general playtest review and discussion

Hey all, 

longtime ea skate fan, and i wanted to submit a playtest review with a couple critical ideas for the future. i wrote this as a message to devs but sharing here as i think theres lots to discuss and also interested what other people think. sorry for the stream-of-consiousness/sloppy writing but here we go:

skate insider ideas

pin daily/weekly tasks so they can be visible while skating. while the pop up alerts are helpful, they dont come up consistently and i found myself checking to see my progress over and over when trying to get them completed.

starting challenges bugs. sometimes i've started a challenge and it fails to begin, doesnt allow the pause menu to start, and while i can skate around, ui elements are missing and i just have to restart the game to fix it.

nose/tail bonk/tap mechanics.
a mechanic for nose bonks and tail taps. one idea would be say holding LB and nose or tail manual while in the air, if you come close enough to something below you, it would do a tail/nose tap animation. close enough that you wouldnt normally land on it, if you land you would do a manual, but airing just above something while holding that control, you could tap it with nose or tail respectively. doing so while grabbing would be awesome too if the mechanics were made properly

underflips from skate three were never that satisfying tbh i could do without them if it leaves space for other skate mechanics added 

footplants feel too slow, i think those need more refinement, felt better in skate 3 than in skate.

map content! i imagine that something like this is planned but i feel theres a real lack of steep/hilly areas, an SF style street area was in skate 2, and skate 3 had lots of hills to bomb, even like a mountain road. would love to see the return of hills to bomb and general big zones. the big ramps on top of buildings are cool, but the danny way parks are iconic to skate and should make a return, if under a different name. but massive vert/transition parks, fun tracks, should absolutely make a return. 

more on spots

its awesome to see the 4th and narrows make a return, china banks and other real life spots, but some parks that i feel should be revitalized from the past would be awesome. i.e. sanitorium ditch, black box park, slappys, the "hidden" skatepark from skate3's dlc centered around skate 2, maloof money cup (maybe a street league park in its place as a competition street park), x games mega park, university ditch, skate 2's dam, skate 3 quarry, dannys mega ramp, danny Hawaiian dream was amazing, fantasy factory and LA Ditch, more pools! improved pools! sidenote, to me the transition and vert physics feel off, hard to explain how, i know the mechanics of LS up or down to get on top of coping with or without air, but it doesnt feel like it works consistently enough, sometimes throwing the character way way off at mach speed, i feel theres some physics that need to be ironed out, also pumping feels way weird. i want to blast giant kickflip back tails with precisision.

theres so so much that skate. is doing right, it will be awesome to see how it evolved and changes. my first impressions of the game briefly are that you nailed the physics and animations for fliptricks, the map feels small and limited compared to past games although as i play more, i am still discovering new spots, and thirdly that while lootbox/microtransactions feel like a necessary evil, they will promote continued development of the game which is very exciting, that being said the process of unlocking things is extremely tedious. opening each box ten times, and watching a congratulations animation ten times, etc etc is really monotonous and frankly just patronizing. add a qol feature to disable unlock animations, or maybe let people buy the box in full to unlock all of it at once. when i save up 2-3k in svb, i dont want to watch 20 animations just to unlock cosmetics, id rather just dump the points and get a bunch of it at once. 

more free clothes and customization options would be nice too, being able to save body changes like you can save outfits,  tattoos, hair colors, more hairstyles, piercings would be sick. also SHAPED DECKS! MASSIVE POTENTIAL THERE, even if the animations/foot positions were left as they are, having the ability to ride shaped boards, or even wheels of different shapes, would be sooooo sick. in real life boards come so different from each other. same way skate three had a tattoo placement mechanic, you could have like "stencils" for putting grip tape art on, like stickers but that you could hand place, and honestly stickers should be allowed to be hand placed too. 

also being an mmo style game, having more things to do with people online would be sick, proximity chat would go super hard but also i'd understand reasons if you chose not to include it, an indoor community hub would be sick. what if there was a massive indoor warehouse location where you could meetup with people to skate with, or if there were like a bunch of big tvs, you could put skate clips on. or like a system of saving skate clips together into compilations with music, that could then be shared on those big screens at the community hub. community hub could also have like leaderboards, competitions etc etc.

i will also say that when compared to previous skate games, it lacks a connection to true skateboard culture, where are the pros? even the short films at the intros of skate 1&2 were sooo incedibly charming. i'd understand the inability to pull off something that sick, but to have more nods to modern skate culture would be awesome, dime glory is a great example, do street league, do thrasher, do florida swamp fest, do DIY skateparks, do mega ramps, do vans pool series, do central park NY street scene, watch some dang epicly latered and put some more of the rich culture of skateboard into the dang skateboarding game.

 all that being said, it feels like a success with a lot of potential and im excited to see where it evolves, but unfortunately im skeptical as ive been let down by video games time and time again. hope it works out well for a long time as it seems you are aiming for it to.

hope some devs read this and put your ideas below, locations, skate mechanics, customization, quality of life improvements, bugs, etc etc.