Yogi Klatt · Principal Vehicle Programmer

Well, I wouldn't go for a racing master mode, because racing, if you want to go quickly from A to B, this is what Navigation Mode is for. But we should absolutely do something like a racing operator mode, where the heads-up display is cleared and shows racing-specific information. We actually have a stopwatch on the HUD. I'm not sure if players know about this, but this is, for example, something that we should then just have on by default, or having a bigger TVI and giving you expected deceleration times and stuff like that. Stuff that's important for the racing experience itself.

Elliot Maltby · Lead Mission Designer

On the mission side for racing: in the PU it can be a bit difficult to do racing missions compared to AC, because we have the respawn flow set out for us. So it can take you a long time to get back to the racetrack where you want to do your races. So we're investigating ways we can speed that up. I don't want to speak to any specifics; they might change. One thing we are doing is we're going to be adding open track versions of the current racing missions that we have, because currently how you unlock the next race track is via completing the first one. So what we're going to do is just give out a version where you don't get a reward, you don't pay a buy-in; here's access to the track. We'll time you like we do in the mission as it is. It's just so you can keep practicing. And then going forward, we'll have more advanced races. But races aren't just in ships. They're in ground vehicles; we have the Daymar Rally that the community do, and that's a lot of fun. But they can also extend to on-foot races. Recently, we prototyped a time trial race in the escape route of the prison, where we timed players who could get out the fastest and then awarded them merits for whoever got out the fastest. But we didn't feel like it fully fit. So we can do it, and maybe in the future you'll see it somewhere in the game. It was a lot of fun because we tried to be suggestive with the direction, so if you didn't know the escape route, you could really mess your time up.