where will sonic team go from here

[BlueFlare]

On 11/7/2017 at 12:22 PM, A sonic fan said:

so after sonic forces's mediocre reception what do you think sonic team will do next.

 

One more last fist bump and take a vacation.

[A sonic fan]

i hope sega find people who get 3d sonic the way whitehead gets 2d sonic.

[Framerate]

Hire sonic utopia creator

[speedfreak]

Probably on to make another mediocre Sonic game. 

[Diogenes]

I really hope they sit down, take a long hard look at the series, figure out what worked and what people liked, and what didn't work and what drove people away, and try to make something new and fresh and good that actually feels like Sonic.

I don't expect they will, though.

[Tarnish]

6 minutes ago, Diogenes said:

I really hope they sit down, take a long hard look at the series, figure out what worked and what people liked, and what didn't work and what drove people away, and try to make something new and fresh and good that actually feels like Sonic.

I don't expect they will, though.

I think even if they did that, all they would see is most people still cheering the boost formula, which IMO is one of the core reasons they can't advance the franchise.

[UpCDownCLeftCRightC]

41 minutes ago, speedfreak said:

Probably on to make another mediocre Sonic game. 

If Forces end up selling decently, this ^^^  is the most likely scenario.

If Forces sells below par, then a hiatus for 3D becomes highly probable.

.....I've never been so conflicted with this franchise in my life. 

 

If SEGA decides not to change their current direction, what would make me instantly feel better, is this: License out the series to indie devs. The products would still need to get approval from SEGA, of course, but I'm convinced that the gateway to a----finally----excellent 3D Sonic title lies outside of Sonic Team proper. And before you say "BOOM!", just note that the point of SEGA approval would be to have something that is truly "Sonic" at its core, not a spin-off idea unless they requested it specifically.

I'm so ready for that. In between my job/career, I and a friend of mine have been mulling over an idea for a truly kick ass 3D Sonic game concept. I don't have the programming skills (mine are extremely basic and science-related) or time to do it myself but I do have most of the concept and I'd love to see a prototype. Don't care a lick about profit or credit being in my name whatsoever. Have zero ambition to be a game designer; I enjoy far more being a fan and anticipating great Sonic games. But I have thought about this for a very long time and would happily put my feet in the fire for this.

[The Man On The Inside]

What they probably will do, is look at review scores, sales etc., take some but not all of it into consideration, think of an idea that they want to try out, shoehorn it into the next game, receive a 68 on Metacritic, rinse and repeat.

What they need to do however is go back to the drawing board and make Sonic work in 3D. Successfully translating what makes something like Sonic Mania good into 3D is, perhaps unfortunately, what it would take for this series to shine again.

And yes, getting another group of developers to create a Sonic Adventure-esque game in the same way that PagodaWhiteHeadCannon made Sonic Mania is an interesting idea.

[UpCDownCLeftCRightC]

27 minutes ago, The Man On The Inside said:

What they probably will do, is look at review scores, sales etc., take some but not all of it into consideration, think of an idea that they want to try out, shoehorn it into the next game, receive a 68 on Metacritic, rinse and repeat.

If sales for this game met previous averages I would agree with you. But the early returns we've seen so far for Forces have not been good. The holiday season will be important for the future of 3D Sonic titles.

[LBomb]

On 11/9/2017 at 12:00 PM, UpCDownCLeftCRightC said:

If Forces end up selling decently, this ^^^  is the most likely scenario.

If Forces sells below par, then a hiatus for 3D becomes highly probable.

.....I've never been so conflicted with this franchise in my life. 

 

If SEGA decides not to change their current direction, what would make me instantly feel better, is this: License out the series to indie devs. The products would still need to get approval from SEGA, of course, but I'm convinced that the gateway to a----finally----excellent 3D Sonic title lies outside of Sonic Team proper. And before you say "BOOM!", just note that the point of SEGA approval would be to have something that is truly "Sonic" at its core, not a spin-off idea unless they requested it specifically.

I'm so ready for that. In between my job/career, I and a friend of mine have been mulling over an idea for a truly kick ass 3D Sonic game concept. I don't have the programming skills (mine are extremely basic and science-related) or time to do it myself but I do have most of the concept and I'd love to see a prototype. Don't care a lick about profit or credit being in my name whatsoever. Have zero ambition to be a game designer; I enjoy far more being a fan and anticipating great Sonic games. But I have thought about this for a very long time and would happily put my feet in the fire for this.

