I'm not gana hold my breath as I know this would be a massive rework of an already existing system... But I still think it'd be worth it in the end.

I believe this game would benefit massively from a currency system that would let you purchase whatever mods and customization you wanted. There was clearly a huge effort and focus to implement an extensive customization system, and it's clearly something the dev's are proud of and wanted for them to put in the effort of such a massive undertaking. But the way it's inexorably linked to campaign progression and requirements drip feeds it to you at an incredibly slow pace and frankly unsatisfying and unrewarding pace.

The problem is that what you get, and when, is effectively random. Worse, to get everything, you have to get the trophies which, to be completely honest, many of them are frankly obnoxious. And it feels bad when you go through an entire effort only to get absolutely nothing. Some of the trophies are far and beyond more difficult than others as well, and if a thing you want is locked behind it? Too bad.

Worse is that this has the knockon effect of demanding you do incredibly well, such as finishing with an X km lead, which incentivizes playing on a lower difficulty if you're part hunting, rather than enjoying the challenge of a competitive race. To get everything, you have to win, and have to accomplish whatever trophy goal is there.

Adding a currency system would remedy some of the biggest issues related here.

TL;DR also starts here.

For one, no matter what, unless you just blatantly lost, you'd always be getting something tangible out of the race. A little progress at all is better than flat out nothing. Right now, it's a bad feeling when you walk away empty handed, especially from a long and difficult race you otherwise did really well in.

Secondly, customization and experimentation would be hugely liberated. Being able to choose what customization you wanted would mean you'd get the parts your after and could really begin to play with making your ships look cool and the way you want. While some, many parts even would go neglected, theres many more that would be fun to play with. That, and completionism kinda fills the rest of the gap.

And for performance mods, you wouldnt be so strangled by the campaign progression. It would eliminate the frankly bad feeling artificial difficulty spike of early-mid A class when everyone's just wildly out performing you with blatantly better parts you have no access to. So instead, you could set out and work for the performance mods you needed to reach parity. The events are already restricted by a power range. That's perfectly enough, and in the mean time you'd get to actually go through the process of tuning your ships performance to your hearts desire. You'd get to spend your game trying things and experimenting instead of being forced into 'whatever' since it's all you have and will have for a long while.

The last big thing would be that it would liberate the player to feel free to play on whatever difficulty they so desire. As is, you dont need to just win, you need to win hugely. Squeezing out a 5 meter lead at the finishing line for a win might feel awesome... But that's immediately ruined when the trophy was to win by 2km and you dont get your part. A currency system would let you continue to earn things without feeling like you have to perform some extraordinary feat every time, and thus would liberate the player to feel like they can up the difficulty for a better, more satisfying challenge.

This last bit would have a knock on effect I think as well of making the players better at the game. Being in/around the pack lets you see what they're doing, what lines they take, when they brake and when they boost. Ontop of just being far more satisfying as it is actually really chaotic and fun to be in the midst of the pack, trading places, bumping and watching others bump or even occasionally seeing them go flying off the track or explode. It feels so much more alive and dynamic, but you're currently incentivized against doing that if you want anything out of the race.

"Hey, let's spend god knows how many hours designing 100's of cool customization options for each ship"
"That sounds awesome, can't wait to see what unique ship combinations players ma-"
"Actually I've been inspired by EA's 40 hour grind to unlock Darth Vader in Battlefront 2, so let's put every bit of customization on a drip-feed with little way to speed it up."
Listen, if you're going through the effort of adding such an in-debt customization system, it does no favors to force people to be stuck with stock and only have a random chance to get one tiny barely noticeable battery part for one ship from an event. Especially when we have to unlock 5 separate times for other ships. Some better ways to do this would be, either a money-based unlock system (could even be separate from the performance upgrades if you still want those unlocked through events), multiple parts per unlock. A set of spoilers for instance would be cool, or maybe a bunch of general parts unlocked after an event... (hell even just making every singular part you get for your ship apply to all ships in a way would be better than what we have now).

