itt: let's whine about chocobo race balance

[MomomiMomi]

-Every item in the game has some kind of counterplay except Briars, which can't be reflected, esuna'd, or avoided except by not letting a player near you have Briars, which is unavoidable on narrow tracks like Sagolii. Briars placed in narrow areas deal more stamina damage than freaking Bacchus Water, which is single-target, reflectable, esuna-able, and has a counter ability. Stacking Stamina doesn't help against them. At -least- make this garbage Choco Reflectable or countered by Tireless, or just reduce the amount of stamina damage done by it. "Don't be near other players" isn't a counterplay option on narrow tracks like Sargolii.

Tireless prevents all forms of stamina reduction, including Briar Caltrops. Sprint also can let you escape it, and I think also prevents stamina loss, but I'm not fully sure on that. I'll need to try it out some more, but I believe I saw someone say it does. Hero Tonic also works.

-Stats seem wildly imbalanced, at least in low-grade tracks. I don't feel any reason to raise my Cunning unless I'm playing at high ping, which basically turns it into a stat tax for slow connections. Stamina and Endurance don't seem to do jack, especially compared to the wildly high amounts of damage Stamina-killer items do.

The only stat that I feel is not balanced very well, as far as I've seen, is max speed. However, it's possible the other stats may become more important in the later races. Rating goes up to 300 most likely, and it already sounds like it gets pretty crazy at R-140. I don't think we've seen everything it has to offer.

-Not balance, but can we please try to prioritize matching players with each other over NPCs? It's annoying to see "Races are currently full!" on high-pop servers despite half my opponents always being NPCs when I actually get in. It's a weird space allocation issue.

It gives you 30 seconds for other people to join your match. If nobody joins, it fills the rest with NPCs. I think it's working fine. An option to queue for a longer waiting period would be a good fix for people who want to race with more players.

-who invented Choco Meteor. Is this avoidable in any way? it's seriously worse than blue shells in mario kart like come on. is there even a pattern to who gets hit by this thing?

Tireless prevents the stamina loss, but not the debuff. Hero Tonic completely negates it. I think it hits everyone in front of the person who uses it, but it might have a range.