As a big balance conversion on v1 Kart, it does a massively, surprisingly good job at what it does. It's incredibly hectic and fun, and it really makes it so everyone has a good chance of winning.
The dash gates mechanic is an amazing idea to keep everyone in front, teching is a really good idea to keep the pace of the race, and every other small tweak on the top keeps it all neat and tidy in a really fast package.
I want to highlight that, despite being branded as a highly-opinionated mod (what isn't, really), Tyron was a massively good sport about balance suggestions on the beta test before release, and was able to find many compromises to keep the spirit of this mod alive and everyone happy as a result.
Having spent about 6 hours of netgames playing this in 15-player lobbies (unlike the 10-player cap that was in the beta test server), I want to comment on things that particularly stuck out to me that felt strange:
- The Eggbox "anti-cheese" fix: makes sense in theory, since dying with an eggbox removes it in Vanilla, but in practice, I've seen players getting "combo'd" thanks to this - getting dunked by an Orbi or Jawz (which is easier than ever thanks to the Dash Gates), and then blowing up later because the Eggbox was kept after your death. It feels uncharacteristically punishing for such a mod that is so lenient on mistakes, but it can be as easily fixed too with a spin-out check.
- Not being able to tech after getting squished by Grow. This is not mentioned anywhere in the changelog, so it has to be unintentional.
- The Rocket Sneakers tweaks: makes sense in theory, but they're over-nerfed, specially considering how they compare to Invincibility and Grow - Grow benefits a lot from Dash Gates because of the built-in handling buff from mini-turbos (so much so that it's possible to get 1st straight away thanks to the system mechanics), and Invincibility is as strong as ever because it allows you to get away with *a lot* of punishment that would happen otherwise in this mod. Because of this, Rocket Sneakers feel comparatively gimped and no better than Vanilla Triple Sneakers. Worse still, Eggboxes are low-key really strong, and Rocket Sneakers are the only power item that can go poof from an explosion, so that can mess things up as well. Firm Sneakers doesn't justify nerfing Rocket Sneakers, so I really wish for this to be tweaked in a future update.
Also, "init.lua" has been the source of some desyncs in this mod (or so it seems), mostly happening as a player joins mid-race. I was able to catch one warning before it crashed me to death:
"WARNING: [path/to/mod]|init.lua:145: divide by zero error"
All in all, I can expect this to be the go-to gamemode for months in servers, and most deservingly so. Cheers and amazing job on everyone who worked on this!
Teching isn't possible during squish because squish isn't credibly reactable, and the effect of squish is so short that the ability to tech would effectively nullify it completely based on a random mash chance. You can still hold Accel to Quick Recover in this situation—I'll see about clarifying this in the changelog or adding some better visuals for Quick Recovery in general, there are a lot of potential directions for better conveyance here.
In most internal test games, and the handful of games I've played since release, Rocket Sneakers still put you within striking distance of 1st basically every time, and often give you a lead of a few seconds. Whether or not they're hugely powerful seems to depend strongly on the course—how cuts are spaced and how much distance you gain—but the higher drain rate requires you to think much differently about how you want to use the limited charges. I'm not convinced they're in a bad place right now, I still personally prefer seeing them to Invinc and Grow most of the time, but I'm monitoring this and will keep an eye on feedback; as one of the only nerfs in Juicebox, it was always going to be contentious, and if this is a common complaint I can think of a few ways to proceed.
The divide-by-zero is resolved in the next version, which will be released basically as soon as I finish typing this.
I'm definitely not finished with this just yet, and conversation more nuanced than "THIS MOD IS SUCKS" is always appreciated, given how loud and abrasive netgame chat can sometimes be. Thanks for your detailed feedback!