Ring Racers Suggestions

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Minor suggestion, but would it be possible to put the name of the characters somewhere on the select screen? Maybe in the "info" submenu where the weight, speed and class are at least?
 
Some suggestions from some guy you don't know:

  1. Ability to manually set cpus in match races, to either show off custom characters (and even followers) or make certain challenges eaiser without having to reset tracks or use a 2nd player
  2. Unlockable Music for
    Daytona, Aurora Atoll and Blue Mountain that uses their OG tracks back in SRB2 Kart. (and selfish choice but Door Into Summer Classic Remix by Dr. Reverbnik for Isolated Island)
  3. Ability to use all items on either battle or race tracks, for complete chaos.
  4. Extend the time for when you activate a draggable item but don't get slowed down. I feel like this grace period is a little too small, maybe even change it depending on how powerful the item is.
  5. if a challege has been keyed and not completly naturally, change the grey shading on the white square to a more cyan shading
uhh idk azure city classic or lovely afternoon or soemthing idk im just a guy on the internet.
 
While there's some stuff I would like to see changed and disagree with Kart Krew on (hitstun, ring debt, etc.), I'm going to try to keep most of my suggestions here grounded that hopefully wouldn't require any significant gameplay overhauls. No new character or track suggestions either, it's hard to ask for more when the team has already done so well in that regard in the base game. free vector tho
  • Add a more significant Wavedash indicator: Wavedashing is an incredibly powerful tool in DRRR, evidenced by a number of staff ghosts making use of it and the technique being essentially required to earn Platinum medals on maps such as Sundae Drive and Star Light. However, despite the sheer power of the technique, there's very little that actually indicates you're in a Wavedash state beyond some white speed lines, which can overlap with other boosting visual effects. When compared to the numerous satisfying effects after executing a rainbow drift (the noise and visual of shells flying out of your kart in addition to a continuous siren sound), Wavedashing feels a little underwhelming for something that has as much, if not more power than a drift boost. I've made a mock-up using arcade sound effects as to what an audial indicator for Wavedashing could be in order to help illustrate my point (turn sound on, imgur usually turns it off):
  • Add a 'remaining time' indicator for appropriate items: Ideally a HUD option that could be toggled, this is a mod seen rather commonly on servers (both for SRB2K and DRRR), but I think it'd be useful to have in vanilla as well, primarily due to the variable time of items. Power items such as invincibility and garden tops have wildly different duration times, depending on factors such as distance from other players and players hit with the item. With this in mind, there's no clear indication as to when your item will end, and as a result, I've had too many times where I've charged straight into a tripwire, only for my power item to vanish just in time to send me flying backwards. A good example is seen on the Sunflower server, seen at 1:59 at the bottom of the screen in the video below:
  • Expanded Stereo Mode: Stereo Mode is a fantastic addition to the game, not only just for seeing all of the songs available in the game, but also with how it can be used during Time Trials when you want to listen to music beyond just the default songs for a specific track. However, I think there's still a lot to be desired with it:
    • Song list: Currently, when rotating through songs in Stereo Mode, you need to constantly mash the Next button to proceed through all of the songs one-by-one. It would be greatly appreciated if Stereo Mode instead had a vertical list of songs in the game, akin to the one seen in vanilla SRB2 or in other titles such as the Super Smash Bros. series.​
    • Encore versions: Ideally, there should be a simple toggle in the Stereo Mode menu that allows you to switch to the Encore Mode version of any specific song. Perhaps by simply pressing the Z button, akin to selecting Encore Mode in Match Race?​
    • Song striking: Once again referencing the Super Smash Bros. series, it'd be great if there was an option to prevent certain songs from playing on stages with multiple possible tracks, akin to the My Music menu in those titles. I'm aware that in Time Trials you can simply exit and re-enter a stage to cycle through songs, but that's not an option Online or in Grand Prix. Definitely a lower priority suggestion, but there's just never any time in my life where I want to listen to the US Sonic CD soundtrack over the JP Sonic CD soundtrack.​