Licensing out to indie devs would depend on the size of the dev team. If it's something like Playtonic then that's fine but a smaller team wouldn't be ideal when developing the next Sonic game. What would be ideal for me is for SOA/SOE to establish an in-house studio to create future Sonic and SEGA titles. They could keep the Mania team while also bringing in other indie devs and experienced professionals. It feels like Sonic Team is just making Sonic games to pay the bills so having them take a break from the franchise would be good for them too.

[Milo]

What I expect them to do: Continue their approach of designing Sonic games through shallow ideas, incoherent focus, hamfisted consumer feedback, lazy design crutches, and inept execution; churn out another mediocre Sonic game that gets polarizing/lukewarm reactions and lower sales than the last title, and then rinse and repeat for the next game. In other words, continue operating exactly as they have done over the past two decades and then some; with no meaningful, positive changes or lessons learned.

What I want them to do: Give up the Sonic IP and go work on almost anything else. They've been at the above shtick for so long though, that I only expect the outcome of Sonic being given to someone else happening only through divine intervention on Sega's part.

[Scar]

They should go on a hiatus and back to the drawing board.

[Osmium]

The coolest thing they could do is formally take a hiatus from working Sonic and get the Sonic Utopia people (Mr. Lange etc.) and the Sonic Islands people and ShayMay because why the hell not and throw @Diogenes in there to make the 3D game we've been waiting ~23 years for. Hopefully that wouldn't cause a "too many cooks" situation though. I can dream, lel. 

[TailsTellsTales]

What I want them to do: Make a 3D game with playable characters, and no 2 Sonic's.

What I think they will do: They will take full control over Sonic Mania team and make Sonic Mania 2 with Sonic as the only playable classic character and they will add Modern Sonic as a playable character. They will make Classic Tails start crying when he sees a badnik and Classic Knuckles will be trying to protect Classic Tails from the mean wittle badniks in the cutscenes while helping the Sonic's out. The game will effectively kill Sonic series altogether. My other thought is that they will not touch Mania 2 and carry on making another 3D game with 2 playable Sonic's.

[molul]

I think Sonic Team will keep doing the same: making average Sonic games and wait for the whole world to see their games brilliant.

[Stardust]

They could pull a Shadow the Hedgehog on Infinite and tell the story of what happened to him after the events of Forces.

After all, he survived his fight with Sonic. Now that the Phantom Ruby is no longer in his power, will he go back to being a mercenary or will he try and take on another identity for himself and try to get his revenge on Sonic and the Resistance somehow?

 

ST could even futher develop the plot and increase the threat against Sonic &Co. Infinite could ally himself with (a) new villain(s) and form a group, a sort of Anti-Resistance League. There could be a fight for territories, resources, lots of espionage and backstabbing going on from both sides and, of course, cleverly devised plots to weaken the Resistance and hinder the heroes' attempt to take them down. 

 

It would be nice to fight different enemies instead of plain old Eggman for a change. Or old bosses like Metal Sonic, Chaos and even Shadow. But this new group should preferrably be nothing like the Deadly Six. No cartoony villains with comical appearances and six-year old jokes. Hopefully the new group of villains would constitute an actual threat and look like one. All they have to do is make them as intimidating as Infinite was in Forces' cutscenes, before we learned of his origin in Episode Shadow.

[Dr. Detective]

The typical knee-jerk reaction would be to throw the baby out with the bathwater once again. If it's not immediately loved than they're gonna switch to something else again regardless of whatever nonsense came out of Iizuka's mouth about them having a specific "vision" and "direction" they want to take the series in. 

Oh and talk of the passion they have. The totally real passion they have. All the fucking passion.

It'll either be that or they'll rest on their laurels even harder by doubling down on the simplicity of their boost mechanic and the forced 2D sections. It won't be like Unleashed or Generations again. If they do come up with something new it won't be given time to be developed so that it can work towards being worthwhile later, proving that whatever new Legacy Sonic they had in mind was only really meant to stick around for one game before everyone told them it sucked.

Story won't be anything to anticipate or care about. Tails will either be an asshole or a wuss. Can't have him be like he is in the Boom Cartoon or the comics because that would be an even distribution of his strengths and flaws. No, he's gotta be one extreme or the other. That's how it works.

