Sonic Riders DX v2.0
Patch Notes

Metal City, being the first stage, is both the most well known stage and the stage everyone has the most practice on. As such, this stage has the least amount of changes, yet a lot to talk about. Our goals with Metal City were balancing gears that use Rings as fuel, balancing Omni-type Super forms options such as Super Sonic, and minor quality of life updates to uncommonly used paths. Of course, with every single stage, we've also balanced shortcuts for each type and made improvements, if necessary and possible, to routes used by E-10000G.

With balancing gears that use Rings as fuel (also known as Ring Gears), the amount of Rings accessible on the stage had to be reduced. Notably, Ring Gears were overpowered on Speed-type thanks to the strength of the shortcuts being allocated in Speed-type's first shortcut, allowing the second shortcut to be skipped and players to grab the 10 Ring box in the center of the cross traffic section that is hidden behind a Power Object. E-10000G could also do a similar routing and also be overpowered. After fixing the allocation the speed in Grind Rails, Rings Gears would still use the same routing as before and it was still overpowered, which led us to replace the 10 Ring box with a 50 Air box. This Air box could be used by E-10000G, who is weak on Metal City using gears that use Air as fuel. With this change, Ring Gears on Speed-type began to use their second Grind Rail. This also turned out to be overpowered thanks to the pair of 10 Ring boxes on the quarterpipe before the rail, which led us to removing those 10 Ring boxes. After all these nerfs, Ring Gears were finally balanced on Speed-type, and since they were already balanced on Fly-type and Power-type, we successfully managed to balanced Ring Gears across E-10000G and all 3 types.

Balancing Omni-type Super forms mainly revolved around Super Sonic, as we expected our changes to apply universally for other Super Forms, which they did. If you read the previous paragraph, the second rail in the first Grind Shortcut got reduced in speed and the 10 Ring box in the center of the cross traffic section was replaced with a 50 Air box. This nerfed Omni-type super forms on the stage, who were already just ok. To compensate, and to fix Fly being underpowered with its first shortcut being considered worth skipping on later laps, we decided to buff the first Fly shortcut that Ring Gears use to pick up a 20 Ring box. To balance out Fly-type, we nerfed the second Fly path.

As for quality of life improvements, we decided to keep them minor as Metal City is both an easy stage and well known enough to not need any major updates. We updated the first top path to have the item boxes cover more of the track and some of the boxes be guaranteed in order to make the path useful for gaining resources in exchange for the timeloss the path has. The other update is to the item boxes after the cross traffic section, which are now positioned in 2 thick lines with a gap between them. This is so players taking the quarterpipe trick, such as E-10000G, are able to collect an item box instead of accidentally go between boxes when they have no control due to just landing a trick with a high speed bonus. The gap between the 2 lines allows certain picks that want to intentionally avoid item boxes, such as Gambler, to continue to do so.

Splash Canyon has historically been a problematic stage. With the Fly skip throwing shortcut balance out of wack and the two sets of 30 Ring boxes near the start of the race, the stage was seen as one of the worst and least competitive. That's why our goal with Splash Canyon for DX 2.0 was to rework the stage entirely. The Fly skip is now banned, and there's no longer 60 rings from boxes at the start of the race. Instead, the stage plays entirely different, almost as if its a new stage.

Our goals with this new Splash Canyon were simple: balance resources for the stage and balance all 3 types, plus E-10000G. With resource balance, we found the stage feel either too RNG reliant or too precise in its ring collection, so we added a line of item boxes just before the crystal cavern section to stabilize this. For balancing the types and E-10000G, we decided to make Fly's first shortcut useful, the crystals in the cavern to be easier to hit, and to make sure E-10000G had the resources to be viable. There is 7 rings before the regular QTE entrance, in case players want to take a time loss to grab those extra rings. We also made Fly's second shortcut, which is still slower than the QTE, the cinematic version of the shortcut from mission mode.

