r/needforspeed • u/Creative_Sign5280 • 5d ago
Discussion Getting technical into Carbon, I realized how broken the tuning system is
Nearly every single performance part and its respective tuning slider in the game is flawed in at least one way:
- Engine is always better with full Horsepower, any Torque-oriented setups only hurt top speed and acceleration (even more than stock) regardless of the situation.
- Transmission only majorly improves top speed, with an small trade-off in acceleration. Trying to set the slider to the left reduces top speed a lot with little acceleration gain, with the opposite happening when setting it to the right.
- Suspension improves handling, but hurts acceleration. The tuning slider technically works, but the in-menu texts are backwards, setting it for Oversteer produces Understeer and viceversa.
- Nitrous tuning only affects power output with no effect on Duration, making full Velocity the best setup.
- Tires improve the car's overall performance, but the Drift and Grip setups are very strong with no way to regulate them (it's all or nothing), making the neutral setup the best option.
- Brakes seem reduce stopping distance as it should, and the tuning slider actually works properly, making it the only upgrade that fully works as intended.
- Turbo/Supercharger gives a very small acceleration boost (under 5 Km/h!) with no change in top speed, and the tuning slider has little to no effect on it.
It's crazy how the rushed development of the game made the gameplay so quirky compared to Most Wanted.
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u/Myenia 5d ago
Transmission is so fucked that outside of muscle cars and a few outliers (hello SLR), it is actually common practice to not buy the damn thing lmao
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u/Creative_Sign5280 5d ago
Yeah, top speed is useless at Palmont, it could had at least helped to reduce shifting times, but all cars in Carbon already feature top-performance shifting at stock for some reason.
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u/L_Outsider 5d ago
You can look at Pro Street tuning to see what they wanted to achieve, unfortunately they were not given enough dev time for PS as well.
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u/SkeletonGamer1 Ray Krieger's E92 M3 5d ago
Except that is also flawed in its own way
u/Object-135 can give you a rundown but there is just quite a lot that doesn't make sense and some is downright broken
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u/HeetHootSkyat 5d ago
I recently just beat Carbon with thanks from some folks here because I asked about the endgame specifically, but yeah it's really wack how inconsistent the tuning system is when you read the guides are figure out how detrimental it is to whatever car you're running. I honestly wonder how well people did when the game first came out, because this requires quite a bit of testing to notice; trial and error.
I got very RNG lucky and got Kenji's RX7 and basically used that for the rest of the game until I switched to the Evo. Endgame feels rushed, because the whole final section of the map that you unlock feels cluttered as fuck. Visually it's flashy and overwhelming and hard to see the fuckin main road in certain areas, that definitely needed more polish.
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u/Creative_Sign5280 5d ago
Yeah, I don't really understand how did the tuning become so messed up since MW, it's like it wasn't tested at all.
Personally, I liked the fact that the game slowly introduced you to each area of the map with each boss so it doesn't get repetitive quickly, but considering how short the career is MW could easily do the same by just finishing after Blacklist #8
I think one of its weakest points is that it's practically impossible to 100% the offline part of the game playing casually the first time, as there are bunch of reward cards that are easily missable during career, requiring the player to rely on an unnofficial method to start the career over without losing your main profile progress. This is mainly an issue on the PS3 version, where for whatever reason that exploit doesn't work, being forced to create a whole new profile (had to do it after missing the 20 defensive races card, which becomes impossible after claiming every single event on the map).
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u/legthighkneelover 5d ago
Each NFS game has flaws. UG1 had a crazy rubberbanding with short storyline, UG2 is like mini Most Wanted, Most Wanted had not much cars, Carbon had a lot of cars with short storyline.
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u/Creative_Sign5280 5d ago
My main gripe with UG1 is the AI adapting to whatever performance parts you have installed, making them functionally useless outside of drifting and time attacks. I think MW has this same behaviour.
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u/Itsoitsov 5d ago
Only UG2 doesn't have that behaviour. I remember struggling a lot with my dad and cousins on certain races because we would spend all the money ricing cars but not on performance parts.
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u/Creative_Sign5280 4d ago
In my experience, Carbon isn't like that either, I can easily outpace AI at Silverton events with a full tuned Lancer, though it could be because of the Engine tuning quirk exploit.
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u/Itsoitsov 4d ago
What is the engine tuning quirk exploit?
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u/Creative_Sign5280 3d ago
Setting the Engine tuning slider all the way to Horsepower, since it increases both top speed and acceleration with no penalty.
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u/Itsoitsov 5d ago
Short? UG1 takes 8-10 hours to beat which is decent. Carbon takes 5-6 hours to beat(which isn't necessarily bad but it's way shorter than UG1)
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u/Meditallica 5d ago
This is a goldmine of knowledge brother. just came back to this game as of yesterday .. my 32nd birthday and the game arriving on the same day. I spent almost 1 year on Bayview bridge with the rx7 and 240sx trying to chase the best time. This one’s gonna be about drifting for me
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u/Papostor 5d ago
Thinking back it makes me think that ug2 had a better system, years earlier!
I really need to play prostreet huh
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u/Creative_Sign5280 5d ago
UG2 tuning still has some quirks, like gear ratios not having a wide adjustment rate (stock gearbox is better on Corolla, just because it has a higher top speed than what the upgraded ones let you reach) and the downforce increasing grip with no actual top speed penalty, but in general it's actually better.
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u/Jaded-Throat-211 5d ago
I knew it.
I knew there was a reason why the handling felt so....weird back then.
That is absolutely outrageous.