Sonic Riders DX v2.1
Patch Notes

As seen with Drift Stat Bonuses on Character Classes, we've taken a hard look at how Drift Stats work on Gears. One element of bad game design we've had since the introduction of the Drift Class was that certain gears cut the bonuses from Characters in half. This adds an extra layer of confusion to understanding these gears, but gets much-much-much worse when you realize that Light Board also has specific stat differences based on Character Class. Once we realized that Drift Characters were too strong on Standard Class gears, we realized there was no longer a need to give them inflated stats to make sure they were viable on more than just Drift Class gears. Since we've nerfed the Drift Class (and the associated All-Around Class), we're removing the concept of halving Drift Stats from Characters from the game. For other gears affected by nerfs to Drift Stats from characters, such as Fastest, they have been adjusted accordingly as seen below.

Accelerator has been a hot-topic in the Riders competitive scene due to its unique design of hoarding rings to charge up for an incredibly powerful boost. However, this design came with many problems over the course of its lifespan. The main one being that its design isn't playable on Fly and Speed types. To resolve that issue, allowed the gear to gain Rings from using shortcuts, believing it would even the differences between types. While this helped us measure when stages shortcuts restored too much Air, this feature came with its own host of problems. With this gear becoming too complicated of a mess, we've decided to rework it. However, if you did enjoy the gameplay of Accelerator before, then you try out Astral Storm, who has inherited its design.

As for this rework to Accelerator, the main goal was to successively create a Standard Class gear that used Rings as fuel. Previous attempts at this have failed due to a flawed understanding of how to balance their fuel and improper resource balance on stages. However, this is no longer the case. The tireless work to balance stages in DX 2.0 has created proper resource balance, and with new research during the development of DX 2.1, we have created a successful Standard Class Ring Gear.

This new research has also led us to re-evalulate the passive drain and drift cost of other gears that use Rings as fuel, which you will see reflected in other patch notes below.

Super Tails has been regarded as the weakest and most boring Super Form introduced in DX 2.0, and for good reason. The type combination of Speed and Fly isn't great, and his gameplay was built around old philosophies for designing gears that use Rings as fuel. While we can't fix the inherit issues of Speed and Fly being a weak Dual-type combination, we have given Super Tails a mini-rework using the newfound understanding from working on Accelerator.

This mini-rework for Super Tails keeps with the idea of making Super Tails basic, not having any special gimmicks like other Super Forms. With Accelerator being embodiment of creating a Standard Class Ring Gear with a boost cost of 5 Rings, Super Tails' higher boost cost of 8 Rings makes it more like an E-Rider for Ring Gears. This design change should make Super Tails smoother to play and give players more options, increasing skill expression and making him less boring. Additionally, with most other Super Forms having their attacks reduced to Level 2 attacks, Super Tails having an AoE attack becomes an advantage for it. To help further emphasize this combat ability, we've given Super Tails increased handling (similar to that of Super Knuckles and Super Amy).

Super Knuckles is actually a bit of a surprising gear to give a mini-rework to, having been successful due to his triple-boosting action and high speed. However, Super Knuckles' design has some reminants of old philosophies for designing gears that use Rings as fuel that we wanted to correct. These changes are aimed at making Super Knuckles feel a little less like a high boosting gear, allowing him to have more flexibility and skill expression.

Astral Jet was one of the first Super Forms designed back during the development of DX 2.0. The goal with Super Forms was to use them as vessels for introducing unique gameplay designs that we otherwise couldn't on regular gears. Super Jet's concept was be akin to the gameplay of Crash Team Racing, where players continuously Drift to keep their boost going. While that exact concept might be overpowered in Riders due to the game's emphasis on balancing around boost duration, we've made our own spin on the idea by making Drifting restore Rings for Astral Jet. This means that by continuously Drifting, Astral Jet will refuel himself and be able to afford his next boost. As a result, Astral Jet has the weakest Drift Dash in the game. In addition, like all of the Babylonian Astral Forms, Astral Jet gains bonus shortcut speed (similar to picking Grinder on Speed-types). This bonus speed to type shortcuts is Team Babylon's counterpart to Team Sonic's Super Forms getting access to more type shortcuts. Players will have to balance between continuously Drifting, utilizing a weak but free Drift Dash, managing resources to keep boosting, and grinding on Rails that halt your ability to Drift in order to master Astral Jet.

