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Ghost Games: Why the Need for Speed reboot is always online

S

shinobi602

Member
Itsfuckingnothing.gif
According to executive producer Marcus Nilsson, online connectivity is a key component of the experience, which apparently places a heavy emphasis on social elements.

"We’ve been pretty big with Autolog throughout the years and, as we know, it’s a really powerful feature," Nilsson told Official Xbox Magazine. "This time around we’re going to give it more of a human voice. It will treat your friend’s play as if it is part of the narrative experience."

"We also have a new snapshot system as well," Nilsson said. "Which is taking pictures of a lot of different moments – [they go] out to the Need for Speed network where people can ‘like’ them, and those likes are being pushed back into the game as currency.

"So you get progression from sharing your photos," Nilsson added. "The Xbox One has really good built-in systems to make videos and stream them, which we are also going to use."
Click to expand...
http://www.destructoid.com/why-the-...3.phtml?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=twitter
 
D

DNAbro

Member
"We also have a new snapshot system as well," Nilsson said. "Which is taking pictures of a lot of different moments – [they go] out to the Need for Speed network where people can ‘like’ them, and those likes are being pushed back into the game as currency.
Click to expand...

that is literally the dumbest thing I've heard as a feature for a game.
 
L

Lil'DigiOp

Member
Racing games don't need to be "always online"

I don't want this in majority of games honestly... Its getting there though.
 
legacyzero

legacyzero

Banned
Stupidest reasons yet for anyone trying to justify an always online game in a genre like this.

Also, Autolog being a "Powerful feature". LMFAO
 
C

Corpekata

Banned
That snapshot system sounds like the least compelling reason for this in a long while.

That first reason about the "friend's play" as narrative might be kind of cool, but I mean, that's not particularly what I go to a game like this for.
 
A

Alo81

Low Poly Gynecologist
xposting from the Steam thread.

...what?

Yo fuck that.

"We’ve been pretty big with Autolog throughout the years and, as we know, it’s a really powerful feature," Nilsson told Official Xbox Magazine. "This time around we’re going to give it more of a human voice. It will treat your friend’s play as if it is part of the narrative experience."

"We also have a new snapshot system as well," Nilsson said. "Which is taking pictures of a lot of different moments – [they go] out to the Need for Speed network where people can ‘like’ them, and those likes are being pushed back into the game as currency.

"So you get progression from sharing your photos," Nilsson added. "The Xbox One has really good built-in systems to make videos and stream them, which we are also going to use."
Click to expand...

These are terrible reasons to be only online. Didn't Need for Speed Hot Pursuit 2012 have the exact same features, wasn't always online, and didn't tie sharing stuff to in game currency?

This is such a lazy excuse for always online. With Rivals it was at least sort of understandable (barely) because the idea was to be in this world with all the other people playing driving in the world at the same time. Their races interesecting and interacting with you. This just sounds like lazy story hooks, and lame social media features.
 
Surface of Me

Surface of Me

I'm not an NPC. And neither are we.
Snapshot feature sounds like it will be BF4 and Hardline abusing the X1's clip record feature. I fucking hated that shit recording literally every few minutes.
 
Kacho

Kacho

Member
That's a weak justification but its their product so more power to them. I'll be passing on it for sure.
 
J

JC Lately

Member
...

Do I even need to post the ERB "motherfucking money" gif here? I really don't feel like tabbing over to photobucket right now.
 
X

Xyber

Member
I usually have like 3-4 people populating my leaderboards in racing games on PC because the people I play with are not big on racing games.

These features are useless to me.
 
C

Corpekata

Banned
Or just be honest, "It's always online because we want you constantly using these social features to keep you and your friends engaged and talking about the product so new people will come play and share and play and share and play and share into the infinite void."

Outside of MMOs I don't think many developers have had a good justification.
 
C

CrunchyFrog

Member
How could someone in this industry be so utterly blind to what's happened in reaction to this kind of shit over the last few years? You'd have to be actively ignorant to not see how bad of an idea this is.
 
K

Krejlooc

Banned
Corpekata said:
Or just be honest, "It's always online because we want you constantly using these social features to keep you and your friends engaged and talking about the product so new people will come play and share and play and share and play and share into the infinite void."
Click to expand...

That's not why. "It's always online because we want to be able to control how, and most importantly, if you can play the game."
 
