[Suggestion] Rethink how Chao keys are used
If your reasoning behind the increase of Chao keys awarded was to entice players into using them more liberatively, i don't think it will work. The fact that you have a limited amount of them, no matter the amount, is already a sufficient reason not to use any. Here i am making a direct comparison between Chao keys and, say, health or mana potions in other games. Players tend to hoard them and never use them because "you never know" what might come next, and you'll need one or several or all of them. I fear the exact same thing may happen with Chao keys, where players will hoard them without using them, because "you don't know" when an impossible challenge (for you) might come up.
Maybe it's the whole concept of Chao keys i don't necessarily agree with…
- They provide a proxy for "regular" completion sure, but anyone who uses them knows they didn't "really" unlock the challenge by themselves, like @yfyfyfyfyfy suggested, so the satisfaction for completion is partially lost.
- They provide players with some way to unlock undiscovered game content without try-harding too much, but you can't even choose what to unlock without looking at a wiki or a guide, so the feeling of discovery is partially lost as well.
- Finally, Chao keys were thought to be exceptional unlocking means, but the recent update makes them really trivial to get, and their value as a tool was essentially nullified…
Instead, i'd suggest you force players to choose a challenge to unlock for every Chao key they are awarded, just after they got the key (so after the race that got them that key). Directly integrating the use of Chao keys into the game flow will prevent players from regreting either using or not using them. (EDIT: changed the wording to be less dictatorial or punitive, as it was not my intention!)
This could be a problem for completionists though, that want to unlock everything/most things by themselves. I don't know if such a system is already in place, but being able to differentiate challenges you unlocked through Chao keys and thus that you legitimately beat would be required (a different outer line for example: silver for chao key, golden for beaten challenge).