so have they ''fixed'' the sig tricks now ? and would you recommend using them as much as possible instead of blackbirds ect ?

Sig tricks were broken? I haven't heard about that... but my game hasn't arrived in the mail yet, so I'm still just testing on the demo.

Are you talking about a bug, or just the fact that they're not worth as many points as tweaked ubers?

I was under the impression they were broken (may be wrong) i remeber reading batty said to do sig tricks as often as possible as they were worth the most points. However they clearly are'nt/were'nt, im starting to get confused lol.

Sig tricks have the highest base score, but can't be tweaked. And tweaking adds a ridiculous number of points.

I think Batty was probably just talking about the base trick score. Or maybe tweaking adds a bigger bonus than it really should? I haven't worked out a standard formula for how Tweak affects the score, but I've seen individual tricks where it appears tweaking is roughly tripling the trick score... which seems like a lot more than it should be, to me.

It's also possible some of the scoring was adjusted slightly from the demo to the retail game. (I'm not thinking it changed in the week the demo was out, but maybe it was tweaked in the past couple months, after the demo version was branched off from the main code.) I'll have to verify / adjust the scoring model when I get the full game.

Hmm, just noticed this. I didn't realize that a given right stick combination could result in 1 of 2 different tricks depending (I presume) on whether you come in switch or not. Question: suppose my rider is facing left prior to the jump, and I do a super uber by doing left-down, and it's a "Royal Flush." If my next jump starts with my rider facing right, and I do a super-uber by doing right-down, will that be a "Switch Royal Flush," and a duplicate trick? Likewise would it be possible for two consecutive jumps with a right-down combination to be 2 different tricks (a Royal Flush and a Switch Stay Frosty), and not a duplicate? I've been training myself to try to just do a different combination each jump, but it seems that sometimes this could be a dupe. I guess it's one more thing to keep track of when trying not to dupe. Any ideas?

Also, do we know if signature tricks are worth more / less than other (tweaked) super ubers? I have always been doing my rider's signature tricks off the biggest kickers, assuming this was the highest-scoring trick. If that's not the case, I'm probably getting scores much lower than I could be if I were to tweak better/best super ubers! Would love to know.

I think I need to practice the "best" combination more; I have trouble with LR and RL; rolling the stick 90 degrees for a "better" uber is more natural for me, so I'm also missing out on points that way.

Thanks!!

In my experience, the Duplicate detection is based on button press, not trick name. So a Seatbelt followed by a Switch Tail Grab would be a dup; a Seatbelt followed by a Switch Seatbelt would not be a dup. I haven't done formal, repeated testing where I'm actually recording results, though.

I believe tweaked super ubers are worth more than the sig trick, but I don't have the full game yet to check other sig tricks than Zoe's and to confirm all of the scoring is the same as it was in the demo. So I'm not 100% sure yet.

One questions: If you stick with and only do two tricks repeatedly but alternate between them every other time, will they give less points the more they are used, do you have to mix it up with more tricks too?

mahkra, do you know anything about which is better as a board stat for racing, speed or boost? I guess if you spent the whole time boosting then that might be the best, but where exactly do the numbers equal out? I'm not even sure how we could figure something like this out without help from the developers.

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Charmy comes in all different colors - UrbanDictionary.com

Quick update:
1. I haven't done any significant testing with the full game yet, but the few things I've checked so far did match the demo.
2. I've not seen any diminished scores for repeated tricks *except* when there's actually a DUPLICATE callout. As far as I can tell, there's no penalty for just alternating between two tricks.
3. I haven't done any testing of board stats. I'm not sure if I could test speed vs boost without a way to record from my xbox... though I do have some ideas of how to test it if someone who can make recordings wants to help out.

Other (personal) news:
I will not be able to do more work on this scoring model stuff this week. I'm moving to Chicago in just a couple months & have to fly out for an interview next weekend. I'm trying to get a teaching job, and the interview will involve a sample teaching session, so I need to prepare a lesson & familiarize myself with the overall curriculum.
I'll probably have some time to work on this again next week, but (assuming my interview goes well) I'll need to take a couple certification exams in April, so later in March & until the exams in April my time will be very limited.

If anyone wants to 'pick up the slack', that's cool. If not, I do intend to finish this, just probably in all honestly won't happen as soon as I'd like it to.

I can record, I'd be willing to help test stuff out, but I work until Tuesday/Wednesday, so that'll probably be the earliest I can get to it.

I have some ideas about how to test speed and boost, but go ahead and post the ways you'd test it and anything with scoring you'd like done and I'll see what I can do.

Thank you so much for your work mahkra. It is much appreciated!

Thanks for all the effort and documentation Mahkra, you rock!

Aftermath, if you pm me your email address, I can send you the excel file I've built up & some notes about testing methods.

I created an account here to say thank you so much for all of your hard work and invaluable information. I was able to improve a trick run from 15,000,000 to around 36,000,000 on the first try after reading this information. Good luck with your job opportunity!

I'm a bit confused after reading some material and I hope someone can clarify.

So, you (and others) state that when you land a trick, you bank Trick X Flow. For instance, you land a trick worth 50 pts and the flow is X2 = 100, which would be your total score if you do not combo it, correct?

Now, if you do decide to combo it, how does it work? I know you do get points in your combo pool and your total score increases, but by what parameters?

And finally, is there any difference in getting the flow up ASAP as compared to getting a combo all throughout the track and finishing with a X20 flow multiplier?

I hope I explained my confusions in a way people will be able to understand and I hope someone can explain. Thank you.

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I dislike how the grabs are character-position based. Like if you're facing to the left, L1 or whatever will be Sidewinder, and when facing the right the same button is submarine. It's annoying and it makes me get repeats all of the time. It's an interesting concept, I'll give it that.

