Regarding Spot Battles and Jams

I dunno about locking the settings to the most difficult, but the settings should be an option that applies to all characters. 

Like i shouldn't bail letting go of a grab in a flip while another player does a back flip quad kickflip.

When the throwdown/spot battle is activated it should indicate some core settings that apply:

• Fall Height
• Hold grab while flipping
• Land assistance
• Preroll (since this can limit trick options)

I think most other options are more control and feel preference, like I don't think grind assist needs to be global, nor things like toggled tricks and stuff like that. 

The above don't change the feel of playing, they just allow you to do things that might be impossible otherwise. 

Like the huge ramp spot battle can suck if you don't have your fall height set and someone else does. If it's set low for everyone, then it's a challenge and even fun to watch everyone fail, but if it's only low for you it's just unfair. 

I agree that it would be nice to have parity but ultimately those are restrictions that we put on ourselves to get a more realistic experience, I wouldn't expect any player to play without the settings they want. I turned off auto-reverts, sometimes I land sketchy and I lose a bunch of speed and it totally ruins my run, but that's a risk I accept by seeking more control. 

Someone playing with assists is honestly at a disadvantage sometimes too, like grind assist is a bit of a wild beast and most players don't even know how to use the left stick to cancel/target rails. 

In my opinion, I think that the sum of drawbacks/positives make it fair. Some people are still pushing mongo, they're easy meat for the sweats like us! lol 

I believe Spot Battle should have as little assistance as possible because it's meant to be a mode where players compete based on their own skill.

Compared to other skateboarding games, EA Skate is already very accessible and easy to control. Assist features are fine for free skating, but in a competitive mode, a more challenging environment encourages players to improve their skills and truly master the game.

That's what made the original Skate series so enjoyable to me. I've played every game in the series, and up through Skate 2, the controls were consistent. Things changed with Skate 3, and I think that was one of the reasons the series lost part of its identity.

Even if you made the current Skate as difficult as possible, it would still only feel about as challenging as the Normal difficulty in Skate 3.

I believe Spot Battle should have as little assistance as possible because it's meant to be a mode where players compete based on their own skill.

Compared to other skateboarding games, EA Skate is already very accessible and easy to control. Assist features are fine for free skating, but in a competitive mode, a more challenging environment encourages players to improve their skills and truly master the game.

That's what made the original Skate series so enjoyable to me. I've played every game in the series, and up through Skate 2, the controls were consistent. Things changed with Skate 3, and I think that was one of the reasons the series lost part of its identity.

Even if you made the current Skate as difficult as possible, it would still only feel about as challenging as the Normal difficulty in Skate 3.

We're only a few days into the x-games event and people are already using the hippie jump to caveman bug to try to trigger thousands of points in a matter of miliseconds. We already have a cheating problem before there's even anything on the line

The people playing with assists typically don't even realise it, and if they do, they're not really good enough at the game to pose much of a risk in the spot battles. They push mongo, their settings are whack, they don't know how to pump, and if they didn't have auto-revert on they'd lose all their speed on their first spin.

I guess I'm left wondering why it really matters to have such rigid restrictions when

1. People are already cheating 
2. People who don't know how to play aren't magically made better by assists
3. People who are playing without assists use their greater control to create more points
4. People don't know push/pump mechanics that would allow them to actually capitalise on the QPs in the street course for example
5. There is nothing on the line 

I play with every assist turned off and on the hardest settings available. I also don't use glitches or exploits. Everything I achieve comes from practice and skill.

You're absolutely right that it's impossible to compete with players who rely on glitches. In my opinion, this ramp has a legitimate score ceiling of around 12,000 points. Anything significantly beyond that is most likely the result of a glitch or exploit.

One of the main reasons I'm against assists in Battle mode is Vert Pump Assist. At 100%, you barely need to pump at all—you can simply keep pushing and still gain a huge amount of speed and height. Personally, I've never seen anyone ride a vert ramp like that in real life.

I play with Vert Pump Assist set to 0. If I mistime my pumps, I barely gain any height. It took a lot of practice to learn the correct timing, and I believe that learning process and skill gap are an important part of the game.

A good comparison is aim assist in FPS games. For example, Apex Legends currently uses 0.3 aim assist for controllers. Imagine if it were set to the maximum instead. At first it might not seem like a big issue, but eventually players relying on stronger assists would close the skill gap. That's why I believe competitive modes should avoid gameplay assists whenever possible.

The same issue exists in Street Fight. Some players use glitches to reach impossible scores. Even if you play legitimately using manual pumping—the strategy that currently gives the best results—players using higher assist settings can still score more than twice as many points.

Can Battle mode really be considered fair when assist settings have such a large impact on performance?

Back in Skate 2, I reached World Rank #12 in Spot Battle and consistently finished near the top of the weekly rankings. Everyone competed under the same settings, which made the competition fair.

The reason I play skate. on the hardest settings is because it feels the closest to Skate 2.

To be clear, I'm only talking about Battle mode. In Free Skate, I think everyone should be free to play however they enjoy.

Of course, I understand you are only speaking about the battle mode and not freeskate, apologies if it seemed I did. Don't get me wrong, I completely get why you would want it, you clearly value an exciting and cutthroat competition which is totally normal for video games. 

Maybe I'm misunderstanding what you wrote but Vert Pump Assist only triggers on when you actually pump, not when you push. All it does is widen the window for a perfect pump, and if you don't pump it doesn't do anything. I've watched people push mongo down the vert ramp during Spot battles, they don't even know pumping is a thing so it doesn't help them. You will always have a way bigger advantage over them playing with your settings and your experience because you can work in prewinds and body flips to get more score. 

IMO I believe that they will eventually add in some kind of spot battle league with rules and restrictions, (maybe as a late year 2 feature?) but for now, the quality of spot battle opponents would not be meaningfully improved by changing how people can play. It would just mean less people play altogether. There's a fundamental knowledge gap that just means experienced players would trounce new players even harder, the game has to do better to close it by overhauling mission structure and early game experience.

When Vert Pump Assist is set to 100, you don't even need to time your pumps correctly. The game will effectively pump for you. I encourage you to try it yourself in a halfpipe with Vert Pump Assist set to 100.

The performance gap caused by assists is already becoming obvious.

With all assists turned off, my best legitimate halfpipe score is around 9,700 points. However, just yesterday I watched players score over 10,000 points by simply pushing without pumping at all. It looked much easier than playing manually. They can also land from heights that would normally cause me to bail, while I crash under the same conditions.

I spend 3–6 hours almost every day playing Spot Battle and checking the daily leaderboards, and I can clearly see the average scores continuing to rise.

This has always been true in the Skate series: unlike Jam, Spot Battle lets you watch skilled players. Because of that, even newer players can quickly learn the most effective ways to score by observing others.

I'm not saying every player has to play Spot Battle. Just like in Apex Legends, many people only play Casual and never touch Ranked. That's perfectly fine.

My concern is Battle modes. If more competitive modes are added in the future, such as S.K.A.T.E., this issue will become even more noticeable.

For that reason, I believe assists should be disabled in all Battle modes to ensure fair competition.