Most of the headlines surrounding Electronic Arts this fall have been about the loot box situation in Star Wars: Battlefront II. But Need for Speed: Payback has been dealing with the same pay-to-win progression issues since it launched a few weeks ago too. More than that, the game is an unstable mess and barely functions on Xbox hardware. Developer Ghost Games is addressing both of those with Payback‘s first big updates.
Specifically, Ghost is paring the time it takes for upgrade parts to appear in tune-up shops by 66 percent. What used to take 30 minutes will only take 10 from here on out. Money and reputation from winning events is getting bumped too, and that goes for non-first-place finishes too. All that to say, it shouldn’t feel like your hand is forced to buy loot boxes with real-world money just to advance in the game.
What’s going to take some time though, are fixes for game stability and performance. Ghost says that patch will arrive “soon,” but that once it does, there will be tweaks to the types of parts tune-up shops offer and better parts from winning events, too.
Ghost says to keep an eye on its social channels for news on when that will drop. Until then, just play something else. The racing in Payback is fine, but with how much of a mess it is from a tech standpoint (not to mention how awful the dialog and writing is) you’re better off spending your time with a better game.
Source: EA
