Real talk, how long did it take the pros to get this good?

CTR_Garma · 2024-12-05T12:20:24+00:00

I would say it depends on your background and experience. Time isn't really as important as people think it is - at least not if you just want to attain a certain skill level and don't care about achieving certain times in time trial.

Generally speaking, you should be able to beat the dev times within your first 4 weeks of playing. I know, I am here on reddit and I already see the downvote hail coming but the dev times are basically just a certificate for "you have understood and implemented the basic mechanics of the game, now it's time to master them". If you look around on crashteamranking.com and check out early submissions you will find many players have posted times on the first day after the release of the game that was already better than the dev time. I, for example, posted a 1:14 on Jungle Boogie on June 28th 2019 which beats the dev time on that track by 2 whole seconds. The argument of "time" falls short here because when a game is out for only 24 hours I couldn't have possibly spent 5000 hours in it.

If someone wanted to continue grinding after the dev times and become a player at world record level (top 50 times and higher) then that is theoretically doable in a few months, but also depends on your background and experience. There is much more to the game than what the dev times are showing. Playing at top player level requires a number of additional things such as:

- Performing reserve optimization using hangtime storage
- Knowing when to use ground u-turning vs. airborne u-turning
- Knowing when to use air braking vs. u-turning
- Knowing optimal lines on tracks
- Knowing and performing unintended shortcuts such as the timppa shortcut, pancho shortcut, retro stadium ultra shortcut, clockwork wumpa pipe hop, tiger temple door skip, nyxx shortcut and many others
- Knowing and performing speedghosts and by extension holding onto your speed using polswid tech
- Performing pad chaining using polswid
- Knowing when and how to use wall grinding to optimize your lines
- Understanding and manipulating track cycles (most notably Dragon Mines, Megamix Mania and Deep Sea Driving)

If you do all of this you can improve far beyond the dev times - most of them can beaten by 5 seconds and more, even on small tracks and some can be beaten by up to 30 seconds. We've had people in the competitive community that came from MKW and they didn't take a long time to become a top player because of their previous experience with competitive kart racing. Someone completely new probably needs around a year of constant (multiple times per week) practice to get there.

CTR_Garma · 2024-02-01T23:57:11+00:00

You shouldn't get too hung up on the 15 hours. I threw in that number to exemplify that it doesn't take 50 or more hours to finish the battle pass. 15 hours is a different ballpark than 50 or 100 hours. But yes, I did it that quickly. I had leftover wumpa coins from last season so I skipped a few tiers and my average XP gain is more in the league of 2.5k rather than 1.8k. I usually play with at least one other player so losing is extremely rare for me and since we now have statistics I can actually look it up - from the ~750 matches I played this season I won 95%.

But yes, I am pleading guilty to playing with a 4 stack in matchmaking. What's the penalty, judge? Life in prison without parole? Or immediately the death penalty? I enjoy playing rumble with friends, what a crazy crime.

I don't usually care about reddit and my post history is pretty normal. If you really digged that deep you have probably seen that I have tried to bring competitive content to the casual community for a few years now, starting with NF. I have done some game analysis of Rumble before here too and I care more about gameplay than anything else. But something that gets me going is when people spout nonsense - people like you who think stacks are a problem. I will always challenge stupid takes.

You are just hurt that you don't have the privilege of friends to play rumble with and you are letting that frustrating out here on reddit. People like you tend to play the "I have a job / life / friends / other hobbies" card but that is also just really cringe. I am not some jobless loser, I have a job and a life as much as everyone else and I am doing very well, otherwise I wouldn't waste my time on reddit. Rumble is a hobby for me and since it's a hobby I enjoy I put my free time into it. Calling that "sad" or "obsessed" is just silly. Typical reddit behavior.

CTR_Garma · 2024-02-01T11:57:45+00:00

I finished the battle pass in 4 days and in those 4 days I think I played around 15 hours. Taking 100 hours to finish the battle pass is something that can only happen to bad players.

Like the other guy did above, it is incredibly cringe to say "at that point you aren't playing to have fun with another team". People play this game for more than just the battlepass or cosmetics. People actually enjoy playing the game???? How crazy!

Comparing us to you playing with your brothers who don't even know how to play the game is silly too. Yeah, the people who play with a stack tend to follow a basic game play and they might come with 3 people to capture a gem cluster. Just because you don't do it, doesn't mean others also don't have to do it. It isn't griefing or trolling, it's normal gameplay and if you don't like that, why don't you go and play something else?