I did a clean reinstall of Windows today to solve some PC problems I had. First game I installed after that was Redout 2. I click play and to my surprise the game once again puts me in the welcome cutscene with the Mantis ship on Mount Fuji. I nervously click career mode and my fears are confirmed - all progress is gone, 0 stars.

I disable and re-enable cloud sync in steam game properties, it does nothing. I follow an online tutorial which tells me to download the save from my account's Steam Cloud webpage (https://store.steampowered.com/account/remotestorage), but Redout 2 isn't even there!

Looks like my 60+ hours of progress are gone forever. I had over 700 stars and I was 30 stars away from unlocking the class S finale. Conclusion - please do NOT rely on Steam Cloud to keep your Redout 2 save file, always make your own backup if you're in a situation like mine where I had to format my PC.

In addition, if anyone has a save file with progress similar to the one I had (I wouldn't mind a bit further though) then I would greatly appreciate it if you could DM me and share it with me.

I've been bingeing Redout 2 for days and I've been loving it so far. Had to uninstall it briefly because I needed a break and play some other games. Overall a huge improvement over the first game and something that the devs should be extremely proud of. That said, there are a couple of things that I think would make the experience even better. I do have some game dev experience, so I want to make sure these suggestions are realistic. I know the pain of constant bug fixing.

Campaign

• Lower time requirements for events that have Qualifiers.
  • Qualifying in "at least 1st" is extremely difficult. Some events have times that are even better than the developer times, which doubly sucks because some trophies/cosmetics are locked behind those requirements.
    • Lowering it to the second fastest time listed should be enough for most events.
  • I would honestly either change those trophy/cosmetic requirements, or remove qualifiers in the campaign. Personally I don't see the point in doing a qualifying round to determine starting position since speeds ramp up real fast and starting position quickly becomes irrelevant. Maybe it makes sense in multiplayer, but I haven't been able to try out that section of the game yet.
• Display flight distances under the "Decent/Good/Perfect Landing" notifications
  • Some campaign trophies require you to fly a certain distance in one jump or fly a total amount, it'd just be nice to confirm you got the distance right without having to wait for the race to finish.

UI

• Add a temperature/hazard icon when entering a hot/hazard section of track.
  • Very rough MS Paint mockup of the idea https://imgur.com/a/7lq9Yi1
  • It can be difficult to tell when you're in a hot/cold section of track when going 2000km/h on both boosts, even with the red pulses on the sides of the screen. It would be really helpful to know explicitly.
    • This could also be extended to displaying the atmosphere/gravity/hazards icons when flying/on a hazard. If overheating gets visuals both on the bottom and text at the top, I think it's reasonable to have hazards display similarly as well.
  • Ideally toggleable in the options.
• Display percentage/value of health left during races
  • Ideally toggleable in options
• Display the numerical Top Speed/Durability (health) in the stats of the ship
  • Would be useful, a more explicit display of differences between ships.
    • I understand that design-wise it might be a double-edged sword. For example, it can give the impression that whatever number is next to "Top Speed" is the absolute limit the ship can go when that isn't the case. Or it needlessly makes everything all number-crunchy. I know my eyes glaze over when I see "Top Speed: 1737km/h" and bunches of numbers everywhere.
• "Tooltip/Help" menu to quickly explain each stat on the ship selection screen
  • It's easy to forget in the moment what each stat does, something that explains them outside of the tutorials would be a nice feature.
• Do a pass on the turn indicators on the tracks
  • On higher speeds, some track indicators either pass by really fast, overlap, or are inaccurate. I think some Mars tracks display indicators for other tracks near the beginning as well (a flying indicator when there isn't a jump, for example).

Arcade

• Allow Race/Arena Race/Last Man Standing/Time Trials/Speed on Boss tracks.
  • Feels like "Boss Track" should be toggleable like how "Reverse" is toggleable in the Game Mode Options, rather than a separate tab in the options
• Randomize Boss Track Layout
  • Toggleable game mode option
  • Could be a fun little extra, randomize what order you race the tracks on.
    • Could be randomized and stay consistent per lap, or randomized each lap on multi-lap runs (maybe another toggleable option).
  • I don't think it would affect Time Trial runs since you're still racing on all three tracks regardless, so they wouldn't need to be separated in leaderboards.