  • Menu layout rework: As it currently stands, I think there's a lot of oddities with how the menu is laid out.
    • Why is the character select option made so early on? When changing characters in single player modes (ex: if I want to experiment with different statlines on a certain track), there's a lot of extra menus you need to move through for something that was very quick in SRB2K.​
    • Why are the extras and options on the very first screen but can't be accessed after selecting a character? If I want to reconfigure any settings, I either need to enter a match or back through the character selection screen, and if I want to check my stats, I have to go back through the character selection screen with no other option. Once again, this was a much simpler process in SRB2K.​
    • The Profile menu feels like it complicates the menus more than they need to be. Options like FOV, Screen Tilting, Effects, and Screenshake feel like they should be in Video Options with Screen Effects, while the Input Display feels like a HUD Option along with the Speedometer. I understand that different players on the same screen might want different settings, but I've gone into the wrong menu multiple times now when trying to adjust some settings.​
    • Very minor suggestion: When selecting a color, pressing Up/Down should instantly cause the wheel of colors to do a 180 spin, instantly warping you to the other side or serving as an equivalent of pressing Left/Right 50 times when all colors are unlocked. Should help in making color selection a bit nicer.​
  • SPB on certain tracks: I thought the SPB was a fantastic item from a design perspective back in SRB2K and I still find that to be the case on most tracks in DRRR: A tool to keep first place from frontrunning too hard, but unlike a certain blue shell, rewards good play by allowing exceptionally skilled players to keep it at bay with skilled dodging, sharp lines, and successful item management. DRRR turns the tide against the SPB target more than SRB2K did (can't use rings, SPB drops Juicebox Dash Gates behind it) and it feels much more difficult than before, but not completely unmanageable... that is, unless you're playing on certain courses. DRRR's track design is significantly more hectic than that of SRB2K's, featuring more gimmicks, automated sections, and unorthodox paths than that of SRB2K. That combined with the new SPB changes in DRRR turn outrunning the SPB on certain maps from "cool challenge that rewards good play!" to "it's just an MK blue shell now". Some examples I've found:
    • Death Egg (everyone's favorite!) is, of course, a huge offender. While it's not as egregious in terms of track difficulty as some other tracks are, its difficulty instead comes from its ridiculous length. It's one thing to ask for near perfection over the span of 2-3 minutes, but asking it for 6+ feels absolutely ridiculous.
    • Spring Yard is perhaps the biggest offender in terms of sheer difficulty, due to the second set of spike balls which requires extreme luck to get through. Speed through? You'll hit the row in front and die. Break or slow down? The SPB will bite you in the rear. Out of every single track element in the game, this is the one that I simply have no idea how to deal with when it comes to SPB Attack. I got the medal on this track out of sheer luck.
    • The terrible trio of Sunsplashed Getaway, Mega Ice Cap, and Mega Aqua Lake all require a significant amount of rings to get through unscathed (Sunsplashed Getaway and Mega Aqua Lake feature a large amount of off road, while Mega Ice Cap is entirely made of slippery ice). Considering the only rings you can find are in Item Boxes, you MUST time almost all of your roulettes exactly in order to survive.
    • Previously mentioned with Mega Ice Cap, but ice tracks in general feel terrible to play with an SPB due to the new changes as well. Diamond Dust, Sub-Zero Peak, and SRB2 Frozen Night all come to mind as being particularly troublesome.
    • Balloon Park is awful for the mandatory drop-down funnel section, which feels like a pure shot in the dark, with the SPB being able to nab you most of the time regardless of what you try, with matters only made worse by any items that might be beneath the funnel.
    • Marble Garden has incredibly rough terrain which makes significant ring usage mandatory and predetermined racing lines unreliable, on top of erratic and unpredictable spiked ball obstacles in every corner of the map.
