GTPNewsWire
Contributing Writer
- 21,597
- GTPHQ
This is the discussion thread for a recent post on GTPlanet:
This article was published by Andrew Evans (@Famine) on October 1st, 2020 in the Need For Speed Payback category.
Need for Speed Payback Comes Free to PS Plus in October
- Thread starter GTPNewsWire
- 37 comments
- 4,687 views
- 131
- United States
- 819
- Brazil
Why the worst NFS though...
Seriously, any other NFS or racing game would be better. If you look at the comments way back at Payback release in 2017 and look for the new comments today, you will see how awful this game is.
Teh story is... meh. The physics are...well, ''ok''. What really ruins the game is the random slot casino upgrade system and performance cards.
Dude, it's a freaking racing game. It "should" be about your car. And then comes EA with this gambling non-sense. The same ******** that is also present in The Crew 1/2.
If they removed this mechanic, than Payback could be a little more decent.
For those who never played the game: in normal racing games, if you want your shiny Civic to be faster, you just go to your garage and buy/install new and better perfomance parts, right? The normal way in every racing game, including the most recent NFS, Heat.
In Payback, if you want better parts, you buy "speed cards" that can improve your car's perfomance. You have 6 areas: Transmission, ECU, Block, Head, Exhaust and Turbo. In each card, you have a level (max lvl 18) and perks (up to 3 perks). Those perks can be something like better accelaration or more nitrous. Finally, on top of all this, you have 6 nfs fantansy world brands: Americana, Carbon, Chidori, Nextech, and Outlaw. Collect at least 3 cards from a single brand and you have a Brand Bonuses, which as the name says, offers bonuses depending on what the brand is specialized in.
Every race gives you speed cards. You can buy some at the shops, but they are all awful. So keep racing and racing and racing... because all Speed Cards are given randomly. Yup. What? You thought you could create specific setups? In a racing game? MADNESS!
The best you can do is to go to the TuneShop and trade your cards, where you spend special tokens and literally test your luck in a freaking slot performance machine. WOW SO COOL SO INNOVATIVE
The whole experience is just frustrating. It's straight out stupid, dumb, unnecessary. It's the same feel i have while playing The Crew. Holy ****, that system can go straight to hell.
After writting this, i dare to say Payback isn't worth even if you get it for free...
Edit, after a whole new month I decided to play this game, again. Man, i stand with my opinion.
The car list is great, the music is good, the scenery, graphics... THEY ALL LOOK GOOD!
But the damn speedcards... holy damn they're annoying.
Seriously, any other NFS or racing game would be better. If you look at the comments way back at Payback release in 2017 and look for the new comments today, you will see how awful this game is.
Teh story is... meh. The physics are...well, ''ok''. What really ruins the game is the random slot casino upgrade system and performance cards.
Dude, it's a freaking racing game. It "should" be about your car. And then comes EA with this gambling non-sense. The same ******** that is also present in The Crew 1/2.
If they removed this mechanic, than Payback could be a little more decent.
For those who never played the game: in normal racing games, if you want your shiny Civic to be faster, you just go to your garage and buy/install new and better perfomance parts, right? The normal way in every racing game, including the most recent NFS, Heat.
In Payback, if you want better parts, you buy "speed cards" that can improve your car's perfomance. You have 6 areas: Transmission, ECU, Block, Head, Exhaust and Turbo. In each card, you have a level (max lvl 18) and perks (up to 3 perks). Those perks can be something like better accelaration or more nitrous. Finally, on top of all this, you have 6 nfs fantansy world brands: Americana, Carbon, Chidori, Nextech, and Outlaw. Collect at least 3 cards from a single brand and you have a Brand Bonuses, which as the name says, offers bonuses depending on what the brand is specialized in.
Every race gives you speed cards. You can buy some at the shops, but they are all awful. So keep racing and racing and racing... because all Speed Cards are given randomly. Yup. What? You thought you could create specific setups? In a racing game? MADNESS!
