Sonic Forces | PS4, Xbox One, Switch, PC "The Next Generations"

[Blacklightning]

4 minutes ago, StaticMania said:

Has there even been a custom character creator in a platformer before? It can go with just about anything, but it doesn't sound like something that's already been a thing.

I dunno, Drawn to Life? That's the first example I can think of off the top of my head.

Most games beyond that tend to stretch the definition of a platformer. Games like Terraria and Starbound have equipment that works hand and hand with platforming, like double jumps, wall jumps, grappling hooks and all out flight, but it's procedurally generated so most terrain won't be built in mind for the player's convenience so much as aesthetic sense. Generally speaking you're better off just making multiple playable characters instead - ideally a custom character would just be that by any other name anyway.

[StaticMania]

4 minutes ago, Chris Knopps said:

...We didn't get DLC for Generations.

You really think we're getting DLC for Forces if they couldn't be arsed to fill in the void that was their anniversary title...?

There's just as much a possibility of it happening as there is for it not happening. Even Lost World got DLC...for some reason. 

[Kintor]

40 minutes ago, Sonictrainer said:

Would you yourself buy DLC accessories for the Custom Hero?

Absolutely, I'd buy some cosmetic DLC for Sonic Forces. This idea how as greatly potential to expand the appeal of Sonic Forces endlessly beyond launch.

37 minutes ago, Blacklightning said:

How many of these things can be said of Forces? Zero. It's a AAA game, so it'll have a pricetag as such. There's no multiplayer functionality, otherwise they would've announced it by now, so a freemium economy holds no benefit to the player. And while they'll probably patch it post release, and may yet add DLC of some kind, once Sega turns a profit on the base game they ultimately have no need to keep nickel and diming players for aesthetic junk. So yeah, it would be a scummy move, and to be perfectly frank it's really sad to see somebody trying to spin it otherwise.

Times have changed, gamers are now willing to pay more beyond the retail game for extra content, even if that content is purely cosmetic. Most obviously you see this season passes, a trend single player games have readily adopted.  Morever, even games without season passes are still embracing cosmetic DLC; like how Persona 5 lets players buy themed costumed based on past Persona cast members thst actually has no inpact on the gameplay. As such, Sonic Forces won't get any flack over cosmetic DLC. If anything  Sega will be praised for continuing to support the popular character creator pist laubch with more cosmetic features.

[Blacklightning]

Just now, Kintor said:

Times have changed, gamers are now willing to pay  more beyond the retail game for extra content, even if tgat content is purely cosmetic.

...so? That doesn't mean it isn't a scummy thing to do. If anything that just makes it even more exploitative because you're knowingly preying on people that don't know any better. Why the hell are you even advocating this? The money that Sega makes is none of your goddamned business as long as it's enough to keep making games, and freemium economies in paid games is already kind of excessive. They're also very bad at it if Runners is any indication.

Not to mention a company's ability to get away with this shit in the first place is largely based on goodwill, and uh... I don't think you need me to remind you where Sonic stands on that scale.

9 minutes ago, Kintor said:

If anything  Sega will be praised for continuing to support the popular character creator pist laubch with more cosmetic features.

I can't think of a single game in any genre where this has ever proved true, let alone a platforming game. Certainly never when it's been purely cosmetic features - even TF2 still packed in balance patches and gameplay-affecting gear on top of all the silly hats.

[Kintor]

54 minutes ago, Blacklightning said:

...so? That doesn't mean it isn't a scummy thing to do. If anything that just makes it even more exploitative because you're knowingly preying on people that don't know any better. Why the hell are you even advocating this? The money that Sega makes is none of your goddamned business as long as it's enough to keep making games, and freemium economies in paid games is already kind of excessive. They're also very bad at it if Runners is any indication.

Gamers are free to make mature decisions with how they spend their money; nobody is being exploited when they purchase something via a micro-transaction because they fully understand the consequences of that financial exchang. Instead what you're looking at is a shift in consumer behaviour, when gamers are willing to buy post-launch DLC to supplement a game they have already purchased at retail.

