My thoughts on Redout 2

[Apteryx]

I'm 99% sure this is a skill issue but I found Redout 1 to be much more fun and accessible than Redout 2. Everything about Redout 2 is just a tiny bit worse and it's so annoying. I was so excited to play after I saw the intro but the UI that followed was disgusting. It looked like Call of Duty MW2, with all the ugly boxes taking up my entire screen. Once I got past the tutorial (which I appreciate them adding because Redout 1 didn't really have a tutorial) and raced against AI, I was surprised at how ruthless the AI were. It was only the first Mt. Fuji Course 1 race, and the AI were rubberbanding all over the place and boosting way longer than I could ever hope to. I managed to maintain first place for most of the race but at the very end during the last 4 turns, one of the AI just came up behind me at mach 7 and shoved me out of the way while boosting into that one pretty sharp turn, clearing it cleanly. Idk what is happening with this game but I hope they fix it soon.

[Cloakshire]

Your 99% assumption is correct. It is a skill issue.

Disregarding the subjective stuff like the UI & comparison to RO1, allow me to elaborate on your Fuji race experience.

Let me first say that the AI does not rubberband nor was it ever a thing in the Redout series.

The opening tutorial about boosting teaches you how to boost and how to hyperboost, but what it doesn't tell you is that you can stack them together and perform a double boost. If you're not doing that, races will be brutally difficult. If you stack your boosts, you'll rocket ahead of the AI. Hyperboost is rarely used on its own, we almost always double boost when our hyper is up.

Lets talk more about the AI showing up outta nowhere at the end. As I said before, there is no rubberbanding. Instead, the AI routinely boosts through certain track sections to gain a lot of speed. We call these boost patterns; as boosting in some sections yield higher speeds/more distance than others. While the AI is not doing the meta patterns, they do operate in such a way that their pattern can overpower a new player if the player is not double boosting and/or not placing their boosts in good locations.

With all that being said, there's nothing regarding the AI/difficulty that needs fixing. There was a difficulty issue after release, but the difficulty was already toned down once in a prior patch.

[Apteryx]

Originally posted by Cloakshire:

Your 99% assumption is correct. It is a skill issue.

Disregarding the subjective stuff like the UI & comparison to RO1, allow me to elaborate on your Fuji race experience.

Let me first say that the AI does not rubberband nor was it ever a thing in the Redout series.

The opening tutorial about boosting teaches you how to boost and how to hyperboost, but what it doesn't tell you is that you can stack them together and perform a double boost. If you're not doing that, races will be brutally difficult. If you stack your boosts, you'll rocket ahead of the AI. Hyperboost is rarely used on its own, we almost always double boost when our hyper is up.

Lets talk more about the AI showing up outta nowhere at the end. As I said before, there is no rubberbanding. Instead, the AI routinely boosts through certain track sections to gain a lot of speed. We call these boost patterns; as boosting in some sections yield higher speeds/more distance than others. While the AI is not doing the meta patterns, they do operate in such a way that their pattern can overpower a new player if the player is not double boosting and/or not placing their boosts in good locations.

With all that being said, there's nothing regarding the AI/difficulty that needs fixing. There was a difficulty issue after release, but the difficulty was already toned down once in a prior patch.

I was tailing the AI that overtook me and it was boosting the whole time, like it's engine was almost white, yet it didn't overheat and explode. It was going too fast for me to see what ship it was using so idk if there's a ship that is tolerant to heat from boosting or smth

[Cloakshire]

Originally posted by Apteryx:

I was tailing the AI that overtook me and it was boosting the whole time, like it's engine was almost white, yet it didn't overheat and explode. It was going too fast for me to see what ship it was using so idk if there's a ship that is tolerant to heat from boosting or smth

There are ships that are more tolerant to heat. Boosting/overheating is tied to two stats.

Durability which influences your max hull and heat gauge. More durability = more hull, faster cooling, and more resistance to heat aka slower overheat.