The best you can do is to go to the TuneShop and trade your cards, where you spend special tokens and literally test your luck in a freaking slot performance machine. WOW SO COOL SO INNOVATIVE
The whole experience is just frustrating. It's straight out stupid, dumb, unnecessary. It's the same feel i have while playing The Crew. Holy ****, that system can go straight to hell.
After writting this, i dare to say Payback isn't worth even if you get it for free...
Edit, after a whole new month I decided to play this game, again. Man, i stand with my opinion.
The car list is great, the music is good, the scenery, graphics... THEY ALL LOOK GOOD!
But the damn speedcards... holy damn they're annoying.
Last edited:
- 13,267
- GTPlanet
- Street-King-07
- Quattro Saltire
Not even being free on PS+ should be enough for anyone to play a game like this infested with predatory monetization and gambling mechanics
- 2,377
- Italia
- STR3LA
The last 3 games focused on car building. And Payback introduced off roads. If you like builds, like me, than this is a great game. The options for car customization are really good. A simple livery editor and probably the best car sounds. Yes, it's also a poor action movie racing game with simple physics. Speed cards? Very bad idea. Imo
For free? Why not..
For free? Why not..
Petroperu
(Banned)
- 360
- Peru
NFS Heat even without the slot machine experience is still a mediocre game.
I was interested in that and bought it two months ago.
After running the first few races, I found it to be a dull and uninspired racing game with dumb concepts.
You win respect at night and money during the day.
Also cops don't chase you during the day as races are done in events that still use the city as track layout.
Should have been nice to have a fictional circuit or a few of those that are locked during the day, but nope.
Is the same lazy EA attempt.
- 1,063
- United Kingdom
I miss the days when NFS were a fun simple hybrid of arcade physics and open world collectathons (even Shift was still fun though) but when Criterion stopped making them it seemed to go to a weird place where the cars don't handle properly and the game systems get in the way of the fun.
- 4,867
- Kentucky
- barrett5
- BarrettMopar
I am very much against loot boxes and gambling for better items in any game so I don't see myself playing this much. Is the open world at least interesting enough for it to be worth driving the starter car around for a bit?
- 2,377
- Italia
- STR3LA
You will probably get more negative answers regardless of it actually being worth it or not. I spent more than 100h on Payback. Others just a few minutes.
- 1,344
- Malaysia
- BABOBILIMBI
The map is pretty fun to drive around but the physics is okay at best. It is more consistent than NFS 2015 but the off road physics feels very weird.
As for the upgrade system, it pretty much the same way you get parts in The Crew. Play an event and it unlocks a random part for you, if you have 3 unused part you can recycle as scrap then put it through the slot machine for 1 new part. The loot box is mostly cosmetic and “scrap” for the performance part slot machine.
I wouldn’t worry too much about the performance parts unlock, the AI is pretty darn slow to the point you can under level by 50 points and still beat them with ease.
- 1,063
- United Kingdom
- 1,344
- Malaysia
- BABOBILIMBI
No, the AI is just really quite slow and there is still a difficulty setting if things gets too hard and you just want to finish it.
- 11,802
- Marin County
The negativity towards the speed cards is a bit overblown, IMO. It's dumb, yes, but it's not game-breaking dumb. When you get down to it you have the same basic upgrade categories as you do in Heat (mostly) with the only difference being random multipliers - and I never felt any monetization pressure myself. You're constantly rewarded with speed cards so it's really not difficult to upgrade your car. When I was playing recently, I noticed I had 180 (!!!) spare speed cards. I don't find the physics between heat and payback to be much different, and I actually prefer the driving mechanics in Payback. I also find the map to be better. The story is real dumb but it's also sort of fun and somehow satisfying - there is actually an arc to it that I found missing in Heat. Roaming racers are kind of a neat feature (it's a bit like the TXR series), though I wish it was a little more fleshed out - it would be cool to earn special rewards (pink slips maybe?) for beating the bosses. I really appreciate the dynamic time of day as well - is this the only NFS game to have that feature? All in all, if you haven't played it, I think its worth playing, especially if it's very cheap/free.