There's lots to explore with this new version of Splash Canyon with tighter resources that will challenge players to manage their Air. We hope all of you enjoy it and continue to evolve the meta as we learn more about reworking stages.

Being the most difficult and least forgiving stage, Egg Factory finds itself to be one of the least favorite stages. The reasons are pretty clear once you watch a couple of competitive games on the stage: both a lack of catchup and an extremely powerful skip lend the to have terrible recovery, often allowing whoever lands the first attack or tornado to win, or whoever messes up first to lose. This issue was especially bad when missing the upper path on second ramp and getting knocked to the right by the spinning capsules could lead to massive time losses. Even worse, tornadoes could be placed before the left-QTE entrance that could knock players off the map into perma-death. Type were also problematic with Fly being overpowered, Speed being uninteractive, and E-10000G being underpowered.

These issues led us to have several goals when addressing Egg Factory: increasing the amount of catchup, reducing near auto-lose scenarios, fixing the interactivity of Speed-type, and balancing types. For increasing catchup, we made turbulence spawn on more parts of the stage. When reducing the number of near auto-lose scenarios, we decided to reverse the direction of the spinning capsules to make it less likely for players to be sent to the right-QTE path and buffed both the right-QTE path and the bottom path after the second ramp to be faster. We fixed the interactivity of Speed-type by shortening its second rail, forcing Speed-types to exist on parts of the track that Fly and Power type also traverse. This also made Speed-type able to take the inner-circle of the spinning capsules section, increasing the skill ceiling of the type. After that, we balanced types by nerfing Fly and giving E-10000G a guaranteed Air box in the section where lava falls from above.

Our goals for Green Cave were fairly simple: after voting to remove the web shortcut from both Green Cave and White Cave, we would balance the type shortcuts accordingly. The web shortcut was removed in order to remove the near auto-lose scenario of missing the web and to increase the skill ceiling of the game by making the track longer, requiring more execution. However, there ended up being a few other aspects of Green Cave worth considering, the near auto-loss scenario of missing Vine Skip, essential Item boxes being too easy to miss due to the stage's curvy terrain, Speed-type's lack of Rings early game, multi-type gears being too good with the Power Shortcut QTE, and the Speed Shoes Item being useless or detrimental to the player in some cases.

We have addressed those issues with several fixes. The lower QTE taken when the player misses Vine Skip was sped up and had Ring boxes put at its entrance, so players who missed it wouldn't be massively behind in both time and resources.

Item boxes on both the spiral and on the vines were far too easily to go between and miss, each coming with large time losses if missed. To solve this, we decided to increase the thickness of these Item box lines across the stage.

Since Speed-type skips the first item box with its Grind rails, we put 7 Rings on top of that Grind rail. The Power Shortcut QTE now uses the "Shortcut Air Gain" stat when calculating how much Air to restore, preventing this shortcut from being too potent on multi-type gears who are supposed gain reduced Air from shortcuts.

With the Speed Shoes item either being useless when obtained before entering the Power Shortcut QTE, messing up player's ability to take the manual ramp, or messing up Speed-type's ability to take the rail under the map, we decided to remove Speed Shoes from the list of possible items that can be obtained from Random item boxes.

Sand Ruins has historically been one of the most difficult stages to balance. The main reason being that it has so many Rings that gears that use Rings as fuel (known as Ring Gears) have always been overpowered on it, which often led to Power-type being not very good on gears that use Air for fuel. Not only that, the set-up for shortcuts on the stage allows Omni-type picks to be quite good. The stage also naturally benefits gears with fuel efficiency and high cruising speed. All of these are a recipe for benefitting exactly Super Sonic. But that's not the only issue that loomed over Sand Ruins. The drop from the top of the colosseum led to games being decided based on how fast someone could fall, the second ramp was so paper thin that players would often jump over it to their death, Speed-type being gimped by its first set of Grind Rails being shaped poorly, the left path at the start of the stage being abused for stronger RNG, and Speed Shoes right before the QTE throwing players into a wall.

