Four Months of Warnings: Why 0.30.1 Killed Tricklining, and How to Fix it.

Difficult to replicate accidentally doesn't mean they existed in a vacuum. The pop glitches were symptoms of other issues that *did* affect normal skating and needed to be fixed. If they really didn't affect everyone else's gameplay I'd be here shouting with you to bring them back, but they literally just fixed bonelesses. They needed fixed.

the pop glitches OP is referencing added a lot of fun while remaining balanced for really cool lines. The dark slide pop glitch requires opening a menu, which breaks the fluidity of skating entirely. Most games don't actively support their exploits as they take away from the immersion, but the Skate franchise is in-part alive due to the wonky mechanics and glitches especially in Skate 3 which skate. is closest in resemblance to. 

What we want is less of a "add glitches back!" and more-so "we like what that exploit ADDED to the game, even if unintentionally" and there is a real community of thousands of folks who enjoyed using them, learned them, and implemented them into their skating style. Pop glitches can be reintroduced not as an exploit to be taken advantage of but instead a mechanic for players who want to push their skating past what realistic skating can offer, if they so choose. As OP said, these exploits were near IMPOSSIBLE to replicate accidentally and don't impact gameplay for realistic skaters. 

These aren't 'bugs' we're attached to, it's an entire style of playing that's completely outside of and separate from a realistic playstyle and has been in the game already coexisting with realistic players since skate 3, what I meant by the gameplay not improving for realistic players without pop mechanics wasn’t that the animation improvements were pointless, I'm saying that your gameplay did not change now that pop mechanics specifically as a whole has been nerfed and patched out, they already have gameplay toggles but if a legacy toggle isn't viable then it would still be viable to find a way to add pop mechanics into the existing animations that we already have and ones in the feature. 

Those were not random bugs, people who prefer flashy tricklining have to go out of their way to learn and build the muscle memory for learning the tech that makes tricklining possible, like pop mechanics, the animation improvement aside (which we don't have an issue with), realistic players did not run into a problem of always accidentally tuck knee popping, they have no reason to attempt a trick like that because they would reasonably assume that would make them fall. Keep the animation improvements but find a way to also implement trickling tech into the game and keep it, it's a lot easier said than done to simply tell trickliners learn the new glitch and move on, that’s not fun at all or realistic, it takes people hours, days and even weeks to consistently build the muscle memory required for learning the viable tech that makes that playstyle possible and it's completely demoralizing to the people who put that time in for something that wasn't a problem for anyone else, to now be expected to start all over and learn something else even though the current pop mechanic (darkside pop) is not a good replacement to everything we lost, how do we know the new mechanic won't eventually get patched out either and replaced with something worse again? If they had found a way to keep pop mechanics in for the 0.30.1 patch everyone would be happy right now, unless the devs specifically say how the game is intended to be played it is not on anyone else to tell others what the intended way is, it's a sandbox game, there’s no reason to push out people with a different playstyle that doesn't affect yours just because you simply prefer a different one, what you see as broken mechanics there’s a separate community who don't see it that way and rely on those mechanics to have fun. Those mechanics we're enjoyed by people who don't even consider themselves to be trickliners, it was a fun and optional/deliberate mechanic that we lost and keeping that out of the game benefits no one.

The toggle was just a suggestion, ideally it would make more sense to find a way to implement those mechanics back into the existing animations or create new ones.

I don't think it's a reasonable ask for them to reintroduce bugs for trickliners even under a separate toggle because there will always be more bugs with every update as they finalize the game.

Nailed it. The game is in active development and the controls will continue to change as new tricks and features are added; they cannot have a legacy switch because old controls would be incompatible with future feature sets.

Moreover, it would likely mess with server physics computations. Remember: the calculations are all cloud based, not local. That’s likely why we have no customisation for things like truck tightness and wheel hardness.

I don't want it to be the only way to play, but it's the intended way to play so that's what has to come first while the game is in development. I don't think it's a reasonable ask for them to reintroduce bugs for trickliners even under a separate toggle because there will always be more bugs with every update as they finalize the game. The whole tricklining style relies on exploits so it doesn't make sense to me to get attached to them in a game in active development, why not just learn the new exploits and move on?

I get what you're saying, and both styles are hard and have a very hard ceiling. The specific thing about tricklining is that the high mechanical, APM difficulty playstyle has existed for a decade and has a large community and history behind it, just like the realistic skating community. It may not have been "viral" on everyone's feeds, but the tricklining community does drive lots of engagement and has had a large part in giving the series an ACTIVE playerbase between the release of 3 and skate..