You would bank 100 points immediately, and 50 points would be added to your combo score. If you don't have a combo going, it starts a new combo with an initial score of 0 + 50 = 50. If you let your 'combo' expire immediately, you then bank Combo Score x Flow = 50 x 2 = 100. So in total, you get 100 points right away and then another 100 points a few seconds later, as long as you don't crash and lose your 1-trick 'combo'.
As long as you continue your combo, the base points from each trick will be added to your Combo Score. As your flow goes up, you'll immediately bank more points per trick, but you're always just adding the base value of each trick to your Combo Score. When you eventually do end the combo, you bank Combo Score x Flow. And Flow is whatever your Flow multiplier is when you banked the combo, not when you initially did the trick. So all the tricks you did early in your run at x2 or x5 or x10 flow will pay out at x20 flow with the rest of the combo.
As long as you don't crash and lose combo points, half of your total points are banked immediately after a trick; the other half of your points are banked when you finish the combo. As long as your flow is x20 at the end, you'll maximize that second half of your points. But to maximize the first half of your points, you need to get to x20 ASAP and stay at x20 throughout the run.


The Duplicate callout is based on button press, not trick name. So you can do a Submersible followed by a Switch Submersible without penalty.

Well, I'll be damned mahkra! I really didn't take into consideration getting the flow up ASAP - I thought that as long as you had X20 at the end, you would be good. Not until was I seeing a trick it run and someone mentioned it was I curious about it.

Thank you for clarifying everything. It'll help with the scores now.

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I've edited the current up-to date model into the first post. Will keep that post updated as I fill in the last few missing pieces.

I've double-checked everything I discovered from the demo & have not found any changes at all to the scoring mechanics in the retail version of the game.

Next Steps:
- Simple Ubers
- Tweak Bonus (x3 ?)
- Duplicate Penalty (50% ?)

Just wanted to thank you for your tremendous work on this.

from what ive gathered u basicaly do left-right-tweak, right-left-tweak on a turning basis for max points..
avoid rails and get the flow up as quick as possible in the beginning of the run?
bummer.

Yes, those are the highest-scoring tricks. Probably even more important, though, is developing a good line with lots of MASSIVE! air & a pace that stays just ahead of Flow without going too fast. That's if you're going for record scores, at least. If you just follow the basic tips you mentioned above, you should have no trouble earning a gold medal on every track in Explore.

Hmm, have been doggedly sticking with classic controls, hoping EA will fix the rotation bug! Thought a small input on controls may be useful?

Pad - prewind and rotation
L3 - movement
R3 - Nose / tail press
X - Jump / wingsuit
Square - boost / tweak
O - Rewind
Triangle - manual grind

The trick sequences follow Mahkra's basic / better / best pattern so I'll only cover the basic tricks as you'll get the idea for which button combinations are better.

Basic:
L2 - Melon
R2 - Indy
L1+R1 - Truckdriver
L2+R2 - Rocket

Better:
L1 - Nosegrab
R1 - Crail
R1+R2+L1 - Tailgrab
R1+R2+L2 - Flying Squirrel
L1+L2+R1 - Seatbelt
L1+L2+R2 - Stiffy

Best:
L1+L2 - Mute
R1+R2 - Stalefish

NB...
L1+L2+R1+R2 will give you the same result as for pressing L1+R1 (ie Truckdriver etc) EXCEPT that pressing all 4 buttons is used to perfom the Character specific Super Uber once you go Super Tricky (whereas L1+R1 will give you Sledgehammer)
R1+L2 Will give you Stiffy etc
R2+L1 give you Flying Squirrel etc
and yes you do get duplicate tricks even if you use a different button comination for successive tricks.

Grinding...
There would appear to be 5 types of basic grind, with multiple button combinations giving the same result...

The Proposal:
R1 orR2

Ta Da!
L1 or L2

Superfish
R1+R2 or R1+R2+L1 or R1+R2+L2

Wheelman
L1+L2 or L1+L2+R1 or L1+L2+R2

Utah Teapot
L1+R1 or L2+R2 or L1+R2 or L2+R1

Laser Seasaw
All 4 buttons

It does seem a bit counter intuitive that pressing R1 alone gives you a trick worth as many points as pressing R!+R2+L1 as you'd have thought that pressing more buttons would award more points! (I have made a mental note to stop button mashing...)

I agree. I think I understand how they mapped the grabs to Classic (L1 is left hand front, L2 is left hand left, L1+R1 is both hands front, L2+R2 is both hands back, etc.) but I don't know why they would do it that way.

The scoring is based on how hard the button press is to execute in Standard, not how hard the actual trick is to perform -- one-button grabs are all the same number of points, even though some are 1hand tricks and some are 2hand. There are 4 basic, 6 better, and 2 best. Using the shoulder buttons, there are 4 1-button inputs, 6 2-button, and 4 3-button. The buttons work out perfectly (especially if Standard had U->D and D->U tricks, in which case there would be 4 "best" tricks), so why didn't they make the better tricks harder to execute in Classic, just like they did in Standard?


EDIT:
I have a list showing how to do all 18 rail tricks in Standard (6 normal, 6 uber, 6 super uber) but it appears all 6 at each level are worth the same number of points. Since it doesn't matter which one you do, I never bothered actually posting the list of tricks.

Yea, my downfall before mapping it all out was doing duplicate tricks and thinking WTF! that's a different button combination! so for classic purposes i think it helps to know to stop being unnecessarily 'penalised'

So how much does tweaking add to All You Can Eat and Blackbird as far as points go? It must be quite a bit since the sig trick is roughly 2x that of the best ubers and from what is being said here, a tweaked AYCE/Blackbird is worth more than a sig trick, right?