Sonic Riders Tournament Edition 1.3 Patch Notes & Developer Comments

Welcome to the notes and commentary for Patch 1.3 of Sonic Riders Tournament Edition.

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Ruling Updates

Skip Rules

“Red Canyon Skip” (the act of jumping off the second grind rail onto off road, boosting, and then jumping almost immediately after the boost to reach the pinwheel auto section) is banned under the already existing rule that bans skips that can be unreasonably blocked by tornadoes.

The rule pertaining to skips that can only be performed by 1 gear is now increased to 4. So if a skip can only be done by 4 gears or less, its banned.

A new rule is being added, though it doesn’t change much but fix another small aspect about Red Canyon. Skips where the landing position can be blocked or guarantees the hit of a tornado are banned.

And that new rule brings us to another skip ban. “Red Canyon Grind Skip Skip” (the act of jumping off the second grind rail onto the bridge closest to the pinwheel auto section, or the case of Cannonball directly into the pinwheel auto section) is banned.

Skips that save 3 or more seconds that use a type shortcut are banned. While this does ban a couple of beloved skips from competitive play, it is a necessary evil as many skips that use a type shortcut have had a history of skewing stage balance.

Skips that are banned because of this rule

Consult this page by community member “Liks” to see demonstrations of all the skips: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1pikmmdvN0kxox6kIFIRQ0wpfqUjj6leZiwlWRUTML2s/edit#gid=0

Termination Rule

If an error or glitch occurs that is not considered to be reasonably replicable or well known, the game should be paused immediately, preferably using the emulation pause provided by Dolphin. The situation will be assessed by judges, typically the tournament organizer and/or appointed persons.

The course of action, such as a restart or continuation of the game will be determined by the judges based on the game state.

Examples of these kinds of unexpected errors or glitches are: clipping through the map in spots where collision seems to exist, random instantaneous death, map generated turbulence on Babylon Garden spawning in a way that prevents the race from being completed, or going out of bounds with no method of respawning.

False invocations of this rule may result in a game or match loss.

New Neutral Stages List

Metal City

Ice Factory

White Cave

Digital Dimension

Sega Illusion

Gameplay Changes

Ignoring Turbulence

Developer comments: “In Patch 1.2.5, the ability to ignore turbulence by holding down the Z button was added. This came with great benefit as players could now use turbulence to its fullest potential, but an issue many found is that they would end up having to hold down Z the entire race. To address this, we’ve added the ability to have the option of a toggle using the Y button. This is indicated by a purple exhaust trail. The hold Z feature still exists, but also works to invert the settling you have toggled using Y. For example, if Y was toggled on, then I could hold down Z to allow myself to ride turbulence once again. In addition, this feature also allows you to ignore pits.”

Jumping Off of Grind Rails

Developer comments: “In vanilla, when jumping off of a grind rail the game would cut your speed in half. In Patch 1.2.5, preserving all your speed when jumping off a grind rail was added. This originally gave you the new jump automatically and holding Z would give you the original jump. However, due to changes in how the Z button is used and stage shortcut buffs, we’ve made the following changes.”

Item Box RNG

Developer comments: “In competitive games, randomization is often frowned upon. Often because some items are restrictively better than others, and randomization as a comeback factor can lead to blowouts early in a race should they kick in too easily. Because of this and based on community input, we’ve decided to make random items a roll between 3 equally powerful items. Other things the community found were things such as airboxes from random boxes being too weak and ring gears being difficult to balance based on their reliance on RNG.”

Air Box

Developer comments: “30 Air Box can no longer be obtained from random boxes and instead is replaced by the 50 Air Box. Item RNG for 1st Place: Removed chance to pick up 20 Ring Box, Magnet, and Ball & Chain items. Increased chance to get Speed Shoes. Item RNG for 2nd Place: Removed chance to pick up 30 Ring Box and Ball & Chain items. Increased chance to get a ring box greater than 10 rings. Reduced chance to obtain Speed Shoes. Item RNG for 3rd and 4th Place: Made changes to increase chances at getting rings as races with 3 and 4 players often have a lack of rings.”

