Oh lordy, you guys xD
It’s now (close enough to) the end of the (working) week, and the survey has garnered 25 responses, i.e. as many as or just more than the number of people who were directly involved in the making. At this point I feel that it’s time to show you what the real feedback was. Some of it was actually surprising to me:
One person was honest enough to respond that they don’t like stories at all, so sorry about the unexpected story to that specific person. Otherwise, the vast majority of responses were overwhelmingly positive.
The majority of you are actually ready to write something, so for those of you who are I’ll be sure to have some clear guidelines in place to keep things running smoothly. But for the significant proportion of you that aren’t, fear not, I’ll structure the application process such that you can nominate the level of control you want over your character, or even not to bother having a character, in which case, you’ll sail through the races with no involvement in the story at all.
This is the conundrum question. It’s an almost perfectly even split between nut jobs and more sensible people. Also for those of you who thought an aerial battle, gun fights, grenades, hand-to-hand deathmatches and a hundred cops chasing cars around Nordschleife was not crazy enough, what the hell do you want, Dragonball Z!? [size=85]IN THE LAST EPISODE: KAAAAAAAAMEEEEE HAAAAAAAAMEEEEEEEEE oh shit, time for the next episode. IN THE NEXT EPISODE: oh shit Goku, that guy you were fighting blew up the whole universe, now how are we gonna find the Dragon Balls!?[/size]
HighOctaneLove does have a point though, the unique thing about BSLL is that it has the krazy dial turned up to 11. For that reason, I think the best way forward is to offer some flexibility in the storylines not afforded to most characters in this installment (I kind of bundled them all into the same scenario). You’ll have a choice as to whether or not to get involved in certain things, and I know for a fact some of you are going to want to more actively drive certain storylines, so I feel there’ll be branching subplots. BEWARE: if those subplots get in the way of your ability to make the next race, that WILL affect your classification, so choose wisely.
Well, it looks like I might not have to create a separate thread, so long as I keep things clearly delineated!
Alright, 8 races it is.
The system is going to be revamped anyway, more on that later, but at this stage, it’ll be mostly geared towards racing with some room to move in the rankings depending on the craziness of your ride. It looks like many of you don’t want somebody to run off with most of the stage wins anyway, so I anticipate a much tighter contest this time around! However, under no circumstances did I want anybody winning all three classifications, so keep that in mind.
The only clear consensus was “just fine”, so same rules again, with a couple of adjustments for body types etc.
Finally, to address all the suggestions:
I did think about this multiple times, and the final answer would be, given the results of this one, and the way I plan to score the next round, this won’t be necessary. Consider that the top five this time was an AWD estate wagon, a RWD coupe, a RWD MR, an AWD coupe, and an AWD hatch. There’s heaps of variety and they all perform differently with different setups, and it’s difficult to make a classification that would really work out. I welcome variety, and expect hybrids and frankencars anyway.
Hmm. I wouldn’t mind putting the cars to a community vote, sure (maybe this will help prevent such horrendous styling faux-pas as we saw in some of the entries this time around 
), but I don’t want that to have anything to do with how the cars perform in the tournament itself. It’s not about a fashion parade, it’s about trying to harness entirely too much power on roads that are frequently unsuitable for such things.
The safety requirement was minimal, and more of a “technicality”. I didn’t want to unfairly penalise older builds, so I left it as a selection and not a stat. I expect it will remain this way.
The madness scale WILL be making a formal comeback, as it will be part of the application process for those who submit a character to guide me into what plot choices they’re going to make, or have available to them. This will not directly affect scoring in the tournament.
Well kubby, I don’t know exactly how the car would stack up, but let’s just say that I also built a K car with 1:1 power:weight ratio as a prelim test and it’s well capable of spanking most of the existing BSLL contenders around the more technical tracks. Also keeping in mind my Peapod underperformed due to putting in an Unreasonably Large Turbo on it (for max power), instead of going with the original 1:1 power:weight ratio… suffice to say the small cars have real potential, though they lose out bigtime on the top speed tests. I’ll do some balancing testing to see whether a small car bonus need be applied, but I suspect not to be honest. Not in that way, anyway.
The racing bits will DEFINITELY remain punchy like in the beginning. Those of you who didn’t like the Nordschleife bit as much, tended to like the first three rounds. Not a problem, that’s how it was going to be. All the crazy story stuff that blew the word count out? That’ll be the optional extra behind-the-scenes.
Also, god damn, how could you not figure out who Kai was? I’m pretty sure we explained… or did I forget to… Kai’s Gryphon Gear’s test and racing driver.
In the likelihood that there will be another super long straight track… I’m honestly not sure. It looks as if people are more interested in trying to eke out the most track performance out of overpowered cars and I’m inclined to encourage that instead.
NO NUKES. Unless you want me to pull you out of the races and get your ass hauled into a dark room never to be seen again. Especially you, Vos, if you decide to come back from the dead
During beta testing, I went back and examined how the driving aids affected tameness, sportiness, and the times on the track. Some aids are actually worth more than others, so, given I’ll be switching to a multiplier performance index like system, this is something that will become a LOT more refined.
Alright then, the survey is still open but the trends were pretty clear. Once I’ve got enough clear space on my calendar (like I said, not until the middle of the year), I’ll be laying some proper groundwork for this. Expect some new content too, including new legendary real-life tracks and roads, an evolved scoring system which follows the basic spirit of the original, and more crazy cars!
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(95000 words no joke). Most would recommend you just read it but if not I’ll write something when I get home.
