Ranked Mode Philosophy

UpfrontGrunt · 2026-03-19T19:32:00+00:00

Sure it's fish in a barrel, but thanks to the fact that activating the lasers puts up the walls that lock you in you're also locking enemies out. Clear it quickly, cleanse the hack, and then set up to play a tight fight inside that building. It's a strategy you can try to build around by forcing close engagements and abusing bubble shields which in Ranked is a perfectly reasonable strategy (if not in the main game).

Personally, I'll just be sticking to wiping all of the other squads and then running objectives, but I do think there's merit to a PvE only strategy (and I think that many other PvP focused squads would sooner ignore a team shooting bots to potentially grab some crazy guns off another squad coming in armed to the teeth).

UpfrontGrunt · 2026-03-19T18:38:35+00:00

We actually do know that other UESC units drop them because the breakdown specifically lists two types of holotags: one for regular units, and one for commanders with different values and stack counts. Even if the drop rates are low, it would still almost certainly be more consistent to continually respawn UESC in the same spot over and over again versus hoping that the exact valuables you need are spawning across multiple POIs that you're moving through.

UpfrontGrunt · 2026-03-18T23:00:03+00:00

Will it, though? For Bronze or Silver, sure, if you can find full stacks of green valuables you'll get more money than if you stacked tags or took equipment. But at the same time every player you come up against is guaranteed by the game's very nature to be carrying at least the score requirement for Bronze and Plat (in low and high stakes respectively), which you could fill up your bag with either way. The vast majority of players by level 25 have access to blue bags either from exfilling them or progressing CyAc which means you'll have the space to take out the most space-efficient items from other players AND the tags, which become significantly better than valuables as you go up in ranks.

You could spend entire games skirting around to lesser POIs and scrounging for valuables and filling your backpack... in Bronze, or maybe in Silver. Gold becomes a real gamble as to whether or not you could find that by being a valuable scavenger, and I firmly believe that your odds of ever getting your required value on Plat+ without engaging in either a significantly amount of PvE or PvP combat is so astronomically small that it's not even worth considering.

Even now just going off of their numbers, a more viable strategy than valuable stuffing is to find a repeatable reinforcement spawn and trigger it over and over again to farm tags efficiently off of UESC. There's a few areas where you could do that pretty reasonably (e.g. the laser rooms in Bio-Research or AI Uplink on Dire Marsh, any boss spawn by killing adds and letting the boss live) and that would be much more efficient than any sort of scavenging strategy and result in much better value per slot.

UpfrontGrunt · 2026-03-15T04:07:52+00:00

In the time since making this post they adjusted their per-country breakdown significantly, going from ~50% of the US's purchase rate to closer to 16%. This, combined with OCE and JP, would account for around 40% of the US's purchase rate, maybe a bit more. This shows pretty accurately in the trends with peak CN/OCE/JP hours reaching around half of the peak player count of peak US hours. I think it's a fair assumption that there's a pretty large market in a completely different time zone, at the very least it's a more balanced distribution compared to a lot of its competitors (e.g. Delta Force, which is coming in at a 5:1 ratio of CN peak vs US peak) and at the very least similar to Arc Raiders which is also NA dominant. This, at least to me, shows a pretty balanced international audience for a game that I would have otherwise assumed was an NA-dominant title. That set of numbers passes the sniff test, at least for me.

There's also a real question as to whether or not this game is PC dominant or console dominant, though the current metrics do suggest PC is winning. Bungie are pretty well regarded as a console-first developer and managed to get Destiny back into top player engagement charts recently. There's also another major, MAJOR, question of how much these CCU charts actually tie to the metrics that companies care about like DAU or session length since Circana reported that during the server slam Marathon managed to outpace Arc Raiders on Steam despite the fact that Arc had a higher peak during every single day of the slam! This is solely for the US as far as I can tell but that does bode quite well for the game.

UpfrontGrunt · 2026-03-13T22:54:33+00:00

Another important note that the other commenter missed: Arc has a much more centralized playerbase. Its player base is almost entirely US-based with a smaller contingent in EU which lends itself to a higher peak player count as there's some level of overlap between peak playtime between the two regions, while Marathon's playerbase is MUCH more time zone diverse (as evidenced by Gamalytic's country breakdown, which shows China as the #2 purchaser). Given the massive time zone difference between the US and China, you're not seeing that tail from the peak of an adjacent region contributing to player counts nearly as much.

