Hello again, time for my Season 4 initial impressions and update for this thread! This'll be a little different from my previous posts. Rather than just a bulletpoint list of things I decided to write down my thoughts in some regular paragraphs. Unfortunately I guess that means more reading for you lol.
General Improvements:
I'm really enjoying almost all of the additions and tweaks for Season 4, especially how much better turning feels, and the loose camera option that brings back a little bit of that camcorder feel from the original game (now if only I could adjust the camera position to be lower/closer like the OG camera..). It also feels like ragdolls are now slightly weightier, maybe? I've had some more realistic-looking bails than I think I've had in the past, at least.
Fingerflips look and feel perfect so far. No complaints really, though it'd be useful if we had an option to toggle staying in Coffin so it's easier to do Coffin fingerflips. Currently you really need to claw grip your controller to do them lol.
I'm very, very glad that the warm color grading/color filter was toned down this season! It's still a bit too orange imo, I'd prefer a neutral color temperature, but this is a major improvement over the previous overly warm one that we had from Season 1 thru 3.
Though I'd still really like if we could use the Replay Editor's effects options during regular gameplay so I can tweak it to how I want it, and/or if Reshade was unblocked by the game's anti-cheat (seriously, why is that a thing?).
Season 1-3 vs. Season 4 color filter comparison. Much better!New Locations:
Stadium is kinda disappointing, not gonna lie. I really like the grind rails out front, and the small vert ramp hidden off to the side. But the Stadium itself, the interior, is probably the thing I've least enjoyed so far this season. It's very small and doesn't feel like it deserves to be its own load zone, it would've been much cooler if we'd been able to seamlessly walk in and out of the stadium. I don't think I'll spend much time in there as it currently is. Takes a while to load into it, there's way too many people crammed into that small space, and I just don't feel like there's enough to do in there atm. I know you're limited by how big the actual stadium is on the outside (unless you want to get silly and make it bigger on the inside than it is on the outside), but I think trimming down the stadium seats would give you a good bit more space to work with.
On the other hand, I really like the new community parks so far. Especially the one in Market Mile on the first day of the season (the one with all the stairs and handrails), and today's park in Gullcrest with a lot of rails all around the outer perimeter. The only ones I've not really been crazy about are Hedgemont's parks so far, and the day 1 Gullcrest park (outer perimeter was completely empty, inside the warehouse had some decent spots but was very small).
I'm really not a fan of the new location and size of Hedgemont's community park. First off it should be Brickswich's park, it's partially inside Brickswich's border! We could use a community park somewhere around northern Hedgemont anyway. Secondly it's just way too small. It's like a quarter of the size of the old Hedgemont! There isn't enough room to put anything interesting in this park so far, they've felt very tiny and it's too easy to fall into the ocean.
It also begs the question of what happens to the previous Hedgemont holiday event parks when those holidays return? I hope this isn't going to be a permanent location. Maybe you guys plan to give each district multiple community park locations instead of just one?
I'll also say that I mostly like that the community parks are rotating out daily now, so if we get a bad park it isn't a big deal. Though that daily timer does kinda suck when we get a good park lol.
I appreciate that you guys are starting to do more realistic park designs, including areas based on irl skate spots. The only thing I'd like to see changed here is the texture work. While the wood is certainly better than what we had previously, you guys gotta mix in some concrete and stuff so it doesn't all look so same-y. For example the Market Mile park I really liked yesterday would've looked so much better if the floors and stairs were concrete.
Oh and one last location-related note: I'm a bit sad to see night is no more at Grom. I hope you'll have it rotate in and out occasionally until the actual day/night cycle gets added in the future. Maybe each week it could rotate between day and night? Or every few days?
Season Pass/Cosmetics:
The season pass is another thing I'm kinda "meh" on. There's a few things I like (though less than previous seasons), and it's cool that there's more SVB to earn in it, but a lot of the pages just have a bunch of sticker and profile customization filler. It's also a little disappointing that there's no theme this season, and no final big reward? I guess the prison jumpsuit is this season's finale costume, except it's on page 6? Pretty odd. The football-related gear like the skate deck also feel out of place to me. I guess because stadium = football? Can't see myself ever using those items though.
I will say I like that the Tix grind has been very noticeably reduced these last two seasons, which is cool.
Dem Bones is a little expensive, but I like the costume, the bone rattling sound effects while pushing or bailing, and that you can wear hats/eyewear while using it. I'd like if you could just wear all clothing, especially shirts and shoes would look funny on him, but this is a good improvement nonetheless.
Music:
I'm mostly liking the new music additions, though as usual I'll complain that I really, really wish you guys wouldn't remove music each time you add some. I want to see the music list GROW, not constantly get replaced or reduced (we're actually at 89 songs this season, while last season we had 99). It's especially bizarre to me to keep seeing UMG songs removed, when my understanding is that those songs have no recurring licensing fees. You pay for them once and you're done, you can use them forever. So why remove them?
One final request/suggestion I thought of recently:
I'd like if there was a button we could hold while landing that would prevent grinding/disable the grind magnetization (and maybe vert magnetization too). A good example of why this would be useful is for being able to manual in tight spots like here in Grom:
I had to completely disable grind assist just to be able to manual that spot, and it was still extremely difficult. There are a lot of spots like this all across the game that I'd love to do little manuals on, but the game insists I grind the edges instead.
Some sort of global "de-magnet" button would be great. Maybe LB since that's only used for emoting, and you're unlikely to be trying to emote while mid-air on your board?
That's all the feedback I've got for now, thanks if you actually read this far!
