Ring Racers Suggestions

Um probably a bit of an ask but a story mode would be really cool! The intro and tutorial kinda got me excited for something that the rest of the game wasn't about. I'll admit I'm not the biggest kart racer fan but that intro just had me hooked and I'd play through the most boring and tedious puzzle game imaginable if it meant seeing cool moments between sonic characters.
Also adding Trip would be cool.
 
idea for the next version:

A classic mode, where it behaves like the 1.0 versions of srb2 kart, such as
no rings
countdown is now a traditional mario kart instead of sonic riders style one
some powerups such as ball hog and ghost will behave like the old ones
no new exclusive powerups
no rivals
respawing is now like being respawning in a set location instead of be carried similar to lakitu in mario kart 8
and some more maybe undocumented

(copied and pasted from my old message in the srb2 kart mb page)
 
Where are Viewpoint Next/Prev controls?
Why removing it? I think these two should stay specially when I'm getting bored waiting for other players to finish the race while also already finished the race and there is no way to change viewpoints unless on spectator meaning I need to use the view command and is not practical.

I prefer to have them back atleast in some form.
 
  • Tricks need an option to let you rollback to pre 2.2 controls.
  • It may be a good idea to let the player bind their own "trick confirm" as opposed to preset binds
  • Add a patch installer/.7z file for version updates instead of forcing full reinstalls each time
  • A certain special something needs to display its HP value or have some kind of visual feedback.
  • That certain special something should prevent movement of what's inside for roughly the time of a hitstop, so players boosting into it can grab what's inside without the rubberbanding taking effect.
In addition, it would be a nice touch to the server website to have a tracker for daily peak playercounts. Gives KK and the community a nice indicator to see how the game is growing.
 
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When the player suffers sufficient damage, their kart is shown exploding with the driver being flung out. In first person, the camera follows the perspective of the driver, but the tyres, steering wheel, and pedals from the kart remain visible until the light snake activates. It would make more sense if these disappeared once the kart exploded.
 
My biggest suggestion right now is to have the option to use rings while holding an item. Ring Racers is all about using rings, obviously, and sometimes I want to keep an item with me to use it at the right time (mainly speed shoes because of the shortcuts) but I lose too much speed because I can't hold the item and use rings at the same time. If the player could use their items when they wanted without losing speed the game would be much more enjoyable.

Another suggestion is to add explanations to the characters' stats. Some of them are heavy, light, have high acceleration, high top speed. From what I've gathered the character select chart shows these stats: to the right are the characters with the highest top speed and lowest acceleration and to the left are the characters with the lowest top speed and highest acceleration, on the top are the lightest characters and on the bottom the heaviest. I don't know excatcly if that's right, but even if it is, I don't know if there's more to it, the time it takes to charge drift boosts for example. It would be good to display a character's stats when selecting them to know different they are to one another, especially the ones who share the same quadrant.

One thing that really bothers me is the necessity to complete the special stages to get the S rank. As someone who's S ranked almost every cup in the first half of the select screen, having to complete the HARDEST SPECIAL STAGES EVER WITH LITTLE TO NO RETRYING IN ONE RUN was cause of a lot of frustration, it only disencourages me to S rank the other half because I know I'll have to redo them all over again. Yes, I know there's a way to practice them once you get the first 7 emeralds but honestly this is the bare minimum considering the difficulty.

I also think the bounce you get after fast falling should be nerffed a bit in height, I fast fall to move faster in strategic places but the bounce takes a lot of the speed and control. The brakes should be buffed too, breaking in this game is a requirement but it's too soft, I often brake with the spin dash button because it's way more efficient.
 
Linlam said:
My biggest suggestion right now is to have the option to use rings while holding an item. Ring Racers is all about using rings, obviously, and sometimes I want to keep an item with me to use it at the right time (mainly speed shoes because of the shortcuts) but I lose too much speed because I can't hold the item and use rings at the same time. If the player could use their items when they wanted without losing speed the game would be much more enjoyable.
Click to expand...
Separate buttons for rings and items leads to a lot of really degenerate item play from first place where they can maintain maximum speed, automatically attract rings to themselves, have a shield that protects them from damage and SPBs, and also just attack anybody who manages to get close in spite of their constant ring spending. Bubble and electric shields simultaneously become elder god-tier items, and hyuudoros allow first place to hold multiple items in reserve without ever needing to waste them.

I wrote a script to test this against maximum difficulty bots and the result is the same every time: they can simply never beat me when I'm frontrunning, even when they're spawning SPBs on the most bot-friendly maps. My keepaway is just that good.
 
Here, I have my own suggestion. Please fix the log files. They are ludicrously large and have a huge amount of spam text basically. This makes it harder to develop lua scripts for, since the terminal output doesn't show warnings, you'll only find out your script is broken once you're in-game. And it also introduces bloat, like...
Screenshot_20240525_124742.png

100mb for a logs folder isn't great. To be fair, I've launched the game many many times, but again it's because I'm developing a mod, so of course that'd be the case.