To that end, Sega has actually done quite well in this new environment. In particular, Phantasy Star Online 2 stands out as an exemplary game that finances itself largely through cosmetic micro-transactions. Not to mention the more recent example of Persona 5 (Sega owns Atlus) that is selling cosmetic character costumes that don't impact the gameplay. Just to mention a couple of ways that Sega already understands how this business model works. So there's really nothing strange about the character creator in Sonic Forces being focused around purely cosmetic considerations.

[Blacklightning]

2 minutes ago, Kintor said:

Phantasy Star Online 2

Free to play. Forces isn't. We've been over this.

3 minutes ago, Kintor said:

Persona 5

If you've got a source as to how well the costumes in this actually did I'd like to hear it.

[Kintor]

29 minutes ago, Blacklightning said:

Free to play. Forces isn't. We've been over this.

If you've got a source as to how well the costumes in this actually did I'd like to hear it.

There's not much point in you trying to draw a distinction between free to play games and retail games anymore when it comes to DLC. As I've as already said, gamers have widely embraced micro-transactions even when they have already paid full-price for the base retail game. This how Persona 5 is able to sell cosmetic DLC in a retail single player game, it's something fun for old school Persona fans who don't mind paying extra for the optional costumes. The same will be true of Sonic Forces as well, the character creator is focused on cosmetic festures as its primary selling point.

[JezMM]

2 hours ago, Chris Knopps said:

...We didn't get DLC for Generations.

You really think we're getting DLC for Forces if they couldn't be arsed to fill in the void that was their anniversary title...?

They probably wanted to just move on.  Generations was the anniversary thing and if they were supporting it with major content for like a year that's less time to spend on the next PROPER Sonic game.

2 hours ago, Kintor said:

Absolutely, I'd buy some cosmetic DLC for Sonic Forces. This idea how as greatly potential to expand the appeal of Sonic Forces endlessly beyond launch.

Times have changed, gamers are now willing to pay more beyond the retail game for extra content, even if that content is purely cosmetic. Most obviously you see this season passes, a trend single player games have readily adopted.  Morever, even games without season passes are still embracing cosmetic DLC; like how Persona 5 lets players buy themed costumed based on past Persona cast members thst actually has no inpact on the gameplay. As such, Sonic Forces won't get any flack over cosmetic DLC. If anything  Sega will be praised for continuing to support the popular character creator pist laubch with more cosmetic features.

Considering Sonic Lost World gave us free level content post-launch, charging for character clothes seems a bit shitty step backwards to me... Likely the only way I'll be buying them is if they come with stage DLC, or they offer DLC bundles where the cosmetic stuff is practically free compared to standalone price (like, level pack = £8, cosmetics = £3, but you can buy them together for £9).

(Granted I concede though that Lost World's DLC was most likely partially funded by Nintendo so I hold no ill will about DLC more comparable to how Unleashed handled it).

45 minutes ago, Kintor said:

To that end, Sega has actually done quite well in this new environment. In particular, Phantasy Star Online 2 stands out as an exemplary game that finances itself largely through cosmetic micro-transactions.

You skipped the part where PSO2 is an online game where:

1. Your character represents yourself in a virtual space and thus cosmetics matter to not just you, but other players too, and there is a whole social aspect of gameplay to having your character interact with other peoples.

2. Unwanted cosmetic items can be sold to other players for in-game currency, directly giving a resource related to non-cosmetic gameplay elements if you so wish.

3. Sonic Forces is an all-ages game, and the main appeal of the character creator as we know it so far is going to be for kids.  That makes any DLC practice extra scummy if you ask me.  I feel it would be much more appropriate to give new costumes in free updates or bundled with more substantial content that an adult paying for the extra content will be more likely to be okay with for their kid.

Granted Club Penguin is a thing so I guess "it's for kids" doesn't mean much when it comes to micro-transaction ethics these days.

[Blacklightning]

Just now, Kintor said:

There's not much point in you trying to draw a distinction between free to play games and retail games anymore when it comes to DLC.