While Astral Storm went through many designs during the development of DX 2.0, they were ultimately scrapped. Instead, with DX 2.1 we've decided to make Astral Storm the reincarnation of Accelerator's "Gravity Cannon" design. By being type-locked to Power-type, the design no longer suffers from having to be made playable on Speed and Fly types, meaning there's no need for this gear to gain Rings from shortcuts. However, hitting Power Objects is still important as Astral Storm since he, like all of the Babylonian Astral Forms, gains bonus shortcut speed (similar to picking Destroyer on Power-types). Additionally, like other newer cruising gear designs, Astral Storm has a little bit of reduced deceleration to ensure catchup mechanics and Drift Dashing are useful for him keeping up. Unlike the Accelerator that precedes it, Astral Storm can attack opponents with his boost, which allows opponents to body block this super powerful boost. But that doesn't mean that they should body block it, as doing so means Astral Storm will be able to restore a huge amount of Rings. Lining up their boost precisely and landing attacks towards the end of its duration is a skill players can learn to push Astral Storm to his fullest potential.

Astral Wave, like Astral Jet, was one of the first Super Forms designed back during the development of DX 2.0. Being made with a bigger emphasis on the space theme for the Astral Forms, and to reflect Wave's character, Astral Wave's gameplay is designed around laying traps on the track by being a Ring Gear version of Trap Gear, meaning she can perform Tornado Boosts. However, Astral Wave and Trap Gear don't play the exact same. While Trap Gear is focused on spamming as many tornadoes as possible, Astral Wave has to manage her resources as Rings due to the high Tornado cost and Rings not replenishing as easily as Air. For those who worry about her Tornadoes based on how they saw her during DX 2.0 development, we've given her the same Tornadoes every Ring Gear has access to instead of the large Level 3 Tornadoes that were originally planned. In addition, Astral Wave can also save up her Rings for a powerful Boost that can turn the tide of a race. Like all of the Babylonian Astral Forms, Astral Wave gains bonus speed while using Fly shortcuts (similar to picking Access on Fly-types). Keeping in line with other newer cruising gear designs and the Trap Gear preceding her, Astral Wave has some reduced deceleration to ensure catchup mechanics and Drift Dashing are useful for her keeping up. Balancing resources between this large Boost, placing Tornadoes, and the necessary Drift Dashes to keep up are what you'll have to do in order to achieve victory with Astral Wave.

Super Ulala is probably the least expected Super Form to be included, but did you know "Super Ulala" is actually a real thing in Space Channel 5: Part 2 during the game's final boss? Space Channel 5 lore aside, Super Ulala comes to Sonic Riders DX as another vessel for a unique gameplay design. Based on the previous design of Power Gear where players had to constantly Boost Chain that we made for "Sonic Riders Tournament Edition Version 1.3", Super Ulala takes a more modern approach on the idea with our 2.5 years of experience since then. Rather than requiring the player to boost every 0.33 seconds (20 frames), Super Ulala makes the window longer by having a Boost Duration that lasts a full second (60 frames). This makes the design no longer insanely difficult and super spammy to play, but still challenging and rewarding for players who master the Boost Chain rhythm.

Super Eggman is another Super Form we've made to house a revamped version of an older gear design. One of the ideas we tested for Cover-S during the development of DX 2.0 was a "charge boost" gear, based on the gameplay of Kirby Air Ride. However, this design ran into issues of needing to be viable across every type and the player being unable to see how much they've charged. These issues have been fixed by existing as Super Eggman. Being type locked to Power-type means the design is focused on working for a single type. The Air bar on the right side of the HUD now represents the amount of Charge for the Charge Boost. With these fixes in place, we've managed to create another interesting gameplay design that gives unique strengths and weaknesses for players to take advantage of.

Astral E-10000G, or Astral E10G, was actually a highly requested Super Form to be added to Sonic Riders DX. Aside from the green robot's cult following, Astral E10G would be the first and only gear completely designed around the No-Type gameplay E10G uniquely has. For this design, we wanted to make a gear based around cruising and drift dashing like Fastest, but with a powerful boost that could be used often enough to pressure opponents without letting the gear boost spam. As such, we've modeled Astral E10G after Super Sonic, but with a heavier emphasis on a cruise-drift playstyle. Mastery of Astral E10G will require players to manage their resources and have strong movement, just like playing other gears commonly used with E10G.