When it comes to Super Sonic, and other Ring Gears in general, we had tested reverting some of the reductions to Rings on the stage as some of them initially felt too heavy. However, its turns out reverting the ones we tested led to several Ring Gears being overpowered. If we left the amount of Rings from DX 1.0 alone and included our other changes to the stage, those gears were perfectly viable, so we kept the Rings the same. Then we tested several different routings for Super Sonic, which led us to nerfing ones that were uninteractive and rebalancing shortcuts to prevent certain routings from being too fast. We also turned the under-the-building section into a Power shortcut that would allow Power-type on gears that use Air as fuel to regain air. We also increased their Air gain during their shortcut after the second ramp. This ensures Power-type is viable on gears that use Air as fuel, not just Ring Gears.

With the drop from the colosseum, we decided to try an idea that had been in the pipeline for awhile. This was the "low throw" from the QTE that was forced upon the player on the final lap of Story Mode, which would remove the need to fall faster than opponents and lengthen the stage. This lengthening of the stage would end up nerfing gears that use Rings as fuel, and to make sure gears that used Air were still fine, we added a 50 Air box at the exit of the colosseum. We then had to adjust the landing position of the QTE's new exit to be further back and in the air to allow room for players to move out of the way of being attacked by players directly behind them.

To solve both the second ramp being paper thin and Speed-type being gimped by poorly shaped rails, we edited the stage's model. The second ramp is now larger, giving plenty of room for players to jump off of it. The first set of Grind Rails now places the player near the item boxes before the second ramp, instead of very far to the left. This is why the Speed of that rail was dramatically decreased.

The left side at the start of the stage is interesting case because it hasn't yet been abused in competitive play. Some players, to differing success, would attempt to take this path and pick up their Random Item box when behind their opponent just enough to get catchup RNG to kick in. With DX 2.0 making catchup RNG always give a better item, this strategy could have become degenerate. However, during testing we did try out this path with guaranteed 100 Air and 20 Ring boxes, and it turned out to be overpowered. For both of these reasons, we decided to make this path guaranteed 50 Air and 10 Rings. Also, some players seem to forget this path has more Rings on the ground than the right path. The random chance to obtain Speed Shoes right before the QTE, which would often times throw you into a wall, was fixed by changing that line of items into 10 Ring boxes.

Babylon Garden used to be an unpopular stage, but strangely saw a resurgence in popularity during DX 1.0. When looking to make changes to Garden, we wanted to address what had made the stage unpopular before: a lack of Rings on the stage and Omni-type picks avoiding interaction. However, another issue arose during testing: certain multi-type picks were overpowered.

When it comes to the amount of Rings on Babylon Garden, being able to get an early level 2 used to rely on getting near perfect Ring collection from the Rings right after the startline, which is unreliable due to the placement of those Rings with the curvature of the terrain. To solve this, we added 6 Ring lines after the spiral auto-section. In a future patch, we'd like to try fixing the Rings right after the startline. Another way we've decided to increase the number of Rings on the stage is adding a 10 Ring box on the manual ramp trick. This allows players to level up more reliably and sooner, but it also warps the stage's balance by making gears that use Rings as fuel, except The Crazy, less viable on the stage as going for this 10 Ring box every lap is a time loss.

Due to the placement of shortcuts, Omni-type combinations could easily avoid interaction and certain Dual-type combinations were overpowered. The second Fly shortcut was originally right after the second Grind Rail, and the position of this Fly shortcut avoided a part of the stage where interaction would often occur. This combination of shortcuts next to each other would allow Omni-type and Speed-Fly combinations to avoid interaction. To solve this, as well as give Fly-type a well needed buff as their second shortcut often gave excess air due to being near the QTE and due to the 10 Ring box on the manual ramp trick, we decided to move the second Fly shortcut to the last turn on the stage.