For reference, here's SRB2's log folder, which has nearly 5x the files, and yet is nearly 6x smaller.
Screenshot_20240525_124854.png


And for further comparison, here's the line count for when the log actually starts to show in-game events.
Screenshot_20240525_125056.png
Screenshot_20240525_125037.png


I think the biggest culprit is the fact it shows every single file being loaded, which isn't a thing SRB2 does. It just shows the resource files being loaded, but doesn't tell you everything that's inside of them. There's also a bunch of load errors, for some reason. That also makes it harder to know if my mod is malfunctioning, because when I ctrl+f search "WARNING", I see a bunch of errors made by the game itself and not my own. And even if I do a reverse search to wrap around, that doesn't matter because there's more warnings near the bottom of the log, way after my own mods load.
 
There's a lot of things I could suggest, but I think the first thing should be making the Special Stages way more lenient. For new players and even just in general, they are hard, especially the later ones. The game expects you to memorize these things with very limited lives, and if you fail enough times, too bad; gotta start it all over. Which means needing to replay the entire cup, and get the requirements you need to even reach the special stage all over.

I'm aware there is a "Special" mode where you can replay these stages (even the ones you haven't gotten to for some reason...?), but it doesn't mitigate the issue when you still have to unlock it, and you still have to go through all the work to even get to it anyhow from the Grand Prix.

On top of all this, the attack stacking from one of the updates doesn't always feel impactful enough. I'll smash the emerald sometimes, fail, and then have to do it all over again. All on top of having to contend with these really difficult games the game wants you to immediately adapt to? It's really demanding. Even if I actually do manage to grab the emerald, I can still fail the special stage if I fall out.

Here's some of my possible solutions. One idea is that if you smash the emerald, it STAYS smashed. No more having to smash it again; just focus on grabbing it. It'll make the damage stacking feel more impactful and it'll likely lower the frustration of needing to replay Grand Prix all over again just to get another few gos at a Special Stage for an emerald.

Another alternative is to simply just allow for standalone retries of the special stage for the emerald via something like Chao Keys. That way, there's less pressure and annoyance on the idea of having to retry a whole cup and waste a lot of time.

The last thing to me should be that the Chaos Emeralds feel like they could unlock something a bit... more? Super Sonic is strangely absent, so I feel like that would be the obvious choice. Have him be the fastest character in the game, but with the worst handling. Hyper Sonic could go beyond that and then have even WORSE handling for slightly higher speed. Fastest characters in the game, but the catch is if you don't know how to use em well, you'll be bumping into and flying off into pits a lot.
 
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bennascar said:
There's a lot of things I could suggest, but I think the first thing should be making the Special Stages way more lenient. For new players and even just in general, they are hard, especially the later ones. The game expects you to memorize these things with very limited lives, and if you fail enough times, too bad; gotta start it all over. Which means needing to replay the entire cup, and get the requirements you need to even reach the special stage all over.

I'm aware there is a "Special" mode where you can replay these stages (even the ones you haven't gotten to for some reason...?), but it doesn't mitigate the issue when you still have to unlock it, and you still have to go through all the work to even get to it anyhow from the Grand Prix.

On top of all this, the attack stacking from one of the updates doesn't always feel impactful enough. I'll smash the emerald sometimes, fail, and then have to do it all over again. All on top of having to contend with these really difficult games the game wants you to immediately adapt to? It's really demanding. Even if I actually do manage to grab the emerald, I can still fail the special stage if I fall out.

Here's some of my possible solutions. One idea is that if you smash the emerald, it STAYS smashed. No more having to smash it again; just focus on grabbing it. It'll make the damage stacking feel more impactful and it'll likely lower the frustration of needing to replay Grand Prix all over again just to get another few gos at a Special Stage for an emerald.

Another alternative is to simply just allow for standalone retries of the special stage for the emerald via something like Chao Keys. That way, there's less pressure and annoyance on the idea of having to retry a whole cup and waste a lot of time.

The last thing to me should be that the Chaos Emeralds feel like they could unlock something a bit... more? Super Sonic is strangely absent, so I feel like that would be the obvious choice. Have him be the fastest character in the game, but with the worst handling. Hyper Sonic could go beyond that and then have even WORSE handling for slightly higher speed. Fastest characters in the game, but the catch is if you don't know how to use em well, you'll be bumping into and flying off into pits a lot.
Click to expand...
Maybe spolier tag that
 
  • Alternative controller displays/glyphs should be incorporated into the main game. Even as someone who actually does use a SEGA Saturn controller, it's a very silly choice to have that be the only option (as well as the glyphs not updating when remapped). IIRC, SRB2Kart actually already did this in its manual, with a modified Saturn graphic using a modern layout - providing an option for the same here would've been a simple fix.

  • I think tumbling after a missed trick should be reconsidered - not getting any boost from a trick panel is punishment enough. If it's really that important to keep, at the very least I think tumble after hitting a ceiling while in a trick state should be removed, as that doesn't have an actually justifiable purpose to me.

  • Seconding the ability to change viewpoint after a race has finished. This was a godsend for streaming, because it meant I could keep the race footage going even after I've passed the line - I don't understand its removal.