If they introduce a new villain or set of villains they'll disappear with no fanfare and Eggman will be the final boss regardless.

Wisps. More Wisps because everyone loves the fucking wisps right? Of course you do.

More of the Twitter acting like nothing's wrong because that's what you've gotta do.

I wish I could be content with saying "At least it ain't Megaman's situation" but nope. Can't do that.

 

[Harkofthewaa]

Honestly, what I think they should do is go back to the 3D game that worked: Sonic Adventure. Yes, it has aged horribly, but that can be fixed with a remake. Not a remaster, but a full blown remake; think Crash NSane, but with refined controls, the new voices/revised script, graphics on par with Forces or better, and a host of bugfixes and new/expanded levels. They could even use this whole dimension thing to justify it canonically, like have the Phantom Ruby go to that time and space after the events of Forces and be the excuse for any and all changes, both storywise and gameplay.

[Multikaris]

1 hour ago, Dr. Detective Mike said:

The typical knee-jerk reaction would be to throw the baby out with the bathwater once again. If it's not immediately loved than they're gonna switch to something else again regardless of whatever nonsense came out of Iizuka's mouth about them having a specific "vision" and "direction" they want to take the series in. 

Oh and talk of the passion they have. The totally real passion they have. All the fucking passion.

It'll either be that or they'll rest on their laurels even harder by doubling down on the simplicity of their boost mechanic and the forced 2D sections. It won't be like Unleashed or Generations again. If they do come up with something new it won't be given time to be developed so that it can work towards being worthwhile later, proving that whatever new Legacy Sonic they had in mind was only really meant to stick around for one game before everyone told them it sucked.

Story won't be anything to anticipate or care about. Tails will either be an asshole or a wuss. Can't have him be like he is in the Boom Cartoon or the comics because that would be an even distribution of his strengths and flaws. No, he's gotta be one extreme or the other. That's how it works.

If they introduce a new villain or set of villains they'll disappear with no fanfare and Eggman will be the final boss regardless.

Wisps. More Wisps because everyone loves the fucking wisps right? Of course you do.

More of the Twitter acting like nothing's wrong because that's what you've gotta do.

I wish I could be content with saying "At least it ain't Megaman's situation" but nope. Can't do that.

 

Let alone Crash Bandicoot or Bomberman.

And given that SLW was still badly received despite the nostalgia pandering and generic mario content, maybe they’ll take the hint and... over-correct themselves? 

[Baconjack]

To be honest, I believe that Sonic Team should simply just reposition itself as a game designer, not a game developer. Give the bone of 3D sonic to the fans like what they did with mania, and let them develop the gameplay and level design, even hire them onto ST. Then give it to the existing ST to develop the visuals, storytelling and audio. They are already good at visuals and that can be seen with every modern Sonic game dating back to Adventure 1. Forces IMO was a well presented game, despite the weak gameplay. 

[Whatever the WhoCares]

Ideally? Release whatever game they've actually been working on all this time, and then focus on grand titles that involve the entire team- not split into groups like we've seen since 2009. 

[Mad Convoy]

On 11/16/2017 at 12:51 AM, Dr. Detective Mike said:

The typical knee-jerk reaction would be to throw the baby out with the bathwater once again. If it's not immediately loved than they're gonna switch to something else again regardless of whatever nonsense came out of Iizuka's mouth about them having a specific "vision" and "direction" they want to take the series in. 

Oh and talk of the passion they have. The totally real passion they have. All the fucking passion.

It'll either be that or they'll rest on their laurels even harder by doubling down on the simplicity of their boost mechanic and the forced 2D sections. It won't be like Unleashed or Generations again. If they do come up with something new it won't be given time to be developed so that it can work towards being worthwhile later, proving that whatever new Legacy Sonic they had in mind was only really meant to stick around for one game before everyone told them it sucked.

Story won't be anything to anticipate or care about. Tails will either be an asshole or a wuss. Can't have him be like he is in the Boom Cartoon or the comics because that would be an even distribution of his strengths and flaws. No, he's gotta be one extreme or the other. That's how it works.

If they introduce a new villain or set of villains they'll disappear with no fanfare and Eggman will be the final boss regardless.

Wisps. More Wisps because everyone loves the fucking wisps right? Of course you do.

More of the Twitter acting like nothing's wrong because that's what you've gotta do.

I wish I could be content with saying "At least it ain't Megaman's situation" but nope. Can't do that.

