Bikes in Midnight Club exist way before MCLA
I'm aware. It's called a continuation of a joke I've been doing for years pertaining to Ghosts calendar syncing to ten years in the past - see 2015-Underground series and
Payback-Carbon and Burnout Paradise. MCLA just happens to be a lot closer to "ten years in the past" than any other Midnight Club. I'd also argue it's the one NFS should be worrying about to this day, but that's a bit of a tangent.
If adding bikes is considered a “game design”, we have The Crew 1 and Drive Club to add to the list of games that “ape off” Burnout Paradise and MCLA.
..well. Kind of, yes. You could form a fairly comprehensive argument that this is the case. Much like one could make an argument that Burnout adding bikes was aping off GTA. Then I could make the argument that neither Driveclub nor TC1 are as shameless ripoffs of Paradise as Payback and Heat are. And then you would make the argument that TC2 is. And then I'd go "you're somewhat right, actually, but perhaps not in the way you think you are".
Congratulations. That's the first layer of the joke uncovered. If it isn't clear, it's "Burnout Paradise was so good every open-world driving game that's come after has wanted to copy its success by copying its game design. Much like how the mid-00's was full of Underground-knockoffs and how NFS as a franchise started out as a Test Drive clone when that franchise took a break in the early-mid 90's".
Roar sort of existed in Rivals with slight variation, Rivals has shockwave to get things out of the way but it is closer range and blast everything around the car instead of just what’s in front. The “innovation” of that has happened.
..and said Roar first debuted in MC3, which.. ok, it's not quite 10 years older, but it is 8 years and an entire console generation. It wasn't exactly "innovation", even in 2013.
Considering the hate around a simple run flat tyres back in Gamescom, I think Ghost will have a tough time convincing the fans that bringing in power ups is a good idea.
For realsies though, I'd love to see what would happen if they *did* make a knockoff Agro and all that. Not just because it is an interesting mechanic and it'd make an argument for having gridlock traffic, but as you said yourself: people got *that* mad over run-flats and limited repairs per night, and as someone who doesn't take NFS seriously, I would only be lying in the most technical of senses if I said that was more entertaining than most of their recent products.