A free to play game needs microtransactions in order to make money. Retail games don't. That's the distinction. This isn't rocket science.

1 minute ago, Kintor said:

This how Persona 5 is able to sell cosmetic DLC in a retail single player game

Okay, but how well did the DLC do?

This whole time you've been banking on a bunch of skins being the singular thing Forces needs to break bank, so if you're going to offhandedly mention random games for some loose sense of correlation you'd better damn well have some numbers to back that up. And before you do it again, no, just repeating yourself and dodging the question again doesn't actually answer anything.

[Soniman]

9 hours ago, Scar said:

 Instead of Sonic and Friends in multiple shitty gameplay modes, Sonic, Sonic and Original the Character in multiple shitty gameplay modes. 

Modern gameply, Modern gameplay again with customizable abilities and Classic gameply.

Yeah uh.....its exactly like the old days, the sheer amount of unrelated gameplay styles is truly overwhelming

[Kintor]

2 hours ago, Blacklightning said:

A free to play game needs microtransactions in order to make money. Retail games don't. That's the distinction. This isn't rocket science.

It's not a question of need, it's a question of want. Which is to say, what gamers want to buy in addition to the game itself and willing to pay for in the form of micro-transactions. You can harp all you want about supposedly unethical business practises and the deteriorating value of content in new games today but that doesn't matter at all when gamers are already accepting of this behaviour from companies. This really is thanks to increasing internet speeds and the ready accessibility of digital content today.

Instead of buying expansion sets (which was mostly a PC thing anyway) for a large chunk of money gamers are much more willing to spend fractions of a dollar on lots of little bits of content they want to add to their games. Heck, it doesn't even have to be the guarantee of new content but merely the chance of new content, like random item boxes in both mobile games and FPS games. So if Sega decides to charge money for new cosmetic details in Sonic Forces character creator, via micro-transactions, nobody is going to even bat an eyelid.

[PerfectChaos]

2 hours ago, Kintor said:

It's not a question of need, it's a question of want. Which is to say, what gamers want to buy in addition to the game itself and willing to pay for in the form of micro-transactions. You can harp all you want about supposedly unethical business practises and the deteriorating value of content in new games today but that doesn't matter at all when gamers are already accepting of this behaviour from companies. This really is thanks to increasing internet speeds and the ready accessibility of digital content today.

But as has been stated many times, the other examples of this tend to be in games that are free to play and/or online-focused. Gamers are probably not going to be so "willing" to pay for this in a game like Forces.

 

2 hours ago, Kintor said:

Instead of buying expansion sets (which was mostly a PC thing anyway) for a large chunk of money gamers are much more willing to spend fractions of a dollar on lots of little bits of content they want to add to their games. Heck, it doesn't even have to be the guarantee of new content but merely the chance of new content, like random item boxes in both mobile games and FPS games. So if Sega decides to charge money for new cosmetic details in Sonic Forces character creator, via micro-transactions, nobody is going to even bat an eyelid.

Are you kidding? People already do get irritated at microtransactions, it happens all the time, mainly where full-priced games are concerned. It is absolutely quite controversial even today.

[Shadowlax]

14 minutes ago, PerfectChaos said:

 

Are you kidding? People already do get irritated at microtransactions, it happens all the time, mainly where full-priced games are concerned. It is absolutely quite controversial even today.

Irradiated sure, outraged to the point of game failure, that's rare.Its something else like pre orders , jim sterling talks about these things and gets up set and maybe some of his audience does, but it still goes on because general audiences don't care. Hell the most popular FPS in the world right now, which is a game you have to pay for . OVERWATCH, has microtransactions you can't track, its randomized, and blizzard is making insane amounts of money on this thing. 

Every now and again people get particularly upset about some particularly bad form of microtransaction fuckery, but people are so used to the concept now that most people kind of don't care. 

