I’ve been meaning to write-up some constructive feedback on Accelerate, but it always seemed very low on the priorities, so I guess now is a good time. Where to begin…
I guess to put it bluntly, Accelerate feels wrong and I believe it’s been traveling down that path for some time because it’s gone from my favorite mode to virtually never touching it anymore. Attempts to smooth over rough spots have repeatedly & dramatically changed how the cars handle to the point that it always feels like an entirely different game whenever I come back, and I just don’t find driving to feel enjoyable in its current state.
For starters, there is now a serious lack of momentum to every action that makes movement feel very unsatisfying. As mentioned, Steering is WAY too tight. While snappy steering is typical of the kart racing genre, the cars are starting to feel virtually weightless with a lack of commitment to moving in any direction. I believe this impedes the thrill of what is probably the meat & potatoes of every kart racer; drifting & boosting. Drifting typically serves two purposes in kart racers; charging boosts and tighter cornering. Normal steering is so extremely tight now that I don’t think there’s a single corner across every track in the game where you can’t accidentally oversteer into the interior wall, even without drifting. It REALLY needs work. I could see needing more responsiveness and turning power if the cars where maybe between 20-50% faster by default. I see there’s some sort of “150cc” mode on the horizon, so we’ll see how that handles, I suppose, but for standard, it really is way too much control for how sluggish the cars are now. I’d almost say it’s made drifting superfluous for corners, but drifting also serves another important purpose: boosts, which needs to be addressed, too.
The recent changes to boosts’ top speed are also a downer, but I see the upcoming patch returns them back to normal, so I’ll withhold criticism on that nerf for the moment, HOWEVER, the way that a boost coming to an end instantly slows you back to default top speed feels awful. Boosts should feel like a huge punch going forward, but instead we get the punch to slow down? Ironically, I think boosts have always been missing snappiness. They rely way too much already accumulated momentum to be any effective. If I screw up a turn or get hit with an item and want to use a boost to recover, using at least an item should completely shoot me back up to normal top speed instead of a mushy, slightly speedier crawl back up to barely 30. This is is the arcade-ness that I think Accelerate is missing, not the steering.
Basically this:
There’s a lot more I want to nitpick, but for now, I’ll leave on this: I don’t know if this is a bug, but did you know that just about any kind of boost while drifting forces your turning radius to tighten? It’s been like this for a long time.
Anyway, take my opinion with a grain a salt, I know games are hard to design and there’s no pure right way to make something fun, but I love racing games and I’m not keen with where Accelerates at now.