Dual-type picks involving Speed-type were overpowered due to the distribution of Speed between both Grind shortcuts. As both Fly-type and Power-type would take the Power-shortcut at the start of the lap, avoiding the first Grind Rail. As most of the Rail Speed was concentrated in the second rail, taking the second rail on top of Fly-type's or Power-type's original shortcuts was too powerful. To solve this, we nerfed the second rail and buffed the first rail. This is an example of the multi-type balance we had to do for balancing stages in DX 2.0.

Digital Dimension is one of the stages we would say did not need many changes. The stage is one of the most competitive and skill testing, but a few minor issues would occasionally make matches feel like a coinflip. Our changes focused on making certain Types less limited and quality-of-life improvements to the stage.

When it comes to types, every Type but Speed-type was limited. While Power-type was the fastest, it had too little air that often made it feel too limited for netplay. As such, we've increased the Air gain for Power Objects again and changed the placement of Power Objects on the bottom path to make them easier to hit, as the shifting sand before made doing so a deceptive task. Fly-type was limited by only having one shortcut available per lap, which often made it feel limited by having less fuel and vulnerable to interaction by intersecting with opponents more. To solve this, we reworked the Fly Shortcut in the Heaven section in order to give Fly two shortcuts per lap. There's also E-10000G, who was considered not even viable on Digital Dimension. To make E-10000G worth picking, we added 50 Air boxes below the shortcuts in the Digital Section, giving a much needed Air restore.

With quality-of-life improvements, the main issues with Digital Dimension were the item boxes. With how long of a stage Digital Dimension is, every resource counts with how sparse they are. A major issue was the wide spacing between item boxes could cause players to miss item boxes, which could often lose them the race as they run out of fuel or miss a crucial level up. Boxes were especially easy to miss on the bottom path due to the shifting sand. Another minor issue was grabbing an Item box before grabbing the side rail in the Heaven section as Speed-type would be difficult due to the placement and spacing of the boxes. As such, we increased the thickness of every Item box line on the stage to solve this. Another issue was getting bad RNG on Digital Dimension could deny the player the ability to level up, which was solved by adding SmartRNG to the game, which we described in the Gameplay Updates section.

SEGA Carnival is another stage that has been pretty well balanced, not needing many big changes. Except for the one major problem it had: Fly type being bound to being abused in Dual-type combinations. This was a major issue that resulted in us reworking Fly-type entirely on the stage. There was also some other issues, notably the first two ramps being way too small, E-10000G not being viable, and Speed-type being overpowered. Like every stage's issues for DX 2.0, we aimed to solve these.

Historically, Fly-type was not viable as a solo type and instead used for Dual-type combinations. This was because the only meaningful Fly shortcut was after the QTE, meaning players would pick a Dual-type gear and be able to take 2 shortcuts instead of 1 per lap. If this Fly shortcut was to be any good for a pure Fly type, it was overpowered for a Dual-type. To solve this, we removed that shortcut, replacing it with a new Fly Shortcut at the start of the lap. This put Fly-type on a similar playing field as the other types, though a little different with Fly ignoring this shortcut Lap 1 to pick up Rings to level up. This was an intended weakness for the first lap, as this shortcut allows Fly to avoid interaction on Laps 2 and 3.

Solving the minor issues was more simplistic. Thanks to stage geometry editing, we extended the length of both the first manual ramp and required ramp. For E-10000G, we changed the first item box line to include guaranteed 30 Air boxes, and added both Dash Panels and 50 Air boxes to the No-Type path at the start of the race. We also added Dash Panels and Speed Shoes boxes to the bottom path on the pirate ship, incase E-10000G finds himself there by accident. As for Speed-type being overpowered, it was as simple as nerfing the main Grind Rail they used. And to prevent an edge with Accelerator, we changed the orientation of Power Objects on the bottom path before the finish line.

Night Chase is one of the first stages we looked when developing DX 2.0. The main issue we sought to address was how limited and vulnerable Fly-type was. The second thing we wanted to do was improving some of the worse paths. Over the course of testing, we also looked into how limited Power-type felt on the stage. Then we made the same quality-of-life update mentioned in the changelog for Metal City.