Speed Shoes Item

Developer comments: “Speaking of items, the Speed Shoes item was changed to give additive speed a while back. However, the item always felt weak as rings could give you a level up which can restore air or an airbox could at least give you air for another boost. This time we’re giving the item some serious speed so it can be useful compared to other items.”

Pits

Developer comments: “Pits refill the player’s air at an extremely slow rate, in exchange for receiving it easily. On paper, this might have sounded good to the original designers. However, not only are pits the slowest way to gain air, but getting to them often involves pulling way over to one of the sides of the track, which loses time in of itself. Sometimes pits are surrounded by offroad, which loses you even more time for going to those pits especially. Additionally, you are vulnerable to attacks while using it. We still want pits to be the slowest way the gain air, as they were intended to punish the player for playing poorly, but hopefully this buff is impactful enough to where taking a pit is a consideration in more situations.”

Turbulence

Developer comments: “In patch 1.2.5, many changes were added to improve turbulence. The minimum riding speed was set to 200 and the maximum speed was set to 250. However it turbulence still has some issues as a catchup mechanic as the riding speed was not fast enough for catchup and tricks on turbulence did not give any speed bonuses.”

Dying

Developer comments: “In patch 1.2.5, we made dying no longer reset the player’s level and rings. However, ring gears could still lose rings when dying. This has been fixed.”

Attacks

Developer comments: “Attacks are extremely powerful in Sonic Riders and have a history of ending races. Previous patches have reduced the impact attacks can have with massive reductions to ring loss, from losing all of your rings to 25 to be specific. This nerf incentivizes players to continue picking up rings after they achieve level 3 in order to create a safety net. Should the player get attacked, having say 85 rings will not result in going down a level. Losing even that much though is still far too devasting at early levels, especially since 25 rings is essentially all of one’s collected gold at level 1. Due to attacks becoming more common with buffs to catchup mechanics, we’re taking more steps to adjust the impact of attacks to be more palatable in competitive play. And yes, fly types will no longer stun you in place for 4 seconds. Check characters changes for details.”

Exhaust Trails

Developer comments: “As previously mentioned, using Y to toggle off your turbulence is indicated by a purple exhaust trail. However, we have added a few other exhaust trail mechanics. This ranges from improving the visual diversity of extreme gears to quality of life updates for accessibility. Of course, we can’t spoil any gear specific ones in this section.”

Tornado Speed Loss

Developer comments: “Tornadoes are a great offensive/defensive mechanic that allows players ahead of one another to interact with their opponents in an interesting way. For most gears that use air as fuel, setting tornadoes are easy as the air cost and speed loss are easily mitigated by the replenishable nature of air. The same cannot be said for gears that use Rings as fuel, as rings are much more scarce of a resource. It doesn’t help that many ring gears are restricted to the pitiful level 1 tornados. To minimize these rather severe shortcomings, all gears that use rings as fuel will lose less speed performing tornadoes.”

Results Screen

Developer comments: “The very first patch of the mod gave us a much faster results screen thanks to UnclePunch, however people have complained that the section that displays lap times is skipped. This has been fixed.”

Running While Out of Air

Developer comments: “Going into run is usually a death sentence in competitive. We never want matches to just end. A player could be doing so well, a tiny misplay happens that allows their opponent to gain the lead, then the player in 1st steals all the power objects because you’re watching a power type ditto, the player behind barely airs out and just like that the race is over. So we’re lessening the most punishing aspects of run that we can while still preserving its harsh nature.”

Tornadoes After Auto Sections

Developer comments: “In patch 1.2.5, the ability to perform tornadoes was disabled for 41 frames after exiting an auto section. In this patch, we’re also updating it so that if a player’s controls are locked for 24 frames or more, they cannot tornado for the next 41 frames after that control lock ends. This change was specifically trying to address SEGA Illusion’s last section involving panels.”

