Need For Speed Heat - General Discussion

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Subjective matter. Personally, I thought the game had the right theme and a decent handling model. Although the story was short, it was enjoyable to work through and thought it would be the perfect set up for Heat to transition into a GaaS type of experience with seasonal events and exclusive prizes.
It was sandwiched between a dev studio restructuring, and a global health epidemic. It was the right game in the wrong place at the wrong time.

2021 is where you want to place your chips in.
 
Let us hope criterion brings it back strong again, I've enjoyed all the criterion nfs games in the past. Although with how criterion is now, that really doesn't mean a whole lot.
 
Bought the game yesterday, finished it today. Was super excited to play it since day 1 and I did enjoy it quite a lot! But I had my criticisms, playing on a keyboard had me questioning a lot of the controls. Length of the storyline which might actually have been not such a bad thing.

Overall though I enjoyed it, was an easy game (should have chosen hard no medium, or at least changed it lol). But I am keen to get to level 50 and upgrade my car (I only used my starter car)
 
A full price game with 1 tiny update and no further updates after 7 months, but it can be completed in a day. What a ripoff. I won't be buying the next one until it goes on sale for less than £10
What do you mean with completed in a day? Are you saying that it take only a day to find all the collectables, finish all the races, upgrade you car to 400+, reach lv 50 with both you and your crew? What about buying and customizing your favorite cars? You can find so many flaws but you choose the complete in a day argument.. in a racing game.
 
What do you mean with completed in a day? Are you saying that it take only a day to find all the collectables, finish all the races, upgrade you car to 400+, reach lv 50 with both you and your crew? What about buying and customizing your favorite cars? You can find so many flaws but you choose the complete in a day argument.. in a racing game.

I'm assuming the poster was referring to the main story. You can argue that any game lasts forever if you're going to count customisation, or at least many many hours if you're talking 100% completion, but how much of that is going to be fun for the majority of the player base?

Personally I took it quite slowly but it doesn't feel like there is much to do in the game if you discount the busy work. The collectables very quickly felt like a grind.
 
Heat is a wasted opportunity, having all races at 400+ difficulty and the ability to earn money at night could easily extend its life for me. Can't say I regret paying for it at full price, I really enjoy it and still end up sinking 100+ hours into it but just wish for more DLC.
 
I'm assuming the poster was referring to the main story. You can argue that any game lasts forever if you're going to count customisation, or at least many many hours if you're talking 100% completion, but how much of that is going to be fun for the majority of the player base?

Personally I took it quite slowly but it doesn't feel like there is much to do in the game if you discount the busy work. The collectables very quickly felt like a grind.
If you are going to buy any racing game for the story mode alone you're going to get disappointed regardless. UG2, MW and Carbon are the games that fans like the most. Yeah, they have a terrible, terrible and short story.
Like I said. The game has many flaws.

The potential is there. I think they should really build around the night and day concept with legal and illegal races. But I'm afraid that Criterion is going to take another totally different route.
 
I don't think players care about the story content much but it is way too short even when you count the amount of races you can do, the progression in Heat doesn't feel as good as the older games as well. Heat is decent and it is the best NFS for this gen for me but it really needed more stuff.

I do hope when a sequel comes, we can get more game modes. Would love to see speedtrap event again and further improved cops, cops in Heat is not fun to mess around and not much reason to do a long cop chase as well.
 
My perfect NFS game would be a combination of Heat, Pro Street and Most Wanted with some additional features.

During daytime you would have a Pro Street alike progression. Showdown events unlocked in different parts of the map. In the end you will need to defeat the Showdown king. Weekly events where you could win iconic cars from past games. Like Apex Glide cars, cars from Carbon, MW... A weekly car meet alike event where players compete for the best build.

During nightime you would have a MW alike progrssion. Become most wanted by climbing the list. In addition you could play as a cop hunting players with high heat or do cops vs races events. They coul copy the Crate system from the first Crew too.
Not last a fun online structure like the past Speedlists.

You really don't need DLCs to keep people to play your game for longer, imo. DLC are necessary but if you give players just cars you are going to se the player base drop significantly just a few days after the DLC release.
 
If anything has been gained from playing Need For Speed Heat, its that the "greater risk, greater reward" gameplay mechanic should be carried forward in the series. However, after spending a considerable amount of time with the game, there are some flaws crop up which I think should be resolved in the sequel:

- The Level 50 cap needs to go. Most players reach the cap too quickly and gives you nothing meaningful to work towards afterwards. Take a hint from The Crew 2 which has 9999(!) levels to grind through, after you complete the main story.
- Have the option for players to take on crooked cops at will, it doesn't just have to be a night-time mechanic. Similarly, allow players to earn cash during the night.
- Potentially an unpopular opinion, but I think cops need to be as difficult as they were at launch. Police chases should be emotional; I kind of miss wanting to smash my controller after being busted as much as the satisfaction from escaping.