  • Also seconding fixing the whole 'changing character boots you into spectator' thing. The way it works right now feels borderline broken with how inconsistent it is, and regularly causes confusion in my online lobbies.

  • I gather the team is tired of reading the word 'AI', but unfortunately GP still isn't quite there yet. I don't think the dynamic difficulty makes sense - if I select a difficulty mode, I want that difficulty mode, not the next one up. At the very least, it needs a cap. While the rival still blatantly cheats, I think it's manageable in its current state until the last race or two of a GP. Likewise, the difficulty name changes felt like a band-aid solution to just not wanting to accept further balancing was needed - Relaxed and Intense are not sequential tiers, there's one missing there.

  • Death Egg Zone should be a single lap, at least in online. I can't think of a good reason for it to be so damn long in GP either (we all realise nobody actually liked Rainbow Road 64 being that long, right!?), but at the very least in online it's just a stage that I constantly skip because nobody in my lobby wants to actually sit through it for the 6+ minutes it can take to clear.

  • Flipcam. This is basic accessibility stuff, and it's baffling it's not here already when the game literally has an accessibility menu.

  • The no-drop dash penalty when respawning after a tumble is pointlessly punishing, and doesn't serve any real purpose than frustrating players.

  • This is more of a meta thing, but I think the change in messaging from 'we hope everyone enjoys this game for years to come!' to 'if you are not a karting god already you will pay with your life' is very weird - it's offputting to potential new players, and I think the tone could use some workshopping to better encourage people to pick up the game. I get the game does have a learning curve, but I think patches have already helped to mitigate that somewhat, and it does somewhat come across as just a kneejerk reaction to the negative feedback towards some of the game's conveyance problems - trying to take it as an intended thing instead of fixing it. (Likewise, I think the devs could use a proofread on some of the patch notes - certain ones, intentionally or not, come across as condescening, or trying to play down that the fixes needed to be made). As someone who genuinely wants as many people to play this game as possible, the paragraph on the website is doing it no favours.
They're the ones that come to mind right now. Other than that, a lot of my initial issues with the game have seen patches, so I'm relatively happy with it in its current state - this wall of text probably looks scary, but it's all fairly basic stuff.
 
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Linlam said:
My biggest suggestion right now is to have the option to use rings while holding an item. Ring Racers is all about using rings, obviously, and sometimes I want to keep an item with me to use it at the right time (mainly speed shoes because of the shortcuts) but I lose too much speed because I can't hold the item and use rings at the same time. If the player could use their items when they wanted without losing speed the game would be much more enjoyable.
Click to expand...

Togen already touched on this, but we're not interested in making this type of change. Forcing an item-availability tradeoff wards against several categories of annoying play, forces the player to make important choices under pressure, and pushes an ebb-and-flow item-play dynamic where certain areas of the track are much more obviously dangerous than others—all things we like. (Plus, we've got some input-crunch problems already.)

You could probably make an enjoyable version of Ring Racers without that tradeoff, but it would have to come with some reevaluation of a lot of other systems. For instance, most frontrunner items are tuned strong because of the implicit tradeoff associated with using them well. Even after doing that, what you'd end up would still be pretty different than the game we're trying to make.


Meta note: Not every suggestion in this thread is going to get a reply—the overwhelming majority of them won't. This doesn't mean that we're not acting on it or taking it into consideration; we read and consider basically every change that isn't obviously ass. (Several things mentioned here, like native controller glyphs or netgame viewpoint changes, are being tracked internally; some of them have been tracked since before release.)

Thanks to everyone who's provided articulate and defailed feedback so far. We're watching a lot of places at the moment, but this thread is the easiest place to collate and follow up on feedback; please direct people here if you think they're saying something we should hear.
 
I have some QoL suggestions for HVR.. if that's allowed.

  • The standard scale for RR maps is 1/4, but the default for things in the editor is 1/1. I know you can change it the settings, but I think by default it should be 1/4. Or you can have it automatically change to be the scale set in the map header, which would be useful if you're jumping between maps with different scales
  • In the Hammer/Trenchboom editors there's a feature where you can place path_ entities and they will automatically be set up to target eachother in the order you placed them. A similar feature for waypoints in HVR would be awesome
 
There should definitely be an option to turn off music skipping. It sounds horrible in servers with D5+, having the music skip back and forward a second sounds bad,
 
Some sort of save backup system similar to PokéWilds (As far as I know, that game creates an copy of the loaded save in the game folder, and then overwrites the original with new data), as I have recently have experienced a save corruption
 
this is a very minor thing but i think it'd be really nice, regarding the music!

i'd love to have a toggle for encore versions of the music in stereo mode! it may not be a big thing, especially since really all it does is slow the track down and lower the pitch, but i REALLY like some of the encore versions of songs, and it'd be nice to just be able to sit down and listen to them that way without idling in an encore freeplay session. i think it'd also fit the vibe of a tape deck being played, especially one with some tinkering like tails or robotnik would do.
 
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