 

Woah dude. I know that you're upset with what happened with Forces and all, but this comes off as excessively bitter and harsh.

For one, what do you have to back that this would be entirely Sonic Team's decision-making, given how involved Sega often is in the development of Sonic games?

For one, what do you have to back up that everybody at Sonic Team is lying about passion? I find it incredibly irritating when people immediately jump to saying that the developers were passionless/lazy/etc. when the real development situation is usually a heck of a lot more complicated than that. Take Sonic 06 for example. It was initially assumed to be the product of laziness and lack of passion. The leak from that former Sega guy (jpeg, I think it was?) saying basically just that only fortified it. But all the while, the problems were revealed to really be a ridiculously short development time, short-staffing, overambition, and a confused direction. All that lack of passion people talked up as so damaging and fundamental to Sonic 06's failure didn't actually come along until near the end of its development as a result of the aforementioned issues, and was far from the largest problem the game's development had. Given how ambitious Forces is with stuff like the Avatar and breaking the status quo in terms of letting Eggman actually take over the world, I get the impression that the influential problems with Forces's development wasn't a lack of passion (at least not at the start or the middle).

Furthermore, how do you know that Sonic Team will just make more simplistic Sonic games if they do decide to make another try at Boost? It also comes off as you saying that Sonic Team would do this deliberately or as the product of some kind of arrogance/spite (e.g. "resting their laurels even harder", "proving that whatever new Legacy Sonic they had in mind was only really meant to stick around for one game before everyone told them it sucked")-- again, citation seriously needed because that is a really big claim with a vast array of implications and questions surrounding it. Immediately what comes to mind is "how long has Sonic Team done this or thought like this?", "so Sonic Team planned for Forces to be condemned from the start?", "so Sonic Team planned for Boost to be condemned from the start?", "so how did Generations happen if Sonic Team never wanted boost to succeed in the first place, wouldn't it be easier to just make Sonic Unleashed but worse in every possible way?", "does this mean that Sonic Team has never wanted a Sonic game or 3D Sonic game to succeed and has always been planning to have the constant switches in direction?", and "what exactly does Sonic Team have to feel arrogant enough about to rest its laurels on when this implies that it hates itself and most of what it creates and does?"?

Again with story and Tails and the implication that its deliberate. You make it sound like Sonic Team has Dakari-King Mykan's philosophy on character development and characterization cemented to their office wall or something-- namely that character development is bad and cannot be allowed to slip past the radar in any of their works, and that characters can only be one shallow archetype or another. Do you have evidence to back that up? As it stands, it seems like Sonic Team isn't being active or malicious in making terrible Sonic stories. Sonic Team writers are just either just not very good at writing (hi Takashi Iizuka, you're a producer not a writer why did you sign up for writing for Shadow the Hedgehog?) or not given enough creative control and/or resources to be as competent as they should (hi Sonic Generations, still mourning the loss of all the awesome ideas Sonic Team had for you but didn't have the time to implement).

Again, how do you know that the new villain will just disappear and Eggman will always be the final boss? And how much would this affect your enjoyment of the game?

I love the Wisps. SLW and Forces didn't execute the concept of Wisps as well as I would have liked, but I like the idea of using them as the modern day equivalent of the item boxes from the Classic games with either them being some kind of Wisp-like tech or Wisps that moved to Mobius after Colors and have decided to keep helping Sonic as a way of thanking him. Plus Colors did a good job with them-- drill makes water control really good, laser isn't overused and is really tricky in the right way, etc. So what is your reasoning that Wisps are inherently bad? Why do you think the decision to implement Wisps in the next Sonic game would be deliberately, specifically because Sonic Team wants to force everybody to love Wisps? You also seem to imply that a concept in a Sonic game is bad if not everybody likes it-- which I can demolish pretty quickly, because I have zero interest in the Classic Sonic games and do not enjoy playing them, yet it would be extremely self-centered to claim that they are bad games or that Mania has no right to succeed.

