Regarding pickup get chances, only star was changed because people in 16 car races managed to get it too often and instead devs increased chance for turbo (so percentage could retain at 100%).These changes only applies to racers at bottom positions. Rest of weapon values are the same since 1999.
People being at 1st place and getting zap rather frequently is nothing unusual, I haven't seen it changed in RVGL. Perhaps since 1.2, but the source code says otherwise.
Weapon get chances might
feel different if you're playing in 16 car races, I don't particularly like online pickup races with so many cars either, there's too much going on.
Also, weapon get choices were never equal. You can't make pickup races fair lol, it's luck. As said, weapon get percentages are the same, except for stars and battery, because people requested to tone it down after the car limit was increased.
If you don't like playing with 16 cars, play with 12 or less, it's not devs problem.
Current values in RVGL (for last places, star was set down to 1 (from 5) and turbo increased to 17 (from 13)). That's all.
// Pickup weighting tables
// #NOTE: Reduced the star pickup weight (5) and adjusted turbo (13).
short pickup_weights[][PICKUP_NTYPES] = {
{ 5, 18, 5, 10, 5, 18, 18, 4, 8, 9, 0}, // 1st
{ 10, 10, 10, 10, 10, 10, 10, 10, 10, 10, 0}, // mid
{ 20, 3, 15, 2, 15, 2, 2, 21, 17, 2, 1}, // last
{ 10, 10, 5, 10, 10, 5, 15, 15, 10, 10, 0}, // CPU cars
};
I don't understand what you're trying to say with the wall-banging, is this v1.2 alpha collision complain thing again?