Slipstream

Developer comments: “Based on the mechanic in Zero Gravity, a brand new catchup mechanic for the original Sonic Riders was created. While following behind an opponent, facing a similar direction as them, while within a cone behind them, and within range, (which gets bigger the farther you are away from the leading player) the player behind will gain the effects of slipstream which causes them to slowly gain extra speed each frame. Being under the effects of slipstream can only occur while the player behind is riding normally. It does NOT occur while riding turbulence. The visual effect for landing a trick or hitting a dash panel is used to indicate when a player is being affected by slipstream. This catch-up mechanic was created to address the many faults of turbulence. Turbulence is unable to form in many areas of nearly all tracks, such as offroad, straights with changes in elevations, type shortcuts, and sometimes it doesn’t form at all for unexplainable reasons. Further compounding the issue is that even when turbulence is being created, not all turbulence is usable, due to the player in 1st being able to directly control it. Despite all of this, it’s important to note that slipstream was NOT designed to make turbulence obsolete. It is simply a weaker but more consistent/predictable form of catch-up.”

Miscellaneous

Developer comments: “Just a bunch of minor changes that don’t have a major effect on the game and aren’t really worth their own section. Most are quality of life changes & bugfixes.”

Gamemode Changes

Time Trial Mode

Developer comments: “Time Trial mode is normally weird since it is a lot slower paced than Free Race. These changes are to make it so Time Trial mode matches resemble the approximate conditions of Free Race.”

Tag Mode

Developer comments: “There’s a supposed glitch that’s been noticed since the last patch where restarting the race in Tag Mode would change the boost speed of the selected gear back to default. This isn’t actually a glitch. It’s intended. In fact, normally starting the race should also have this glitch occur, but due to some technical garbage on how codes overwrite data, it changed to only reset on restarting. We’re fixing this issue by removing tag mode from changing the boost speeds of a gear to default.”

Battle Mode

Developer comments: “Changes were made to battle mode to make the mode more fast-paced, competitive, and fun. The two main issues were the very long timer and the sluggish movement, both of which were changed, hopefully creating a more enjoyable experience.”

Type Changes

Fly Type

Developer comments: “Fly type has a much slower cruising speed compared to speed type. Thematically, this makes sense, but from a balance perspective, it makes fly rather undesirable on gears that utilize top speed. Of course, fly type have other benefits compared to speed type. This buff is just to make them a viable option on gears like Fastest.”

Power Type

Developer comments: “Same reason for the change in fly type’s top speed modifier. Although it is worth mentioning that power type’s top speed is very close to speed type now which might seem odd. The fact of the matter is, power types use their top speed more than the other types. Because they are on the ground cruising through most of their shortcuts, top speed is more significant of a stat for them in general.”

Leveling Up

Developer comments: “Leveling up does improve your stats such as boost speed, drift boost speed, air tank size, but it surprisingly didn’t increase top speed except level 3. And top speed isn’t a stat utilized often with how much of the gameplay relies on boosting. In addition, drifting has become very weak given the maximum speed a drift boost could set you to was 250, so these buffs are to make these stats scale with level to be more useful and sensible scale-like boost speed.”

Character Changes

Developer comments: “There’s a lot to unpack here. Level 3 attacks lasted an incredibly long amount of time that prevented players from catching up. This is especially apparent for the attacks most fly types have. The rest of the changes are to modify the character archetypes for more diverse differences & playstyles between the character. Except in the case of Knuckles, Cream, and Shadow, which were buffed to serve their role better.”

Characters Archetypes

Developer comments: “Relisting of what all the characters do after these changes so players can understand what role each character serves.”

Stages Changes

Metal City

Developer comments: “Hitting the cars in Metal City was like getting hit by a tornado, as in, you would often lose. It’s far too devastating of a time loss for something your opponent had no part in. For a competitive game, players value the “player vs player” relationship rather than “stage vs player”. We nerfed the amount of stun and airtime you spend when getting hit by cars that so playing speed and fly can realistically succeed on the stage.”