Need For Speed can certainly make the night time gameplay from Heat its unique selling point, it just needs greater longevity more than anything else.
 
- The Level 50 cap needs to go. Most players reach the cap too quickly and gives you nothing meaningful to work towards afterwards. Take a hint from The Crew 2 which has 9999(!) levels to grind through, after you complete the main story.
I can't imagine there would be any meaningful progression in trying to grind out 9999 levels.

- Potentially an unpopular opinion, but I think cops need to be as difficult as they were at launch. Police chases should be emotional; I kind of miss wanting to smash my controller after being busted as much as the satisfaction from escaping.
There's something that I think a lot of people fail to acknowledge in their feedback: the difficulty of the cops is not the issue, it's how the difficulty changes throughout the heat levels. Ideally, the cops should get more difficult at a fairly linear and predictable rate.

Heat's difficulty curve is pretty much a god damn plateau after Heat 2, which just ends up making the early game cops a nightmare to deal with and the late game cops barely posing a challenge.
 
I can't imagine there would be any meaningful progression in trying to grind out 9999 levels.


There's something that I think a lot of people fail to acknowledge in their feedback: the difficulty of the cops is not the issue, it's how the difficulty changes throughout the heat levels. Ideally, the cops should get more difficult at a fairly linear and predictable rate.

Heat's difficulty curve is pretty much a god damn plateau after Heat 2, which just ends up making the early game cops a nightmare to deal with and the late game cops barely posing a challenge.

The comparison to The Crew 2 was suggesting that levels don't have to capped at such a low number. Of course, the game progression needs to be structured around more levels if it is to be of any benefit to the player, but usually more levels = more events to discover and more unlockables.

I agree with the point on cops, the problem was the difficulty spike between Heat 2 & 3 at the beginning of the game, then as you progressed and obtained cars with a higher performance rating, they didn't pose much of a threat at any level.

Perhaps the better suggestion would be to implement a more linear difficulty curve (which appears to be what one of the patches did) but also have the police use cars which match the performance rating of the player's car, much like the AI use cars of a similar performance in High Heat races.
 
I'm fine with Heat cops difficulty and I wouldn't mind if the difficulty remains that hard but the whole cop chase feels pointless in game. Doing a long cop chase doesn't gave you much rep, wrecking cop cars by ramming them do more harm than good for yourself, there is only 1 boring way to efficiently wreck cops and quickly evade them to do another race is a much better way to gain rep.

Heat could be decent if there are more patch and update to tweak the game but I doubt it will be as good as the fans wanted regardless the amount of updates.

The comparison to The Crew 2 was suggesting that levels don't have to capped at such a low number. Of course, the game progression needs to be structured around more levels if it is to be of any benefit to the player, but usually more levels = more events to discover and more unlockables.

The Crew 2 example is a pretty crap one, it has a high cap but the rewards and the grind for it is tedious. I bought the game on day 1, got up to level 100 and gave up due to the game lack of content. I came back to the game when I saw the Inner Drive update this year and the game lasted a month for me before I got bored of its content again.

The high level cap is rather pointless in most cases when there isn't more content to support it, having a few cars lock behind it just plain annoying for me.
 
It was sandwiched between a dev studio restructuring, and a global health epidemic. It was the right game in the wrong place at the wrong time.

2021 is where you want to place your chips in.

While I agree Ghost moving back to Criterion and COVID has quite a big impact, I don't believe that it affects them so severely that they couldn't push a few more DLCs. The remaining KS cars are already in the game. Just release them with a couple of missions, some new race routes, some new vanity parts, some new fashion items (if that's your thing) and you're done. Probably a few days of work max but that would build up the goodwill of the community immensely. Not to mention basic features like button reassignment which we had been screaming for since launch, and still not implemented.

What actually happens is, they probably looked at how abysmal sales figures were for the McLaren DLC (no surprise given how overpriced it is) and decided to cut their losses and focus on the next game early to make sure they're the launch title. More profit, don't give a 🤬 about existing customers which is so typical EA.

I haven't bought any NFS on launch day since MW 2012 and that's not gonna change anytime soon. Unfortunately, lots of people will say "never again EA" but ended up getting wooed anyway by trailer and pre-order bonuses and they end up buying deluxe day 1 edition by the time the next game comes around. Well folks, if you keep lining their wallets no matter what product or service they put out, this is the kind of crap that we'll get.

Oh and I wouldn't be so sure NFS 2021 will be a good game either. 1.5 year of development time is barely anything for next gen as games get more and more complicated.
 