    • Conveyor belts will fling the SPB closer towards you, most notably on Hot Shelter where the SPB will straight up kill you on the large rotating wheels at the start of a lap without any rings.
    • Tracks with mandatory hazards such as Endless Mine Act 1 & 2, extremely narrow paths such as Carnival Night and Launch Base Modern & Classic, cramped maps with erratic hazards such as Lavender Shrine Classic, moments that bring the player to a halt like Collision Chaos, and gimmicks that don't seem to properly work half the time such as Metropolis all contribute to the SPB feeling less like a realistic challenge and more like a guaranteed time waste.
  • There's perhaps even more maps that skipped my mind, but I would hope that this gets my point across. A lot of the tracks in DRRR feel more hostile towards racing than your average racing game track does, which I think was an intentional decision. However, I don't think the SPB was properly adjusted from SRB2K to DRRR to account for the change in track design philosophy. I'm not 100% sure what parts of the SPB can be adjusted, but Lost Colony stands out in my mind as a map where the SPB actually does seem to have a change in behavior, notably in the elevator room where it definitely seems to slow down. I think it would be worthwhile to go back through the maps in the game and make changes where appropriate to certain tracks so the SPB once again feels like a "fun challenge to overcome" rather than "this is a guaranteed time loss on certain maps".
  • Non-Encore SPB Attack: The original SPB Attack add-on in SRB2K was a great tool in practicing racing lines for when you have an SPB on your tail, but in DRRR it functions moreso as a minigame or a puzzle to solve rather than a realistic practice tool due to only being playable on each course's Encore version. I'd like to see this possibly remedied (even if it doesn't give a medal when beat) so it can be used as a practice tool akin to the original add-on.
  • Inputs carry over through screen transitions: In SRB2K, typing a message with chat open during a screen transition would still result in the message appearing in the chat window upon the transition finishing. While this appears to be the case with the console in DRRR, it no longer works with the chat window during multiplayer. I would like to see this returned to its SRB2K state.
Finally, to echo some previous suggestions that I strongly second that have already been brought up in this thread, without rambling too much on them:
  • Displaying bound controls: I play on keyboard, so I have no clue what "Press the right shoulder button!" or "Press the C Button!" is ever supposed to mean. If that's not possible due to the wide variety of input sources available, I think having the option to change things to instead say "Press the Drift button!" or "Press the Spindash button!" could go a long way.
  • Spectator mode fixes: Allow for spectating other players upon race completion as well as no longer forcing players into spectator mode when changing characters. Ideally, I think it should work similarly to SRB2K, where you couldn't switch during a race but could during the initial start of a race.
  • Alternate streamer friendly music tracks: I'm the certified "World's #1 Biggest 765 Stadium Fan", but I definitely think every track with a non-streamer friendly music track should have an alternate streamer friendly track. Ideally, the streamer friendly track would be an alternate music track for people who aren't in streamer friendly mode as well.
  • Reimplement flipcam: I imagine there was a genuine reason for its removal given its absence despite being in both SRB2 and SRB2K, but I see no reason for it to not be here, especially given the wider array of accessibility options DRRR provides compared to those two.
  • Shorten Death Egg: I've already talked about it somewhat in the Spoiler section, but I really do think Death Egg might be the most egregious track in the game due to its immense length. I understand it is supposed to be the DRRR equivalent of an "ultimate final level", but it loses that initial "wow" factor the moment you try playing it more than once and immediately becomes an absolute slog. I think the best compromise in my mind would to be to take it from 12 laps to 8 laps, which would allow it to still be the longest track in the game. Ideally, the Giant Eggman Robo would now attack on Lap 4 and Lap 8 with Lap 4 featuring the hands attack and Lap 8 featuring the energy blast attack.
 
