Yes, we understand what you want. You want it to show the forward time for a track if the forward time is faster and the backward time if the backward time is faster. But I think this is wrong and I am strictly against that. If a track is faster backwards I still want it to show the forward time on the front page and the backward time only in the backward category (whether this is also on the front page or the way it is now).

Maybe you perceive forward and backward as the same track but I don't think many racing game players do. I have been playing these games competitively for 13 years and I have never heard something like that.

What you are saying is nonsense. Playing mirrored or at night makes no difference in terms of the time that is possible because the track is exactly the same. Asking for mirrored or night boards is idiotic.

Playing a track backwards makes a difference. It makes it essentially a different track. And the main time shown should always be Forward, even if Backward is faster for some tracks. Backward should definitely continue to be treated separately.

And it's not really important to me if the Backward boards are shown on the front page or the way that it currently is. They are definitely more relevant than the Stock boards though.

No, my suggestion was Forward and Backward and remove the Stock boards or hide them like the Backward ones are currently hidden.

I disagree with your comparison with MW/Carbon and NFS 2. There is a very big difference between using NOS or not using it in MW/Carbon. And Arcade, Simulation and Wild feel very different from each other in NFS 2. Driving the NFS McLaren and the Stock McLaren in HP2 on the other hand feels pretty much identical. The Stock one will lose a couple of seconds because it's a tiny bit slower everywhere but you don't really feel any difference during the run or have to do anything different. Therefore I really don't see much of a point to the Stock category in this specific game. Turning off NOS in MW/Carbon or changing the handling mode in NFS 2 significantly changes the gameplay experience, so that's something very different.

I agree that showing Backward instead of Stock would make more sense. I don't know why the Stock category is even a thing in this game at all.

In a game like NFS 3 Stock makes a lot of sense because there non-stock requires you to manually tune your car. But here the NFS Edition cars are just slightly faster versions of the Stock cars. In a sense they are "stock" as well because they are not manually tuned in any way. There isn't much of a point to have separate leaderboards for the non-NFS cars because they are just slightly slower versions of the NFS ones and otherwise there is no difference. Backward on the other hand makes a track a completely different challenge.

I am definitely against what Molotok wrote. That would make no sense at all indeed.

Had a funny failure during my try today. Definitely not a recommended strat. :D

(fail part starts at 2:00)

Sometimes tapping the brake once could save you a full minute. :P

@Ewil: Yeah, I was not talking about the career there with the 3 cars. Of course when you can use Corvette there is never a reason to use Viper. :)

Here you can find my standard setups for Lancer and Porsche: http://www.nfs-hq.com/carboncircuit03.html http://www.nfs-hq.com/carboncircuit11.html (3 3 3 means all sliders to the right, 3 3 2 means first two to the right and last one in the center and so on...) I don't have a Viper setup right now.

And just to make it clear: I did not ask for individual track leaderboards. You said you wanted to do them anyway, so I just wrote that IF you do them they should be with categories. I actually agree with Grim that the term "Speedrun" only refers to a fast playthrough of a whole game (career/story mode) and is not used for fast quickrace times on individual tracks. Then again both activities are about being fast in a video game, so they are at least somewhat related.

I don't really know. I am fine with track leaderboards being here (except those for fast times in modes that are not about the time) but I can also understand if people feel that it's the wrong website for them (unfortunately there is no better one that already exists though, at least for Carbon). You guys can decide about it. I don't really want to be involved in that choice, since I only just came here. I can accept either way. If there are track leaderboards, then I will use them. But if not, then I am also happy to just give the career playthrough a try. I didn't expect any more than that when I signed up here anyway. :)

PS: Canyon is also about score, not just Drift and Speedtrap. I would only do Circuit, Sprint and Checkpoint (if any). Another option would be the individual events of the Challenge Series (the ones that are about time). Those are even part of the 100% game completion speedrun. Just a suggestion though. You really don't need to create anything just for me.

By the way, with WCG rules the Lancer is the best car on most tracks but not on all. There are a few exceptions where the Carrera GT or the Viper are slightly better, so have a look at those cars as well. The Viper is basically a weaker version of the Corvette, which is good on extreme top speed tracks like Waterfront Road.

A nice track to compare the 3 cars is Mission Street, where they are all pretty close to each other in the end. It has a very long straight but also some tight corners. The Viper is best for the straight but worst for the corners. The Lancer the other way around. The Porsche is second best for each part. Here is a video that shows a fast run with each of them:

Well, with NFS you never know if you should call it a bug or a feature. :P

In NFS MW you can also use lesser transmissions to gain a better acceleration at the cost of top speed. There it feels quite reasonable. But yeah, the Stock transmission of the Lancer in Carbon could be called bugged I guess, since it has a very different top speed depending on if you use automatic or manual (303 vs 346). People have accepted it as part of the game though.

Well, to be honest I don't think it makes sense to go for the fastest time in Drift and Speedtrap events. If going for the highest score/speed is not acceptable on a Speedrun website, then I would rather just remove those events completely and only have leaderboards for those types where going for the fastest time is the intended goal. In Canyon you also get a score, so if the goal here has to be the fastest time, then I would only do leaderboards for Circuit, Sprint and Checkpoint. That's already a ton of tracks anyway. And doing a mode that is about score or speed for the time feels very awkward to me. Of course it's totally normal when the event is part of a full career playthrough but as an individual challenge it feels very odd. I don't think any of the NFS players that I know would enjoy playing individual score/speed events for the fastest time.

