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TL;DR at the bottom
I play a lot of Fall Guys. I started playing at the end of Season 1, and have since logged 550+ hours and almost 400 wins. I love this game, but I’ll be honest: the game is currently in its worst state since I’ve started playing. With Season 4 came a lot of changes; some good, some bad. I’ll try to go through everything in this post. The purpose of this is not to complain about maps or game modes that I think are bad or bash the dev team. This is a constructive analysis of the major, glaring issues that currently exist within this game, and what can be done to fix them. I relisted all of my suggestions in the TL;DR at the end.
Map Rates
This was my primary motivator for making this post. I have been tracking my stats since halfway through Season 3. I have 900+ matches tracked from Season 3 and 150 Main Shows tracked so far during Season 4. I understand that the devs increase the probability of playing new maps at the start of the season, which makes sense. But some of the map rates are absolutely egregious right now, and some of the older ones aren’t showing up at all anymore. Here is a screenshot breakdown of all of the maps I’ve played so far this season.
Rates Too Low
You will notice that I’ve not played a single match of Gate Crash, Jinxed, Hoopsie Daisy, Fall Ball, or Egg Scramble in Main Show in 150 games (pretty big sample size). I am convinced at this point that they are not even in the playlist anymore. However, I have played all of those a couple times each in Squads Mode (with the exception of Egg Scramble, but my sample size in Squads is not nearly as big). That is extremely disappointing, as I consider Fall Ball and Hoopsie Daisy to be some of the best team games, where the skill of a single player can actually have a major impact on the result. Fix this!
Beyond that, I’ve only played nearly-unanimous fan-favorite Slime Climb 9 times (6% of games), Big Fans 5 times (3% of games, this one seems to be 2nd round only now), and Snowy Scrap 2 times (1% of games). These are all massively decreased from the previous season. I’ve also only gotten 1 Royal Fumble, but I’m going to discuss why that is in it’s own section, as there are many factors contributing to that. The rest of the rates that seem low can perhaps be attributed to statistical anomaly or not having a large enough sample size.
Rates Too High
The 3 new race maps are appearing at twice the rate of any of the other races. Not a big deal. It makes sense that they gave the new maps higher rates, and I’m sure this will be lowered soon. Why though, have I been subjected to Team Tail Tag 23 times (15% of games) already this season, which is already more times than I played it in 900+ games last season! Most egregious of all are Basketfall and Power Trip, which combined I’ve played a whopping 42 times (nearly 1 in every 3 games!). These rates need to be lowered. While grabbing has certainly worsened this season, which I’ll get into later, my major gripe with these two game modes brings me to my next section:
Team Sizes
There have been a lot of complaints lately about Basketfall and Power Trip. I don’t think that they’re inherently bad game modes. They’re pretty fun as finals in Squads mode (4v4). But the team sizes for these in Main Show are absolutely insane. I've posted my match history for Basketfall and Power Trip below. You can see that 50% of my Basketfall games have had 20+ players, and a whopping 70% of my Power Trip games have had 20+. There is only so much an individual can do to have an effect on the match when there are that many people in it. It sucks the fun out out of the game and rewards luck rather than skill. You can see my qualification rate decreases pretty sharply the more people there are in these team games. The currently broken grabbing mechanics only add to the frustration. These modes both badly need to be capped at 16-18 players. That alone should help decrease the frequency that these modes show up as well, fixing two issues at once.
Physics and Grabbing
The new physics in Season 4 have improved some aspects of the game, but made others much worse. Improvements are most noticeable on Door Dash, Tundra Run, Hex-a-Gone, and Thin Ice which were previously the worst maps for ragdolling. You can also stand on and recover from dives/falls slightly better on steep inclines on maps like See Saw, Roll On, and Roll Out. You also don’t get ragdolled on the conveyor belt on Whirlygig. Obviously though, this “bean stability” has come with trade-offs. You now get hit much harder by other players, and also can’t get past someone as easily who is standing in your way. I think I can live with those trade-offs.