Kris M. said:
Some suggestions from some guy you don't know:

  1. Ability to manually set cpus in match races, to either show off custom characters (and even followers) or make certain challenges eaiser without having to reset tracks or use a 2nd player
  2. Unlockable Music for
    Daytona, Aurora Atoll and Blue Mountain that uses their OG tracks back in SRB2 Kart. (and selfish choice but Door Into Summer Classic Remix by Dr. Reverbnik for Isolated Island)
  3. Ability to use all items on either battle or race tracks, for complete chaos.
  4. Extend the time for when you activate a draggable item but don't get slowed down. I feel like this grace period is a little too small, maybe even change it depending on how powerful the item is.
  5. if a challege has been keyed and not completly naturally, change the grey shading on the white square to a more cyan shading
uhh idk azure city classic or lovely afternoon or soemthing idk im just a guy on the internet.
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I actually forgot about this and while I don't think it's a necessary addition I do have to admit the new track used for daytona just doesn't hit the same for me.
 
One suggestion I have that I put up in the gitlab is that we should have the ability to customize by pick and choose who would the bot be for Match Race

Something like this would actually be awesome to have since not only we have a TON of characters in vanilla but also character mods are a thing now so instead of GOD FORBID RNG they appear in match race after multiple RELOAD, we should atleast have the option to priortize what character appears.

This way not only it again destroy the hassle of reload every time but also gives people more option to customize their races. (like Play against multiple of the same character or race against ONLY custom characters.)
 
Just wanting to put in my own two cents on Death Egg after seeing other posts in here talk about it - on paper I LOVE the idea of a big gauntlet stage as this climactic setpiece in a kart racer, a track so big that the cup is shorter to accommodate it. But I feel like the dials are turned a little too high - it's a bit too long and a bit too tough and it ultimately feels unsuited to be a "regular" track. I would echo the comments about it feeling unsuited for online multiplayer. Death Egg is big enough to knock one track out of the cup, which would suggest it's double size, but the average completion time online in my experience is just under 10 minutes, and I'd say every other track wraps up in less than 3 minutes - it's more like triple size. This isn't even a knock against the track itself, it's honestly really cool... but it feels like something more suited to a story mode than something that should be at the end of a traditional cup or in the online rotation.

I do think Death Egg should be rethought, but I would also hate to see it go entirely. My suggestion would be to have the current Death Egg reworked to host some kind of boss race like something from Diddy Kong Racing, or turn it into a setpiece track tied to Special Stage completion like Radiant Emerald in Sonic R. Turn the course into a big standalone challenge and maybe beating it gives you a tastefully-animated Super palette. Then put it in:
the Special Lost & Found with Adventure Example, out of rotation but replayable.

Then maybe replace it in Egg Cup with a more traditional Death Egg track? Those are VERY lofty "ideas guy" suggestions that I don't expect to be done - but the track is so outside the norm, and I feel it would be better if handled as such. When it's treated as a regular track, I just don't feel it works. (Again - totally subjective though!)
 
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I thought I'd throw some initial suggestions I have currently.

Rival Customization:
I noticed it earlier from the GitHub that it was stated that characters can only have three rivals max, anything above that will never spawn those characters in a race. While three rivals is a decent number, being limited to that kinda sucks. I think that if a character has more than three, it should randomly pick three from that list to begin with, and then fill in the rest as racers get eliminated from the gp. Kinda like a Rival Queue in a ways. The queue should probably also be a random order of characters so it doesn't get too predictable. The idea of never racing certain characters is also quite interesting, so maybe characters could also have a no-show list of racers they'll never go up against? Could be a neat idea to add too, but mostly getting an increase in how many rivals a character can have would be ideal.

Cup Customization:
While the current cup set up is pretty good, it does feel kinda limiting on how it's set up currently. The current cup set up is based off how many rounds of which type are in the line up. It's decent for a basic set up, but the ability to kinda place where bonus rounds are in the list would be nice to have. It would be nice to have 5 maps and a bonus round, and be able to place the bonus round before the final race, instead of it being after the 3 round every time.

Custom Medals:
Back in SRB2Kart, I made ghost times for each of my courses and always thought it would be cool to attach a medal to the best times, and now with Ring Racers having more medals and saving progress on custom maps, I think it would give more incentive for mappers to include some ghost times to beat if players wanted an extra challenge. It would have to be optional to set up these medal times, but it would a nice extra for those who wanted to go the extra mile and give some more content. I know one of the issues that could come from this is ruining the base game progression, but the solution is fairly simple. Just have custom maps have a different medal type that doesn't add to the base game medal total. It could still add to a counter for a player to see how many custom map times they've conquered, but it wouldn't effect one's progression with the base game.