Might I repeat that one of the most popular pay to play games in the ENTIRE WORLD has misconstructions based around loot and is actually just gambling, and its not the only one to have it and people just accept it. And then make videos about it, literally just gambling on stream or on youtube. 

[JezMM]

3 hours ago, Kintor said:

It's not a question of need, it's a question of want. Which is to say, what gamers want to buy in addition to the game itself and willing to pay for in the form of micro-transactions. You can harp all you want about supposedly unethical business practises and the deteriorating value of content in new games today but that doesn't matter at all when gamers are already accepting of this behaviour from companies. This really is thanks to increasing internet speeds and the ready accessibility of digital content today.

 

Instead of buying expansion sets (which was mostly a PC thing anyway) for a large chunk of money gamers are much more willing to spend fractions of a dollar on lots of little bits of content they want to add to their games. Heck, it doesn't even have to be the guarantee of new content but merely the chance of new content, like random item boxes in both mobile games and FPS games. So if Sega decides to charge money for new cosmetic details in Sonic Forces character creator, via micro-transactions, nobody is going to even bat an eyelid.

Willingness/acceptance =/= enjoyment.  No-one enjoys spending money on content that they don't feel is worth the price, but they still want the content badly enough that they'll begrudgingly cough up for it.  You're suggesting any business practice is fine until it reaches the point where all customers literally refuse to adhere to it.  Just coz SEGA COULD do something here it doesn't mean they aren't being shitty for doing it.  You know what gets me to cough up money?  A company who cares about making good, fun content for me to enjoy and prioritises my enjoyment as the key factor when creating a product designed for entertainment.

The only people who would ever "enjoy" paying for Overwatch loot boxes etc are rich fucks with more money than sense.  I personally refuse to and it pisses me off that people willing to do so will stage it as if Blizzard are doing a nice thing by giving you an alternative way to acquire items if you don't get what you want through hours and hours of playing.

If extra cosmetics in Forces were paid for AND randomised then I would lose a shit ton of respect for SEGA and it would sour my overall experience with the game.  Granted I think that's incredibly unlikely to happen.

 

As said though, if there are options where you can get cosmetics as a bundle with actual tangible content like DLC stages, I'll find it a lot easier to swallow.

[Salamander]

10 hours ago, Kintor said:

Sonic Forces doesn't have that luxury because the gameplay on screen isn't an illusion, certainly not in the sterile Dungeons & Dragons sense.

Leaving aside for a minute the sociopathic viewpoint that anything goes so long as Sega makes a profit - as if what we should desire as fans is for Sega to make money rather than for them to make good games - I would suggest that a great deal of Modern Sonic gameplay and a certain amount of Generations-style Classic gameplay is an illusion.  Speed boosters, scripted ramps, rail-grinding, various other automated set-pieces - there's an awful lot of a modern Sonic game in which the player has absolutely no input at all, and the game simply does it for them.  I would even argue that certain times when the player has to press a button may constitute illusory gameplay; if all you have to do is hold right, or Boost, for long stretches of time without having to change or react to anything, you're not really playing a game at all; there's no meaningful difference between holding down one button for an extended period of time and holding down no buttons at all.

Sonic is moving to a stage where it is no longer a game; it's just a movie which occasionally asks you to repress play, and pauses or rewinds if you don't.

[Blacklightning]

3 hours ago, Kintor said:

It's not a question of need, it's a question of want. Which is to say, what gamers want to buy in addition to the game itself and willing to pay for in the form of micro-transactions. You can harp all you want about supposedly unethical business practises and the deteriorating value of content in new games today but that doesn't matter at all when gamers are already accepting of this behaviour from companies. This really is thanks to increasing internet speeds and the ready accessibility of digital content today.

You've yet to actually provide a gauge for how effective microtransactions and cosmetic DLC are in a paid AAA product, which is funny because this is exactly what I said you would do:

5 hours ago, Blacklightning said:

Okay, but how well did the DLC do?

This whole time you've been banking on a bunch of skins being the singular thing Forces needs to break bank, so if you're going to offhandedly mention random games for some loose sense of correlation you'd better damn well have some numbers to back that up. And before you do it again, no, just repeating yourself and dodging the question again doesn't actually answer anything.