Why the spite towards people on Twitter? They don't have much of an effect on what major features are included in Sonic games, Twitter is a terrible place for elaboration and thoughtful explanation, so why are they of such importance to you? Who are these people acting like nothing is wrong out of obligation? Aaron Webber (who is just doing his job, does not make the major decisions, and is actually remarkably lucky enough just to be able to pass on bug reports and criticisms to the higher ups, and thus does not deserve ire)? Fans (who also have no control over official Sonic stuff)? Fans who disagree with you (really petty if that's the case, and they also have no control over official Sonic stuff)? Fans who are excessively positive (who are annoying, I'll give you that, but they can be easily blocked and don't have control over official Sonic stuff)? Sonic Team and Sega employees who tweet about their work (okay, these guys actually do have some control over Sonic games but they're not likely to take much of substance from Twitter and I really don't want to shoot down Sega of Japan letting its employees be more open with fans and customers given how much of a rarity that is for Japanese companies)?

Evidence that Sonic's in the exact situation as Mega Man? Also I am not a Mega Fan, so please explain the Mega Man situation and how Sonic Team is similar to Capcom so I can understand where you are coming from.

Thank you for reading. I look forward to your response.

[Dr. Detective]

On 11/27/2017 at 5:23 PM, Mad Convoy said:

Woah dude. I know that you're upset with what happened with Forces and all, but this comes off as excessively bitter and harsh.

That's because I'm feeling bitter and in order to express that I felt the need to be harsh. 

On 11/27/2017 at 5:23 PM, Mad Convoy said:

For one, what do you have to back that this would be entirely Sonic Team's decision-making, given how involved Sega often is in the development of Sonic games?

I looked all over that post I wrote and didn't once come across direct mention of just Sonic Team. However, this is a thread about where Sonic Team will go so I suppose it makes sense to assume I meant all the blame fell on their shoulders. Obviously not. It's SEGA's bullshit that they've got to deal with as well. The point is that the development team and the publishers and whoever are the reason shit is so fucked and I hate them for it. 

On 11/27/2017 at 5:23 PM, Mad Convoy said:

For one, what do you have to back up that everybody at Sonic Team is lying about passion? I find it incredibly irritating when people immediately jump to saying that the developers were passionless/lazy/etc. when the real development situation is usually a heck of a lot more complicated than that. Take Sonic 06 for example. It was initially assumed to be the product of laziness and lack of passion. The leak from that former Sega guy (jpeg, I think it was?) saying basically just that only fortified it. But all the while, the problems were revealed to really be a ridiculously short development time, short-staffing, overambition, and a confused direction. All that lack of passion people talked up as so damaging and fundamental to Sonic 06's failure didn't actually come along until near the end of its development as a result of the aforementioned issues, and was far from the largest problem the game's development had. Given how ambitious Forces is with stuff like the Avatar and breaking the status quo in terms of letting Eggman actually take over the world, I get the impression that the influential problems with Forces's development wasn't a lack of passion (at least not at the start or the middle)

In a generalized statement, often finding time to cherry pick and point out that yes, not everyone over there are soulless, bloodsucking, heathens who drink the corporate cool-aid is a dauntless and pointless task. I'm sure there are people over there who are very nice and well-meaning. I'm sure that's true of any company. I don't feel the need to go out of my way to remind other people of that. When it comes to shit-stain corporations like EA, that's currently getting flak for living up to their name as one of the worst company's imaginable, deservedly so, it's not any one individual person people are pointing out. Even if there is someone you have a face to point towards, it most likely isn't going to be someone whose high enough on the food chain that would be worth complaining too. Most likely they're either innocent or maybe even just as frustrated as the rest of us.

However, when talking about a corporation, the stigma is a bit different. Collectively, Sonic Team and SEGA are faceless industries that the general public has to react to based on what information they feed us and the products they give us. I'm sure the development process was hard for them just as it probably is for literally every other video game development team out there. Suffice to say though, it's NOT the consumer's job to give a fuck. It just isn't. 

I highly doubt that a lot of Sonic 06's problems would have been fixed had they been given more development time. Confused direction is the biggest culprit to that game's failure because even if they had more time it wouldn't have saved them from making weird decisions concerning how big and empty the hubs were, how some missions were relegated to forced story progression, the strange way some of the access to new stages was granted, and the story as it was. If the lack of passion people had for 06 didn't come until the near end of it's development than that makes a lot of things in that game affectively worse for me. That means that someone was passionate about Sonic getting it on with Princess Elise and I find that really unsettling.