Splash Canyon

Developer comments: “The fly skip on this stage means that the shortcuts of each type needed tremendous buffs. In addition, there are a lack of power objects in multiplayer, so the air gain from objects was increased.”

Egg Factory

Developer comments: “The reduction in speed loss from the lava helps increase the viability of typeless on Egg Factory. Speed type rails were so weak here that it was always suboptimal for players to take them despite the air it grants. The first one was especially useless because not only was it slower than taking the normal route, but meanwhile, the main path has a guaranteed 100 airbox waiting for you. With the immense buffs to rails, you are on the grinding for a shorter period of time, which means less air. Now there is actual route diversity for speed types. The path that fills your tank vs the path that is faster. Either could be the better choice, it’s base on the specific situation the player is in, and that’s exactly what we were after with this buff.”

Green Cave

Developer comments: “This stage has a lot to talk about. The power shortcut QTE’s air was reduced because of gears that consume a lot of air or have the potential to consume a lot of air. The dash panels after exiting the QTE from the normal entrance were buffed since the player is put very far behind by going that path. The falling speed from completing a grind rail could not be increased on this stage as a certain rail will end up killing the player.”

Sand Ruins

Developer comments: “Sand Ruins is an interesting stage that is designed very differently from other tracks. Instead of type shortcuts being presented all bunched up with a choice having to be made, they are instead placed one after another. With buffs to shortcuts, this could understandably make bringing multiple types to the stage very powerful. In addition to this manner of stage design, power types possess what is possibly the single most potent type shortcut in the game, the breakable pillar near the end of the track. To add insult to injury, the shortcut is even better due to the changing/increasing number of pillars that slow down non-powers types more, which partially dependent on RNG. In short, the number of pillars was drastically reduced and made consistent so that other type shortcuts would not have to be massively buffed to compensate, otherwise picks such as Super Sonic would become quite overcentralizing on the stage.”

Babylon Garden

Developer comments: “Babylon Garden is designed similarly to Sand Ruins, where type shortcuts are placed in succession to each other. The main difference here is that power doesn’t have any ridiculous shortcuts that can possibly become stronger via RNG. As a result, fly and speed can afford to be buffed a bit more vicariously here.”

Digital Dimension

Developer comments: “Digital Dimension is probably the most difficult neutral stage in competitive play. Players must familiarize themselves with what is arguably the most demanding ring collection in the game. Many players approach routing on the track very differently, and it’s interesting to see how players react when placed in air-tight, ring scarce, strenuous situations as they are pressured by the presence of their opponent. However, the item boxes behind the start line allowed for “item camping” to become an overcentralizing strategy on the stage. This diminished much of the unique skill expression the track has in store, so we eradicated it completely. On another note, like Egg Factory, grind rails are significantly slower than the main path, yet also deprive speed types from valuable item boxes. The buffs are to address that same issue.”

Sega Carnival

Developer comments: “It might look silly when you see that the third grind rail is over 600 speed, but trust us when we say that top path is still faster. The bottom path on Sega Carnival is easily in the top 5 for largest time disparities between multiple pathways. The ludicrous buffs are to mitigate the punishment of missing out on top path’s direct & wealth abundant road.”

Night Chase

Developer comments: “We sing a similar tune to the Metal City changes, except that the issue for non-power types are even more pronounced here. The balance of type shortcuts will always be lopsided no matter how much we buff them. This is because of the Night Chase’s gimmick of cars being present throughout most of the track. When it comes down to it, cars are moving stage hazards for speed and fly types, but air-filled goodies for power types. With the changes to Metal City carrying over, succeeding with speed & fly types are now realistic on the stage. Lastly, the fly hoops are too fast for any fly skip to exist, so multi-type gears are no longer overcentralizing.”

Red Canyon

Developer comments: “With the banning of Red Canyon Skip, it turns out fly type is the best type. Oddly, fly type takes none of its fly hoops for its routing. The buffs to fly hoops are just so you can’t lose speed from using them.”