Payback - Story & atmosphere
Heat - Racing
Payback - Story & atmosphere
Heat - Racing
- 1,135
- California
- stupidstormy36
- Stormy036
I have to disagree with you there. This is EA we are talking about and the push back was very necessary as it was with BF2. You should not accept a monetized, slot-based upgrade system from any game under EA, or some others for that matter, especially if it's a card system that they are trying to push into all their games. With EA's track record, I'd say it was well justified. Now they're getting slammed with Madden 21. Again, justified in my opinion.
The physics needed a major overhaul, not the upgrade/monetization features. Fortunately, they did fix the upgrade system in Heat to a more traditional system.
The Crew has a similar system and I hate it there too. However, it's not as egregious as Payback.
Last edited:
- 11,802
- Marin County
Maybe it's because I only paid $4.99 for Payback (EA Access 1 month) but I didn't feel it was too bad. I didn't even realize the cards were monetized. They're given out like candy during regular gameplay so I never felt lacking in terms of car upgrades*. I don't think it's as bad as the shark cards for GTA online, for instance, where the prices of items in game currency are truly ludicrous and require hundreds and hundreds of hours of grinding to acquire. In payback I was able to do everything I wanted in a pretty reasonable amount of time and I never felt compelled to spend real money. I should note that this is the first EA game I've played in many many years and I have no real stake in the NFS franchise...I just thought I'd play it because it was super cheap - I don't feel too strongly about it, basically.
*Edit: For instance, in Payback somewhere towards the halfway point in the story I decided that I was going to complete the game with a classic Honda NSX. So I just used that car for all the missions and whatever side races I wanted to do. As I progressed, the car was automatically upgraded with the awarded speed cards. I don't remember if I actually went to buy speed cards from the upgrade shop or not, but I was able to beat the game with that car (plus the starter drift & off road cars that I didn't bother to exchange). Actually that brings me to the point I dislike most about Payback which is the locked car types, which seems dumb.
Last edited:
- 2,377
- Italia
- STR3LA
It was a poorly designed, not that bad idea, imo. The same problem that had FM7 at the beginning. Loot boxes that you can buy with ingame credits. They fixed it by showing you the content in a shop. The RNG mechanics are still there since the content change every 5 minutes. If Payback had a similar shop instead of slot machines.. who knows.
I think they wanted to make a sistem that still give you a sense of progression and a loot kinda system. Like in MMO. You doing races and you lv up by applying better loot. And the first Crew really showed me how a MMO Racing Game should look like. Off course not for everyone but why scrap such Idea? I wouldn't mind a MMO NFS with cops and racers. Yes, you need to grind to get a maxed out Outlaw set. But you really don't need it for the story. And it really isn't that grindy either. Oh, yes you can buy it with real money too. But why would you buy a racing game if you don't want to race?
- 4,867
- Kentucky
- barrett5
- BarrettMopar
It took me less than there and a half hours to unintentionally break this game.
I assume this glitch is common?
I assume this glitch is common?
- 1,063
- United Kingdom
I played Payback for an hour yesterday and enjoyed it. First time thats happened in a while with a NFS game, so that was nice. I think I will do this one from start to finish, and I like the cheesy story, makes a change from serious GTS racing for a bit.
- 13
- Portugal
- GTBT100
I don't understand the praise regarding the driving physics. For me, there was a clear downgrade from 2015.
Chaining drifts is almost impossible, weight transfer is non-existant (no scandinavian flicks) and the understeer is abismal (worse than 2015).
And don't get me started on the off-road physics, the cars are uncontrollable.
Despite all of this, the general gameplay is enjoyable and has some improvements (the different classes, the collectibles and challenges).
Not disappointed with the game, but frustated, yes.
Chaining drifts is almost impossible, weight transfer is non-existant (no scandinavian flicks) and the understeer is abismal (worse than 2015).
And don't get me started on the off-road physics, the cars are uncontrollable.
Despite all of this, the general gameplay is enjoyable and has some improvements (the different classes, the collectibles and challenges).
Not disappointed with the game, but frustated, yes.
Similar threads