Thrust is the other half. Thrust affects how potent your boost is and how much heat your boost generates.

With this in mind, a ship with low thrust and high durability will be able to boost for a long time. While it won't win on a short straight, it can make it up over a longer distance.

^This sounds ideal, but the lack of boost potency will become detrimental as you move up. So the name of the game is to balance your ship's durability/thrust ratio to give yourself enough boost potency to stay fast, but enough durability to offset the heat generation.

The AI that was boosting forever probably had a stat combination that favored high dura/low thrust which can be magnified by the ship's base stats as they each have a different base distribution. (This magnification will get smaller as you move up and base stats become less impactful due to better part selection).

I don't have a video of the Fuji trial specifically, but I do have this which shows the same track in an event not much further than the trial. The AI is set to nightmare for me, but you should be able to see the pattern I used on Rainbow Forest.

https://youtu.be/7XcRPYs4780?si=moyJlcUCMBFeStUi

[Apteryx]

Originally posted by Cloakshire:

Your 99% assumption is correct. It is a skill issue.

Disregarding the subjective stuff like the UI & comparison to RO1, allow me to elaborate on your Fuji race experience.

Let me first say that the AI does not rubberband nor was it ever a thing in the Redout series.

The opening tutorial about boosting teaches you how to boost and how to hyperboost, but what it doesn't tell you is that you can stack them together and perform a double boost. If you're not doing that, races will be brutally difficult. If you stack your boosts, you'll rocket ahead of the AI. Hyperboost is rarely used on its own, we almost always double boost when our hyper is up.

Lets talk more about the AI showing up outta nowhere at the end. As I said before, there is no rubberbanding. Instead, the AI routinely boosts through certain track sections to gain a lot of speed. We call these boost patterns; as boosting in some sections yield higher speeds/more distance than others. While the AI is not doing the meta patterns, they do operate in such a way that their pattern can overpower a new player if the player is not double boosting and/or not placing their boosts in good locations.

With all that being said, there's nothing regarding the AI/difficulty that needs fixing. There was a difficulty issue after release, but the difficulty was already toned down once in a prior patch.

How picky is the timing on the double boost? I only have the first ship (the purple Feisar looking one) and whenever I attempt the double boost, I just overheat or lose control and hit a wall. Is it possible to cancel the hyper boost?

[Cloakshire]

Originally posted by Apteryx:

How picky is the timing on the double boost? I only have the first ship (the purple Feisar looking one) and whenever I attempt the double boost, I just overheat or lose control and hit a wall. Is it possible to cancel the hyper boost?

Yes, you can cancel the hyper one of two ways b/c the button is a toggle, not a hold like normal boost. Either tap the hyper button again while it's running, or tap the brakes to cancel it early.

Cancelling a hyper early reduces the cooldown and will let it become available again sooner. The cooldown can range 6-12 seconds depending on how long you let it run.

Best to make sure you're at full hull and a near emtpy heat gauge before double boosting, especially early on when the ships are fragile.

[Yasha]

1 is a significantly better game in every respect besides the actual driving mechanics.

[Cloakshire]

Originally posted by Yasha:

1 is a significantly better game in every respect besides the actual driving mechanics.

Debatable. Both games have their strengths and weaknesses. If there's anything the majority of the community agrees on though, it's that RO2 feels more like a side grade rather than a successor/sequel to RO1.

[rdowg]

Originally posted by Yasha:

1 is a significantly better game in every respect besides the actual driving mechanics.

I'd say the first game had better tracks and music, but not much else

[Apteryx]

Originally posted by Yasha:

1 is a significantly better game in every respect besides the actual driving mechanics.

which is why i refunded 2 because i like to race to music that doesnt sound like a monkey weakly beating a drum every five seconds. also, i hink the overall difficulty and ship handling is more fair in 1 because it requires enough skill to keep completely incompetent people out of multiplayer, but it isnt so ridiculously unfair that i quit after a mantis boosts for 45 seconds

[Cloakshire]

Originally posted by Apteryx:

...but it isnt so ridiculously unfair that i quit after a mantis boosts for 45 seconds

Obvious exaggeration on the ridiculously unfair aspect and the 45 second boosting. But if it's not for you, it's not for you. RO2's not for everyone.

