Skateboarding.

[Rufus]

You know, that thread-bumping maniac wasn't half wrong when he thought skateboarding on Era had potential, because it actually really does. I logged on the other day with Crono, bummed some money off him to purchase a deck, and we had fun with the two tricks available in the one area you can do them in. The fun was short-lived and it left me wondering why skateboarding, albeit not a huge priority, hasn't been further developed as it could be (for lack of a better phrase) ****ing fun.

I've got a few suggestions on how to build on the skating, or amend it if possible, but it really isn't hard. I heard a rumor skateboards were nerfed to increase the value of cars (because you know, transport is transport) but like the war in Iraq, it never had to be this way. Anyway..

• Ditch the Fisher-Price headgear.
  I don't think I know a single real skater who would actually wear a helmet. I know it's safety, and you were probably told to wear one when you were young. I was told too, but I never did, and if mommy told you to wear a helmet online, well mommy should log on herself, and be shot, nine thousand times like the rest of us.
  
  
• Making skateboards worse than cars.
  The current skateboard movement is extremely stiff; you turn your direction and lose the speed you built up, you can't fit through areas which you can already do by walking, and you're restricted to + directions which makes for bad transactions. Apparently these things are to (as mentioned previously) make sure skateboards are worse than cars in the grand scheme of things; it doesn't have to be that way though.
  
  In reality, a skateboard can go as fast as the average car speed, but not for very long. The reason everyone isn't out in the streets skateboarding to work and school is because skateboarding is also something you build up skills in. The momentum should be built up at first by pushing off, then you should build on that more, then you would eventually slow down needing to push again. This alone would differentiate between car movement and skating movement. Along with that, skateboards generally deteriorate over time with what you're performing on, how badly you execute tricks, and if these skateboards did deteriorate per-part then not only would they be "worse than cars" for durability, but it would have economy++ points too. Deteriorating parts rather than the entire board makes the blow easier for the player, because nobody is going to want to shell out 600 bucks entirely for another set. If one part was broken or on it's way, it would effect the rest of the parts, and your ability to ride and perform tricks too.
  
  
• Improve the performance and skill required with tricks.
  Seemingly everybody likes systems you can 'level up' with these days, and as you learn more tricks and do them more often, you get better. This concept can be easily conveyed into a stat-building process. Currently there is 3 tricks: grinding, 360 flip (tre flip), and the varial flip, but as far as I know you can only do these inside the skate park. EXPAND IT SO YOU CAN DO THESE TRICKS OUTSIDE PLEASE. I don't see why it hasn't been done already, but why not also add more basic and well known tricks, such as kick flip, heel flip, big spin, 180 frontside/backside, nollie, switch, fakie, etc. You probably have no idea what I just said if you don't know much about skating, but they're pretty generic and would be easy to pull off on Graal. In time more tricks could be added, and you get better you learn them, I guess there would have some kind of difficulty level per trick, but for every super hard trick you pull off, there's super hard bragging rights to go with it.
  
  One big gripe other than the fact there's only three tricks, you can only perform tricks inside a small "skate park" area, and the part where it doesn't take any skill at all, is the grinding. Like the others, grinding takes no skill at all, but it'd be much better if it did and it would be pretty damn easy to add that too. I'm straight up ripping most other skating games here (namely Tony Hawks) but if the majority do it, they must be doing something right . Having something like this, which requires you to keep your balance to complete a trick is just one small addition that would make it much better:
  
  
  
  p.s Display the tricks you've just performed on the bottom of the screen, or in the message system. Player chat is weak.
  
  
• Add new deck designs, more realism, less 'Word Art' graphics.
  I think out of the choice you get as a deck, there was around, say, two that were decent. The majority of the designs looked like they were made on Microsoft Word 1.7, and although the majority of these designs have oddly colored grip tape, in reality it's a pretty rare (and lame) thing to see. It would be nice to see some decent designs that were more influenced off what decks actually look like, and less server name branding all over them. Customizing is fun, and another direction that could be gone with this is fully customizing your decks. Different trucks, wheels, etc through choice would really make a board your own, and works well with the above.

If this stuff was done, some of the points alone would improve the current system 100% but there's no point in doing one thing and leaving it at that. If development was made on the skateboarding part of Era (which is quite minimal) you're opening up to a whole new target, which can't hurt. Things such as adding new skills that take skill could branch off into new events, new deck designs could branch off into competitions, the possibilities are there, just gotta find the time to do all this.