And in Carbon both steering wheel and gamepad are competitive. In the WCG final it was actually wheel vs gamepad. And this was definitely the most competitive Carbon tournament ever, since it had by far the biggest prize pool, so people practiced super hard for it. :) (http://www.acemprol.com/download/file.php?id=8467&t=1)

I actually did a test speedrun of the career last night just for fun and to get more experienced with it and I took the Lancer instead of the Corvette to see how it would go. I couldn't skip the Canyon against the Lancer (since I still have the RX-7 there) but I believe I skipped all other Canyons in Silverton, although the overtake wasn't always right at the start.

Since the run was terrible I won't submit it on the site but you can see the Canyons with the Lancer at 2:11:30, 2:35:10 and 2:50:20 here:

The perfect setup for the Lancer is a bit unusual. You can actually leave transmission, suspension and brakes Stock. Especially with transmission and suspension this is actually an advantage. Stock transmission only works when you play with manual though but that is recommended in Carbon anyway. :)

The Corvette is probably still the right choice for the playthrough though. It is the fastest car in the game on almost every track.

In the multiplayer modes of both MW and Carbon you can choose between nitrous on and off. Most tournaments that happened in these games used the option off. I don't know exactly how this originated (it might have been to make cheating harder) but either way it has become the standard for a lot of competitive players. Many people also simply don't enjoy driving with nitrous as much.

Also in Circuit you can't chain perfect laps together when you play with nitrous because to get the fastest possible lap you have to start it with much nitrous and end it with none but then the next lap can't be as good. If you play without nitrous you can aim for the same time in every flying lap when you do a full race, which makes the practice more smooth. With nitrous you need one preparation lap between each timed one to regain full nitrous.

Corvette and Audi in Carbon I believe were also banned to make cheating harder in online matches because there were some ways to edit them from outside of the game but once again even now people still like to use these rules simply because they enjoy the gameplay with them more. To be fast with the Corvette you have to drive pretty rough with a lot of wallrides. With the Lancer (best car on most tracks with these rules) the driving is a lot more clean and for many people more fun.

(Of course other games like Underground 1+2 also have wallrides but in those games they would be there regardless of the car, while in Carbon it is possible to make them a lot less viable by just banning a single car.)

Anyway, I am just suggesting these rules because I know that a lot of people like to use them, no matter how they originated. :) (some people would probably even suggest some additional ones in MW where not all upgrades are allowed but those ones don't make sense to me personally)

I see that you also have different categories for each track in NFS 1-6 (like Stock and Tuning in Porsche or Regular and NFS Edition in HP2), probably because each way of playing is preferred by some people. In can assure you that in MW and Carbon (and some others) people also have preferences like that. :P

Example of a competitive match with nitrous turned off in MW: (video description has timestamps of the races)

Final race of the WCG 2007 Carbon tournament:

And you can find tons of BMW videos if you search for "NFS MW BMW No Nos".

Well, it depends on what the rules would be. If the only category would be "unrestricted" (all cars and nitrous allowed), then I personally wouldn't be interested, since I don't like to play that way. Me and a lot of other competitive players like to play with certain restrictions that we know from the tournaments that used to happen back when the games were new.

Suggested categories for Most Wanted:

• unrestricted
• No Nos (no nitrous allowed)
• BMW (only the bonus BMW M3 GTR allowed + no nitrous allowed)

Suggested categories for Carbon:

• unrestricted
• WCG (no Corvette or Audi allowed + no nitrous allowed)

All of this applies only to Circuit and Sprint. For the other modes (if you want to add them at all) unrestricted would be enough.

No Nos was used for many years in all the MW tournaments hosted by ESL. BMW is also used by many hardcore players, since the car doesn't have a setup, so that everyone has the same conditions.

By the way, no nitrous just means that players aren't allowed to use it. It's impossible to turn it off for single player races in MW, at least with the BMW, so videos have to start sufficiently early to make it clear that no nitrous was used at the end of the previous lap either (which would let you start the timed lap with an unfair speed advantage).

WCG stands for World Cyber Games, which hosted the most important Carbon tournament ever in 2007 and it used these rules, which people still like to use today. In Carbon nitrous can be turned off for single player races, so here this is easy to enforce.

Personally I play with No Nos rules in MW and WCG rules in Carbon.

If you need lists of the tracks you can find them on my website here: http://www.nfsHQ.com

@Ewil: I own every single NFS game for PC but I am probably most experienced and skilled in Most Wanted and Carbon. However, like I said I only have records for individual tracks (using specific rules from the tournament scene) and here you only have records for speedruns (career playthroughs), except for NFS 1-6, so I don't see how I could submit my existing records here. :P

I am interested in giving some career playthroughs a try though, unless they require too many ugly exploits like restarting the game and such, which I don't really enjoy. I want to be able to set a good time mostly thanks to fast driving. :)

I will definitely try Carbon and maybe also Underground 1. Most Wanted and Underground 2 are a bit long I think.

Ok, I see. Thanks. :)

I just did a first test run and it took me close to exactly 3 hours. I lost a lot of time though because I did probably 5 or more defensive races before I realized that I don't need to do them...

I also don't know yet what the quickest events in each area are and other stuff like that. I will probably watch the video of your record and then just try to do it the same way with slightly faster driving. :)

By the way, in the car comparison list that is linked in your guide the times for the Mazdaspeed seem to be mixed up. And which track did you use for that comparison?

Hey guys!

I am a long time competitive Need for Speed player and I am very good at several of them, including Carbon. However, I have never tried a speedrun before. Most competitive NFS players only go for record times on individual tracks (which we don't call speedruns) and not for fast career playthroughs. I am thinking about giving it a try in Carbon though, since the career there is not very long and I am curious how good you guys are here.

I have one question though. I see that people have some kind of software on the left side in their videos, which counts not only the total time but also the time for individual sections. How does that work? And is it required?