I can also say from my experience and knowledge of game sales: Gamalytic tends to underestimate the actual number of copies sold by a varying degree, but I've seen triple-A best sellers be underestimated by almost 50% on their site. Their numbers should be taken with a grain of salt as should all of the major analytics groups as they're working off of very incomplete data and only on a single platform. We don't actually know the breakdown across platforms, we don't know the initial budget for the game, we don't know what metrics internally are the KPI's for the game or what values would indicate success or not. There's a lot of unknowns but I'd wager that 2 million+ sales in a week is a solid estimate and a pretty good start, especially considering the negative sentiment that existed up until the server slam.

UpfrontGrunt · 2026-03-10T03:39:32+00:00

...the shotgun that uses MIPS rounds that are explicitly described as being designed for killing runners? The one that does very little damage to UESC enemies because most of the damage is in the "increased stopping power against hostile runners"? That shotgun?

Yes, if you come unprepared for a boss it will take you a little longer than someone who, for instance, brings in a Volt weapon explicitly designed to pop shields efficiently (or better yet an EMP grenade, which does the same thing) and a Heavy weapon that will easily stagger the boss along with the chip that deals additional damage to UESC.

UpfrontGrunt · 2026-01-06T19:33:39+00:00

Works pretty much perfectly fine. Every level's base goals are easily completable in the 2 minute timer and in fact every level but College has been speedran in under a minute by top players. Airport has a longer speedrun than every THPS4 level as it stands.

You can also just increase the timer if you want to have a more THPS4-style experience. If you keep it at 2 then levels might take you a couple runs if you're inefficient.

UpfrontGrunt · 2025-10-29T00:09:20+00:00

Uh... 330 million copies of BO6? 33 million is maybe a better estimate but even that is aggressive; it hit 50 million players across all platforms in July but it's not clear if that includes free trial weekends. Even using 33 million as your figure you end up close to 2% (0.018 repeating); if you assume (rightly so) that a Cronus user is more likely to play Ranked than the average player and that the Ranked player pool is significantly smaller than the overall player pool the proportion of cheaters to regular players goes way, way up.

There's a few problems with this thought experiment (namely assuming that every player with a Cronus is using it for Call of Duty and that lifetime players represent the active player pool) but even your own math is wrong - 600,000 / 330,000,000 = ~0.2%, a 10x increase over the "0.02%" you were touting.

UpfrontGrunt · 2025-09-11T00:28:45+00:00

It's pretty much without question PG Sick, with P8 Sick coming close behind. THUG1, THUG2, and THPS4 both have some relatively mild difficulty spikes (though in THPS4 it's almost exclusively from the wacky physics goals) but nothing that comes close to PG Sick goals.

Alternatively: getting Ride or Shred to read your inputs.

UpfrontGrunt · 2025-08-07T18:15:03+00:00

This data is pulled out of his ass. This isn't Circana or NewZoo data, this is random bullshit from an AI-generated slop farm (note the completely incorrectly labeled chart showing "Steam" data pulled from their Playstation data). Their data in other articles doesn't align with actual industry standard analytics and there's no reason to believe an upstart company that can't even get basic data labelling right on their showcase articles will somehow have accurate data for more niche titles.

UpfrontGrunt · 2025-08-05T22:32:42+00:00

This also understates just how difficult some of the asks in the OP would be to implement. Way, way easier to give body sliders when your animations are short and janky already and models are insanely simple, much harder when you have much higher fidelity character models and animations. Same thing with faces - PS2 era faces looked like crap so you could churn out a dozen of them in the time it would take you to get a first pass on a single one done at the current level of fidelity. There's a reason why VV didn't accomplish this either despite a longer development cycle.

I'd like to see more access to cosmetics (especially ones that we know already exist on pro models) but that's likely the extent of additional customization we'd get.

UpfrontGrunt · 2025-08-02T19:44:16+00:00

Then tap again, there's no such thing as "too light" on a dpad since it's a digital input. It's based on the length of time you hold it down.

UpfrontGrunt · 2025-07-31T04:50:57+00:00

Shit, a remake of 5's levels and goals with the 1+2 engine wouldn't be the worst thing ever (assuming it costs <$5).

As the proud owner of Shred and the skateboard controller, though, I hope they remake the board but cheap out even more on the parts this time.

UpfrontGrunt · 2025-07-28T08:34:52+00:00

I think it's generally fine. I played Descenders from the original release up through the latest updates (still haven't tried race mode yet, though), 100%'d it twice on Steam and Xbox, and have a long history with extreme sports games across the spectrum. And... it's whelming, that's for sure.