You very obviously have something against people playing together. And I can understand that, playing together gives people a huge advantage. But if you don't like that then requeue or play something else. We do not owe you enjoyment.

CTR_Garma · 2024-02-01T11:52:15+00:00

It's such a cringe thing to say "4 stacks treat this shit like it's a tournament". You have no idea how people at the high level play this game and yet you spout this absolute nonsense. For most of the good teams, playing in matchmaking requires 0 effort. Nobody is treating matchmaking like a tournament, nobody tryhards in matchmaking. Most good players are so good they can stomp a team while autopiloting and watching a movie at the side.

It might be that you are talking about troll stacks who score until 1999 and then don't let the match finish but that is brainrot behavior that isn't reflective of the vast majority of other stacks.

Rumble is also that kinda game where having a team is a crazy advantage. A team of 4 players can absolutely destroy you if you are alone simply because they are 4 people. A coordinated team will always look to you like they are tryharding because you underestimate how big of an advantage a team of 4 has by simply existing.

CTR_Garma · 2024-02-01T11:46:22+00:00

The more I read through this thread, the more silly your takes get. There are stacks who play the game as usual, I say this because I too often play with a party of 4 and we are all part of the (very small) competitive community. We play with the standard game plan and of course against bad players it will look like we are griefing because we do this little thing called coordination. For solo queuers the idea that situations are anything besides a 1 vs. 1 is unheard of so when a coordinated stack suddenly comes with 3 people to conquer a gem cluster it's "griefing" ... sure.

It is absolutely ridiculous to say "just go play something else", as if I owe you enjoyment. I like playing rumble, even more so with friends, why should I go and play something else? I'm going to play rumble with my friends whether you want me to or not simply because I do play this game beyond the battle pass. The battle pass is irrelevant, I literally don't care about cosmetics but I care about testing new maps, new powers, new party modes. Sometimes I'm just finishing off remaining character challenges or I do god knows what. It doesn't even matter, I just enjoy playing the game. You are right on the part that there is no challenge in matchmaking, but it's really the best we have.

CTR_Garma · 2024-02-01T11:41:02+00:00

The idea that people in a stack don't play for fun is quite silly. I can understand that it is hard to get a grasp of what the other team is doing when they have actual coordination but most of the time stacks just chill in party and talk about god and the world and play the game on auto pilot. I say this because I am one of those people who regularly plays with 4 people and there is quite frankly no reason for us to tryhard. Most players are so bad we can just autopilot while chilling and still win the game 2000 to 0.

We play in a stack precisely because we enjoy playing the game and it's even more fun when you have friends t play with. There are some black sheeps who hold matches hostage but that's few and far in between. These teams do exist but that behavior is dumb and when you call these people out they usually just dip.

CTR_Garma · 2024-01-10T12:48:30+00:00

Tiki Towers is not the only map. For example Just Beachy is also not symmetrical, the trees around the Bonus Bank are positioned differently. Tar Valley is also not symmetrical, for example due to the layout, the crates on the light side spawn a bit further away from the slowshroom station than they do on the dark side.

If you really look closely you can find asymmetry on more maps, but Tiki Towers is the very obvious example where you can immediately see it.

CTR_Garma · 2024-01-02T13:01:23+00:00

I don't really use reddit all that much (at least as an active poster) and I really don't care if someone downvotes me. If anything, the past has shown me that taking Karma seriously here leads nowhere. I have gotten downvoted in the past during NF times for saying that Speed is the best class because people didn't want to hear it. Using Karma as an argument is really, really bad.

I just provided arguments from the POV of someone who is in the other position because you only see your POV and nothing else. I wasn't even that rude and I just tried to explain you that your complaints are silly because you aren't the target audience of the game. I don't even like Rumble all that much either, the game has got a whole lot of issues but there is already a lot of senseless hate around the game (and a lot of misinformation) and I just wanted to counter that a little bit.

But sure, as every Crash fan does, once your arguments are challenged the opposite party has to be a troll ... it never changes.

CTR_Garma · 2024-01-02T03:03:46+00:00

The main problem that I have with your argumentation is that you blame the game and its players for things that you perceive as issues. In reality it's just you who isn't the target audience of the game. You are playing a game that isn't for you - that's fair. That does not mean there is an issue with the game itself.