Forces' ideas being ambitious is a far different concept then what happened with it's execution. They had an idea that was far too big and ambitious for what it was they wanted to actually do. What did they want to do? They wanted to cash in with Classic Sonic again because they heard people liked that there Classic Sonic. They made us run through 5 different versions of Green Hill (including the one in the Shadow DLC), 3 more versions of Chemical Plant, gave us Modern Sonic and Avatar gameplay that was built to function one way in 3D and wasn't properly changed to suit the 2D sections so that the characters would accelerate and fly over platforms way too fast, and a bunch of other underdeveloped bollocks that just led to another ho-hum game.

I don't hate Forces. My friend was over and we had fun playing it together and I got to watch him make his own avatar character. It's easily the best mechanic in the game and there was a lot of care put into that. The positive things about Forces I've already said. That doesn't change the fact that the situation we're in because of the kind of game it overall turned out to be is pitiful.

It's miserable thinking about the state the series is in. I haven't actually felt this way about the series since 06. If there ever was a way to get me to realize just how pathetic of a situation we're in it was to build me up with the promise of a bunch of cool stuff for the thing I was looking the most forward to in your game and then not succeed or try to captialize on any of it.

Who over there had passion and who didn't is irrelevant to me. I make fun of it because whether they have it or not, it's an arbitrary industry bullshit PR term that they use to sell faith to the customer before the product shows it's true colors when it's bought.

Selling faith is for the priest, not the game developer. I'm going to continue making fun of the "totally real passion" Sonic Team AND SEGA keep using in these interviews where they chat shit about nothing substantial until the game is out and we get to see what they did and didn't lie about.

On 11/27/2017 at 5:23 PM, Mad Convoy said:

Furthermore, how do you know that Sonic Team will just make more simplistic Sonic games if they do decide to make another try at Boost? It also comes off as you saying that Sonic Team would do this deliberately or as the product of some kind of arrogance/spite (e.g. "resting their laurels even harder", "proving that whatever new Legacy Sonic they had in mind was only really meant to stick around for one game before everyone told them it sucked")-- again, citation seriously needed because that is a really big claim with a vast array of implications and questions surrounding it. Immediately what comes to mind is "how long has Sonic Team done this or thought like this?", "so Sonic Team planned for Forces to be condemned from the start?", "so Sonic Team planned for Boost to be condemned from the start?", "so how did Generations happen if Sonic Team never wanted boost to succeed in the first place, wouldn't it be easier to just make Sonic Unleashed but worse in every possible way?", "does this mean that Sonic Team has never wanted a Sonic game or 3D Sonic game to succeed and has always been planning to have the constant switches in direction?", and "what exactly does Sonic Team have to feel arrogant enough about to rest its laurels on when this implies that it hates itself and most of what it creates and does?"?

Well, first of all, I don't actually claim to factually know what they'll do. I'm making an educated prediction based on what they've done before and what they most likely will continue to do. This is actually really surreal because I feel like I used to be the person speaking against the kind of talk I'm doing now. However, I feel like after 10+ years of waiting, finally finding something to get excited about with Forces, and then getting swatted back into reality like a goddamn horsefly finally made me snap.

Nothing in there suggested that they would do this out of arrogance or spite. I legit don't know what you're talking about there. If anything, all the stuff you quoted, to me, comes off as claiming that they're just really reactionary and oblivious to what's going on around them. I've actually defended them from people who've said they're deliberately trying to be spiteful or arrogant and yet for some reason, this is the second time now where someone has confusingly thought I was calling them arrogant or accusing them of doing things out of spite. 

"Resting on their laurels even harder" just means that they're going to stick with what they're doing and not do much to improve or learn from their past mistakes. The Boost formula should have improved but now we're at a point where they've gone backwards and that shouldn't be the case.

When I said "proving that whatever new Legacy Sonic they had in mind was only really meant to stick around for one game before everyone told them it sucked" I was talking about how obvious it is that Iizuka and Sonic Team (and SEGA) don't really have a vision and are just reacting to stuff that happens. Multiple times, leading up to Forces, Iizuka has said something that has confused or contradicts something he's said just a few weeks before and it was driving everyone up the wall. During the lead up to Lost World, he was going on about this new Legacy Sonic thing that they had for the future and how he now wanted to create a new Modern Sonic. However, when Lost World came out and the reception wasn't what they wanted it to be, instead of improving on the formula they let it go to the dogs and went back to what was working before. He dropped that new "vision" of his quite fast considering what he told us it was supposed to be. That wasn't meant to suggest they planned it that way. They're reactionary. They do really stupid and dumb things as a collective company but I've never claimed it was 100% malicious intent.

