Need for Speed Payback Adds Online Free-Roam, New Vanity Items and More Tomorrow
Need for Speed Payback has been out for almost three months now, and the biggest issue fans have had with the title is its lack of online free-roam. This detrimental exclusion has had a severe impact on the title's replayability, with Ghost Games in the new year addressing the feature will arrive sometime in 2018.
Ghost Games have announced in an Under The Hood post over on the EA website, that a new update will be releasing tomorrow which finally brings the highly anticipated Online Free-Roam feature to Need for Speed Payback, along with several new extras.
Alldrive (what Ghost refer to as Online Free-Roam) is coming and the studio has plans to roll out different phases of Alldrive throughout Need for Speed Payback's lifecycle. For phase one, Ghost are implementing Alldrive: Hangouts - the basic online free-roam experience which allows you to join up with friends or other online players and explore Fortune Valley, host impromptu car meets and use the Snapshot Pro feature to snap pictures of your rides.
Catch-Up Packs are a new feature being added to Tune Up Shops in this update, which will allow players to speed up the progression of their cars, meaning it will take far less time to upgrade a stock car to a desired level. Catch-Up Packs will have three different pack types - Level 6, Level 11 and Level 16 - which unlock after reaching specific points during Payback's campaign mode, and can only be bought using in-game cash.
The Level 6 pack costs $71,400 unlocks upon completing Chapter 3, Level 11 costs $131,000 and unlocks upon completing Chapter 4, and Level 16 costs $180,000 and unlocks upon completing Payback's campaign.
New Vanity Items are also being added in the form of new colour variations for Underglow and Tire Smoke. These new colour variations are; Steel Blue, Candy Pink, Cyan, Coral and Gold, with Tire Smoke receiving a black colour variation. These new variations will be added in amongst the existing pool of items from Shipments.
Snapshot Pro has also seen some improvements, with new tweaks and filters being added with the new update. One of these new tweaks is that Snapshot Pro can now be used when in a takedown sequence, the camera distance has been extended to now explore much further away from the car, and the camera sensitivity has been adjusted.
Objects have also had their quality level improved for higher quality snapshots, and a new toggle has been added to turn dirt on or off. The new filters that have been added are; Cinematic, Cool, Warm, Grunge, Vintage, Desaturated, Lo-Fi, Vivid, Retro, Infra Zone and Monochrome Monitor.
Lastly, an option has been added to scrap all unequipped Speed Cards and changes have been made to the Front menu. While the changes aren't major and are more quality of life improvements, the changes are said to help stay up to date with the latest Need for Speed news and help get into campaign or multiplayer much quicker. You can read up all about these changes here.
Has this new update got you excited to jump back into Need for Speed Payback now that online free-roam has finally been implemented? We're definitely looking forward to being able to make more Nobeds Challenges! Let us know your thoughts down below.