Vol. 7: Drift & Drag reveal blog.

Alright, let’s goooooo!

• HIGHEST RATED REPLY ON TWITTER:
  • “If Burst NOS could be disabled in the Drift Pro game mode, I think that will do a lot to help. Players would prefer to use the regular NOS to help raise speed and extend drifts. But the Burst NOS activates and grants us so much unneeded grip/traction, it throws us off from drifts.”
    
  • Dev response - Thanks for the feedback here! Something we have spoken about a bit and would like to take on but it's a little tricky to decouple. If we can, we will for the next Vol.
    
• HIGHEST RATED REPLY ON IG:
  • “Story mode needs all this content now would be fun and nice to play when u don't wanna play online”
  • Dev response - Something we have mentioned before is that adding anything to Story is difficult for us and honestly, we don’t think we will get to it for this year of Kaizen. 
    
    “Why is updating the story so hard?!” A choice was made early in development of Unbound that SP and MP would be separate, so the core architecture of the game listens and facilitates this rule. We have heard you loud and clear that you would love SP updates and we would love to too, but the truth is adding or changing to this in live service could be super bad! Messing with the garage, events and storage systems could mean complete losses of builds and progression and that is something we definitely do not want to happen! Please rest assured though that whatever comes next for NFS, ALL areas of the game will be updatable.

Overall, we’re hearing a lot of positive things about Drift Mode and that you feel we’re on the right track with handling. We also see that some feel the scoring system is a bit inconsistent. Also, wheels don’t self-align like they should with countersteering animations relative to the angle of the car, which would help with control and immersion. We agree that it’s definitely not as polished as we’d like, but we hope the fun of being able to have a more dynamic and playful drift experience outweighs the issue for now. Any future iterations of this will be refined and improved in line with this feedback.

• HIGHEST RATED REPLY ON TWITTER:
  • “I feel like there should be an actual danger to it like if your car goes too far in the red, it should blow up if you crash thats it you are done. In Payback your drag cars would wheelie off the start line, nfs cars dont do that anymore i think this should be looked into as well.”
  • Dev response - We love this idea and it is something we considered but unfortunately it’s not something we could get to. As with all things Kaizen, this Drag mode will now be a base for us to work upon in the future and make better, more rounded, and nostalgic as per this suggestion.
    
• HIGHEST RATED REPLY ON IG:
  • “Being able to overrev and eventually having the engine go out when overrevving for too long! That enables players to push their car when they need it, like when they are in the highest gear and so close to the finish line, that they risk the engine to die for some extra speed!
    
    And that if you crash hard enough your car totals and you're out for the race!
    
    Would feel more dangerous yet fun.”
  • Dev response - Similar to the above (also someone is obviously a souls like fan!) jokes aside, consequence is important for NFS so we would love to add more ways to experience that in the future.

Like Drift Mode, we’re also hearing a lot of positive feedback about Drag Mode and the old skool flavor it delivers. We want to go further with this experience, like we do with everything we’ve added so far. Many of you have said you want to see more creative liberties taken with the mode, like cars two-wheeling on the start line and having hot rods and hood blowers, etc. This kind of feedback is super useful to know which tone and flavor is right for you all. We also love to see the continued reinforcement of wanting higher stakes, and more Risk/Reward, as we feel the same. 

• HIGHEST RATED REPLY ON TWITTER:
  • “Some of the rival cars I didn’t like so only a few are worth it but the League gave me an incentive to play Unbound more often. I think it should return for 8… for the MW update bring back bounty system and have cops pursue you as soon as they see you 🤷🏾‍♂️”
  • Dev response - Great to hear you enjoyed League overall! It's our attempt to get nostalgic SP style play into MP (as SP isn’t something we can change up this year). Good news for you… League will be back for Vol. 8, with the same systems but new cars to go after each week.
    
    
• HIGHEST RATED REPLY ON IG:
  • “1. A great addition with decent challenges almost similar to a blacklist.
    
    2. It made me actually come back to the game after 2 volumes. Kept looking forward to play after work/weekends. And the anticipation of what the next winnable car would be.
    
    3. N/A. I didn’t have an issue with multiplayer focused updates.
    
    4. No. I usually jump straight into online ever since I finished the story mode when it first came out.
    
    5. Yes, definitely worth it for their custom cars. However, I wish they didn’t come stock once we won them. They should’ve come exactly how they were upgraded by the rival drivers.
    
    6. Hell yes, I want the league back.
    
    7. Maybe bring back OG racers from other games once in a while? Also would like to see it not so reliant on other players to complete challenges like the cop escape assist challenge.”
  • Dev response - So we like Leagues?! Good, as we do too. We’re glad to see a healthy mix of understanding what we are trying to deliver to you all, and it didn’t get in the way for those who didn’t want to play it. Also, really happy to see that Leagues being updated on a weekly basis went down well too!