In order to make Fly-type less limited and vulnerable than other types, we had to rework both of its Fly Shortcuts. The first Fly Shortcut originally led the player to the upper path after the first ramp. This upper path comes with a massive time loss and a huge window of vulnerability, due to needing to waste time falling from above and not having control by taking the Grind Wall and the subsequent cars below. To solve this, we changed the Fly path to exit the player on the inner part of the first turn, the same place the Speed and Power Shortcuts end. The second Fly Shortcut was more problematic in terms of vulnerability. Being originally placed on the quarterpipe after the cross-traffic intersection, Fly-type had the longest distance between its shortcuts by a large amount, in addition to needing to cross the intersection. To reduce both of these issues, we moved the second Fly Shortcut to the quarterpipe before the cross-traffic intersection. This reduced the distance Fly-type had to travel to get from one shortcut to another and removed the pain of having to cross the intersection. Both of these changes, as you can see below, made us reduce the speed of the Fly Shortcuts from ludicrous speeds to something reasonable.

In terms of worse paths we made better, the aforementioned top path after the first ramp and the outer part of the first turn were our targets. For both of these paths, we added a line of 50 Air boxes to them. While it doesn't make these paths faster, it does offset the loss of fuel that comes with taking them. However, we did add a line of Dash Panels to the outer part of the first turn, which does make that path a bit faster. While we did intend the first top path to have 100 Air boxes, to match the Air shortcuts gave, we had to make it 50 Air instead as it would make Super Hang-On overpowered. For another path we decided to buff, we added 50 Air boxes on the right-side quarterpipe before the cross traffic intersection. These boxes are intended for E-10000G, who is underpowered on the stage. While this doesn't fully meet our expectations to make E-10000G worthwhile in competitive play, it is a step in the right direction to make him playable.

With Power-type feeling limited on Night Chase, we looked into methods for making Power-type less limited. The first method we tried was increasing the timer for linking Power Objects, which would make it easier to link cars together. However, it turns out this made Power-type overpowered on Night Chase. In fact, without any buffs, Power was the best type on Night Chase. While the type seems limited in netplay, with good execution this type is much faster than others. Because of this, we decided to not buff Power, and we're going to keep a close eye on how Power performs in netplay in over the DX 2.0 meta.

The one quality-of-life update is to the item boxes after the cross traffic section, which are now positioned in 2 thick lines with a gap between them. This is so players taking the quarterpipe trick, such as E-10000G, are able to collect an item box instead of accidentally go between boxes when they have no control due to just landing a trick with a high speed bonus. The gap between the 2 lines allows certain picks that want to intentionally avoid item boxes, such as Gambler, to continue to do so.

Red Canyon was one of the stages we had a lot to work on when it came to balancing types. The three main reasons were balancing Fly-type while eliminating the Fly Skip, rebalancing Power-type as we are eliminating bonus speed for hitting Power Objects, fixing issues with the second Power Shortcut, balancing the stage around the Fly Cosplay Skip that E-10000G uses, buffing some of the lesser paths, making essential item boxes harder to miss, and increasing the speed of the Waterwheel auto section.

One of the issues with Red Canyon in DX 1.0 was how overpowered Fly-type was on the stage. To solve this, we decided to eliminate the Fly Skip from existing. Instead, the Fly Shortcut takes a path similar to the Fly Skip, but much slower as the Fly Hoops set the player's speed to a lower value. We also had to deal with multi-type combinations involving Speed and Fly, as players could jump from the first Rail into the second Fly Hoop. As that was shown as overpowered in testing, we had to nerf the first Rail and the last two Fly Hoops, while buffing the last two Rails and the first Fly Hoop.

