(Very detailed) SP/MP feedback for the developers to consider 4 next game(s)

(Character limit in the title)

I'm a racer first and foremost (I also do drift), and what I love about Unbound the most is that it makes racing with other humans (both in freeroam and now PvP) much much much easier than it was in prior NFS games, I wanted to highlight the things it did right and what other games did wrong, as well as provide ideas for future games.


The biggest issue with Heat is that the multiplayer wasn't designed to be much of a multiplayer at all, it was just story mode but connected to a server which was bad for PVP, why are you able to do story mode events vs the AI in multiplayer? It didn't make sense and the result was a very bad multiplayer where getting people to accept race invites is a nightmare, Unbound corrected a lot of these issues, I'm just hoping the developers don't fall into the Heat trap again because the multiplayer in that game is really bad.


There is also the Payback trap whereby PVP and freeroam are split completely, there are no race events in Payback freeroam, a very poor multiplayer structure since whenever a game's playercount drops, it's always the PVP that suffers the most, case in point Payback's PVP mode is empty 99% of the time while freeroam is always populated, so I hope the next game doesn't rely on PVP too heavily for racing and make PVP the only place to get races, I think Unbound as it is now has a healthy balance, there is racing in PVP as well as freeroam.


Since volume 7.1 I've noticed a few players who will send out invites and then back out when someone else accepts the invite, which obviously is counterproductive in multiplayer, and hopefully in future games players like these can just go into solo/offline mode to do whatever it is they want to do, while leaving multiplayer to the players who want to play/race with other players.


With all that being said, here are the requests/suggestions/feedback I have for future games. I've thought of these issues/ideas for months and months now:

Solo/Story mode requests:

- Shared car garage with MP
- Same tracks as in MP
- Track leaderboards (without "attempts" counter in Heat)
- Split timing/delta timing/player ghost for time attack runs


Multiplayer:

- No explicit option to start events solo like in Heat, instead solo races only starting if no one else joins, just like Unbound. (Heat players would go into online mode and reject race invites specifically to do solo races, which made no sense and would harm people like me who want to race with others, if players *only* want to do solo races to practice or whatever, it should be in solo/offline mode)
- A progression system that encourages people to do races with others in MP (Money and XP alone are not enough), which Heat sorely lacked. I don't mind the Unbound MP progression system though some of the challenges were excessive, and of course the Unbound system wouldn't work if the garages aren't split anyway
- 32 player servers. 16 is just too small, especially when there is lots of content and the people on the server are all split doing different things
- 8 player parties to return
- Maintain the ability to accept race invites from everywhere including the garage and in Cop chases (I love this about Unbound and hate that it's missing in Heat)
- Maintain the great server menu popup that opens from anywhere (the one that opens when holding V)
- Maintain the ability to see what everyone on the server is doing through the map (fantastic feature)
- Maintain the offline part of the multiplayer garage (it's very useful for building and customizing cars in peace, and buying/installing cars/parts is also much slower when connected to a server). Players who take a long time working on wraps should be encouraged to do so in this offline part of the garage instead of wasting space if connected to the server

Here are some ideas I've had to try and improve/promote racing in freeroam (PvP is awesome, but freeroam is the heart of the game and most players spend most of their time in freeroam)

- (inspired by the open playlists) An optional PVP-like nonstop racing/playlist queue in freeroam, where you theoretically could join a FR server and find maybe 5 people doing races in said queue and join them, this queue would keep going constantly and players could join/leave whenever they want. After every race maybe the players get to take a vote and see what race they want to do next
- A way for the game to matchmake players who frequently accept race invites together in freeroam. Maybe the game could track how often you accept/reject invites then place the players who frequently accept invites together when searching for servers. There are players who go into freeroam to do everything except race, maybe these players could be grouped together with similar players

- if not invite acceptance rate based matchmaking, then maybe themed freeroam servers where you could choose to be grouped with other players who want to do races/playlists
- It would be fantastic if there was a way to thank people for accepting your invites. The "thanks" in the chat wheel is too vague, the other racers might not know what you're talking about. It would also be cool if you could send a racer extra cash for accepting your invite or something of the sort. As it is now I always let the other racers win the races as a way of thanking them for accepting the invites

misc. :
- Eradicating the numb/delayed steering introduced with the Volume 6+ cars when set to grip

- It's great that Unbound gave you a way to show off your car/character customization, like through the banner and the pre-race animation. In previous games there was no point in customizing your player and license plate since no one else saw them, I love that Unbound showed these off to the other players as well, as customization is in the game's DNA

- (Idea) The ability to set yourself a status when in freeroam to let the other players know what you like to do


Again, these ideas are for future games, I understand a lot of this would not be possible in these final few months of Unbound's life cycle. Thanks for reading