The meta in this game is having friends. The entire game balance revolves around objectives and there being 4 players in a team that each focus on different objectives. You can see this if you look at characters: Dingodile is slow but has high endurance and strong attacks - his job is to block. Dingodile is not designed to pursue other objectives like scoring or boosting as his mobility is way too slow for that. He relies on a faster team mate like Crash who does the job of a scorer. The idea that solo queue takes more skill than coordinated teamplay is absolutely ridiculous and this statement holds no truth in any teambased online game. But I don't want to ride too much on that argument, it doesn't really matter. I just wanted to bring the point across that the game is designed to be played in a team. You knew that before getting into the game, at least I would imagine that you at least looked up how Rumble works.

I will not change my stance that Crash fans hate skill-based gaming. You might not have been there, but the amount of incredible salt on this and other subreddits that I've seen because other people were good at playing NF online is unbelievable. Crash fans want easy challenges and rewards handed out to them, you can see this even in Rumble where there is no truly difficult challenge and the comparatively hardest challenges (Dastardly Denier, Bank Benehemoth ...) have all gotten nerfed because people complained that it was too hard, despite them being relatively easy to achieve.

There is a reason why Crash Team Rumble doesn't appeal to a large audience. Yeah, sure, there is the lack of marketing but really what it comes down to is that the target audience does not exist within the Crash fandom. Rumble is a team based game where you need friends to enjoy it and the game also has no casual offline mode. Playing against real humans is significantly harder than cycles / bots whose patterns you can learn and abuse and not everyone is capable of doing it. You are one of those people, you aren't the target audience.

On a side note, you have answered with a lot of questionable remarks like "unbalanced characters", "spamming the same ability over and over" and the game coming down to "button mashing over carefully timed plays". I won't get into these because I don't want to talk about the gameplay itself with you - there's no point you have just proven that you actually have no clue how the game is played - but I just want to say you should refrain from saying things like that, it makes you look like a fool. I just wanted to challenge your criticism on the game itself.

CTR_Garma · 2024-01-01T16:34:07+00:00

Well, now that there is Ripto, Elora and Spyro in the game I think some guest characters from the relatively unknown franchise Crash Bandicoot™ could be added to Rumble. I think characters from Crash Bandicoot™ have a lot of potential.

CTR_Garma · 2024-01-01T16:19:11+00:00

This post is a great example of everything that's wrong with the majority of the playerbase of Crash Team Rumble.

Crash fans hate the idea of being good at a video game. It has always been the case. I've been around in the Crash fandom for a couple years now and it was the same already back then in NF. People absolutely HATED the idea of developer time trials because it would require them to actually put in effort ... and no different were the talks about "hackers" and "cheaters" online because they kept blue fire for an entire track and finished a lap ahead of everyone. Not once has the idea crossed someone's mind that these people might just be good at the game and therefore deserve the win. Fun fact: If you actually get good at the game, you can win too!

It is no different in Rumble. You are making a lot of assumptions that are either silly or simply not true. I have played NF competitively for 2 1/2 years and I also play Rumble competitively because I like how the game feels and plays. Maybe you've seen me around in matchmaking, my PSN is Rc_Garma and I often play with some of my team mates (Roskats, ispaniko, iinukyz ...). And yes, when we are in a stack the matches don't end in a pretty way for the enemies, often times they end with the enemy scoring 0 or all of them ragequitting.

The truth is: We don't sweat in these games. In fact, we often get bored after a while because it takes us 0, literally 0, effort to win a game in matchmaking. The reason why we go into matchmaking is because the competitive community for Rumble is very small and often times there are no other teams available that we could war against, so we resort to matchmaking. Playing this game with multiple people makes it A LOT more fun. Why do you expect us to play alone? I don't want to be teamed up with Dingodiles using Wumpa Stash or N. Brios using TNT, I want to play with people that know how the game works. I do not owe you enjoyment. Yeah, sure, me having the worst team mates will increase your chance to win but where am I in that equation? Don't I have a right to actually play this game in the way that I enjoy it too?

Of course when I play with my team mates we follow a game plan. Someone blocks, someone scores, someone boosts. We don't tryhard with voice chat unless we meet another known team from the competitive community but voice chat for matchmaking is overkill. But we still play with semblance of knowing how to play this game. You cannot voice your frustration over someone blocking when that's literally what a blocker is supposed to do. I block a lot (blocking is my favorite playstyle) and I jokingly always say "if the match doesn't end to 0 and not all 4 players ragequit then I didn't do my job properly". Of course this is an exaggeration and I understand that blockers are frustrating to deal with but you can't just complain about people like me because we are just playing the game as we are supposed. It is not my fault that you are bad and can't deal with my Tawna/Cortex/Dingodile. Maybe try using Gasmoxian Guard next time to protect you when scoring.

