Need For Speed Unbound Vol. 9.0.2 Patch Improves Lockdown, Contract Usability and More

EA released their Need for Speed Unbound Vol. 9.0.2 patch today, featuring improvements to Lockdown, Contract usability, maps, matchmaking and more. This update follows closely behind the release of Vol. 9 last week. Check out the patch notes below.

For those of you that might have missed it, Lockdown is a new layer to Unbound’s street racing experience, enabling players to assemble crews of up to three members and face off against rival teams. In this mode, racers undertake Contracts, breach Lockup zones, maneuver through the Lockdown Zone and secure the Extraction truck.

Contract usability and display improvements

• Automatically expand Contracts tab at the start of a round
• Ensure that local player is always at the bottom of the Squad List to improve display and updates for Contracts
• Enabled Contract notification updates in the HUD to allow for better tracking of Contract progress
• Fixed and improved multiple Contracts where descriptions were misleading and some notifications were not updating correctly 
• Fixed Contracts Pop Up to differentiate progress between local player and contributed progress from Crew members, like Linkups
• Made Contract complete progress clearer in the Contracts selection menu 
• Fixed multiple Racer X Challenges not tracking correctly

Map and Mini Map Improvements

• Fixed Lockup icon on mini map to ensure it has a backing
• Fixed Truck icon on mini map to stop it being semi transparent
• Made sure that rival players in Hot Rides are docked to the mini map and show with correct icon
• Made sure that server messages are using the correct iconography for rivals 
• Fixed sizing of icons on Mini map to improve consistency and clarity. Rivals are no longer massive
• Most Wanted overlay is now highlighted for rival players on the mini map
• Improved look of the Lockdown zone on main map and mini map. Making it clearer when in the zone and imminent zone areas
• Rivals in Hot Rides are now discoverable and highlighted on the main map

Fixes and improvements to in session routing and notifications

• Fixed issues when routing to Truck would not update correctly from phone widget and would not display route to truck
• Fixed routing to players on bikes or Hot Rides not updating with live position
• Fixed routing to Truck from the map not updating with live position
• Fixed Truck Extraction notification not showing on the HUD when players exit from the map
• Fixed incorrect distances being displayed for party members routing to Extraction Truck
• Fixed a bug where the Critical Health state was skipped when being Wrecked or Busted, meaning players should now have more of a chance to get to a gas station before being eliminated
• Critical Health phone and routing to gas station messages and now displayed in Green to differentiate them from Truck notifications 

Matchmaking Improvements

• Added kick for players who take too long to load into Lockdown sessions, keeping others queuing
• Handle backfilled party members becoming the new host correctly so they can continue on the backfill flow, which leads to stuck lobbies
• Extraction Session Lobby Improvements to allow more players into games and improve wait times loading into gameplay
• Stopped party members from being able to quit after party leader starts matchmaking, leading to bad things in matchmaking and players hanging in zombie lobbies

Other notable improvements and fixes

• Ensure that the last player on a Crew now drops all their loot before being downed
• Ensure that loot items remain in the world during overtime period
• Improved loot dropping from downed players so it remains near their vehicle and not lost down the road
• Implemented VO cool down on Racer X at Lockups to stop that Ding Dong going chap chap chap, all the time!
• Added the Jacked and Impounded details to the Lockdown Garage to highlight and make the current status of vehicle clearer
• Fixed an issue where extracting the same Blacklist vehicle would keep the vehicle and not convert to cash. Causing bloat in vehicle inventory
• Added rewards message after races so players can see how much cash they earned
• Fixed Heat level 5 UI getting stuck after leaving the zone and escaping
• Fixed inconsistencies with Jacked vehicle tiers being displayed as Tier B late onto the round when they are in fact S and S+
• ESF has been updated to provide immunity against roadblock spike strips
• Fixed vehicle repaired messages when passing through gas stations
• Increased the rate of Extraction Truck spawns late into the session
• Fixed an issue in the Squad List that highlighted Crew members collecting cash and not the local player
• Increased cap on owned vehicles from 200 to 250 to help those players with issues because they don’t know their inventory is full. May result in slightly increased load times for players with very high inventory values.
• Added a fix to help recover inventory issues and not being able to play the game. Note this is one use case we finally were able to reproduce in the dev environment. We are truly sorry for players still getting errors, and we will keep trying to find solutions.
• Multiple crash fixes for clients and server