Thoughts on current online scene
Posted: Wed Jul 17, 2019 9:09 pm
I've played Re-Volt online for a few months already and there is also a friend of mine which I've been trying to encourage playing with me as well. It's cool that now you maintain a schedule of races and try to get people together, it was really missing a few years ago, but there are a couple of issues I wanna mention:
- High entry level for new players
This is what's keeping my friend from playing online and leaves a bad taste on me as well. Most of the time I'm coming 12-14, but on open and smooth tracks I'm ending up 8th with the same effort. This leads us to the following: - There should be more open tracks
There are many great open and fast-paced tracks in a wild like White Rose Chapel we've played today (it's one of my favorite). But the current track pack contains many narrow tracks with sharp turns and lots of obstacles (including tiny ones along the walls). Many of them have a lot of ridiculously stupid reposition points, placing you in some corner in completely random direction.
These are hardly suitable for fast cars because of high speed and not enough game FOV to see ahead. Such tracks should be played mostly on low-to-mid cars, leaving fast cars for open and fast-paced tracks, so we could fight more with each other and less with the track itself. It will also lead to more competition and much tighter races; - Amount of players
I should say that 16 players in a single room is definitely an overkill. Total mayhem at the start, oil is everywhere; there is not enough pick-ups for the second half as well.
Probably there would be better to have 2 rooms by 8-10 players, giving people more space to race; - Repetitiveness
It feels like we play the same tracks. I think I've seen all of the track during these months, but some tracks are played almost every day and some of them I've seen only 1 or 2 times. And this leads to the next issue: - Track selection
Track pack consists mostly of the same tracks with only a few changes every 2-3 months. Probably there would be better to have a smaller selection of tracks, but replace them completely every 2-3 months.
Select half of the tracks to be wide and open, suitable for fast cars and new players. Maybe add some more variety as well, like some of the great extreme lego track out there.