Astral E-10000R, or Astral E10R for short, is another one of the more original designed Super Forms for DX 2.1. However, the gameplay design for Astral E10R is actually a revamp of one of the scrapped concepts for Astral Storm. With this design, we've seriously pushed the limits for complexity in gear design while trying to keep true to core gameplay. While playing Astral E10R, you cannot charge your Drift Dash by Drifting. Instead, you have to perform Boost Chains (Boost while Drifting) in order to charge your Drift Dash. 2 Boosts are required for a Regular Drift Dash; 3 Boosts for an Overcharged Drift Dash, and 4 Boosts for a Critically Overcharged Drift Dash. Your Boost Duration is short, allowing you to pull these Boost Chains off in a quick succession and charge your Drift faster than other gears would. Once you release your Drift to perform a Drift Dash, you'll perform an automatic boost along with it, similar to how Cover-F works. This automatic boost has enhanced Boost Speed and Boost Duration, giving players a breather before going back to spamming 4 Boost Chains to charge the next Drift Dash Boost. This enhanced boost after releasing a Drift Dash is a new feature added to the design during DX 2.1's development, fixing the original design's issue of being too difficult and playing too spammy. Much like how Astral Wave was designed around the key phase "Black Hole" and the current Astral Storm was designed around the key phrase "Supernova", this design was originally built around the phase "Acceleration Blast", one of the attacks from the sci-fi 2D action platformer franchise, "Blaster Master Zero". This is our most unique Gear design yet, and we hope you enjoy it.

With plenty of changes to Drift Dash Speed in DX 2.0, we've kept a close eye on Auto Slider. It still sees less play than Default Gear (our center for Gear Balance) due to its higher execution requirements. As such, we're giving a small buff to its Drift Cap to give it more pay off for the extra risk and difficulty from its higher execution requirements. Additionally, with the change to Drift Stats on Characters, it no longer cuts those stats in half.

Fastest has a pretty good balance between Drift and Top Speed Character Classes in DX 2.0 where Drift is harder in exchange for being faster, but with the nerfs to Drift Stats on characters, this balance becomes tilted in favor of the Top Speed class. Overall, Fastest is still regarded as underpowered due to its lack of catchup ability and overall speed. To solve both of these issues, we've decided to make Fastest decelerate even slower from high speed. The deceleration stat mostly impacts how much Fastest benefits from catchup mechanics and Drift Dashes, making this buff target those deficiencies and provide a needed speed buff. Additionally, the global reduction to speed loss from placing Tornadoes should also help Fastest with its combat issues.

The rework to Access in DX 2.0 was successful in giving the gear a unique identity apart from just granting Fly-type. However the gear has struggled a bit due to its high boost cost, often making the pick too risky and inflexible in the face of interaction from opponents. As such, we've reduced the boost cost a fair amount.

  Trap Gear's design is somewhat problematic due to its ability to spam tornadoes, often creating non-games. While we had plans to rework the gear, we'd decided to make give it adjustments instead as we didn't have the time to rework it. These adjustments are aimed at making the gear a little faster as its underpowered, as well as greatly increase its tornado cost to reduce the amount of tornadoes it can spam.

With the change to Drift Stats on Characters, it no longer cuts those stats in half.

Light Board is one of the most complex and skill expressive gears in Sonic Riders, with its design going as far back as the Vanilla game. In DX 2.0, the gear turned out to be overpowered due to its ability to place tornadoes without much downside. As such, we're making nerfs towards its Air Costs. This will make Slide Booster have less resources and thus place less tornadoes. And since we've made the global change of reducing the speed loss from placing Tornadoes lower, something that would benefit Slide Booster, we've gone harder on these Air Cost nerfs. Additionally, with the change to Drift Stats on Characters, it no longer cuts those stats in half.

With the universal change to make every gear that uses Rings as fuel gain Rings whenever landing an attack, Super Super is  one of the biggest beneficiaries of that change. While we planned to have this balanced out by the updates to passive drain and drift costs for gears that use Rings as fuel, we believe Super Sonic will need a bit of an extra nerf. As such, we've reduced the acceleration of Super Sonic, giving him less recovery and making him more vulnerable while at low speed.