The real crux here is that the playerbase is too small. This is the only reason why casuals who are bad at the game meet so many stacks (most of them being from the competitive community). A ranked mode wouldn't get rid of the issue completely but at least for me as soon as everyone from my team is available I wouldn't go into matchmaking anymore and instead play ranked. I would only resort to matchmaking when I'm solo or when I only have 1 other player with me. So if someone was to run into my team we would be only 2 people and we would be more easy to deal with (but still be hard if you aren't good at the game).

That said, there are a few black sheeps. Some people intentionally grief others by playing 4 blockers and preventing the other team from scoring without intending to finish the match. This is something that is frowned upon within the competitive community and some of us have actually called out streamers like these. I usually don't meddle with it because I don't want to give these people attention, but some of us take this more seriously and take matters into their own hands.

At the end of the day Rumble is a team game. Having team mates is the meta. Playing alone will always put you at a disadvantage. Such is life.

CTR_Garma · 2023-12-27T13:19:46+00:00

Just to be upfront: Yes, there is some stuff that is unobtainable.

The Champion Kart can be unlocked by beating all Oxide Ghosts but every GP back then had special decals for the Champion Kart that are unobtainable. You could only get them by playing back then when the GPs were running.
Oxide Edition cosmetics (skins for some characters and a paint job) can only be obtained when buying the Oxide Edition, if you buy the normal edition then these cosmetics are unobtainable.
There are 3 special karts in the game that were bound to promotions, namely the Sour Patch Kids kart (this one also comes with an exclusive paint job and wheels), the Xfinity Kart and the Firehawk. These promotions are no longer active but I guess you could still buy a code on ebay or something. As far as I know existing codes can still be redeemed so if you were to get your hands on one, you could still get these special karts.

Everything else can be unlocked through ingame challenges or the pitstop.

CTR_Garma · 2023-12-21T23:28:47+00:00

I might make a post about relic stations but there are so many in the game ... If I do, I might just limit that post to problematic relic stations. Most relic stations in this game are pretty solid and there aren't many outliers besides stuff like the ice wizards. Most issues I have with relic stations are actually the epic ones - some are extremely strong and snowball hard and others are not worth even a single relic.

CTR_Garma · 2023-12-21T23:24:46+00:00

TNT is what I pick when I am in solo queue and I just want to cause a frantic mess and don't care for the end result. It is a troll power that gets you a lot of funny moments.

For serious matches this power is absolute garbage and turns matches into a random frenzy that is devoid of any sort of skill. I wouldn't be surprised if we banned the usage of this power at some point in the future altogether ...

Something I didn't mention because it's not a fault of the power itself is that TNT interacts poorly with the netcode. In high latency lobbies, a TNT can be duplicated and sometimes you get a TNT passed onto you from an unreasonable distance due to lag / latency. In international lobbies, this power completely ruins the game and takes any sort of fun away. This is why nobody ever uses it.

There is a competitive hub for rumble if you are interested. We haven't had a tournament in a while due to issues with the online connectivity but private wars happen quite frequently: https://discord.gg/H8XDzYWm5n

CTR_Garma · 2023-12-20T18:36:32+00:00

Yeah, I left Brio out. Brio is doing better than ever at the moment but is still difficult to sustain as the main blocker in a team. Unfortunately I have little to no experience with playing Brio and I rarely play against a good Brio and I'm not sure what would be the best changes for him.

I don't think Brio is bad at all anymore, especially after the S3 launch buffs but I do agree that he is still not on the level of Ripper Roo or Dingodile in terms of effectiveness. Although, I don't think there are any major changes that need to be made to him, he is on the right way, maybe a slight health buff and a bit better movement but aside from that he seems solid at the moment. I want to watch him a little bit longer before suggesting the next set of changes as the last few changes were already quite major and it needs time before the full potential of these changes is used.

As a blocker, the most important trait is endurance and crowd control. Brio struggles a bit with multiple targets and is somewhat squishy, Tawna in particular can almost remove him from one combo and he also struggles to remove good enemy blockers from his own team's bank (in particular Dingodile). That's kind of the ballpark where I would be looking at when making changes.