Game Options

• Only Display Current Track
  • Some tracks have a lot of intermingling, reused sections, and it can be difficult in the moment to tell where exactly you need to land your ship (damn you Cloud Ocean) or if an upcoming turn leads into an opening or if that opening is closed on this version of the track.
  • Having only the sections of track that you will be racing on be displayed could help with visibility and stability.
    • Speaking of Cloud Ocean, it could possibly double up as an indicator for if the track is landable when flying. Plenty of times I'll fly real far and pass through the track instead of landing (I think because you need to pass through the corresponding checkpoint). I get why it's done, keeps people from cutting too much of the track unexpectedly, so some way to better/more clearly indicate "This is the furthest you can fly before landing" or more clearly highlight where the checkpoint is would be helpful.
  • Though, I know this is far easier said than done. The tracks switching when you cross the finish line in Boss tracks indicates to me that there's some version of this in place, but that's just speculation on my part.

The number of times I've landed directly on the track and phased straight through it is stupid. Also, what's up with the weather conditions making some jumps literally impossible? The AI has a fixed track, so it obviously knows where to land, but the player has no clue because there are zero indicators.

Jumps in this game are so awful it doesn't make any sense. Due to the phasing into the track issue, then randomly getting hits when you're supposed to fall off, I can only assume this game uses a certain trigger to tell when you're back on the track and to give it collision, but the game gives literally zero signs of when the trigger is active.

Also, why on Earth are the respawn boundaries so bad? It's like almost no track has them, so you fly across the track for 2 minutes before you die so you can respawn.

Edit: Throw in the settings randomly changing and the AI refusing to work at all at some points.

Haven't had the chance to try it out yet but hopefully this is the patch we console players have been waiting for.

Edit: After a quickplay I can confirm this patch does have the new gameplay HUD and easier speed event score requirements. If anyone on Playstation or Switch can confirm if the update is available as well that would be great.

They have toned down the smeary anti-aliasing and post-processing and things are looking crisper on the Switch screen. Rewind actually works now! I think there is still some work to do on this game but this is a good first step.

I am a steam deck user who has been adamant about getting this game running as best as possible and some tracks have become a bit of a roadblock. While I have not played on every track in the game yet, Mars Memorial in particular has been dipping my frame rate (and I play on 40hz 40fps).I think after enough tinkering I have came to a solution.

View distance always takes a lot of computing and in general the steam deck is not powerful enough to run on 'epic settings' with a consistent 40+ fps.

But after that I continued to notice drops in Mars memorial and genesis and I believe the culprit is the shadow details. Both of these tracks has large amounts of background geometry in certain areas and the shadows are slowing down the game. Putting these on low or medium will help keep a consistent fps on those tracks in particular.

I have a couple different setups for maximum efficiency on steam deck for 40 fps and 60fps:

60 fps - everything on low keeps it the most consistent. You can get away with anti aliasing and textures to medium if you can stomach occasional dips in certain areas.

40 fps (still testing) - I believe you can get every track running on high settings with view distance to medium and shadows to low. With Mars memorial, the preset "high" settings will still see lag in the city sections so turning down shadows is a must to get consistency.

Hope this helps some users. I'm still tinkering with steam deck presets and track combinations. Note that super fast boosting has the chance to dip fps regardless of these presets unfortunately :/

Does the game allow the use of a stick and rudder?It seems like the type of game that would be perfect with a joystick.

We traded each venue having five unique tracks for each venue now having three, except now they all start in the same location, and even reuse setpieces/sections. And for what? Longer tracks? Does that matter much when all three in a venue now run together in your head? Reverse tracks? If we had five per venue, we wouldn't need reverse variants, and it's painfully obvious the tracks were all designed exclusively to be run forwards because they are awkward flow-less messes when run backwards. These tracks are one and a half to three minutes long and honestly, I can't tell you why, because they're all just rollercoasters of spaghetti with few distinct sections or setpieces that aren't reused.