Vote gametype switch:
In SRB2Kart, battle mode was an option for a vote every so often and if it was picked, it would switch to battle, or vise versa with race if it was already in battle mode, but that isn't present in Ring Racers. Now that battle mode is way more crazy and fun in Ring Racers, I kinda miss the option for a battle mode switch to appear in rotation. It might be nice to have that as a server option where game modes can be voted on in a map voting pool for those who would want to play both Race and Battle. And maybe it could be open to have custom game modes utilize this switch as well so server hosts don't have to remember 50 different command lines just to switch to and from a certain game mode. For those who also don't wanna not get stuck on other game modes for too long, a "Return to Race mode" votable could also be added.

Color limit increase:
This is a small nitpick, but I can see some getting pretty tilted over this. The max colors are pretty small. The 100 base ones are good but the ability to make your own color palettes does wonders for custom characters, however you can only have a very few amount before they start overriding and glitching out the base 100. Figured and increase on this would be nice, and I think a bug still exists where adding custom colors can randomly reset your spray can collection to 0. I'm pretty sure it's already been reported on the Github though so I won't say too much on that.

Random Cup:
Dumb little idea to have a Grand Prix cup that only consists of randomly selected maps. Just thought it would be a fun idea to when you just wanna see what fate throws your way in a Grand Prix. Kinda like the All Cup Tour from Mario Kart Double Dash, but just 5 race maps and 2 prison rounds instead of every map, because that would be a little insane. It could also pull from custom maps too, but a way to restrict maps from the pool would also have to be added. Getting a free pass with something like the test map would be weird, or getting stuck in a tutorial map wouldn't be fun either since those don't have a normal finish line.

Anyways, wall of text over lol.
Ring Racers is a fun game.
 
Currently, the rival system in the grand prix feels frustrating and out of your control.
Attempting to hinder rivals feels meaningless, as frantic items will ensure that they catch up in little time, reducing the incentive of interacting with the rival and skewing item choice towards speed over attacking items.

An idea would be a mechanic where landing a hit on the rival or faulting them would temporarily weaken their rival buff and disable frantic items.
This would give an incentive towards attempting to combat and interact with the rival, more than trying to outrace an unstoppable force, giving control to the player.

There may be issues in practice though.
  • How would this be communicated to the player? - Maybe have the rival graphic change when the debuff is in effect?
  • How long should the debuff last? (depending on difficulty, item, course length) - Trapping items that hit by happenstance probably shouldn't reward a player for not purposely committing towards hindering the rival.
  • How should the debuff wear off? (gradually? instantly?) - Should the rival ease towards the front slowly, or burst in with a grow invin combo, re-establishing them as a threat? Can we even predict how the AI acts?
  • Would this complicate an already contentious feature? - Perhaps this is venturing into feature bloat territory, but this feels simple, hit someone and they stay down for a bit.
I like the idea for a rival but the implementation leaves me feeling like "This is your rival, they will cheat, you can only watch."
 
This is a recreation of a GitLab Issue i did.

some recent Ring Racer mods (Like Wumpa Cup) have been experimenting with more, well, experimental "Monitor" designs however due to the fact the game only uses the Square box shape for it's cups. it can cause the cup icon to look strange in some special cases.
flowerfail.png

A Rather simplistic solution to this would be to add a value that can be used to change this sprite to a different graphic like the Monitor and Cup Logo, and to prevent having to retroactively update all the previous cups, the square box outline can be used as the default, and will be applied if the value is empty or doesn't exist. This would mean that cup makers would have to make an empty sprite if they need to remove the outline. but it would still allow more flexibility to the cup icon designs.
FlowerWant.png

An example value could be something like this
CUPOUTLINE = CUPBOX
CUPOUTLINE = CUPCIR (for custom Circle asset shown in the example image)
or
CUPOUTLINE = CUPNON (for an example empty sprite)
 
Request for a specific server variable to be added, "Bot Quota"

This variable can be set to a value less than the current Max Player variable, and will fill the server with bots upto that player count taking other human players into account in the final value. This means on a server with a Bot Quota of 6 would have 6 bots, but as a player joins they remove the bot and replace them with themselves.
 