We’re glad to hear the appreciation for League mode, even if it wasn’t the big single-player update some were hoping for. The positive feedback, especially from the Reddit community, shows that trying something different with League in Free Roam has been well received. We love some of the features we have got in here like, weekly updating racers and a more classic linear progression. We’ve also noted the desire for more variety in 1v1 events beyond just drag races, and understand the confusion around winning stock variants of cars instead of the customized versions used by characters. This kind of feedback is invaluable as we continue to refine the NFS experience. While Vol. 8 is already set, we’re exploring ways to address your suggestions in the future.

• HIGHEST RATED REPLY ON TWITTER:
  • “Both cars feel great, the Mustang Dark Horse is a bit of a beast, but the M3 Touring feels super slow in the top end”
  • Dev response -The Darkhorse is indeed a beast! We hear and see the feedback around the M3 and will take a look to see if there is something we need to tweak

• HIGHEST RATED REPLY ON IG:
  • “add E36, can’t be talking about drift cars and ignore the e36. besides people have wanted it in a nfs game for years since it was removed after nfs shift”
  • Dev response - E36 is an absolute legend! There are many many cars we would have loved to have added for Drift and Drag (especially that which shall not be named…), but as mentioned before we already have a specific set of cars that were in production. Pivoting and making new cars between Vol’s isn't something we can do 

We love the passion the community always brings here with wish lists and what would accentuate gameplay and game modes best. Truth is, we also think “wouldn’t it be sick if we added in the…here!”, but as we mentioned above, our cars have real long lead times. In the case of Year 2, we’ve had to match up cars that we already had in production with the nostalgic themes that we came up with later. This is what resulted in mismatches like the M3 in an Underground-themed-volume. We also hear you on the need for muscle cars, although you will likely have to wait for a future installment in the series to see an improvement in that collection.

• HIGHEST RATED REPLY ON IG:
  • “As an avid player for 25 odd years I’ve really enjoyed this expansion.
    Bringing life back into a game that I really thought I was done with.
    A NFSMW or Carbon series would be a great throw back.
    Or to be a bit out there a homage to the run in a sprint series perhaps.”
  • Dev response - Thanks so much and honestly we are super happy that it’s resonating with you! MW and Carbon are obviously very dear to us, and we’d love to revisit properly at some point in the future, and infuse them into an ultimate destination for all NFS fans

Lots and lots of discussion about what NFS Legends content you’d like to see next, although the funny thing is there’s 0 unanimous opinion on what that should be. The debate rages on. We do hear that some of you would’ve liked to see preset UG2 car designs such as the RSX, Civic, Mustang, Integra, Peugeot 206 and RX7 - all things we wish we could’ve had there too for Vol. 7.

• HIGHEST RATED REPLY ON IG (Not relevant to the topic, but the comment had over 500 likes so we are addressing here):
  • “We need ai in online, it feels so dead. That or increase lobby sizes dramatically”
  • Dev response - We are seeing what we can do in terms of AI online but it's a big ask with the game’s architecture. In terms of server size, that's not something we are going to be able to address this year, but again it is something we want to address for the future
    

There was a lot of varying opinion on one topic in this feedback post - namely which item in the Speed Pass was your favorite! Some say it was the M3, others loved the LED spinners, whereas one person’s favorite was the blue fire tag! We now know that you want more vanities and customization options in the future (of course, this is NFS) and that you like unique or fun options, and licensed content like rims and tires. More to come, especially on the licensed content. We’re trying to deliver the right balance between new features and cool new content. 

It’s also really nice to hear that most of you think the progression is achievable and isn’t a grind. That said, we know some aren’t fans of the “premium pass” model. Overall, it’s the best we have to work with for now, and we’re grateful for your support, and we’ll be taking extra care to review this approach in the future.

• HIGHEST RATED REPLY ON TWITTER:
  • “I just want the dang infinity wheels and plates. Came back to the game at Vol. 7 and loved it, purchased the Vol. 6 catch up pack and kinda expected to get the wheels and plates. Pretty disappointing”
  • Dev Response - This one’s a little confusing. The issue here would have been that you played Vol. 6 but didn’t buy the Premium Speedpass. So when buying the catch up pack, it just gave you access to free tiers you have missed and not the premium ones containing things like the infinity rims and plates. 

The headline for the feedback here is clear: Catch-Up Packs are confusing. We’ve done our best to explain in the Update to Catch-Up Packs Blog but either the information is still muddy, or it didn’t reach everyone. Many of you seem confused as to why the free tier content that was missed could be bought later, but not the premium tier content. We are trying to strike a balance here between rewarding our returning players with some exclusive gear and making it fair for people who do not have time. 

Your feedback is pretty much 50/50 split - half of you think this system is fair and the other half think it’s unfair to charge those who missed out on content that was previously available for free. Fairness and value is incredibly important to us and we will continue to investigate the best way to offer premium content in future NFS games.

Thank you all so much for being part of this journey, as we continue to build towards the Ultimate NFS Experience. We hope that we’ve accurately captured your feedback here, but if you disagree then feel free to hit us up on Instagram or Twitter, or head over to the community-run subreddit or Discord channel.

See you on Aug 22 for the launch of Vol. 8: Cops vs Racers.

    -Team Kaizen, Criterion Games

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