Ice Factory

Developer comments: “The first fly shortcut was miles slower than either path to the QTE, unfortunately buffing it was tricky. The vertical speed from fly hoops was the hardest thing to get to work properly. In order to make fly somewhat viable on this stage, the speed of the fly hoops needed to be buffed the point where taking the path without constant micro-adjustments will probably kill you. It’s jank to say the least, but in our humble opinion, fly type being harder to succeed with is better than fly type not being able to succeed at all. It’s interesting that we created a fly path that requires actual player intervention rather than simply watching the game do its thing.”

White Cave

Developer comments: “Early game builds tend to excel on this stage. With vine skip accessible to any character, and the main path generally being faster than all type shortcuts, E10G is also very meta here. While it’s true that a player can technically succeed using any type here, speed type as a whole, & fly type whenever not equipped with the High Booster, is slightly lacking in viability. Both have exceedingly low pick rates on this stage. These buffs to speed & fly are aimed to push the power levels in the same league as E10G, nothing too crazy.”

Dark Desert

Developer comments: “Fly type is the meta here. It’s unfortunate that players are susceptible to a disastrous game-breaking bug where going off the first fly pad too fast will turn off all collision, resulting in death. There is no way to fix it at this time, but players can become adept at avoiding the bug with practice. While it does not completely solve the issue, speed and power type becoming viable will make the bug less prevalent solely on the account that fly type’s pick rate will dwindle. In testing, speed proved to be surprisingly good on this stage if you jump off early on the rail before the QTE. Also, Powerful Gear is very good on this stage with its new buffs. Fly type is still technically the fastest for players who have refined the intricacies of working around the fly pad.”

Sky Road

Developer comments: “This stage is almost completely revamped. The turbulence was removed because it is highly uninteractive and creates boring gear diversity on the stage. There was also no way to slow down the speed of the turbulence which left getting the bottom path a death sentence even if it was only for one lap. The item box changes were to help supplement the lack of rings on the stage. As for the item boxes after the QTE, no one can pick them up without massive time loss except gears with incredible turning, which ends up being very overpowered.”

Babylon Guardian

Developer comments: “This stage still isn’t fit for competitive play. These changes were sort of just for fun. Why don’t you give the grinding mission a try, huh?” 🙂

SEGA Illusion

Developer comments: “Sega Illusion is a great fast-paced track. There is only one major point of contention, the specialized dash panels in the Chu Chu Rocket section. These panels lock your controls for a longer period of time than normal dash panels, making incoming tornados pretty much undodgeable. Most of the measures the player in 2nd can take lose just as much if not more time than taking the hit and moving on. You’re losing time because you’re in 2nd place, but you are now forced to lose more time… for the sole fact that you were behind. Folks this is what is known as a win more mechanic, which is anti-competitive. The panel lock time was changed on this stage to allow people to dodge tornadoes feasibly. In other news, due to the fly rings being faster, the fly skip is now less potent.“

Gear Changes

Default Gear

Developer comments: “Default Gear seems to only need a tiny push forward, with one of its main issues being air usage. Since Default Gear is supposed to be representative of its character, which means the type their character has as well, a shortcut air buff thematically fits.”

High Booster

Developer comments: “High Booster is a gear that is centralizing on certain stages, most notably on ones where it levels up quickly. These changes are aimed at reducing its power there and increasing it in places where High Booster is uncommon. In addition, the previous drift cost buffs were too much, so those are being rolled back slightly.”

Auto Slider

Developer comments: “The drift costs on this gear were a bit too low considering the shadow buffs it had received from the global buffs to maximum drift boost speed by level up. The drift cost is still pretty low though so the gear is more or less at the same power level.”

Powerful Gear

Developer comments: “The central idea of Powerful Gear is that it can conquer all-terrain, whether its ice or uphill. However the base game had no means to ignore off-road, so we created this special effect from the ground up for Powerful Gear’s birthday. Now it can finally live up to its name.”

