SRL is about over, and I've got one gripe about it. I figure most of you probably have a thing or two that you would have changed about it, too, so I thought I'd start the thread.

The real thing that bothered me was the physics behind getting bumped. I hate that another player can be making a wilder turn than I am and bump me not only off my line, but out of a gate entirely, not because they concocted some perfect scheme, but rather because they are shittier at driving than I am. I think if the physics had been the exact opposite, that the vehicle on the less stable path would be the one to suffer the impact, spin out of control, roll over the more stable sparrow, I would have enjoyed this a whole lot more.

Honestly, I would have stopped racing after week one if it weren't for the potential light level of the loot.

Before y'all rag on me, understand my enjoyment in a racing game comes from running the perfect line, doing the perfect lap. A decade ago I wasted a lot of hours on the Gran Turismo games and I always found that more enjoyable than Mario Cart. The shenanigans of the last 2 weeks on the tracks just eat away at my nerves.

Before y'all rag on me, understand my enjoyment in a racing game comes from running the perfect line, doing the perfect lap. A decade ago I wasted a lot of hours on the Gran Turismo games and I always found that more enjoyable than Mario Cart. The shenanigans of the last 2 weeks on the tracks just eat away at my nerves.

It's true: Beardfade is always gunning for the perfect line. It's pretty fun to watch - always from behind...

• Getting bumped.
  
• Getting stuck/launched/stalled on bad geometry.
  
• Those flipping fans every. Single. Time. One person lags.
  
• Venus as a whole.
  
• Everything that makes the Sparrows fun to drive normally, makes them miserable to actually race.
  
• Garbage gate placement. If I don't have to hit gates, I can run a perfect lap, a fast lap, a lap the way Forza has taught me to drive. But that doesn't work here, and the way some gates are placed is just stupid, annoying, and nonsensical.

I know I have more, Nomis can attest that I bitch endlessly when we race (so does he). Don't get me wrong, I enjoyed it, and I want to see it come back (ideally with more than two flipping maps and a ton of changes), but the more I played, the less I was actually enjoying myself. Especially when Venus came up. Fuck Venus. I'd rather beat my head against a wall than race on Venus.

Upside: I didn't cross the 300 threshold, but I did jump from 295 to 299 and grab some legendary helmets I actually like to look at, along with a few pieces of 300+ gear.

Downside: I nuked my supply of armor parts with all the infusing I was doing. Jesus... 10 parts for a single infusion? Ouch.

I also did not get the one sparrow I really wanted. Because bullshit and dice rolling with real money.

Hey, do you and Junior want to play on the 360's tonight? Competition might be less stiff.

• Garbage gate placement. If I don't have to hit gates, I can run a perfect lap, a fast lap, a lap the way Forza has taught me to drive. But that doesn't work here, and the way some gates are placed is just stupid, annoying, and nonsensical.

As a person who participated in amateur ski races as a kid , I find the complaints about gates and their placement funny/odd. The geometry upon which you can 'sparrow' is not the course. The gates are the course.

Edit: I just have a different perspective on it I guess.

• Garbage gate placement. If I don't have to hit gates, I can run a perfect lap, a fast lap, a lap the way Forza has taught me to drive. But that doesn't work here, and the way some gates are placed is just stupid, annoying, and nonsensical.

As a person who participated in amateur ski races as a kid , I find the complaints about gates and their placement funny/odd. The geometry upon which you can 'sparrow' is not the course. The gates are the course.

Edit: I just have a different perspective on it I guess.

This was my thought exactly (I ran giant slalom on a snowboard in highschool). Sparrow racing is about anticipating the next gate location to get the best line. Hell, side boosting even felt kind of like getting a great push from your legs, and feeling the board bite on a tight line.

IMO, They could improve it by doing more signalling on that element. I think people compare that to speed pads in Fzero, but it's a lousy comparison. I think giving the gates explicit sides they had to be passed on would better communicate the kind of challenge in sparrow racing.

Ohh yea, and the physics were def. wonky, those should be fixed ;)

Honestly, I loved Sparrow racing though. Bring 2 extra tracks and I'd be happy for a long time.

I had no problems with the gates and planned my lines accordingly. What I'm thinking is that they should have changed the gates. Perhaps weekly, or daily. Really force you to rethink your lines. It would be a way to get more out of the same two courses than they did.

Totally agree. Despite some rubber-banding and shenanigans, SRL (when it's not being thrown into chaos by collisions) is mostly about a good line and driving precisely. Games like that do NOT benefit from randomness and unpredictability. That just makes it feel like everything you're doing is pointless.

I would actually take it one step farther and just disable collisions with other players entirely, until some way can be found to make it NOT feel like random bullshit every time someone touches me.