Now, they're still a company of course so that's still there regardless. ANY company shouldn't be outright trusted to not do sleazy, untrustworthy things. However, I've always made it known that I don't think that's the biggest outward issue when it comes to how SEGA and Sonic Team operate. If this is your first time ever reading my posts about them then I understand why you wouldn't know that about me I suppose.

Your other questions aren't ones I think should have been asked in relation to this statement at all though. They don't really make much sense.

"So Sonic Team planned for Forces to be condemned from the start?" No. I never said that. I don't even know why you'd think I'd be saying that. Of course they didn't plan to condemn it. 

"so Sonic Team planned for Boost to be condemned from the start?" I never said this either. I don't know why you're asking me questions about them purposefully condemning things.

"so how did Generations happen if Sonic Team never wanted boost to succeed in the first place, wouldn't it be easier to just make Sonic Unleashed but worse in every possible way?", "does this mean that Sonic Team has never wanted a Sonic game or 3D Sonic game to succeed and has always been planning to have the constant switches in direction?", Yeah, I said absolutely none of this and I feel like you either took what I said the wrong way or read it upside down or something. 

"what exactly does Sonic Team have to feel arrogant enough about to rest its laurels on when this implies that it hates itself and most of what it creates and does?"?  I never used the word "arrogant" and I never said that the reason they were resting on their laurels was because of arrogance or that they hate themselves and all that they create. You're putting words in my mouth here. I said they were resting on their laurels but the reason I feel they are is because they're playing it safe. They're using the boost formula because it works and they're not working to improve or change anything about it for a possible combination of things. Fear that they'll make it worse. Complacency because they have a winning formula and they don't want another Lost World situation. Confusion on what to do next. Heavy work load considering what they can and cannot do going forward. Iizuka saying that he doesn't want to go back to the Adventure formula again because he wants to move forward and not rely on the past even though he happily did that with Mania and shoehorned Classic Sonic into Forces, making what he says an eternal contradiction.

There's a lot of confusion, incompetence, exhaustion, and yes maybe even a little arrogance (I've officially said the word arrogance now) going on over there that's leading them down this path of ruination. I'm not so jaded that I'll deny that there's some good intentions there but I feel it's equally distructive to not be wary of the bad intentions ANY company has when it comes to the handling of their stuff. 

Including a company that puts out really good games like Nintendo. Nintendo, as a company, acts like an evil, stupid, dick-headed bastard all the time with it's business decisions. But they make good games. I try not to generalize but if I ever do, do know that it's not the whole picture I'm describing. This is just a thread talking about what I think they'll do next and whatever the intention behind what they'll do next is... this is still what I think they'll do next. 

On 11/27/2017 at 5:23 PM, Mad Convoy said:

Again with story and Tails and the implication that its deliberate. You make it sound like Sonic Team has Dakari-King Mykan's philosophy on character development and characterization cemented to their office wall or something-- namely that character development is bad and cannot be allowed to slip past the radar in any of their works, and that characters can only be one shallow archetype or another. Do you have evidence to back that up? As it stands, it seems like Sonic Team isn't being active or malicious in making terrible Sonic stories. Sonic Team writers are just either just not very good at writing (hi Takashi Iizuka, you're a producer not a writer why did you sign up for writing for Shadow the Hedgehog?) or not given enough creative control and/or resources to be as competent as they should (hi Sonic Generations, still mourning the loss of all the awesome ideas Sonic Team had for you but didn't have the time to implement).

Alright stop it. I was clearly being sarcastic. 

I'm mocking their inability to write Sonic and Tails correctly by spitefully phrasing it by saying "Can't have them act this way because that would be too smart". 

Stop asking for "evidence" to back this up to. These are predictions. I never made any claims that these are facts. If you want the evidence for why I feel this way go back to all my previous thoughts on how I feel about how they've written Sonic and Tails in the past few games before this. You're getting way too personally bothered by this.

I'm not going to feel sorry for insulting anyone's favorite multi-million dollar corporation or a development team that, by this point, should be doing better than what they're doing now.

On 11/27/2017 at 5:23 PM, Mad Convoy said:

Again, how do you know that the new villain will just disappear and Eggman will always be the final boss? And how much would this affect your enjoyment of the game?

This accusatory, venomous finger pointing your doing is really grating. 

