Top Drives Roadmap Update - October 2021
Hey drivers, welcome to the October 2021 edition of the Top Drives roadmap!
As part of a general update of what we’re working on next, we've decided to try a more contextual format with this Roadmap update.
We've divided our future plans 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
So, let's take a look at future plans!
[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, as we have seen with the example of the UI redesign, the development of which will not continue in the same way as we were expecting previously (instead, we will implement various learnings acquired through A/B tests into the existing user interface).
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.
2021 So Far
Before diving into our future plans, let's recap our progress on the things we mentioned in the February Roadmap update earlier in the year:
Without any doubt, our highest priority for the first half of 2021 was bringing you more single player content, mainly in the form of Challenges and collections of Challenges, including Year of the Ox, Summer Games, and more. These can be enjoyed in your own time, without the burden of staying up late to be online for the last minutes of the Tri-Series Finals.
Braking distance (nearing the end of development):
In the short-term, our priority is to bring a few long-awaited quality of life features, including a Wishlist feature, more improvements to Challenges, as well as some improvements to our tooling.
We will implement improvements from the UI A/B tests into the current user interface, and will run more Collection Series, such as Summer Games, to keep you busy upgrading your garage and beating Challenges to earn great rewards.
On the horizon (in development):
There's loads of exciting stuff that is currently in development.
We've heard your feedback asking us to introduce more Yellowbird-like Series, so our design team is now fully involved in creating challenging single player campaigns that award a unique Prize Car at the end.
Likewise, our intention is to keep updating the game with diverse new car collections, extending the total number of cars in the game even further.
Several quality of life features are also in the pipeline, as we are looking into providing different event start and end times for players in different regions - a task that is technically challenging and requires a lot of consideration to be implemented.
Finally, we will continue updating 3D environments to bring a new look and feel to your racing experience.
A long road trip (mainly pre-production, very early on in big feature):
While we spoke about such a rework on numerous occasions in previous years, this monumental task turned out to be much bigger in scope than one could have reasonably expected. But we are keen to implement it and bring Top Drives to a new standard.
We are also exploring ways to make the process of collecting cars, and cars themselves, more exciting by introducing certain cosmetic changes to our cards in the form of Special Editions, though these are unlikely to be customisable by players.
The same goes for expert-tuned versions of well-known cars, we are exploring the option of bringing aftermarket models that could have uprated stats based on the special upgrade path a player might take.
This is it for now and we hope you enjoyed having a peek into the future of Top Drives.
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!
