The official Need for Speed twitter page has been responding to a lot of questions about the game, and things are looking rocky right now.
Of course, PC gamers asked about the frame rate. NFS: Rivals for PC was locked at a disappointing 30fps. Some people found a way to boost that to 60fps, but that didn’t work out for everyone. Ghost Games could not – or would not? – confirm if NFS would have a frame lock.
Camera-wise, we’re definitely not going to be seeing a cockpit camera view in the game. We’re reassured that we’ll have multiple camera angles to choose from, just not the cockpit camera. Bummer.
We’ve also talked about how NFS will require players to be online in order to participate in the “narrative experience” that they can share with their friends. In just a few short hours, this has garnered a lot of negative reactions. On twitter, players have been begging for offline play to be included. The response so far somewhat skirts the issue. We’re being toldthat they will have fully-dedicated servers, and that they’ve even improved AllDrive. That probably wasn’t the answer players were looking for, since many seem to want to just enjoy the game by themselves.
An earlier tweet about the always-online requirement providing “[m]ore variety and a more rewarding experience with friends” has some people practically ripping their hair out, because it sounds like EA is dictating to players what makes for a rewarding experience. We’re sure that wasn’t the intention, though. The AllDrive system – with all its good intentions of letting us play in the game’s open world with 5 other friends – was a bit of a wreck, last time we checked. We last saw it in NFS: Rivals, when it didn’t have dedicated servers and resulted in a lot of frustration. Unless all six of you have agreed to work toward the exact same thing (or to never, ever take a bathroom break), at least one of you was going to end up with a ruined game. A dedicated server could save us from a good deal of heartbreak, or just make us want to cry. We’re no strangers to server connectivity issues, but sometimes we’d rather run right into a brick wall.
So AllDrive Multiplayer is confirmed, as well as single player mode. No news on whether single player mode will also require you to stay online, but we really hope not.