The two biggest issues (apart from the handling model) in Need For Speed Payback won’t be returning for Need For Speed Heat.
The Under The Hood blogpost accompanying the trailer reveal, now posted directly to the Need For Speed subreddit, confirms that you will now know exactly what car part you unlock by winning races.
The Speed Card system has a randomised drop for car parts, abstracted to be like what a gear score is for armour in RPGs. While the system sounds interesting on paper, the need to grind races to get the right drops, and that there are loot boxes that give you Speed Cards, make the system overwhelmingly unpopular.
“Win the race, win the part. Speed cards from NFS Payback are gone,” reads the post. Community Manager Ben Walke also confirms from the various replies on the subreddit that there will be no loot boxes in Heat.
After the loot box debacle of 2018, EA has been stepping away from the inclusion of loot boxes outside of the free-to-play battle royale Apex Legends. Though this does not apply to the many EA Sports titles that still employ a similar system via the Ultimate Team modes.
That said, there are now more good things that are going for Need For Speed Heat. The arcade racer series hasn’t been overly impressive these years, just good enough, so the game needs every bit of positive points right now.
Gameplay for Need For Speed Heat will debut on gamescom’s Opening Night Live livestream hosted by Geoff Keighley. The game will be out on November 8th for the PS4, PC (Origin) and Xbox One.