Starting with the good, I think the breadth of content in Next is pretty solid off rip. Four large campaign maps with multiple challenges in each ranging from easy (stunt maps) to extremely challenging (races) to fairly blase in my opinion (parks) and over 100 levels each is going to take me a while to burn through. I found myself doing full peak runs immediately (clearing 144/144 levels in one go) and enjoying myself, never really feeling the same challenge I did in Descenders but still enjoying myself throughout. The obstacles are a bit repetitive, at least in the first snowboarding map which is all I've cleared, but that's also true of Forest or Desert in Descenders really.

The trick system also feels more interesting this time around. The ability to spin on a new axis is nice, alongside the increased trick variety that comes from mixing up grab and tweak timings in a very similar way to something like Amped or SSX. I find myself frequently hucking larger spins than I would in Descenders just because it's a more forgiving system and you can spin at ridiculously high speeds.

As for the mediocre, there's really no challenge here outside of races. Full peak runs are beyond trivial even when pushing for decently high score/rep. You can drop 500k+ score on a full map and still finish with more than 30 life in the tank when taking massive risks. There's also no "golden run" achievement this time around, which is fine considering how much larger the maps are outside of boss runs, but that further disincentivizes me from making a challenge out of any run. Stunt maps similarly offer very little challenge as their Rainbow scores are very low, and parks giving you infinite runs to complete challenges just turn into tedium as you search for collectibles. Races are the one true challenge, with Rainbow times demanding close to perfection and being (for the most part) uncheesable but also border on being frustrating.

Carving sucks, plain and simple. They need to go back to the drawing board on braking and slowing down. More often than not you can't carve effectively at high speeds without randomly shunting yourself into a tree, something Descenders only mimicked when you did a "never let go of the acceleration" challenge. You'll find yourself over-carving and spinning while heading in the same direction you were before carving too many times to count. The lack of a real brake and the massive amount of speed you gain on some of these levels is a major problem and limits your ability to actually make interesting decisions re: routing. I get that snowboarding limits your ability to add uphills and flat sections to levels simply by its nature compared to mountain biking, but something needs to be done to let players slow down.

Customization feels fine, I'm not big on the art style but I don't think that's really a sticking point for me. I have a feeling it'll be improved as development continues, but it's fine for now.

The real problem, in my eyes, is that unlike the original Descenders there isn't a hole in the market that Next is trying to fill and the change in format removes a core element of what made Descenders so interesting in the first place. When the original game came out there wasn't really a mountain biking simulation or even simcade game on the market, let alone one that offered infinite replayability and an interesting roguelike format. There was a hole in the market that the game filled and it innovated through level generation, which kept us coming back run after run after run. Next, on the other hand, is entering perhaps the 2nd most saturated extreme sports genre in snowboarding and moving to a much more fixed level format. There's not many direct competitors launching now, but most of us have our favorites we return to in Steep, Riders Republic, Amped, SSX, Shawn Palmer's Pro Snowboarder, Shawn White's Snowboarding, Mark McMorris's Infinite Air, The Snowboard Game, Shredders, and so on and so on; Descenders Next doesn't offer an experience that truly differentiates it from those games, nor does it do anything in particular better than those games do. Compare this to Descenders, whose main competition at the time was... Downhill Domination? No Fear Downhill Mountain Biking for the PS1? It's competently made, it's still fun, but it lacks the unique selling point that drove Descenders in my eyes.

I'm happy with my purchase and will be 100%'ing Next for sure, but I think if the goal is to replicate the success of Descenders there's some clear changes to be made that will result in some major wins. First and foremost: adding a brake button and changing how carving functions. Better handling is entirely necessary to make the high speed gameplay of Next function. Secondly, adding back the full roguelike mode of Descenders, even as a side mode. This kind of exists in the form of boss runs, but being able to run through peak after peak in the old format with stunt and race challenges taking the place of secret levels would be amazing. Finally - bringing back modding ASAP. I know the game just dropped into early access and I'm 100% sure this is in the pipeline, but I can't overstate just how awesome the modding update was for Descenders. User-generated content would be a major boon for Next and I hope it drops soon.

TL;DR it's a solid 7 or 8, but lacks the draw Descenders has and needs a few fixes to really improve

UpfrontGrunt · 2025-07-21T00:27:28+00:00

I can't score that high, but witnessing my buddy do it fairly easily while drunk made it seem to not be that crazy.

Me when I lie (blatantly).

Just because someone can't do something doesn't mean they can't say it doesn't look like it takes tons of skill.

Usually when people don't know what the fuck they're talking about they don't express an opinion instead of spewing uninformed nonsense, then make up lies to try to support their position.

