Honest Feedback (update)
The game is not good, but it can still be saved. I have several grievances about Skate. ranging from objective to subjective issues. I’m going to start with objective issues:
The flick-it system is deteriorating. I’ve posted about this before, so long-story-short I had had trouble with the Nollie Varial Flip and Nollie Hard Flip consistently registering as Nollie Kickflips, Nollie 360 Flips, and Nollie 360 Shove-its. The comments reported players being able to replicate the issue, meaning it wasn’t just me, that was very vindicating.
Latency is increasing. This could very much be a me-problem, but just in case, I’ve noticed the latency between input and animation increasing. It feels like a full half second now.
Game breaking glitches. Although rare, the game sometimes thinks I'm entering/exiting a challenge... forever. The HUD completely disappears, I can't interact with anything, nor pull any menus down, but I can still move, skate, and do tricks. Requires resting the game to fix.
Now for the subjective issues:
You stopped listening. And I’m not talking about the big changes like adding an offline mode or featuring pro-skaters, I’m talking about the little changes like adding good music, optimizing the shop, fixing the art style, and adding desired game modes (S.K.A.T.E. and Death Races).
The game lacks culture. I’m sure you’ve heard the cries time-and-time again, but it's true, this game lacks true skate culture. With just Vee’s dialog alone players could tell this game wasn’t made for them, it was curated for kids. But you also have issues with the game's overall art style, it looks like something out of Fortnite, and the music does not match what we expected to hear (I can understand you may have licensing issues to deal with, so I’m not too butt-hurt about the music).
The shop system is way off. First, cycling items every few days makes no sense, it doesn’t resonate with any IRL store I’ve ever been in, and most importantly it doesn’t motivate players to log back in. Let me explain: if you want players to have reasons (plural) to log back in, cycle the gameplay, not the system. When I log back in I want to think “what fun new challenges await for me today”, not “what useless new item I can spend my real money on today”. It just makes you sound greedy and slimy. Second, just optimize it already, give us a catalog that we can filter. Skateboard>Deck>Girl or Accessories>T-shirts>Generic. If you want to force show us items that require real money in this type of cataloging, fine, just give us this.
The map feels small. Every time I talk about the Skate.'s map, I mentioned Skate 1 and 2’s map, because their maps were longer/taller. Skate.'s map is equally as wide as it is long, which makes it feel small because the time spent to travel/skate from one end to another can’t vary. Furthermore, the lack of length also prevents the ‘natural development’ of hills. I hope one day we have Death Races again, and if you agree but are having trouble developing the challenge, IT'S BECAUSE THE GAME DOESN’T HAVE ANY HILLS!
Whose idea was it to add a seasonal currency? Literally no one asked for that. It just made the game more busy (mechanical and spiritually) for no reason. Here’s an idea: keep only the Rip Chips and San Van Bucks, we don’t need anything else. Lock the seasonal items behind IRL dates (is it Christmas, is it Halloween, etc) and charge us Rip Chips for them.
With all that said, there was a few thing you did right:
During the Christmas season you added these gift graffities and told players to “go find it”. It single handedly got me to load back into Skate.. When the goal is to find something without any tools, it forces players to work together—it brings us together—, it gets us talking, and excited. Did I mention it single handedly got me to load back into Skate.? In case obvious clue wasn’t obvious, this is how you get players to log back in into your game. Now imagine you did that to a type of challenge? *cough* Own The Spot *cough*. If you hide the OTS challenge icon from maps and campuses and tell players to “go find it”, it will get us excited. Not only does this make sense from a skate culture perspective, it is also one of the joys of playing previous titles: stumbling across an OTS challenge. Alternatively you could invent a whole new type of challenge and hide that :/
The replay update, that was pretty good.
Adding Impossibles, that was pretty good, a first in Skate. history.
One comment really resonates with how I feel: “we trust Full Circle, we don’t trust EA”. The game is still in Early Access, so please don’t be afraid to fk sht up, test, gamble ideas, try, do anything that could reasonably give us hope again. I don’t want to lose hope for this game, not yet anyways, I’m waiting for Season 3 to make that call.
