About Spot Battles

Hi there,

Thanks for taking the time to share your feedback and suggestions around Spot Battles.

I’ve moved the thread from Bug Reports to General Discussion, as the points raised here are more focused on general feedback and suggestions for the mode rather than a specific bug.

We appreciate you sharing your feedback with us!

Check this out.

As spot battles will be categorised as throwdowns when they're allowed to be placed anywhere, so anyone nearby with this setting enabled (Found in Social category) will be invited to your spot battle, and vice versa. So matchmaking is already going to be available at S5 launch.

A standardised spot battle control system is just not a good idea imo. The whole idea of Skate is that people play it how they want. If you're choosing to make the game harder for yourself, that's your own choice. Playing with assists off gives you greater control over your skater and actually gives you the advantage over people with the training wheels (Auto-Revert, Pump assist and Grind assist) on.

I agree about the finger flip spam - it is a bit much. The bit about glitches though, I'm sorry to break it to you but it's just not something that the game can police. For one, Spot battles are a social activity and not a competitive mode, there's nothing on the line and it's purely just for fun. The mode is fundamentally unbalanceable, it's been like that since the original Skate and that's definitely not changing here. 

People have to leave or go AFK for any multitude of reasons, and as rounds are only 15-30 seconds long, the harm is minimal and I don't agree with punishing people for that. You'd end up waiting the same amount of time if someone didn't bail on their run

Hope this helps

I’ve played every game in the Skate series. In Skate 2, my highest achievement was reaching 12th place in the world in Spot Battle rankings. I was consistently near the top of the weekly rankings and took 1st place many times. In the current Skate, I’ve also taught my techniques to more than 20 other players — and of course, I’ve always done so using the hardest settings.

In Skate 1 and Skate 2, the control settings for Spot Battles were standardized, so everyone competed under the same conditions. That created a fair and competitive environment.

However, as you said, the current Spot Battle system has very little competitive integrity. But isn’t a “Battle” supposed to be a competition? 😂 And there’s a “Daily Rank,” right? Isn’t that also a form of competition? 😂

I do recommend playing on the hardest settings in the current Skate. But that’s because, even on the hardest settings, the controls feel fairly close to Skate 2 to me. I don’t find them particularly difficult. Of course, that’s partly because I’ve been playing these games for a very long time.

I’ve put a lot of time and effort into practicing and improving my skills in this Skate as well. But I still can’t compete with players using the Easy settings. 😂 The reason is simple: assists can make many of the techniques I spent so much time practicing much easier to perform, while certain glitches or exploits specific to the easier settings can produce even higher scores with very little effort.

Sure, you could say, “Just play however you want and have fun.” But is that really satisfying in a competitive mode?

I want more people to discover the depth of this game and continue playing it. Every sport and every competitive game has rules and limitations for a reason. Those rules create the challenge, and that challenge is what makes competition exciting.

I genuinely want this game to become more popular and have a stronger community. We’ve waited 16 years for this. 😂

That’s why I want Spot Battles to feel like a real battle again — something that is exciting not only for the players competing, but also for the people watching.

Please give us a competitive environment where skill, practice, and creativity actually matter.

Sure, it created a fair and competitive environment but it didn't actually create an environment for creativity. And yes, if your sole concern is with getting the most points, a spot 'battle' is a competition then. But you don't actually get anything from it, the daily rankings are fleeting and should just be something done for fun.  

When a thing is a competition, winning is the ultimate goal. If winning can only be accomplished through cheese (which it absolutely always will be the case in this game) nobody's going to enjoy it. The competitive integrity on a sliding scale can either be a zero, in which people just do what they want and the focus is on how the time is used. Or, it can be a ten, where the best point-scorer is the winner and everyone else is below the winner. 

I'm not sure what kind of spot battles you've gone through but every player I've played against on the assisted settings (Hesitate to call them easier, IMO assists just make the game simpler not easier) has not been very good at the game, and because they don't know they're relying on assists, there's layers to the game they just can't break through. They're trivial to beat and easy to spot. 

Sure, you could say, “Just play however you want and have fun.” But is that really satisfying in a competitive mode?

Doesn't it kind of highlight the issue when the mode itself has essentially no competitive integrity, makes you watch each skater's run to completion or til' bail, and you're still viewing it as a competition? Like you're still thinking about the time you got 12th on a leaderboard 15+ years ago, it doesn't sound like there's any room inside you for something new and enjoyable.

tl;dr All the best skaters I know from the community don't play spot battles, they go out and innovate the game on their own terms. Spot battles are just a bit of fun. If winning was all that mattered, everyone would do their run at the same time for three rounds. But you're forced to sit and watch someone else play because the whole idea is to watch and be watched.