One of the ways we've tried to buff Power-type in the past is by making Power Objects give the player bonus speed whenever they break them. However, a huge issue with this has been the fact Power Objects do not respawn instantly, which makes this method of buffing Power-type unfair in Power-type mirror matches. To solve this on Red Canyon, we've decided to get rid of Power Objects giving bonus speed and instead put Speed Shoes for the Item box line after the second Power Shortcut. These Item boxes also help E-10000G whenever he takes the No-Type path after the QTE without performing the Fly Cosplay Skip. We also put a line of Dash Panels and a line of 30 Air boxes after the u-turn that both Power-type and E-10000G take. This is a part of our buffs to worse paths. We then had to balance each type to be strong enough compared to the strength of the Fly Cosplay Skip available to E-10000G, including the No-Type path E-10000G takes when he does not use the Fly Cosplay Skip.

Another, and extremely important, change for Power-type is fixing the collision at the end of their second shortcut. Previously, if players end over certain collision at on the bridge at the end of the second Power Shortcut, the player could be sent flying into the air. Thanks to collision editing, this is no longer the case.

When it came to buffing worse paths, one of the examples we've already talked about is the buffs to the No-Type path after the QTE. This helps make races less 'auto loss' whenever Speed-type or Fly-type misses their shortcut. Another way we've made worse paths less bad is adding a line of 30 Air boxes to the bottom path after the last ramp. This help matches the top path, which has a line of 50 Air boxes.

One of the strange parts of Red Canyon's stage balance is the 30 Ring Boxes after the first ramp. These boxes are essential to pick up, either for leveling up or as fuel for a Ring Gear. Because of this, we decided to increase the number of boxes on the Item box line on the bottom path and increase the number of boxes and thickness of the Item box line on the top path, since it is curved terrain. We also extended the length of the first ramp, making it easier to players to use the ramp, solving an issue of players going off the ramp before being able to release their jump.

Lastly, we decided to speed up the Waterwheel autosection. The reason is because this autosection works by having cycles. The faster the autosection is, the shorter each cycle is; the shorter each cycle is, the smaller amount of time that can be gained or lost because cycles exist at all. If you've ever heard of the analogy involving framerules and a bus stop, you'll understand what we're saying.

Ice Factory is one of the stages we did not have many changes for. We wanted to make Power-type feel less awful coming into their Power Shortcut, balance the types, and make the bottom path less of a time loss. Over time though, we had to deal with minor quality-of-life issues the stage had, particularly involving Fly-type. This led us to making a few more changes to the stage, but overall the stage is similar to the previous patch.

When it comes to making Power-type feeling less awful, the main issue was the placement of the Dash Panels right before the u-turn that leads into their first and only shortcut. The issue was the control lock from the Dash Panels hindered the ability to turn sharp enough to optimally make it into the shortcut. While most gears could use the icy terrain to turn sharper, Default Gear and Powerful Gear were immune to the ice. While they could squeeze through a tiny gap on the left side to dodge the Dash Panels, this space was tiny and let them vulnerable to interaction such as tornadoes. While debating many different ways to handle this, we ultimately came to a compromise and moved the Dash Panels back a few units. This meant the control lock wore off sooner relative to the turn, allowing Power to turn sharper into their shortcut. This actually led to being a very large buff for Power type, which resulted in other types needing to be buffed.

When it comes to making the bottom path less awful, we added Speed Shoes, 50/100 Air boxes, and another line of Speed Shoes to the bottom path. And then we realized we had to nerf the Grind Rail on the bottom path as Speed-type was still faster than all these compensatory Item boxes.

As for quality-of-life updates, these all surround Fly-type. A very obvious issue to anyone who's played Fly-type before hand is their second shortcut, which comes immediately after the first shortcut. This path was extremely vertical, but only had 2 Fly Hoops. This easily led to players accidentally sending themselves off the intended path into certain death. To solve this, we added more Fly Hoops to the path to guide players without the risk of dying. We then changed the line of Item boxes after this shortcut, which happens to also be the same Item box line after the QTE, to be thicker and further away. This is so Fly-types have more room to adjust themselves to pick up an item.