Much like Super Sonic in the patch notes above, Hyper Sonic is one of the biggest beneficiaries of making every gear that uses Rings as fuel gain Rings whenever landing an attack. However, Hyper Sonic is a little underpowered and his Drift Costs are actually little higher than they should be. As such, we're adjusting the passive drain and drift cost as slight buffs while keeping the Rings gained from attacking in mind. And much like Super Sonic, we're also reducing his acceleration to give him less recovery and make him more vulnerable while at low speed. We've also buffed his boost at Level 1 to give his Level 1 more recovery, as Hyper Sonic typically loses if he drops down to Level 1 during a race.

Surprising most people, Super Amy turned out be grossly overpowered in DX 2.0. While the universal adjustments to passive drain and drift cost actually turn out to be slight buffs for Super Amy, we've given her huge nerfs to her speed by reducing her Drift Cap and Drift Dash Speed and huge nerfs to her utility by cutting her off-road (which affects her speed after someone else attacks her), her weight bonus (affects bonus speed going downhill), reducing the Rings she gains when landing an attack, and the universal change to Super Form attacks (as she could pressure her attack the best out of the Super Forms).

Super Shadow has actually ended up fairly balanced compared to other super forms. While he's an easy pick on SEGA Illusion due to an abundance of rings, he's easily outpaced at a high level by most other picks as collecting and saving those Rings puts him behind. While Super Shadow's design does embody older design principles for gears that use Rings as fuel, his ability to use all type shortcuts gives him enough flexibility to not have the same issues Super Tails and Super Knuckles had. Since we're just keeping him simple place, his changes are simply the adjustments being made across the board to drift costs in exchange for gaining Rings when landing an attack. However, as an added bonus since he's fairly balanced, he'll be able to use his Level 3 Attack while in Chaos Mode and using his Chaos Control Boost. This should reduce the impact of having his attack nerfed to Level 2 attacks.

Neo Metal Sonic is fairly balanced in DX 2.0, but doesn't see much play. With these changes across the board to passive drain, drift cost, and the ability to gain Rings when landing an attack, we're taking this as a chance to give slight buffs to the Super state of Neo Metal Sonic. This will reward players more for landing attacks against opponents while transformed, opening up more risky options to use this transformation offensively.

With Faster being a bit underpowered in DX 2.0, we've decided to give buff it a little. Since the gear hardly sees play on characters with Drift Stat bonuses, as well as players generally avoiding Drifting while playing the gear, these buffs are aimed at removing the higher Drift Cost Faster has compared to other gears.

Changes to Opa Opa in DX 2.0 were mostly aimed to make the gear less powerful on Egg Factory and more flexible for other stages. While this was succesful, the gear has ended being too weak overall and not as flexible as we aimed for. As such, we're cutting back on the Boost Chain Modifier reduction to make it faster and buffing its Acceleration and Drift Cost to give it more flexibility.

The Crazy is in a mostly balanced state in DX 2.0, which is surprising given its history of being overpowered in previous patches, but it's still a little too good. As such, the only changes we have for the gear come in the form of universal changes regarding Drift Cost and Rings gained when landing an attack. These have ended up being slight nerfs that are acceptable for the gear.

With Cover-S seeing not much play, and what little play it does see is skewed towards stages with long stretches where it doesn't have to reset its Boost, we've decided to give the gear a reduction in its initial boost cost. The aim is that this will help Cover-S be strong on stages where it has to reset its boost more often and on stages it has opportunities to boost chain on, which both which are the same set of stages.

If you've read through these whole patches, you've heard the same story at least 5 other times. Cover-P is getting some adjustments to its passive drain, drift cost, and Rings gained when landing an attack due to new research while creating the rework for Accelerator. For Cover-P, these end up being an overall buff. This is fine, as the gear is slightly underpowered in DX 2.0.

With the change to Drift Stats on Characters and Super Hang-On's performance never being based on any usage with neither the Drift or All-Around Character Classes, it makes sense that we can slightly reduce the E10G SHO specific nerf as E-10000G has lost Drift Stats of his own.

With the change to Drift Stats on Characters, it no longer cuts those stats in half.