If you're going to continue to state stuff like this as though it's actual fact, then surely it's not asking a whole lot to present some actual facts.

Also, internet speeds have practically nothing to do with the rise of microtransactions and cosmetics in the first place, especially when most of it is either already on the disc or constitutes like 20 megabytes anyway. I'm honestly not sure how you decided these things are even tangentally related.

44 minutes ago, Shadowlax said:

Irradiated sure, outraged to the point of game failure, that's rare.Its something else like pre orders , jim sterling talks about these things and gets up set and maybe some of his audience does, but it still goes on because general audiences don't care. Hell the most popular FPS in the world right now, which is a game you have to pay for . OVERWATCH, has microtransactions you can't track, its randomized, and blizzard is making insane amounts of money on this thing. 

Every now and again people get particularly upset about some particularly bad form of microtransaction fuckery, but people are so used to the concept now that most people kind of don't care. 

Might I repeat that one of the most popular pay to play games in the ENTIRE WORLD has misconstructions based around loot and is actually just gambling, and its not the only one to have it and people just accept it. And then make videos about it, literally just gambling on stream or on youtube. 

If Sega had the same clout as Blizzard or Valve (I'm assuming you mean CSGO here), maybe this would have been a valid point? But Blizzard is backed by one of the biggest publishers out there and Valve runs the single most popular digital distribution service in the world, and I'm honestly struggling to see how Sega is supposed to compare with that when it comes to brute-forcing bullshit. If they tried the same shit either of them pulled, they would get eaten alive.

[Kintor]

1 hour ago, Shadowlax said:

Irradiated sure, outraged to the point of game failure, that's rare.Its something else like pre orders , jim sterling talks about these things and gets up set and maybe some of his audience does, but it still goes on because general audiences don't care. Hell the most popular FPS in the world right now, which is a game you have to pay for . OVERWATCH, has microtransactions you can't track, its randomized, and blizzard is making insane amounts of money on this thing. 

Every now and again people get particularly upset about some particularly bad form of microtransaction fuckery, but people are so used to the concept now that most people kind of don't care. 

Might I repeat that one of the most popular pay to play games in the ENTIRE WORLD has misconstructions based around loot and is actually just gambling, and its not the only one to have it and people just accept it. And then make videos about it, literally just gambling on stream or on youtube. 

You make a good point about just how far gamers today are willing tolerate the presence of micro-transactions in a retail game. In many ways it is like gambling, with no guarantee that the player will ever receive anything new let alone of value as a result of their micro-transaction purchase.

Personally, I like to think of these situation as being similar to trading card games like Yu-Gi-Oh!, you buy a boost pack of cards to expand your collection and improve your deck but you have no control over what cards are inside that pack besides the assure that one card will be a rare one.

Incidentally enough, besides Overwatch, Blizzard is making a crazy amount of money with Hearthstone by replicating this same boost-pack business model in the form of digital cards that people buy with micro-transactions. The days of one-off game purchases are really gone for good.

Edit:

6 minutes ago, Blacklightning said:

If Sega had the same clout as Blizzard or Valve (I'm assuming you mean CSGO here), maybe this would have been a valid point? But Blizzard is backed by one of the biggest publishers out there and Valve runs the single most popular digital distribution service in the world, and I'm honestly struggling to see how Sega is supposed to compare with that when it comes to brute-forcing bullshit. If they tried the same shit either of them pulled, they would get eaten alive.

As I've already pointed out, Sega does this sort of micro-transactions with plenty of their games, from Phantasy Star Online 2 to Persona 5. It's standard industry practise by now, gamers are willing to pay small amounts of money for small amounts of optional content, even when there is no garuntee of getting the specific peice of content they desire. This happens all across the industry, not just Sega and certainly nost just Blizzard or Valve either. Yet nobody is raising a stink about it, certainly not anymore. We've come a long way from the days of 'horse armour'.

