"The course is set. The horn is loaded. Contestants, to your marks."
A tune-up patch from the floor crew. Nothing new in the arena this week — just a lot of things that were quietly cheating, and are not anymore.
The Course
The floor crew stopped building ramps into each other. Course sections used to be inspected the moment they were bolted down, which meant the first section was judged against a half-empty arena and the last one got to see the finished build. Anything that arrived later simply appeared inside it. The crew now walks the whole course after it is assembled, re-inspects every join, and relocates any section that turns out to be blocked — repeating the sweep until nothing needs moving.
No more ghost ramps. When a section gets torn out, the ramp leading up to it now goes with it, instead of being left standing in mid-air waiting for a contestant who will never arrive.
The Rules
Effort and Timer Cards no longer confiscate prizes. Play an Effort or Timer Card on a rival and the officials were quietly stripping whatever they were carrying — Pugil, Shield, Parachute, the lot. A card played on the whole field cleaned out everyone. Those cards were never meant to touch the prize table. They don't now.
The Horn
The final-round handover no longer gets stomped. A contestant who tumbled into the gunge kept ringing the end-of-turn bell — 180 times over nine seconds, straight through the standings. Every ring restarted the final-round theme and cut the previous one off about fifty milliseconds in, so the horn never got to finish and the standings music was flattened every frame. The bell now rings once, the way a bell should.
The score bows out gracefully. The music leading into the final round used to hard-cut in a fifth of a second. It now fades properly — and the fade is no longer killed mid-breath by the round change that follows it.
The Camera
The auto camera has been re-tuned. New tracking speed and a new angle, so it keeps up with a running contestant without whipping around behind them.