[Suggestion] Time Trials need a quick (re)start + Please remove the starting line minigame from them
Summary: Time Trials should automatically start with a fixed speed/boost so that the emphasis is put on the race itself. The minigame before the starting line is a redundant time waster, highly tedious, and not an enjoyable, or necessary, part of the time attack experience.
Reasoning: Putting aside its role in the other game modes, I think that the starting line minigame is an intrusive part of time trials. It gates the actual time attack itself behind a counter-intuitive barrier of execution and creates a hostile situation towards a player trying to grind out times. I understand and respect that the developers likely see it as an exciting variable ("What interesting tricks will people do at the beginning in order to shave off seconds? What will the ideal strategy be? It's another thing to figure out in the race!"), but in practice... my opinion is that it is not suited for this game mode and also, for me personally? Rob me of the ability to enjoy it to its fullest extent. There are many, many times during a race where execution will come into play without having to force the player to open a lock every time they hit restart on a mode that is inherently already full of frequent restarts.
As an example, in the previous versions of this game (SRB2K), you had a timing minigame to get a boost at the beginning. While it may, or may not, have its place in a standard race (just as the starting line minigame may or may not), for the purposes of this topic, it is absolutely redundant for time attack. If it is a requirement (and it is) to open a race at the fastest possible speed, the player's time is only being wasted if they bungle the entry... I want the question to be floated: if you have to perform the same action 100% of the time at the beginning of a race... just to start the race... Should you really be doing it at all in the first place? Especially when it's such a minor element?
To see it from your perspective and be fair, because I am coming at this from an angle of good faith, I do understand that speed is not the only element at play here. The angle of entry is also a component that the starting line minigame integrates (although to what extent, I cannot say atm). I simply do not believe that it is a worthwhile part of the experience that should be prioritized over the fact that you are making the player waste ten seconds before they can actually... you know. Play the time trial itself. I have to float the question: is it actually fun at all to have to drift in a circle several times before you enter the race? Every single time? The exact same way? Over and over again?
I understand that a change like this could interfere with staff ghosts. I have already seen feedback where a dev has said "I don't know if we can fix this without breaking 999 ghosts we already had to make". Very fair! It's hard to want to change anything that dramatically when you are making more workload for yourself. I have to wonder, though, if you could not just keep the staff ghosts as is, but start them from when they cross the starting line. If you open an updated time trial mode with a boost in the center, would the varying nature of the former starting line minigame actually affect things very much? Would a player just be able to fairly compete with the old ghosts?
Either way, I would rather time trials be improved, even if it meant temporarily killing the staff ghosts. That's a personal feeling and I can understand not everyone would see it that way, especially not devs who've worked hard making those sick time trials to begin with. It's hard work and I respect that. But I also think it might be a case of sunk cost fallacy. Should an unfun system be forced to exist forever because the staff ghosts were already made?
I'm asking this with love in my heart. Time attacks are my favorite component of racing games. This is why I'm playing the game at all, or any racing game. My friends and I share times and compete against each other and I want to be in there playing with them and not... like, doing drift donuts or bouncing off walls for 10 seconds before I'm allowed to play the game I'm here for. It's just tedious. I don't think I have ever played a racing game that thought this was something a time trial needed. In fact, many modern racing games do just start time trials in motion already, or with an auto-boost.
It isn't removing complexity from the game. It would just be putting the fun part forward.