I've been detached from the community for a long time now, and I had not been keeping up with Kart Krew development at all. So seeing Ring Racers be shadow dropped yesterday was a huge surprise! Hopefully, because I've been removed from the wider community, my impressions without any pre-concieved biases and expectations can be of some help. (Seeing how some people are worked up in this thread and the
Kart Krew EXE mod thread, maybe it could have been called Ring Ragers. Dohohoho)
I have a lot of thoughts on this release, and I want to present them in a more constructive way because I think this game is
REALLY good, I'm having a blast playing this, but I'd love to see it be even better still. And seeing that there's no official Ring Racer thread on the MB, I suppose here will have to do. (I understand most conversation happens on the Discord servers these days, but this forum is still a better place for the average user to post some thoughts without it being immediately drowned out by a dozen one-sentence messages imo)
Some day 2 impressions, after playing the game, sleeping on my thoughts and playing it some more.
- Overall, this game is fantastic and I'm having a blast. I need to emphasize that whatever else I say, I think this release rules.
- The tutorial is really cute and I love how it's presented. But it's egregiously long while still leaving gaps in my knowledge. I've done a few cups and I have no idea why I keep seeing sparkle-tethers connect racers as an example. Maybe the tutorial would be better served by spreading it out between cups? I certainly didn't need to know about trick pads before being allowed to play the game at all for example, but I would have appreciated that info later.
I also think the player should just be asked if they want to do the tutorial, then be given a simple YES/NO option. Some players will skip the tutorial and be frustrated by mechanics or controls they don't understand, but I think that's a worthy trade off to getting players into the game faster if they really want to. The tutorial as it stands is a genuinely quite tall barrier to entry, I have friends I would love to play this online with and I know they would show up ready to play in my discord voice call at the right time- and only then start the tutorial and hold everything up for 30 minutes at minimum. Which is a huge downer on a game night with friends. I'm aware that you can skip the tutorial by completing an optional race, but even that is a skill check which I think many players would prefer to meet by just playing games and talking to their friends as they do so. I completely understand why the tutorial is mandatory, but I really do think you should be willing to potentially let the player make mistakes by skipping the tutorial.
- This also applies to loading addons! Players should be allowed to just load them without an unlock requirement as well. If things break, then you will just have to trust a player to know that this is because of an addon. Completing 4 cups is a very tall requirement to letting people play as their favourite character they downloaded from the MB if they just installed fresh and that's the reason they even got the game, for example!
- I get the idea behind unlocking customization by making the player collect spray cans and unlock characters. But at minimum, I do think all the basic colors (the ones available in the tutorial, where you can only pick one) should have been available by default. Leaving extra characters as unlocks is fine though. I love being surprised by some of these picks when I see the CPU use them in races. However, I would love to have a clearer idea of how to unlock specific characters! I think a menu where I can see a list of the unlockable characters with their unlock requirements would be very welcome. For example, I assume Charmy Bee is in this game and I would love to unlock him- but I would like to know how so I have a goal I can target.
- On the topic of unlocks, I was hugely surprised the first time I found a special stage and got my first chaos emerald. I was not expecting anything like that, and I genuinely want to see what I unlock for getting all the Chaos Emeralds. Is it a new cup? A playable super sonic? (Well, given how Eggman and Tails this game is focused, a hyper tails might be more appropriate), but I don't know and it's an exciting mystery to uncover.
- Speaking of the CPU, these CPU racers are exceptionally well made. Whoever programmed them at KartKrew has done a fantastic job. I wouldn't say I'm great at Kart so I don't know how they hold up against the best players, but they're definitely racing neck and neck with me the entire time. They're a good challenge without feeling unfair and that's no small feat.
- More than anything else, I'm excited to just play more of this on my own and online with whoever happens to have a lobby open, but it's very hard for me to recommend to friends to play with them for a one-off game night because of the requirements to unlock online play. And that's genuinely a bummer.
I imagine things might be quite heated in the KartKrew discord server after this release, but please don't be disheartened. I think this release is great, just with a few rough edges that can be sanded down in the opening moments of the game. Then you can all take a very, very, well-deserved break.
Edit: I've since been told there are passwords to skip the tutorial and online play unlock requirements. But these aren't really appropriate either, as they require access to friends who know them to even learn about them. Which presumably also means assumed access to the SRB2 discord servers. Please remember that most players just won't be looking there, especially not when they've picked up the game for the first time.