DukeofLeet said:
Request for a specific server variable to be added, "Bot Quota"

This variable can be set to a value less than the current Max Player variable, and will fill the server with bots upto that player count taking other human players into account in the final value. This means on a server with a Bot Quota of 6 would have 6 bots, but as a player joins they remove the bot and replace them with themselves.
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I am pretty sure this is already a thing
 
A couple of things, at least:
  • Rivals need to be more interesting to race against, not just more challenging. Right now Rivals are just harder CPUs that just cheat. That's not fun, and there's no meaningful counterplay against them, especially since players are incentivized to dispose of items at the earliest opportunity so they can use their ring boost (which I'll get to further down the list). If their only purpose is to make Grand Prix races harder, then screw that, just get rid of them entirely, Grand Prix races are hard enough as it is. They're not fun to race against.
  • The dynamic difficulty system can easily punish you for doing too well. I'm not sure if it's as bad as it used to be, but even on Intense difficulty doing well enough could cause the difficulty to spike beyond what the player is remotely expected to exceed at that difficulty level.
  • The ranking system feels like it's at odds with itself and the gameplay. It wants you to get as many rings as possible at the end of a race, but at the same time place as well as possible consistently across the entire race, especially when you're encouraged to burn as many rings as you can to race well. It doesn't help that quite often you'll have to sacrifice rings to scrape over the finish line in first when someone is rapidly catching up due to an item (usually the Rival being a cheating bastard as usual).
  • Either give the player the ability to use ring boost while holding items, or give them more incentive to hold on to them for strategic purposes, because right now items are more often than not a liability rather than an asset when you want to be ring boosting as often as possible.
  • Fast falling shouldn't bounce, or at least not as much. The bounce can slow you down in situations where you'd think fast falling would actually be a good idea when it turns out it's just better to fall normally, which discourages using fast falling outside of situations where you absolutely need to.
 
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I think there has to be a difference between saying "the rivals are overtuned" and "cut the rivals entirely." Rivals need to exist, I'd argue, because otherwise the Grand Prix system falls apart. If every CPU is equally skilled, their winrate against you is going to be evenly split, so no single rival is going to maintain a point lead ahead of you. Unless several are consistently beating you, which they shouldn't be, because the challenge of Grand Prix is to get first every race. So you need a singular CPU to be better than the rest
I don't think I even mind "that they cheat." Because how else would you have them be better? Just be even more competent? At that point, I figure you either stretch the limits of what the AI is capable of, or you're asking them to be Too perfect. If they rubberband in behind, they hypothetically will "cheat" when they're in back and you can't see it, but they'll ramp back down and be a reasonable fight when they're close enough for You to be the one doing the fighting.
Now, whether that pans out in practice is a different story, and all. But conceptually i think there's nothing wrong with having a singular CPU that rubberbands much more strongly. If anything, I think it's a courtesy that the game will point out to you exactly who it is. Without Rivals to threaten your win, either Everyone will be constantly hot on your heels, or No One will be.
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Having some way to save replays of failed grand prix attempts would be great. If I have a clip I really want to save as a replay, but I get below 4th, it becomes impossible to save. It acts like I can save it, it lets me set a name and everything, but when I go to my replays it just saves the winning attempt under that name. So right now it's impossible to save replays of grand prix attempts that lead to a Try Again
 
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Candescence said:
The dynamic difficulty system can easily punish you for doing too well. I'm not sure if it's as bad as it used to be, but even on Intense difficulty doing well enough could cause the difficulty to spike beyond what the player is remotely expected to exceed at that difficulty level.
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Part of the problem with the dynamic difficulty is that, for reasons I'm not sure, doing well in the prison break also increments it. Maybe to make getting to the sealed stars harder? But it feels a bit unfair at times and I don't think it should do this.

Candescence said:
The ranking system feels like it's at odds with itself and the gameplay. It wants you to get as many rings as possible at the end of a race, but at the same time place as well as possible consistently across the entire race, especially when you're encouraged to burn as many rings as you can to race well. It doesn't help that quite often you'll have to sacrifice rings to scrape over the finish line in first when someone is rapidly catching up due to an item (usually the Rival being a cheating bastard as usual).
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I haven't personally found it too unreasonable to get an A Rank. Difficult, sure, but totally achievable. It helps that a perfect score is not required, I don't know the specific minutiae but I have definitely had many races where, say, I didn't finish with 20 rings, and I still got an A. It probably works on some sort of internal points system based on the combined total lap and ring bonus to determine your rank.