Much like Green Cave, our goals for White Cave were simple: after voting to remove the web shortcut from both Green Cave and White Cave, we would balance the type shortcuts accordingly. The web shortcut was removed in order to remove the near auto-lose scenario of missing the web and to increase the skill ceiling of the game by making the track longer, requiring more execution. However, it had many similar issues as its Heroes Cup counterpart. A lack of turbulence across the stage almost entirely, the lower QTE being too slow, essential Item boxes being too easy to miss due to the stage's curvy terrain, early Ring collection being unreliable, Fly-type being underpowered has plagued White Cave for years, and the lack of Random Item boxes leading to unstable RNG.

When it came to experimenting with spawning turbulence in new areas, White Cave was one of the first stages we tried. White Cave often lacked interactivity between players, and lacking turbulence throughout almost all the stage was one of the reasons why. As such, we've made turbulence spawn in the winding tube and section after the QTE.

For things much like Green Cave, we've resolved these issues the same way. The lower QTE was sped up, making that path less of a near auto-lose. For essential item boxes, just like Green Cave, we decided to increase the number of boxes after the first ramp. We've also provided 10 Ring boxes on the outer parts after the first ramp, so those who miss the trick in the center are not fully out of resources.

For issues exclusive to White Cave, we took some unique approaches. With the placement of Ring lines in the area before the first ramp, collecting more than 5 Rings would require the player to get very close to one the trees, which they could accidentally bump into and miss the Rings. To add a safer but slower alternative, we added a short 3 Ring line on the left side. To solve Fly-type being underpowered, we added a second Fly Hoop to the first path to increase the air restored, and then we made the second Fly shortcut viable to use to make the type have the same amount of shortcut usage as Speed-type. With only 1 Random item box per lap, White Cave had very unstable RNG for how short of a course it is, which historically led to statistics like "winrate of High Booster if it picks up an Air box" being tracked. To solve this, we added a line of Random Item boxes before the ramp to the final u-turn.

Dark Desert is another of our smaller scope stages, mainly aimed at balancing shortcuts and quality-of-life updates. However as time went on, it seemed there were more and more quality of life updates to do.

With balancing type shortcuts, the situation was pretty simple. Fly-type was overpowered, Power-type needed changes as Power Objects would no longer give speed, and Speed-type was underpowered. For Fly-type, we reduced the speed of their first shortcut. With Power-type, we buffed the bonus speed the Dash Panels gave in the Power shortcut. When it came to Speed-type, we buffed both of their shortcuts. For the second shortcut specifically, we changed the shape of the second rail, intending to make it useful for players. Unfortunately, this rail still seems slower to use, but not as awful as before. The first rail in the pair is still worth taking, so Speed-type is very much viable on the stage.

For quality-of-life updates, there's a ton of them. The first is removing the Dash Panels after the first ramp. This makes sure players aren't locked into a specific direction when trying to pick up the first Item boxes. The second is making these first Item boxes a thicker line of boxes, as players did not have much room to maneuver as they just landed their trick. Going backwards a bit, we decided to extend the terrain on the right side after the first ramp. This invisible floor ensures players who take the right side of the first ramp aren't performing tricks into a certain death. After that, we increased all of the pairs of 30 Air boxes in the manual ramp section into quartets of 30 Air boxes. The main change that impacts most games will be the changes to the item box line before the gravity shifting cavern. We've updated this line of boxes to be thicker, extender out further, and for each box to be 30 Rings. This is because we've deemed these boxes essential to pick up, as missing them would almost guaranteed losing the race. To make matters worse, these boxes were harder to pick up as they were right after a u-turn, giving players little room to adjust to being able to pick them up. With our changes, that has been solved. We then decided to make the right half of the Item box line after the QTE 10 Ring boxes to give access to rings for players to recover in the last part of the stage. Our last change is adjusting the spacing between all the Dash Panels after the QTE so players cannot accidentally squeeze between them.