Fastest

Developer comments: “Most of Fastest’s buffs come in the form of the general buffs to top speed by level up and drift boost speed maximum by level up. The rest of these changes are to polish the gear off. Notably, the shortcut air gain buff is to increase the viability for power type, as their shortcuts do not halt air drain.”

Turbo Star

Developer comments: “The previous changes to Turbo Star were removed and instead moved to Cover-P. This new Turbo Star design all about utilizing its enhanced level 3 it achieves at 90 rings as well as drift boosts during the early game.”

Speed Balancer

Developer comments: “A lot of people did not like playing Speed Balancer despite all the buffs we’ve given it. Its poor ability to micro space made it difficult, unfun, and vulnerable to aggressive play in particular. These new adjustments preserve the gear’s identity while mitigating the weakness. In addition, the player is also rewarded with powerful boons. Its normal handling is still quite poor, but the gear’s drifting ability is excellent.”

Blue Star II

Developer comments: “At lower-level play, we are very happy where this gear is. However, at higher levels of play, it struggles to stand out, generally being outclassed by common picks like Default Gear, Darkness, and Legend. We wanted to gift it a weapon in competition that a top player could make use of, but not butcher the gear’s difficulty by just granting it more air efficiency, boost speed, or some crazy effect like the “Legend” or “Berserker” has. Turns out giving it a stronger boost chain is exactly the kind of high skill ceiling buff we were looking for. An extremely robust utensil for eating the opponent alive! It is the perfect lever to move because lower-level players will not properly utilize the advanced technique. Only those who possess an adept mechanical mastery of boost chaining and all of its applications will reap the benefits of this change. It’s really no surprise then that during testing, BS2 was many of top players favorite gear this patch.”

Access

Developer comments: “With the buffs to shortcuts across stages, multitype gears are bound to have their power reduced. These changes are similar to the other gears that give an extra shortcut, but Access gives a small bit of base stats to differentiate itself.”

Beginner

Developer comments: “Beginner is a new gear design that is based on the Slide Booster. It is an gear with the same idea but different implementation. Instead of rapid-fire boosts to maintain a constant speed, are bestowed much stronger drift boosts with a longer charge time in exchange.”

Accelerator

Developer comments: “Accelerator had two major issues. Requiring too many rings or have too little room to store excess rings which are caused by having too high of a cost on its boost. These changes are to improve upon that as well as other stat increases.”

Trap Gear

Developer comments: “This gear was a lag machine that isn’t fun to play against and has litter interactivity should it get ahead. These changes are aimed to make the design much more cohesive and less uninteractive. The very high acceleration is there because gears cannot tornado for 40 frames after exiting auto sections.”

Light Board

Developer comments: “Light Board struggles with its boost costs and much lower burst speed output. This gear is consistent with its speed due to its special effect which allows the gear to retain boost speed even after boost duration has ended. The higher costs were an attempt to balance it, although it seems a bit outclassed by Magic Carpet. In this case, a couple of small adjustments are the recipe for a successful buff, such as lower drift costs. This would not only be an objective increase in value to the remaining air it does have, but it simultaneously gives Light Board something else to do while it retains its boost.”

Slide Booster

Developer comments: “These are just minor restrictions to help keep Slide Booster the same since we are happy where the gear is at this time.”

Legend

Developer comments: “Legend is a beginner-friendly gear. With the Always Max Trick Charge flag and having extra air gain with those tricks, it’s very forgiving. Its air efficiency is so good that it easily rivals Darkness & Air Tank. This is of course great for low-level players. The main issue is that high-level players have refined applications for recently discovered techniques to burn that access air they normally wouldn’t use. This exponentially increases Legend’s burst speed potential. Naturally, this was not what we intended. It’s nice to see that Legend has the duality of being good for newcomers and top competitors alike, but being as prevalent as it is at all levels of play, it’s clearly a little too strong. To address this, we’re reducing the bonus air gain it has.”

Magic Carpet

Developer comments: “Magic Carpet being the prototype to all extreme gear, is supposed to have the DNA of nearly all special effects. These changes simply add more of them to the gear. However, due to the monstrous utility of stockpiling all these signiture extreme gear talents, we are hitting the air costs a bit, as the gear has become extremely efficient.”