What I can’t live with however, is the worsened grabbing. While you used to be able to grab someone who was within arm’s length of you, you now have to be literally rubbing up against them to grab their tail or whatever they’re carrying. Worse, you also now get grabbed from seemingly twice as far away. Not to mention the completely broken jump-dive-grab for ledges on Wall Guys. I’m at my wits end, but I feel like there could be an easy fix for it. Revert back to the old physics on all maps where grabbing is part of the objective. Those maps are Jinxed, Tail Tag, Team Tail Tag, Royal Fumble, Wall Guys, Penguin Pursuit, Egg Scramble, Egg Siege, Basketfall, and Power Trip. That would go a long way at making those ones bearable again.
Snowball Survival should also be reverted to the old physics, since the snowball is nerfed now and favors running you over instead of knocking you around. Maybe Jump Showdown too, since it is absolutely infuriating to get grabbed from twice as far away on that round.
Near Disappearance of Royal Fumble
I’ve identified several factors contributing to Royal Fumble’s near disappearance from the game this season. Keep in mind that Royal Fumble is capped at 6 players. First, is the increased qualification numbers. I’m sure you noticed the number qualifying from all race modes (and survivals such as Tail Tag, Roll Out, and Jump Club) this season has increased slightly, with 44-45 qualifying from 60-player first-round races (up from 43 previously). On 10 to 11-player races (Fruit Chute, Tip Toe, Wall Guys, Freezy Peak, and Hoopsie Legends) 6 people used to qualify, giving a possibility of getting Royal Fumble. In Season 4, qualification was upped to 7 people, making it impossible to get Royal Fumble immediately after any race round. The qualification number should be lowered back to 6 for 10-11 player races.
Next, survival maps. There are a few survival maps that can end with 6 or less people on them: Snowball Survival, Perfect (Death)Match, Slime Climb, Hoverboard Heroes and 10-11 player Tail Tag. Perfect Deathmatch is incredibly rare, Slime Climb has recently become rare (please fix this I’m begging you), and Snowball Survival has been massively nerfed as a result of the new physics. So, very few opportunities for a Royal Fumble here.
Lastly, team games. The only way to end up with 6 or less people after a team game is from a 2-team game, 12 players or less. That leaves Fall Ball, Basketfall, and Power Trip. I have not played Fall Ball yet a single time this season and I’ve never played a Power Trip with 12 or less people, so that leaves Basketfall. I’ve played 3 of those with 12 or less. This seems to be the best bet right now for playing Royal Fumble.
I have played 4 finals with 6 or less people out of 91 total finals this season, and only 1 was a Royal Fumble. These 4 immediately followed Hoverboard Heroes, Tail Tag, and Basketfall (twice).
Final Rounds in General
The vast majority of finals that I’ve played this season (80%) have been either Hex-a-Gone, Thin Ice, or Jump Showdown. The game, for whatever reason, seems to be favoring finals with a higher number of players this season. This leads to very few games of Fall Mountain (capped at 9 players) and Roll Off (capped at 10). This is partially due to a higher number of people qualifying from rounds. I think the number of people qualifying from each round should return to what it was the previous season, for a higher likelihood of having 10 or less left in the final.
TL;DR:
-Maps that don’t appear at all in Main Show: Gate Crash, Jinxed, Hoopsie Daisy, Fall Ball, and Egg Scramble.
-Map rates too low: Slime Climb, Big Fans, and Snowy Scrap.
-Map rates too high: Team Tail Tag, Basketfall, and Power Trip.
-Team sizes too large: Basketfall and Power Trip.
-New physics on some maps good.
-New physics bad on all grabbing objective maps, plus Snowball Survival and Jump Showdown.
-Too many people qualifying from each round, leading to finals with too many people and not enough games of Fall Mountain, Roll Off. Royal Fumble is more rare than ever.
Suggestions:
-Fix the rate that each map is showing up.
-Cap the team sizes for Basketfall and Power Trip to 16-18 players.
-Revert to old physics on maps with grabbing objectives: Jinxed, Tail Tag, Team Tail Tag, Royal Fumble, Wall Guys, Penguin Pursuit, Egg Scramble, Egg Siege, Basketfall, and Power Trip. Also Snowball Survival and Jump Showdown
-Revert the number of people qualifying from race and survival rounds to the same as previous season to increase probability of finals with less players.
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