When it comes to stages that are incredibly unpopular, Sky Road is typically near the top of the list. Over the years, we've updated Sky Road in several ways to make the stage more competitive. When it comes to issues with the stage in DX 1.0, most of this is from either balance issues or the second ramp being paper thin. While most of these balance issues have been solved through indirect changes, there were still a few that needed updates.

If you've read the changes to stages previously, you already know what we've done to fix the second ramp being paper thin: we extended the length of the ramp. This solves one of the biggest issues with the stage that would occur in netplay: players flyng off the ramp before they are able to release their jump.

With addressing balance issues on the stage, The Crazy was overpowered and types were unbalanced. The Crazy abused deaths to reset its fuel, allowing it to greatly outpace other gears. This was solved by nerfing the fuel restored by dying. When it came to types, we made major changes to Speed and Power, while just buffing Fly as it was underpowered. Speed has its first rail changed to not be accessible from taking the first ramp, which helps balance multi-type combinations on the stage. Due to Power Objects no longer giving bonus speed when broken, the second Power shortcut was given a set of Dash Panels near the end of it. This allows Power-type to perform an improved version of their Bombastic Skip.

The last thing we did to update Sky Road was to buff paths taken by E-10000G. The goal is an attempt to make E-10000G viable on the stage, but also to make it when non-E-10000G players miss their shortcuts, they aren't put into an 'auto loss' scenario. To do this, we added many things to the final spiral of the stage: a line of Dash Panels and 100 Air boxes before the spiral, and then a line of Speed Shoes boxes and a line of Dash Panels at the end of the spiral.

Babylon Guardian has never been a competitive stage nor ever been balanced for competitive play. The reason is simple, the stage is illegal in competitive play, because its a boss fight and a boring loop. For DX 2.0 though, instead a joke stage with stupidly fast shortcuts, we decided to actually rework Guardian and balance the stage's shortcuts. In doing so, we made it possible for players to level-up on Guardian. Due to the powerful catchup from both slipstream and turbulence, this stage is built around attacking other players to keep their level down. For the best results, this rework of the stage is intended to be played with 4 Laps.

SEGA Illusion is one of the most well designed stages in the original game. However, it wasn't without a few problems. Allowing Fly-type to leave half-way through its first shortcut to stay flying for much longer than intended created issues with gears balanced around limited fuel gain. Types were too weak, with E-10000G overpowering all of them. On the flip side, E-10000G had access to less Rings, making him unviable on Ring Gears. We've solved all that and also did some minor quality-of-life updates to the stage.

With Fly-type able to continue hovering during its first shortcut, the type was able to gain absorbent amounts of Air. Because of this, we had to emergency ban Accelerator on SEGA Illusion during DX 1.0. As such, we've changed the Fly path to prevent players from hovering and we've cut Fly's Air gain in nearly half. To compensate, as the type was otherwise slow, we've made it possible to tap jump on the manual ramp to access the first Fly Shortcut and buffed the second Fly Shortcut greatly.

When it comes to addressing the other two types to be able to compete with E-10000G, we buffed both of the Grind Shortcuts, increased the Air Gain from Power Objects, and increased the speed of the Dash Panels inside the first Power Shortcut. To equalize the Rings between the types, we removed the 10 Ring boxes inside the type shortcuts in the Space Channel 5 section and instead put a line of 10 Ring boxes at the start of the same section. Even though E-10000G might not be viable on Ring Gears on SEGA Illusion right now, it will future proof the stage for any future Ring Gears.

For minor quality-of-life updates, we made three changes. The first was increasing the size of the manual ramp, just like we did on SEGA Carnival. The second was to change the alternating 50/100 Air box line into a line of purely 100 Air boxes, removing the possibility for players to lose time simply by hitting the wrong box. The final one was to change the last line of item boxes from Random to 10 Rings, preventing players from getting Speed Shoes at the end of the race to cheese a win.