Air Broom

Developer comments: “Air Broom just needs a small push, and since the gear is supposed to be based on using tornadoes in active combat, it makes sense to reduce the tornado cost.”

Hovercraft

Developer comments: “Hovercraft not losing cruising speed while charging a jump is actually a weakness as the faster movement makes it harder to control the gear. Similarly, because of its oversteering, we decided to mitigate parts of that weakness by making the gear lose no speed when it hits a wall.”

Chaos Emerald (Super Sonic)

Developer comments: “Super Sonic is tough to balance. Having access to all 3 type shortcuts makes him not only powerful but also easier to play than other ring gears. These changes are aimed at making Super Sonic less easy and more intractable. In addition, the attack stun nerf will ease the oppression of Super Sonic’s AOE hitbox.”

Faster

Developer comments: “This is a minor rework to keep Faster working the way it was designed last patch: to be a hybrid between cruising and boosting like Fastest was intended to be in Vanilla.”

Gambler

Developer comments: “Gambler in the previous patch was a rather bad design as it abused the ability to sit on an item box to avoid its weaknesses. This new Gambler concept is a hybrid between using air and rings as fuel, as the gear does both. However, it still keeps its core identity about having a strong late game.”

Power Gear

Developer comments: “Power Gear is a new gear design based around utilizing constant boost chains at a very low boost cost. Its attack is only out for a handful of frames, making it exceedingly difficult to land one. This gear demands high physical execution, there’s no getting past that. Be that as it may, if you do decide to break the barrier, you’ll wield tremendous power, hence the name.”

Opa Opa

Developer comments: “Opa Opa was originally intended to have halved boost duration instead of a hard 60 frames, so these changes are to fit with that design. In addition, the attack stun nerfs were needed as the flatten status effect is truly devastating. It isn’t as much as the character nerfs though. For a gear design around having a strong attack, we do not intend to hit it too bad.”

The Crazy

Developer comments: “The Crazy in the last patch was a bit… too crazy. These changes are to tone it down, bring it more in line with other high boosting gears, and increase the number of stages the gear can be played on. Its attack now being restored allows it to make use of an old ability it used to have in vanilla, stealing rings from the opponent. Other than Super Sonic, most ring gears would rather not attack their opponent, as their successful exchange actually loses them rings. Rings are too high of a toll to pay for only dishing out level 1 attack stun. The Crazy’s changes bestow it great offensive utility other ring gears don’t have. With the gear’s blindingly fast boost speed, an oppressive time is waiting for anyone in its path.”

Berserker

Developer comments: “Berserker is a gear all about close-quarters combat. Its signature ability is truly a mighty one, Perpetual Attack State. To compensate, the original designers opted to make a slower gear with the inability to gain air by normal means. This is a fundamentally flawed design, however. A successful gear cannot be slow and airtight, it has to be one or the other. So we fixed the air problems in SRTE 1.2, but the gear still proved far too slow. Due to possessing the Perpetual Attack State flag, the gear cannot boost chain. That’s bad enough, and yet the Perpetual Attack State flag also had the preposterous shortcoming of making turbulence so ineffective, the gear might as well not be able to ride it at all. These weaknesses make getting into attack range to dish out the carnage way too difficult for even the greatest of players. Even if Berseker pulled off the herculean task of reaching the opponent and beating them down, it wouldn’t be able to keep the lead for long. This gear’s deficiencies didn’t allow it to succeed in anything other than throwing, so its ridiculous deficiencies are being lessened.”

E-Rider

Developer comments: “E-Rider is envisioned to be a variant on the High Booster, with some levers pushed a couple of notches here and there. This allows the gear to be viable in places were High Booster almost succeeds.”

Air Tank

Developer comments: “Air Tank is a rather simple design that is extremely effective. It runs on having air efficiency much like Darkness, but Air Tank achieves that by having a larger maximum air size. In addition, the boost costs at earlier levels are highly efficient, but at the cost of air management becoming tighter at later levels.”