"How do you know-" Stop.

This is a prediction thread and I never stated that these were facts. 

On 11/27/2017 at 5:23 PM, Mad Convoy said:

I love the Wisps. SLW and Forces didn't execute the concept of Wisps as well as I would have liked, but I like the idea of using them as the modern day equivalent of the item boxes from the Classic games with either them being some kind of Wisp-like tech or Wisps that moved to Mobius after Colors and have decided to keep helping Sonic as a way of thanking him. Plus Colors did a good job with them-- drill makes water control really good, laser isn't overused and is really tricky in the right way, etc. So what is your reasoning that Wisps are inherently bad? Why do you think the decision to implement Wisps in the next Sonic game would be deliberately, specifically because Sonic Team wants to force everybody to love Wisps? You also seem to imply that a concept in a Sonic game is bad if not everybody likes it-- which I can demolish pretty quickly, because I have zero interest in the Classic Sonic games and do not enjoy playing them, yet it would be extremely self-centered to claim that they are bad games or that Mania has no right to succeed.

Yeah, the wisps decided to do that off-screen. Oh wait, no, you can find this out in Sonic Runners, a mobile game that you apparently can't fully download or play anymore. Yeah, it just feels like another needless extension of their haphazard and uncoordinated decision making to me. 

Once again, you're taking the flavor chat I'm using too seriously here. I'm not LITERALLY saying that the reason they're including the wisps is because they think everyone loves them. Although, now that I'm thinking about it, why include them at all if you didn't expect people to love them? It seems kind of strange that you'd put something in your game that you weren't expecting to be well-liked. I have a feeling they do put them in because they think everyone, or at least the majority of people, love them. They could be right about that. I don't know.

"You also seem to imply that a concept in a Sonic game is bad if not everybody likes it-- " I implied nothing of the sort. Are you actively trying to twist what I'm saying to be as horrible as possible? Please, try not to read so far into things that they come out sounding as far off from what their original intention is. You'll end up arguing against a point that isn't there.

I don't know how it's possible for someone to read my line of "Wisps. More Wisps because everyone loves the fucking wisps right? Of course you do." and get out of it that I was saying that "A CONCEPT IN A SONIC GAME IS BAD IF NOT EVERYBODY LIKES IT!"

No. I was just saying that me, and a lot of other people, don't like the wisps. That's it.

On 11/27/2017 at 5:23 PM, Mad Convoy said:

Why the spite towards people on Twitter? 

I didn't. I just said that they'll ignore that anything's wrong because that's what they're supposed to do. I didn't give an opinion on it one or the other. You only think it was spiteful because I'm angry at Sonic Team. Which is understandable. I only mentioned it because I was trying to be all encompassing on as much things about the company and social media aspect as I could though.

On 11/27/2017 at 5:23 PM, Mad Convoy said:

Evidence that Sonic's in the exact situation as Mega Man? Also I am not a Mega Fan, so please explain the Mega Man situation and how Sonic Team is similar to Capcom so I can understand where you are coming from.

He's not. 

I was saying that I couldn't even console myself by saying that his situation isn't as bad as Megaman's because either way, Sonic's still in a terrible position. Megaman's situation is just worse since Capcom isn't doing anything with the blue bomber. Capcom doesn't seem like they care about him at all really. 

On 11/27/2017 at 5:23 PM, Mad Convoy said:

Thank you for reading. I look forward to your response.

Putting a smiley face at the end of your post isn't going to counteract against all the accusatory stuff in your post. Ironically, you took what I was doing against Sonic Team (and SEGA) and did the same exact thing against me, making the implications of what I was actually saying A LOT worse than what they were. I thought what I was saying was plenty harsh on it's own. You didn't need to make it sound even worse by accusing me of stating these predictions as facts, claiming I was being literal with my sarcastic quips, and insinuating that my problem was solely that they were being evil bastards when I didn't even outline my actual opinion on them but rather what I think they'll do next.

[ClassicKnuckles]

I mean, Sonic Forces was kind of a flop. I love the game to death, but the average gamer and critic does not. I mean I like Mania, but it's just too much Classic Sonic. After the success of Mania and the failure of Forces, will Sonic Team continue to make Modern Sonic games, or just make 2D Classic Sonic games? 

[Balding Spider]

Sonic Team will continue to make Modern games, that's not going to change. Though I expect the quality to still vary with each game.