Necrobump because since I played Race with Spaz in a JDC event somewhat recently, it still has a lot of flaws. I got salty and stopped at some point. This is probably partially to do with the fact race still uses treasure mode as a workaround, though there are other reasons too.

The fact of the matter is, a lot of players dislike race mode, and the 99.5% of them use Spaz. The main problems are not a matter of character usage.

What I consider the main flaws and important elements:

Unintintuitive level design - I'm going to be pedantic this time. It's that many custom made levels like to enforce backtracking, and from my experience in all the events, it confuses the hell out of the majority of players, especially those who haven't played the levels before. And that kills a lot of the competition. The solution is to simply stop using backtracking or at least make it a lot more obvious than a puny text string. Like clearly indicate crucial paths and remove redundant dead ends. Also lets not forget the hidden shortcuts. This is why the same handful of players keep winning.

Another one is off-screen obstacles. A great example is where a ceiling spring is placed conveniently above a ground spring that if you hold on right, you go into a warp that takes you back. How am I supposed to know that would take me back before then?

Another one is tight spaces, especially 1 tile vertical ones that force you to slow down...with poles between them that push you back. Do you like inevitably being shot/pushed amidst the chaos? Especially into a pole?

Partially related, I consider flow to be important in race too. After all, it's about going fast, so if you have to slow down a lot or get stuck against walls and poles, it doesn't feel as fun. Some obstacles are okay, but they shouldn't be so tight to the point of often creating clusterfights.

The next is to do with the inherent game design of JJ2 - The fact you can spam projectiles. The causes every start to become an uncontrollable clusterfuck. I did see one level somewhat get around this by giving everyone a shield at the start, though unfortunately it had too many tight spots and a stupidly placed morph (better yet, it looked like it was placed behind a wall but it wasn't - the wall was layer 3) which made me not enjoy the level anymore.

Sure, every first timer of a map is not going to be at their best, but race is far too punishing to first timers, and a lot of that comes down to the level design.

If peoples gripes with race mode are disregarded (or at least if no one makes better levels), it's always going to be a widely disliked game mode. I actually put the effort to explain why and what do to about it. With scripting, it could also become a more fun experience too.


However, I have intended to make race levels for a long time with my ideals, but I've been holding off for so long waiting for race mode to be improved (I hate playing it in treasure). Particularly that I want every player to start well spaced and not always end the moment the first player wins.