Heavy Bike

Developer comments: “Heavy Bike is a new gear design based around having a strong, yet air costly early game, with a slower but highly air efficient late game. A gear where leveling up actually decreases some stats instead of exclusively increases. This sort of design offers dynamic gameplay with how & when the player levels up. It cannot ride turbulence. Being the heaviest of all extreme gear, colliding with other players at the start line will boop them farther than usual, which can lead them to make a premature start. Watch out though, the seesaw platforms in the Super Monkey Ball section of Sega Carnival will tilt significantly quicker should Heavy Bike Ride on one side.”

Destroyer

Developer comments: “With the buffs to shortcuts across stages, multitype gears are bound to have their power reduced. These changes are similar to the other gears that give an extra shortcut, but Destroyer gives a small bit of boost speed to differentiate itself.”

Omnipotence

Developer comments: “Buffed shortcuts on all stages make having access to all types very powerful on stages set up to utilize three shortcuts, so this nerf is to balance Omnipotence.”

Cover-S

Developer comments: “Cover-S is a completely new gear designed around making shortcuts more powerful.”

Cover-F

Developer comments: “Cover-F’s previous changes have been removed. Instead, it is a new gear design that cruises at a high speed with a high passive drain. Boosting replenishes your air, but it slows you down. Abuse ledges and ramps to get the most out of this gear.”

Cover-P

Developer comments: “Cover-P inherits the changelist of Turbo Star from the previous patch. Changes were made based on that to use fewer rings, but have more emphasis on picking up rings to gain speed.”

Hang-On

Developer comments: “Hang-On is a new gear design based around being a standard gear that uses rings as fuel. It also has a really modest, yet comfortable amount of bonus turning.”

Super Hang-On

Developer comments: “Last patch, Super Hang-On was designed a bit weirdly as it was easily abusing item boxes while still refilling too slowly from pits. An improvement in coding ability has allowed for better implementation of our original idea. The raw numbers buffs are simply to push the gear up to par.”

Grinder

Developer comments: “With the buffs to shortcuts across stages, multitype gears are bound to have their power reduced. These changes are similar to the other gears that give an extra shortcut, but Grinder gives a small bit of shortcut air gain to differentiate itself.”

Advantage-S

Developer comments: “Running is the least explored mechanic within Riders, mostly because it’s supposed to be a detriment. However, if it was fast enough, it has a few properties that would make it quite formidable. In run state, you are immune to uphill speed loss, off-road speed loss, turning speed loss, and you are completely immune to attacks altogether. Advantage-S is a fresh take on the high boosting archetype of extreme gears. Using the air meter as a timer, the player vicariously spends all their resources to gain as much of a lead as possible, until it transforms into its running mode. Now out of air, it’ll then proceed to book it headlong towards the next air pocket at high speeds… by running there! Let’s see who among you dares to meet this challenge!”

Advantage-F

Developer comments: “Advantage-F is a new gear design based around constantly hitting walls to gain speed. Riders have interesting collision physics. Hitting a wall in other racing games is usually an extremely high-speed penalty that stops you in your tracks. In Riders, not only is that penalty minuscule, but hitting the wall at certain angles can launch you at predictable trajectories as if you were a pinball. It is an interesting point to note that even though we came up with this gear idea, the way this game works allows such a design to exist in the first place. This is a testament to the game’s untapped potential.”

Advantage-P

Developer comments: “There are no real changes for Advantage-P, so this is the section where we will explain how we were able to get Cover and Advantage gears selectable on more players. The answer to this is that it uses the model of the Cover/Advantage gear the character can be selected on, so that way the game doesn’t crash. Since the gears pretty much use the same model structure, there’s no errors or anything.”

Cannonball

Developer comments: “Cannonball was a little too potent, so these are small nerfs to put it back in line.”

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To learn more about Sonic Riders Tournament Edition and the latest patch, please visit the official Discord server.