While I agree Ghost moving back to Criterion and COVID has quite a big impact, I don't believe that it affects them so severely that they couldn't push a few more DLCs. The remaining KS cars are already in the game. Just release them with a couple of missions, some new race routes, some new vanity parts, some new fashion items (if that's your thing) and you're done. Probably a few days of work max but that would build up the goodwill of the community immensely. Not to mention basic features like button reassignment which we had been screaming for since launch, and still not implemented.
Replace days with weeks.

Oh and I wouldn't be so sure NFS 2021 will be a good game either. 1.5 year of development time is barely anything for next gen as games get more and more complicated.
Who's to say that they weren't already working on the next game before the switch happened?
 
While I agree Ghost moving back to Criterion and COVID has quite a big impact, I don't believe that it affects them so severely that they couldn't push a few more DLCs. The remaining KS cars are already in the game. Just release them with a couple of missions, some new race routes, some new vanity parts, some new fashion items (if that's your thing) and you're done. Probably a few days of work max but that would build up the goodwill of the community immensely. Not to mention basic features like button reassignment which we had been screaming for since launch, and still not implemented.

I doubt it is as simple as days of work, the amount of testing and needing to go through MS/PS system for certification will takes more time. With the huge delay due to moving companies and the virus outbreak, I think killing it early and have the whole team focus on the next title seems to be a better idea at this point for EA.

What actually happens is, they probably looked at how abysmal sales figures were for the McLaren DLC (no surprise given how overpriced it is) and decided to cut their losses and focus on the next game early to make sure they're the launch title. More profit, don't give a 🤬 about existing customers which is so typical EA.

I don't think the point of DLC is to make big profits post launch, more to just get news about the game circulating around the internet to remind folks that the game exist and hope they buy the game or DLC. At least that is what I remember SMS said back then about paid DLC and free contents in pCARS1.

I haven't bought any NFS on launch day since MW 2012 and that's not gonna change anytime soon. Unfortunately, lots of people will say "never again EA" but ended up getting wooed anyway by trailer and pre-order bonuses and they end up buying deluxe day 1 edition by the time the next game comes around. Well folks, if you keep lining their wallets no matter what product or service they put out, this is the kind of crap that we'll get.

if the average joe spent their money on it for day 1 release and still end up enjoying it, they will continue to buy it. Considering the disaster of Payback on the internet and it still manage to meet the sales goal for EA, the general public that is buying the NFS is still satisfied with what happened on the IP. The internet praise or outrage generally don't reflect a game failure or success, at the end it is still depend on the profitability of it.

Oh and I wouldn't be so sure NFS 2021 will be a good game either. 1.5 year of development time is barely anything for next gen as games get more and more complicated.

if going by the standard game franchise cycle, the minute Heat reach near completion they probably have small teams move on the next game for groundwork. EA is not going to let those people sit on their hands while others are busy testing out and fixing major bugs in the game.
 
They would've started planning for the next game well before Heat's release. While the whole studio change seems like a giant wrench in the works, you might wanna remind yourself who was in charge of Ghost for the past two years...
 
They would've started planning for the next game well before Heat's release. While the whole studio change seems like a giant wrench in the works, you might wanna remind yourself who was in charge of Ghost for the past two years...

I understand this I’m just stating the facts
 
Can anyone tell me if the game supports the Thrustmaster 458 Spider wheel for Xbox? Google isn't helping me as no matter what I put into the search engine it comes up with results for the 458 Spider in the game..
 
What is the easiest way to level up and get rep with out getting caught by cops?

Discover where all the big ramps are (including those used for billboards) and use them to lose the cops. They are basically the equivalent of pursuit breakers in this game.

To add onto the advice, jumps over water are guaranteed to wreck cops. There’s one in the docks at Port Murphy in the south-west of the map, and another one in the downtown area in the north-east.

Upper left corner of the city map is a difficult ramp to make but it will definitely kill all cops in the immediate area of the pursuit
 
Ok what’s the easiest way to upgrade a c10 to a off-road car

Don't. The Bel Air, 65 Mustang, and Volvo 242 are miles better. If you really want a truck, go for the Colorado.

In any case, just do day races, save money, focus on off-road handling parts and buy the best parts you can. It's pretty straightforward.
 
Can confirm, the Colorado is the better of all trucks in the game for offroading, but it sucks for track racing (and I have one because it's, well, an experience to drive in tight tracks).
For offroad racing, I found that the rally diff and suspensions are a bit too understeery for my tastes, I much prefer the Speedcross parts.
 
Don't. The Bel Air, 65 Mustang, and Volvo 242 are miles better. If you really want a truck, go for the Colorado.

In any case, just do day races, save money, focus on off-road handling parts and buy the best parts you can. It's pretty straightforward.

Can confirm, the Colorado is the better of all trucks in the game for offroading, but it sucks for track racing (and I have one because it's, well, an experience to drive in tight tracks).
For offroad racing, I found that the rally diff and suspensions are a bit too understeery for my tastes, I much prefer the Speedcross parts.

thank you both
 
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