N

Neuromancer

Member
Bullshit, sorry Ghost Games. I'm not buying it. Rivals worked just fine without an Internet connection. In fact, it worked better than when it was online.
 
R

RexNovis

Banned
What a bunch of bullshit. Screenshots and videos have ever required an always online system but for some reason you expect us to buy that this game's use of screenshots is do integral to gameplay it requires a connection to work? That makes 0 sense.

In other news the awkward XB1 plug
"The Xbox One has really good built-in systems to make videos and stream them, which we are also going to use."
Click to expand...
basically confirms this has an XBox marketing agreement.
 
F

fedexpeon

Banned
Really?
Realllllllllllly?
Snapmode?
I already have problem with automatic trophy sharing, and now we have more useless pictures?
 
Agent_4Seven

Agent_4Seven

Tears of Nintendo
Well, here's the reason right there not to buy and not to play this game. I'm really tired of the games with always online thing and heavy focus on social components. F off EA.
 
R

rrs

Member
your friends as part of the (very cheezy) story sounds interesting but all I want out this series is to drive fast cars fast and make my fast car look awesome

if I want a story, I can make up my own of being badass supreme with rich parents who don't care and it would be so much better

EDIT: and cars that steer like cars and not like I'm playing an awful Outrun2 clone
 
S

Sevyne

Member
I can't even think of a suitable insult to explain how dumb this is. Anything I could possibly say would be downplaying how dumb this excuse is and how dumb those "features" are.

Is it really THAT difficult to make a good NFS game and not muck it up with some kind of nonsense like this?

I think all anyone wants is either a return of classic NFS or Underground with actual improvements (not steaming piles of forced online social fecal matter). Is that really too much to ask for? Did anybody ask for any of this stuff they're adding? Didn't think so.
 
K

Krejlooc

Banned
LewieP said:
Very similar justification as the one they used for Sim City, and we all know how that turned out
Click to expand...

I thought of that quickly, too. Lots of focus on social aspects. What if, like Sim City, the community never quite comes together (or worse - like Sim City, trolls start popping up explicitly to ruin other people's games?)

Surrendering a large portion of your design to web 2.0 sounds like a disaster, especially given the backlash this game will get because it's always-online.
 
D

Dinjoralo

Member
Hopefully, there'll be bot accounts that put likes on every picture, so you won't have to harass your actual friends.
 
J

Jigorath

Banned
I can't wait to take pictures and then "like" those pictures. Then I can share them with everyone on my friends list to see. Then my good buddy "SSJ420NOSCOPE" can like it too. Thanks EA.
 
EYEL1NER

EYEL1NER

Member
Fuck me, that sounds horrible. I hadn't heard that the new NFS was online-only yet. Usually just hearing the news that a game that has historically been playable offline is moving to online-only is enough to make me say "Nope" and start ignoring that game. I like the NFS games though and figured that I should at least check out what the reasoning was, see if it was something solid. Turns out it's nothing!
If the game came out tomorrow and I bought it to take out of the country with me on Monday, I wouldn't be able to play it indefinitely because Autolog and taking pictures are SOOOO vital to the game's experience? Yeah, I'm not going to give this game a second thought.
 
V

VanWinkle

Member
So stupid. There is NO REASON that somebody shouldn't be able to just drive by themselves. Same with The Crew. I have been playing that the past couple of days and I like it a lot but I cannot tell a single reason why it HAS to be online-connected. There are people driving around me but I never interact with them, so why can't I play it offline or without those other live players?

Makes no sense.

The only reasons they ever give are reasons why it has online functionality, not why it HAS to be online.
 
Shin-Ra

Shin-Ra

Junior Member
Single player parts of games should work without any online connection.

Burnout Paradise managed that just fine.
 
N

Neuromancer

Member
On the other hand, how else can they force everyone to buy NFS 2016 if they can't flip a switch and make it so no one can play NFS 2015? It makes sense to me.
 
I

Inuhanyou

Believes Dragon Quest is a franchise managed by Sony
Dead on Arrival.

A shame because i wanted to give this game a shot before i heard about this always online nonsense. Now no dice.

I'm not giving you 60 dollars to shut off the servers a few years down the line.

This type of weak ass excuse of turning games into a service is really going to kill these types of games in the long run.
 
R

reptilescorpio

Member
I really want to play this, it looks fantastic. I hope they backflip on the always-online requirement. My internet drops out often enough to make this a pass until they do so.
 
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