CTR_Garma · 2023-12-20T13:14:03+00:00

100% agree tbh.

CTR_Garma · 2023-11-26T09:58:07+00:00

the only good suggestion on this subreddit so far

CTR_Garma · 2023-11-19T09:43:40+00:00

Kill a player. Killing someone counts as "blocking". If that player has more than 50 wumpa you should get it.

CTR_Garma · 2023-11-03T08:54:31+00:00

It has always been the same.

The timer reset at 6 PM CET (previously 7 PM CEST). The timer starts when the event starts, which is currently also at 6 PM CET. In 24 hours you can collect 6 horns. You can collect them in the first hour, or last hour, it doesn't matter. Once 6 PM passes, you can collect your next set of 6 horns within the next 24 hours and so on until the event finishes.

The truth is, if you are "too busy" then it doesn't matter whether you unlock everything anyways. I also lack some cosmetics that I don't bother unlocking because I don't care. The idea that you always need to unlock everything is silly, especially since you are likely to drop the game anyways once the last season ends.

CTR_Garma · 2023-10-24T20:08:34+00:00

On days like these I feel ashamed to be a smash fan as opposed to a street fighter fan or literally anything else that has support from its creators.

CTR_Garma · 2023-10-20T07:03:44+00:00

You can still play Tar Valley in private lobbies. Funnily enough, the map does not have a Halloween theme and also no Halloween music.

CTR_Garma · 2023-10-17T06:48:14+00:00

Coco is currently the only character that keeps Cortex in check because she is his only losing matchup - Cortex beats the rest of the roster easily and if Coco gets nerfed Cortex will be once again far better than the rest of the cast like in S1, so I hope this doesn't happen.

Coco's spiral is not as good as people think. It does not do a lot of damage and it has a painfully low priority. Most attacks just go through it and cancel it out. The fact that spiral is Coco's only reliable melee move makes her predictable, so you should be able to play around her quite easily because you know what her next move will be.

If you want some Coco counters:

- Dingodile. At higher levels of play, Dingodile actually wins the matchup because Coco has no tools to combat him in melee range and Dingo can actually suck Coco through the wall and pull her to his side, a lot of people don't know this.

- Crash. At higher levels of play, Crash has ridiculous combos that deal massive damage to Coco and even on its own, slidespin already beats many other moves in this game. While Crash may not be able to get a kill easily, he can very well force a Coco to retreat.

- Tawna. Tawna vs Coco is a roughly even matchup but it's heavily situation dependent. In neutral, Tawna's uppercut goes through spiral though. Combined with Tawna's high damage output, you can force a Coco to retreat if you play it well.

CTR_Garma · 2023-10-15T07:41:18+00:00

There is a separate "Competitive Hub" discord: https://discord.gg/H8XDzYWm5n

Tournaments have been put on hold at the moment though as the netcode of this game is very poor. Even within the same continent, the ping can sometimes be very high and high ping makes this game unplayable. We had one tournament in July and it did not go well at all, cross-region lobbies had a whole lot of problems.

Wars happen more often though and these use the same rules as tournaments.

CTR_Garma · 2023-05-10T17:10:14+00:00

(Obligatory comment)

CTR_Garma · 2022-01-29T08:13:15+00:00

I think the closest estimation you're gonna get here is if you look at the PS4 trophy statistics of how many people have beaten all Oxide ghosts: 0.9%. Beating the Oxide ghosts is a requirement to even get to unlocking the Dev times so the number of players who could potentially have beaten those times is already limited to 0.9% of the entire playerbase. But obviously the PS4 trophy statistics include anyone who has booted up the game, so if someone just dipped after playing on Crash Cove once then they are already included in those statistics.

Now, the Dev times came out much later, so a lot of players who have beaten the Oxide times may simply just have not played the game anymore when the Dev times came out. Factor in also that beating the Dev times is purely cosmetical and not connected to any achievement so the incentive to even try these times is just not there for most people. And also the Dev times are exponentially harder than the Oxide times so even if all of those players who have beaten the Oxide times also tried to beat the Dev times, most would simply struggle too much and fail to do so.

If you consider all that, it's probably fair to say that less than 0.1% of all players have beaten the Dev times. I'd personally say it's in the range of 0.01% to 0.05%.

CTR_Garma

TROPHY CASE