I also think that other than this issue, SRL was great. I hope to see it return.

Also, are you on Forza? I should probably add you if so.

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I agree all of your points detract from the racing aspect of SRL, but let's be honest here, Destiny isn't robust enough to handle serious racing. So I suggest it goes the completely opposite way into wackiness.

"But, Zack" I hear you ask "implementing power-ups will be a major pain in the ass!"

Not so fast, my non-Cody friend! I'm sure we can come up with some minor hacks to make it fun! Most of the hacks I came up with are pretty much the Supers we know and love (perhaps to hate) our very own Guardians already have! Let's use Mario Kart as template, shall we?

• Red/Green Shell: Lance Nova Bomb with the tracking perk/sped up Axion Bolt/sped up tracking Hammers
  
• Banana peel: Ward of Dawn with Saint-14 debuff
  
• Lightning Bolt: instant Landfall (one of the perks for Stormtrance) on every enemy
  
• Temporary Invincibility/Star Power: same as Banana Peel, but it stays on your Sparrow

Tricky bit would be assigning them a button and figuring out how to make them available without without screwing everything else. I'd go as far as creating a separate instance to current Super based on last power-up ran over, keep Super regen at zero and making an instant Super (like when you level up) when you run over power-ups.

What say you? What more can you come up with?

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For the most part I've really enjoyed SRL. Not sure I would have played as much if I didn't have the chance to get 310-320 helmets and class items though. Overall, the majority of my complaints revolve around some weird physics in the game. So, in no particular order here are my suggestions.

- Make your rider/sparrow more visible. At the start of the race on Venus, whenever everyone hits that first s-turn, it's just a complete visual clusterf***. I can't tell you how many times I lost my sense of direction at the beginning of Venus. First person would fix this, but you could easily highlight the character in a subtle way also.

- The weird landings are just painful. A little rock being able to stop all forward momentum is so infuriating. Also, the explosions on landing are about as random as can be also. This is pretty much the same problem as when you die from jumping and landing on something on patrol or during regular missions. Guessing there are some weird geometry issues that cause this?

- The bumping is very bothersome, but mainly because the wild drivers seem to not be penalized for hitting someone. The idea about disabling collisions would work, but also take some of the chaos out of the game. Not really sure what my happy compromise would be.

- I really wish there was a system that would throw your guardian off the sparrow when you are spinning out of control. I had a race last night on Venus that I was leading from the start and never had anyone even on my radar from the first s-turn. I hit the last warp gate a little off or something and when I came out on the other side I proceeded to spin out of control for probably 8-10 seconds. This ended up costing me a race that had been a blow out. It would have been great to be thrown from the sparrow and forced to respawn instead of being stuck in an out of control spin I can do nothing about.

I'm sure there will be some other things I think of, but for now this will do.

I had no problems with the gates and planned my lines accordingly. What I'm thinking is that they should have changed the gates. Perhaps weekly, or daily. Really force you to rethink your lines. It would be a way to get more out of the same two courses than they did.

I like this a lot. More on track dangers to go along with that could have increased the variety.

Though with only two tracks, and Destinies reputation, it would have felt like stretching.

With 4 tracks total, changing configurations? That'd be pretty amazing, and deeper then some dedicated racing titles.

I had no problems with the gates and planned my lines accordingly. What I'm thinking is that they should have changed the gates. Perhaps weekly, or daily. Really force you to rethink your lines. It would be a way to get more out of the same two courses than they did.

Yup, I think changing the gates would have been great. Especially in those places where you can take an alternate route (like by the walker & servitors). Gee, even just a little bump to one side or another would be enough to change it up.

- The bumping is very bothersome, but mainly because the wild drivers seem to not be penalized for hitting someone. The idea about disabling collisions would work, but also take some of the chaos out of the game. Not really sure what my happy compromise would be.

I agree, it's frustrating that others don't seem to be negatively affected by collisions. I'm sure they are though and we just don't see it because of latency, perspective, or other reasons.

The bumping is frustrating, but in defense of collision detection between players, it's an important part of the game, it adds the need to use various tactics to deal with those other players during the race. If there were no collisions then we'd essentially be running a solo-time-trial with 'ghosts' of other players on screen. While solo-time-trials would be a fun game mode & it would grant you the chance to really nail down your lines, it doesn't sound nearly as fulfilling to me. Actual competition against live people is much more gratifying than being rank #20,451 in a time-trial, at least to me it is.

Things I'll do to deal with the frustration of other racers:
1- Go slow at the start, be just behind the pack so you don't get bounced around, this will also give you wide gates to make it easy to boost past the pack into the lead once things thin out a bit after the first couple gates.
2- Make sure I'm not caught on the outside of another racer as a turn comes up.
3- Stay ahead of the pack so you don't get bumped around, if things are rough maybe I'll drop into second and wait for a good opportunity to get a good lead on the person currently contending with you for first place. Better to be in 2nd than for both of you to get bumped back to 3rd & 4th due to your fighting for 1st.

