Only thing that ruins need for speed is the physics for me.
I really liked nfs 2015, because it had the feeling of underground 1 & 2, with deep customization for the type of cars I like (jdm), but the physics were
The handling on payback was terrible. They need to stop making their handling model for 12 year olds that never drove a car before in their life.
I get they're going for an arcadey feel and it's not Gran Turismo or Project Cars, but they need to tear their handling model down and rebuild it from the ground up. Forza horizon was a good example of a handling model that isn't full sim sim yet still accessable for the casual racing game fan.
It doesn't matter how good the graphics are, how deep the customization is, and how many bells and whistles you add if the cars just suck to drive.
It's hard to get a gauge of handling from YouTube videos but it looks slightly better but still off from where it needs to be.
All they have to do Is copy Forza Horizon 4, NFS UG2/ Carbon customization, Carbon night cycle (drift, crew race events, canyon, police more active), Pro Street style organized races, the players should have the choice to be a Street Racer or a legal racer, think of good honor and bad honor in RDR.
Legal racers (Gran Turismo track type racers, low risk, no cops to worry about)
Street Racers (Cops, traffic but you get that Fast and Furious vibe, risking car getting impounded)
Pinkslip races in online 1v1 races only.
Literally emulate Forza horizon but tweak it enough, slap Underground 3 on it and it's good.
Or if Rockstar takes it for Midnight Club instead.
For this to happen it will take them at least 4 years to get this to be done correctly
Crank this game up for the 1st time in a while and it's still fun to play. The only bad thing is that the online mode was always lacking. Everyone only wants to race the same 4 tracks. That gets boring real quick. Need for Speed Payback had the best setup. You were thrown in a random race and then for the next 4 races you all have to vote on 3 random choices. You never ran the same set of races.
It was also weird how Payback's multiplayer was more active. A year after Heat came out, I could still find more people to race with on Payback than Heat. Heat only had like 3-4 online people per race and the rest were filled with AI racers, but I never had less than 6 people on Payback.