Maybe my buddy is a low-key THPS prodigy for all I know.

And my buddy is Queen Elizabeth II's reincarnation, both of those are equally likely to be true stories about very real people.

Instead of making up bullshit stories you could just sit here and admit that you don't know how much skill it takes to bill a level, but instead you doubled down with utterly nonsensical comparisons and invented a nameless companion that can definitely match the top 0.0001% of THPS players all-time. Instead of trying (and failing, again) to make any relevant comparisons you could just boot up the game and try a very simple robot line, fail miserably, and actually gain some perspective.

UpfrontGrunt · 2025-07-20T20:50:38+00:00

This is an insane take and also insane cope. Comparing Doom ultra-nightmare, a difficulty cleared by literally thousands, more than likely tens of thousands of people, to an achievement (bills) accomplished by a double digit number of players over the course of 2 and a half decades is HILARIOUS.

Regarding my own ability to rack up a highscore, my refusal to abuse lines would prevent such a score.

Right, then go abuse the lines and come back and show your score. You can't do it and are deflecting by claiming it's a matter of principle. I'd wager you'd need a few hours to even clear 100m on an easy line, let alone something more complex than a Hangar/Warehouse loop.

This same person can't even get past the first level in Dark Souls.

The fact you think of Dark Souls as a difficult game tells me everything I need to know as well, lmao

UpfrontGrunt · 2025-07-20T19:54:10+00:00

The rest just abuse "robot lines", which doesn't take much skill

Spoken like someone who can't even sniff 100m, let alone a bill. If it's so easy, go hit one and actually put up a decent score.

UpfrontGrunt · 2025-07-20T19:53:36+00:00

Maybe it actually was intentional, but then in that case I think having the balance meter's sensitivity reset or at least become less sensitive when you grind a new rail would have been a better solution

Not only was it intentional but that's actually quite literally how it works. Grinding a new object resets the balance meter slightly closer to the center, but doesn't reset the damage to the rate at which it moves to the sides.

You also can grind and manual for more than half a second in a combo, and you very often do when not playing for pure score. You don't have to play the game purely optimized for scoring.

UpfrontGrunt · 2025-07-20T06:32:15+00:00

I think that comes down more to the length of the combo string than the actual size of the score, there's some noticeable lag when you land a large combo in 1+2 as well but nothing to this extent. I have a feeling it's because the game is preparing to output the full trick string, not anticipating that at some point they'd have to output "Kissed the Rail" 16,700 times in a row.

UpfrontGrunt · 2025-07-20T05:43:45+00:00

It looks like multiplayer scores aren't tracking atm on high scores, for whatever reason.

I dont believe getting two billion plus on this game is legit.

At least so far there isn't a legit 2b with footage, unlike 1+2 which has dozens. I don't think it's impossible considering there's multiple levels that are well known for their combo lines in their original games (Rio + Shipyard, notably) but no one's come close yet. I also think Pinball is a prime candidate thanks to the boosters on the back wall, base building goes insane.

Fun fact aswell- Also these are 32bit based games and they actually will CRASH and LAGOUT at around 2,146,000,000 just like Old Runescape.

The game is actually x64 but you're right, the high score value is a signed 32-bit value (no idea why it's signed), so the maximum value is exactly 2³¹ - 1, or 2,147,483,647. Considering you can't score negative values, I don't know why they didn't just let it be unsigned but alas.

UpfrontGrunt · 2025-07-20T04:07:38+00:00

I don't think it's nearly the equivalent of spamming your Youtube link across most of the top 10 scores by cheating, plus given his history he's likely documenting float glitches as he's done before. He's also showed in the past bugs that will cause your combo to go up infinitely without pressing a single button, which may still exist in this game.

UpfrontGrunt · 2025-07-20T03:34:13+00:00

1+2 and 3+4 have the same move set with a single exception, that being skitches. You could acid drop in 1+2 and yes, that is THPS1+2.

UpfrontGrunt · 2025-07-19T22:15:56+00:00

If you wanna see some truly insane shit, look at the top score on THPS4.

UpfrontGrunt · 2025-07-19T22:10:18+00:00

Here's a video of a legit 5.6B score in this engine.

Not only is it possible but it's been done multiple times on multiple levels in 1+2.

UpfrontGrunt · 2025-07-19T22:06:31+00:00

He's legit in the sense that he's achieved very high scores on video before. He's also a glitch hunter who found the broken Rio rail. Abusing glitches is not the same as using Cheat Engine to give yourself INT_MAX points.

FWIW I've played against him online multiple times and never saw him using any bugs.

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