- I really wish there was a system that would throw your guardian off the sparrow when you are spinning out of control.

You can just dismount like you regularly do.

Man did this bring me back to old F-Zero days!

- I had fun the whole time. Last place? Still fun. Lost by 0.005? Still fun. Had a perfect race going until I hit the final fan in lap 3? Still fun!
- The sparrows are all basically identical, which meant the deciding factor in races was skill more than anything else.
- The rewards were plentiful and felt powerful for the game mode. Even if you lost you knew the odds were good that you were getting something sweet anyway.
- Racing with friends was a blast. There just are not enough PvP modes where I can challenge my friends at something in this game (Rumble and SRL, basically). It's a lot more fun to talk trash to your buddies when your own success isn't married to theirs.
- Normally I like a racing game with tight controls, but the really loose sparrow controls felt great. The "Bungie steering" system is really nice and intuitive.
- I loved the track design. Putting secret passages with "slow down goo" bombs tied to the first place player's passing meant players in back had a decision to make about whether or not to take the passage, while players in front were punished for it.
- Increasing gate size for players in back is a MUCH better way to balance the race and keep everyone involved than rubber-banding, which is what most racing games do. I really liked that the races were fair for all players. If I lost, I didn't feel cheated; I felt like the other guy was just amazing.

One minor gripe: The red bull sparrow actually had higher boost stats than any other trick sparrow. And my buddy with it absolutely smoked in races. This felt a bit pay-to-win-ish, but I also saw a guy with the exact same sparrow as me (the lightning one) beat my buddy's best ever time by 5 seconds, so it clearly wasn't the only factor. Still, learning about the higher stat made me disappointed.

One minor gripe: The red bull sparrow actually had higher boost stats than any other trick sparrow. And my buddy with it absolutely smoked in races.

Isn't it the same as Timebreaker? I've noticed that Timebreaker handles considerably differently than the new sparrows. But if you want the absolute best times, Timebreaker is what you need.

The idea about disabling collisions would work, but also take some of the chaos out of the game.

I fail to see how that's a bad thing. ;)

- I really wish there was a system that would throw your guardian off the sparrow when you are spinning out of control. I had a race last night on Venus that I was leading from the start and never had anyone even on my radar from the first s-turn. I hit the last warp gate a little off or something and when I came out on the other side I proceeded to spin out of control for probably 8-10 seconds. This ended up costing me a race that had been a blow out. It would have been great to be thrown from the sparrow and forced to respawn instead of being stuck in an out of control spin I can do nothing about.

FYI, you can actually dismount the sparrow in SRL, and it'll cause you to immediately die and respawn. The only tricky part is knowing how long you could be stuck in the spin - it may or may not be faster to just let it go. There's not really any way to know for sure while it's happening.

I think it was repeatedly said that your sparrow is a feather and everyone else's is a rock, or at least that is how I felt.

Cyber tossed out the idea of making collision physics nonexistent like the Tower and I swear if he had been looking for disciples in that moment I'd be following him around making a journal right now.

Cyber tossed out the idea of making collision physics nonexistent like the Tower and I swear if he had been looking for disciples in that moment I'd be following him around making a journal right now.

I've reconsidered my opinion on this, actually. As a few people have pointed out above, disabling collision would effectively turn it into a time-trial mode with ghosts.

There's a certain art to jockeying for position with a rival as you approach an impending fan-blade. That's not to say the sparrow physics/networking don't need to be vastly improved, but I would like to see some other strategic element added to allow for overtaking. And no, not power-ups.

also, add more fan-blades.

also, add more fan-blades.

There is a special place in hell for people like you :)

One minor gripe: The red bull sparrow actually had higher boost stats than any other trick sparrow. And my buddy with it absolutely smoked in races.

Isn't it the same as Timebreaker? I've noticed that Timebreaker handles considerably differently than the new sparrows. But if you want the absolute best times, Timebreaker is what you need.

Completely different. It's a stunt sparrow like the tumbler, but with a faster boost speed.

… is the implementation of two-rider sparrows, one person drives, one person shoots. Something akin to rocket racing in Halo, but with Destiny weapons / physics…

Or maybe that's a terrible idea!

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… is the implementation of two-rider sparrows, one person drives, one person shoots. Something akin to rocket racing in Halo, but with Destiny weapons / physics…

Or maybe that's a terrible idea!

I need heavies to consistently kill someone on a Sparrow. (I've done it with a sniper, but it's luck.)