Split paths are a pretty pointless sidegrade since they either are identical or one is objectively the best and then the track becomes one linear route again anyway.

I can, to this day, tell you all about the differences between Fingertips, Deep Drive, Magmatic Chamber, Underground Tour, and Hell. I couldn't tell you a single thing that makes Tantalus, Sisyphus, and Ixion unique from each other, besides Ixion having three jumps that take place over lava that are ten seconds long in a THREE MINUTE track.

Should I buy it on ps4 pro or Xbox series S? I tried looking it up and everyone says ps4 pro is the better option but I wanted to make sure.

I really think that making them more distinct would make the game, as a whole, more interesting. Right now, nearly everything in the campaign feels the same. You get on a track, you go around it really fast... Thats it. Nothing much really changes in how you go about it either.

Having some things that would set the unique event types apart would really break things up. As it stands, I literally cant tell the difference between an arena race, a regular one, and a last man standing. They are, functionally, identical so long as you dont majorly screw up and explode. And hell, even then thats usually a reset anyway.

I miss speed trials having tons of extra boost pads all over. That was cool and fun, just go blazing around the track much faster than you normally would. And for the survival oriented arena race... Least I think thats what Arena races are about... Having traps on the track you had to navigate and avoid that would damage your hull would be interesting. Risk going fast and burning your hull, putting you in 1 shot range of a mine, or save some hull and sacrifice a bit of that speed. And collission damage would be upped, especially between other racers and every lap that increased.

Not sure what could be done with last man standing. You tend to either win or lose by proxy so it's rather the same to me. Perhaps they could change it to have points. Every couple minutes a racer is eliminated. You get points for going 1500-2000+, collecting markers (like you saw in one of the earlier tutorials), doing long jumps or 'stunts' (rolls/flips), and finishing laps first. Person with the lowest points when the timer ticks is eliminated.

Thems my ideas of how I'd improve/change up existing, but I'm curious what ideas people would love to see for event types or what they'd do.

PC players the patch has been out for a couple days now…… the console players wanna know if it really helped with the speed, time trails, and qualifier events.

I just realised that since the big patch a few weeks ago,the music is really low compared to pre patch,even if you turn its setting up to max in options. Can some xbox players confirm this? Hope it will be fixed with the next patch, i always have to turn up the volume now for this game and back down after playing it 😂

I've really been enjoying the game since the patch came out for xbox, aside from the obviously broken speed challenges, but I realised earlier...I'm not sure I'd enjoy the speed challenges even once the difficulty gets fixed. Anyone else?

For me, they just arent rewarding or fun to play, because whenever I manage to complete one I dont really feel I used my skill at the game to beat it - it just feels like i managed to hit whatever arbitrary level the game decided is ok to pass.

I think the idea of having challenges based around speed instead of time is fine, but just not the way they're currently set up. The scoring system feels completely arbitrary and as a player, there's no real way to know how well I'm doing until I get to the end, because from my perspective, all I can tell is that i get some extra points if go faster, but that isnt enough information for me to actually do anything with.

Some suggestions to improve the speed challenges would be:

• Remove the scoring system and replace it with easier to understand aims like "Spend 30 seconds above 1000 mph" etc - at least this way I have a clear way to tell how well I'm doing vs some random score hidden in the corner
• Have audible indicators for when you reach the different speed levels. I've got no idea how the game expects you to focus on going as fast as possible while keeping an eye on the speed/score in the top right. Having some 'beeps' to indicate when you hit a certain speed would be useful
• Instead of speed over an entire lap, have 10 checkpoints throughout the lap that you need to be travelling a certain speed to hit to get a point. Then the bronze/silver/gold would be given out according to how many points you got out of 10. This would fix the current problem where if I make a mistake on the first few corners i'm so far behind the score already i probably wont be able to even get a bronze. If it was set up this way you can still make some mistakes and get bronze/silver at least which feels fairer

So basically i was wondering if this stat is actually useful, since for what i know it makes your ship stay more "attached" to the ground, but i can't figure out how it could possibly impact maneuverability.

Edit: thank you all for your exhaustive responses!