Noticing your 1hr in RO1 and 1.3hrs in RO2. I think early judgements were made, but that's just my opinion. Maybe you can give RO2 another shot in the future once you complete and master RO1. For now, RO1 has a plethora of content and I highly recommend the DLC's as they get integrated into the main career if you get them early on.

There's a way to try the DLC's without buying them too. If you join a lobby and the host has the DLC, they can take you there without you needing to own it. I have em all so if you want to experience the RO1 dlc's before committing to a purchase, feel free to hollar.

[HighLanderPony]

I can have more fun in this in 2 hours than I can have in Speedstorm in 2 months.

The right control and assist setup can help a lot.

[Wylie28]

Its an easier game. They made the ships all turn on a dime like the F-zero sequels/wipeout. All of which suck and are the reason I enjoyed Redout 1. Plus the campaign sometimes presenting you the reverse maps first and not the forwards just makes it virtually impossible to learn any of the tracks without putting in significant degrees off effort several times longer than the campaign itself.

[Entropy]

Both are good, but RO2 feels like it gives you so much more control over your ship, and feels so much faster, i dont see myself returning to RO1 after finally properly learning RO2, 1 just feels very stiff now. You know youve finally managed to grasp how to play RO2 when you dont need to look at the rally arrows, and tracks flow so much better.

Best parts of 1 is the track pieces variety, no cylinder or pipes in 2 (only the beach DLC has a pipe), rest is subjective.

Overall RO2 is significantly harder but feels more rewarding.

[GTCv Deimos]

I've gotta say, you R01 stans really got to me, and I decided to go back to this game to give it another shot. I didn't take to it at all on launch, and as I revisit the early campaign, I can see why! The intro races are just... wayyyy too short and vanilla, and I'm not finding the handling to be particularly enjoyable. Also, I am only just now learning that you sorta have weapons in this game, and I'm not a fan of that at all (I'm a bit of a racing purist). Finally, the OST so far is decent, but it also loops way too frequently, and having three back-to-back races with the same, now-tired music track in an OST that's already pretty samey isn't really selling me on it.

Again, I'll continue playing, as there's plenty of enjoyable games that don't exactly make a good first impression. At the very least, I'm finally over the extremely limited amount of rumble feedback R01 implemented.

But as things stand, as messy and scattershot as RO2 can be, it's still beating RO1 in my world on all metrics, plus it made a much better first impression on me. The game bursts right out of the gate with its hard-as-nails moments, and satisfying handling physics. RO1 will have to do a lot more to earn my adoration.

Italic: I'm talking about RO1
Bold: I'm talking about RO2

[HighLanderPony]

Originally posted by GTCv Deimos:

I've gotta say, you R01 stans really got to me, and I decided to go back to this game to give it another shot. I didn't take to it at all on launch, and as I revisit the early campaign, I can see why! The intro races are just... wayyyy too short and vanilla, and I'm not finding the handling to be particularly enjoyable. Also, I am only just now learning that you sorta have weapons in this game, and I'm not a fan of that at all (I'm a bit of a racing purist). Finally, the OST so far is decent, but it also loops way too frequently, and having three back-to-back races with the same, now-tired music track in an OST that's already pretty samey isn't really selling me on it.

Again, I'll continue playing, as there's plenty of enjoyable games that don't exactly make a good first impression. At the very least, I'm finally over the extremely limited amount of rumble feedback R01 implemented.

But as things stand, as messy and scattershot as RO2 can be, it's still beating RO1 in my world on all metrics, plus it made a much better first impression on me. The game bursts right out of the gate with its hard-as-nails moments, and satisfying handling physics. RO1 will have to do a lot more to earn my adoration.

There are no weapons... wut.

glhf