Candescence said:
Either give the player the ability to use ring boost while holding items, or give them more incentive to hold on to them for strategic purposes, because right now items are more often than not a liability rather than an asset when you want to be ring boosting as often as possible.
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Tyron has already gone into detail about why this likely won't happen:
Tyron said:
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.
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Candescence said:
Fast falling shouldn't bounce, or at least not as much. The bounce can slow you down in situations where you'd think fast falling would actually be a good idea when it turns out it's just better to fall normally, which discourages using fast falling outside of situations where you absolutely need to.
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I half agree with this because while it does feel unsatisfying to use, there is at least one course built around the mechanic (Pestilence) and I actually really like its use there; driving off of a ramp and timing the fast fall to bounce off of a sneaker panel to not fall out of the course is really fun and satisfying, and I don't think you'd be able to accomplish it in quite the same way if it didn't have that bounce recoil like some server mods have removed. It makes me wish there were more courses that more obviously made use of the mechanic in this manner instead of most courses having long vertical drops that you fast fall down without much going on. Not a lot that can be done about though in vanilla outside of major track overhauls, but something for map makers to keep in mind.

EDIT: I wanted to make some additional comments about Rings and Items being mapped together but completely forgot to so I'll do so at the bottom here.

As I've seen another person point out elsewhere, one thing a lot of people fail to recognize is that the way the item system works in tandem with the ring system is meant to tie into KK's general desire for player expression (as well as avoid toxic play as Tyron mentioned). This is exemplified best imo by the changes to how the item roulette works (one of my personal favorite improvements coming from both SRB2K and Mario Kart in general). As an example, If you're frontrunning and you happen to becoming up to a wall of item boxes, you have a few different options you can choose to go with depending on your preference:
  • Attempt to weave through the boxes, as many of them have gaps large enough that you could probably slip by, though I wouldn't personally recommend it since it's very difficult to do (in a hypothetical scenario where you aren't frontrunning this is probably easier as you can either go for a greyed out item box or ring box).
  • Assuming you either attempted the previous point and failed or just want to play this way, you can alternatively accept the item box and toss it out as soon as you want. This is what most people seem to do, and though not ideal, it gets you back to chugging rings as soon as you can, and puts something on the track, however small, that other racers now must watch out for.
  • You can choose to roll for an offensive item, aiming for something offensive while knowing that you may be at a disadvantage should you come to a steep slope or just a long straight, with the tradeoff that if you can use your item properly, it may protect you from an incoming danger you'd otherwise be unable to avoid like a Jawz, or spinout the guy in 2nd gunning for your position. Obviously this is the riskiest option either way, and can fuck you over royally should things go wrong, but is immensely satisfying if you can pull it off, potentially giving you an even greater lead advantage than some of these other options.
  • The Super Ring is an item a lot of people forget exists, probably because it's exclusive to first and most people in that position are trying to forgo items for actual rings, but is actually a very viable option. It's a free 20 rings that you can use to boost ahead, so item boxes are not exclusively something one needs to get rid of immediately and can even be used to your advantage. They even have increased odds during an SPB chase which helps since being in that scenario prevents pickup of rings in the field.
While I personally prefer to use a mix of options 2 and 4, any one of these scenarios mentioned can be viable ways to pull ahead and it's all dependent on player expression how you choose which one to go with.
 
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On release I thought the bounce was frustrating and also felt it should be removed, but the patch to add the direction change mechanic to it completely changed my mind on it - it's a satisfying course correction tool now, and I think the bounce works in that context. For simply reaching the ground faster, I tend to use the midair mini-turbo boost (I'm not calling it a Triangle Dash...) anyway, and that's also a really fun technique to pull off - especially in stages such as Labyrinth, or on stages like Blizzard Peaks with the half-pipe turn.

I do think a name change would make sense though - just call it the bounce instead of the fast fall. Given it's more than likely supposed to be a Melee nod like several other mechanic names are - fast falling in Melee is *genuinely* faster, whereas the fall part here is, but not in the grand scheme of things.
 