 

[Shadowlax]

2 minutes ago, Blacklightning said:

 

If Sega had the same clout as Blizzard or Valve (I'm assuming you mean CSGO here), maybe this would have been a valid point? But Blizzard is backed by one of the biggest publishers out there and Valve runs the single most popular digital distribution service in the world, and I'm honestly struggling to see how Sega is supposed to compare with that when it comes to brute-forcing bullshit. If they tried the same shit either of them pulled, they would get eaten alive.

Or no one cares. Because large sections of the video game audience , particularly younger ones are already inundated to this shit. And some people raise some fuss and most people don't care. I don't like it, there a lot of non consumer friendly shit sega does that I don't like, remember the shining force thing they did on youtube, but that doesn't mean enough people will care.

Clout doesn't really mean much, kids will want the costume for their character. And get their parents to use their credit care to buy that like with mobile games, like with many games today. 

I don't like it, i'm not going to pretend me not liking it in this situation is going to be more than that

[Jovahexeon Jax Joranvexeon]

I'm sorry but how did talking about Sonic Forces lead to discussion about gambling, micro transactions and whatnot?

[Badnik Mechanic]

55 minutes ago, Kintor said:

Yet nobody is raising a stink about it, certainly not anymore. We've come a long way from the days of 'horse armour'.

 

You are joking right?

For Honor recently change their entire drop/micro transaction system because players worked out how bad it was and started to leave the game in droves.

Do I need to bring up the Payday 2 fiasco?

Or Sonic Runners for that matter?

 

 

[Blacklightning]

3 minutes ago, Kintor said:

As I've already pointed out, Sega does this sort of micro-transactions with plenty of their games, from Phantasy Star Online 2 to Persona 5. It's standard industry practise by now, gamers are willing to pay small amounts of money for small amounts of optional content, even when there is no garuntee of getting the specific peice of content they desire. This happens all across the industry, not just Sega and certainly nost just Blizzard or Valve either. Yet nobody is raising a stink about it, certainly not anymore. We've come a long way from the days of 'horse armour'.

6 hours ago, Blacklightning said:

Okay, but how well did the DLC do?

Still waiting on an answer to this.

I considered adding more, but the fact that both of you are actually, honest-to-god advocating exploitation akin to gambling in a game that children play frankly speaks for itself. I'm done.

[Kintor]

34 minutes ago, Blacklightning said:

I considered adding more, but the fact that both of you are actually, honest-to-god advocating exploitation akin to gambling in a game that children play frankly speaks for itself. I'm done.

Eh, this kind of 'gambling' has been going on for a lot longer than you think. Arguably this kind of 'micro-transaction' can be traced back to 1948 with the creation of the modern baseball card pack. I know that as child buying random boost packs of card games like Yu-Gi-Oh! never bothered me. That's probably why this micro-transaction approach to DLC doesn't bother me either, the internet has just expanded upon a physical business model that was already acceptable to both children and adults.

[JezMM]

I really feel this line of conversation is becoming less and less relevant to Forces, a single player game.  All the examples given, be it real life baseball cards or PSO2 clothing, are cases where the random purchases have worth to doubles, in which you can trade unwanted items with other players for other items or currency.

I sincerely doubt if Forces has cosmetic DLC it will be randomised (and as said I don't care how accepted it is, I would look down on both SEGA and the people who advocate it if they engaged in such a model for a Single Player offline game primarily aimed at KIDS) and if it did I can't imagine any kind of compensation that would be satisfactory.  I know the pitiful amount of in-game currency Overwatch gives you for doubles doesn't at all feel like compensation to me, and I only deal with boxes I've actually earned through gameplay let alone actual real life money.

[Meta77]

Yea did someone ask about how pso2s micros do? Very well actually. I get slapped by impulse when I see some cure outfit for my ladies

[Detective Kaito]

I wonder if OCs could equip a mask of Knuckles or Tails like you can do with your character in PSO2. I personally have a PSO2 character with a Knuckles mask and I refuse to take it off. lol