TOP DRIVES ROADMAP UPDATE - JANUARY 2022
RELEASE: 14.4
Hey drivers, welcome to the January 2022 edition of the Top Drives Roadmap!
2022 is here, and it’s looking no less exciting than the previous years. We’ve prepared this Roadmap update to give you an idea of what work has already been completed for Top Drives in the 3 months since our last update, and indicate what are the things we are working on in the coming months.
The future plans are divided into three categories of features coming up:
Braking Distance - near end of development
On the Horizon - in development
A Long Road Trip - mainly pre-production, very early on in big feature
Now, let’s look at what's been done, and what's coming next!
[DISCLAIMER]
As always, it's important to keep in mind that our timelines do shift a lot, and so do team priorities. Features may not end up being developed.
Additionally, an item being on this list is not a guarantee it will be released. For every player-facing feature, there is often a non-player-facing feature, such as improving our tooling to deliver more live content, or improving our processes to make the resolver (game engine) more resilient, so this list does not include everything we will be working on.
Q4/2021 - Q1/2022 Progress Update
Before diving into our future plans, let's recap the progress on the things we mentioned in the October Roadmap update last year:
In the past 3 months, we developed and introduced a number of important server-side and player-facing features that help us bring more relevant and timely offers. Our localisation tools have also been improved to support these features.
The team focused on creating a better playing experience through a variety of long-awaited quality of life features that help you save on instant fuses, keep track of wishlisted cars, quickly navigate your garage, prepare your hand without access to tickets, and more.
Additionally, we released a brand new Championship - one of the most requested game mode updates of 2021, offering a chance to earn renown, upgrade cars and unlock the Epic Nissan GT-R LM Nismo, along with other great rewards.
Braking distance (nearing the end of development):
In the short term, we are focusing on bringing to Top Drives the updated 3D environments - some of you had a taste of these in a series of tests we ran for new players in the last few months.
Additionally, we will be closely investigating the reports of stability and resource management issues that arose after updates earlier in 2021. A team member is fully dedicated to solving these issues, and so far we have seen promising results in this area.
A brand new rewarded ads ladder will be soon making its way to Top Drives, replacing the existing system that awards Gold, Cash and Upgrades for watching ads. Players will get access to a wider range of ads in a neat dedicated menu on the Home Screen.
Finally, a number of quality of life features are imminent, such as improvements to the holding pool, allowing you to lock a car and see whether you already own it. UI will be enhanced to prevent buying attempts with Gold by mistake.
On the horizon (in development):
A whole range of upgrades and new systems are currently being developed, in various stages of progress.
The team’s priorities in 2022 will include improving the Challenge design system to ensure a more robust Challenge creation process. This may involve snapshotting everyone’s garage upgrade state to inform difficulty decisions when designing Challenges.
To reward players for daily activity in Top Drives, a new daily objectives system will be implemented, offering great rewards playing every day. The in-game Store will see an overhaul to improve navigation when searching for offers, packs and currency.
We are still working on the future car updates, including signing contracts with never seen before car manufacturers.
Different event start and end times are still very much on our radar, and the technical solution is currently being tested by the team.
A long road trip (mainly pre-production, very early on in big feature):
Several items from the previous Roadmap update remain in the long-term plan. This includes physics rework, special editions of cars and aftermarket performance tuner cars. We do not have any major updates on these at the moment.
We are committed to bringing more quality of life features this year, such as ability to preview tracks before racing in the Event (your next tracks will still be unknown however), and the ability to use a duplicate Legendary to fuse into another Legendary, counting as three Epics. This list is likely to be updated with more items as we progress further in the year.
This is it for now and we hope you enjoyed having a peek into the future of Top Drives.
The team is very pleased with the progress of the last 3 months, and we were excited to share our plans for 2022.
As in the disclaimer, it's important to remember that priorities are likely to shift, and this roadmap will continue to evolve as we reach different milestones ahead of us.
Still, our future plans are as exciting to us as they are for you folks, and we will be sure to keep you updated about changes when we feel there is enough content to talk about.If you'd like to discuss the roadmap and other Top Drives-related themes with fellow players, make sure to follow our on our social platforms and Discord:
See you soon!