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Right, I got a few off the top of my head;

1: Move Ring Bonus to the screen after the per-map letter grade. People still think its required for ranks on a per-map basis, while held rings only factor into continues and bonus points toward the final level grade. Moving it to the next screen and depositing them into the Total Rings tally would help people prioritize lap placement, since that's actually the only factor for per-course ranks from what I've seen.

2: I think CPUs above Vicious difficulty should randomize their colors and be given random followers you unlocked/added. Not only is it a nice visual change of pace, it gives you more opportunities to see your large collection of followers.

3: Speaking of visual changes, unless I missed it, is there really no cup difficulty that sets Encore mode? I've barely played Encore at all, and it seems like a bit of a waste of a cool feature. I have yet to see it come up in a netgame I didn't host and enable for the heck of it. It's practically exclusive to a certain spoiler and that's it.
 
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D00D64 said:
1: Move Ring Bonus to the screen after the per-map letter grade. People still think its required for ranks on a per-map basis, while held rings only factor into continues and bonus points toward the final level grade. Moving it to the next screen and depositing them into the Total Rings tally would help people prioritize lap placement, since that's actually the only factor for per-course ranks from what I've seen.
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Is this actually true? I know it seemed that that rings don't seem to weigh as heavily in determining your rank but do they really not impact it at all?
 
Haven't been able to find info on if this is possible or not so I'm gonna assume this for now till I can confirm it and figure out if this post should stay.
Custom Prizes from the prize catcher in custom special stages
Map makers could change what prize you get from the catcher and change all icons relating to prizes in the respective cup from a yellow emerald/plus sign to actual prize icons. Gives more incentive to collect the prizes in custom cups rather than be a Rank Up bonus for S Ranks.

The second page of cups could retroactively get prizes this way.
There could also be animated prizes, re textured capsules, or even gift box opening animations if you want to boost the mystery of the prizes that use this feature.
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D00D64 said:
2: I think CPUs above Vicious difficulty should randomize their colors and be given random followers you unlocked/added. Not only is it a nice visual change of pace, it gives you more opportunities to see your large collection of followers.
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This does reduce the cannon event effect so I would put more thought into it, but I like the direction. I think having custom Rivals sometimes appear as an unlock based on other profiles or friends (through a button to save their profile character as Rivals) would be great. Just don't pick from profiles with no custom colors or pets in case those are for control schemes like how I have my game set up.
D00D64 said:
3: Speaking of visual changes, unless I missed it, is there really no cup difficulty that sets Encore mode? I've barely played Encore at all, and it seems like a bit of a waste of a cool feature. I have yet to see it come up in a netgame I didn't host and enable for the heck of it. It's practically exclusive to a certain spoiler and that's it.
Click to expand...
I think I had that appear in my mind for a second before I forgot. Thanks for covering it. I would love to see an Encore difficulty, even if it works for all difficulties or just Vicious/Master.
 
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Rolly Polly Pal said:
Is this actually true? I know it seemed that that rings don't seem to weigh as heavily in determining your rank but do they really not impact it at all?
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ringracers0601.png
ringracers0603.png


Unless it impacts the ranks below, not at all. Lap placement is all that matters. You know when you pass a lap, it gives you a thumbs down, thumbs up, or OK hand? That is what determines your rank. I believe, at least on a 3 Lap course, you need all OK hands to get an A. Lap Bonus is simply the results screen's hint at what you got, with OK hands being worth 2, and Thumbs Up being worth 1.

My results may be skewed here because its not a full cup, but I was able to get an S while only having 1 in Total Rings, and not even getting all As because my rival took 2nd on the last lap of the last course. Heck, the hint for special stages covers Ranks, so I don't even know if rings factor into getting to the special stage at all.

ringracers0602.png

But because folks equate the Lap Bonus with their ranks, they believe the Ring Bonus factors into ranks as well, when literally only lap ranks matter on a per course basis. My best guess is that rings can help pick up your slack on other methods of score, like lesser ranks, continue penalties, or partial bonus stages. If you play well enough in all of these, Ring Bonus is simply another means to gain continues, especially if you need them for the Special Stage.

...Though, I haven't done any code digging, so I can't say for sure. These are just my thoughts on it.
 
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