Your gameplay might have changed but the tricklining style was heavily nerfed. The skate team is fully aware of how exploits and glitches keep the game alive for all players, given the pseudo re-launch of Skate 3 during Youtuber Era bringing in fans who thought the glitches and exploits made for fun gameplay. These exploits were apart of the gameplay for almost half a year and the dev team knew that, so it isn't unreasonable to ask for them back without affecting the main game, if what has been changed is intended for the casual experience and realistic skating. 

Please remember that we are NOT asking to remove, change, or even nerf realistic skating. What is really selfish and weird is for you to try and holier than thou your way into having realistic skating being the only option and only playstyle that can be happy or upset with gameplay changes. 

You're entirely missing my point. I'm not saying realistic skating is harder than tricklining, and I don't think tricklining is harder than good realistic style. It's foolish to call tricklining "high skill gameplay" because it belittles the hard work realistic skaters put into their play, spending hours trying to get a perfect line and then another hour clipping and editing the footage. They're both high-skill ceiling styles of play, realistic just has a lower skill floor meaning you can just pop in as a beginner and hit a line with assists and it'll look decent because that's what the game is built for. There are a lot of high-skill techniques that I guarantee trickliners don't have access to "if they feel like chilling". They're both difficult, you just value the skills you use more than the skills we use. I don't have any interest in tricklining because I think it's boring and looks bad but at least I'm not out here inferring it's low skill and could do it if i felt like getting sweaty. Different goals, different practice, different skills.

Re: your weird social media claim, if watching tricklining videos is what kept the game alive for you that's great, but that doesn't make it the lifeblood of the game. You just didn't watch the creators putting out realistic style skate videos and that's fine. A lot of them also moved on to SkaterXL and Session before "skate." because they had more to offer their playstyle after Skate 3.

Also my gameplay did change in the recent update because so many glitches were removed. They said from the beginning that they wouldn't remove bugs that people were enjoying unless they were also affecting intended gameplay and I think they've stuck to that. They had to remove the tuck knee pop to make bonelesses function as intended, same with the judo plant pop glitch. They also introduced several other glitches that you can play with, but expecting a broken game to stay broken because you got used to it is selfish and weird.

I understand what you’re getting at but I don’t think it's fair or productive to compare the two playstyles like that, which isn’t what we’re trying to do, I have nothing against realistic players and I support the people who prefer that playstyle and definitely respect the ones who are good at it, those 2 playstyles already proved they can coexist thanks to skate 3, they’re just two different styles of playing and the skill ceiling for the both of them are nowhere near each other.
Most of the people who prefer tricklining can also switch to a realistic style if they choose as a way to chill, but most of the people who prefer a realistic playstyle can’t just simply switch to a flashy tricklining playstyle. I don't think that makes either one of them better than the other, they just require practice with different skillsets like you said, your gameplay did not change with the removal of pop mechanics, but it drastically did for everyone outside that realistic playstyle, no one wins in that which is why implementing it back in generally is a win for the community.

The reason the tricklining community 'keeps the game alive' isn't a conceit, it’s a decade of data. That community kept Skate 3 active on social media for years because high-skill, complex lines provide a 'spectacle' that naturally draws in viewers even those who don't play the game. Even after EA stopped supporting skate 3, the tricklining community remained the main community that still plays it to this day, proving that mechanical depth is the primary driver of the franchise's longevity.

Removing that creative and mechanical depth isn't just a blow to one 'niche' it’s a reduction of the game's overall longevity to the community they claim to listen to, this is more of a point to highlight that they’re not really listening to the community right now, and if the game still is ‘alive’ after pushing the tricklining community out that still doesn’t justify pushing them out, what good does lowering the skill ceiling do for either playstyle? Supporting both ensures everyone wins and keeps the game fun for everyone.

Again, you just value those skills differently. I'm not saying tricklining is low skill, but you're the only ones saying its the only high-skill gameplay. There's still a high skill ceiling for realism even if the barrier for entry is lower. I just don't understand the conceit that your style of play is somehow keeping the game alive.

That’s exactly the point. It’s not about one style being 'better' than the other, it’s about the mechanical depth that allows for that level of execution. Skill expression is what gives a game its 'endgame' and long-term replayability. Supporting both playstyles through a toggle or restored mechanics ensures the game remains a true sandbox for everyone, rather than a rigid and restrictive experience for some, lowering the skill ceiling only hurts the game, there are many other skating games that go more in depth with the realism and if they’re going to cater to that specific playstyle there already is better options for that, no one gains anything from taking out pop mechanics but a sizable chunk of the community loses its reason to keep coming back without them. Flashy tricklining has always been a very big part of the skate community, they can't claim to listen to the community while actively alienating it for no reason.
Tricklining is very deliberate and optional, no one is forced to do that but EA is forcing everyone into a realistic playstyle.