Boost Sonic is the only way to make 3D Sonic.

[knuckles20]

I fully disagree with that since it's not actually 3D if you have to make half the game with 2D sections. So you're advocating for SEGA to be lazy with their 3D games by not having the games in 3D.

 

[Jar Jar Analysis 1138]

6 hours ago, JezMM said:

The physics-play I'm talking about is that of the classics where you are encouraged to play and experiment, with rewards for success rather than punishment for failure.

I agree.

Controversial opinion but I feel Sonic 2 fits this description more than 3k.

[JezMM]

4 minutes ago, Jar Jar Analysis 1138 said:

I agree.

Controversial opinion but I feel Sonic 2 fits this description more than 3k.

Tbh I feel Mania has become the new standard for good physics-play in Sonic.  It took the classics at their best and made almost an entire game of it, and the four new stages were full of fun new toys to play with.  The conveyors of Press Garden Act 1 are my favourite.

[Jar Jar Analysis 1138]

10 minutes ago, JezMM said:

Tbh I feel Mania has become the new standard for good physics-play in Sonic.  It took the classics at their best and made almost an entire game of it, and the four new stages were full of fun new toys to play with.  The conveyors of Press Garden Act 1 are my favourite.

UgghXD

One of my pet peeves in Mania are exactly those gimmicks that just throw/bounce you around like Sonic CD lol. 

Casino Night from Sonic 2 should have been an example of physics play as you're mostly in control. 

[Spooky Mulder]

I have the opposite opinion. Boost will never make a good Sonic game, unfortunately. I’m not saying that Boost stages aren’t fun, but technical limitations related to this style mean it will basically never be able to support a full game that is also financially viable.

From a developmental perspective, the Boost style is incredibly wasteful. The speed of these levels requires HUGE stages that are incredibly resource intensive, and most of those resources basically amount to wasted backgrounds that you zip past in seconds. There’s huge incentive to keep stages as narrow and linear as possible because of this.

Even in a best case scenario, the nature of this gameplay style means you’re only going to get between 7 and 10 stages that take anywhere between 3 and 8 minutes to complete. You’re talking a 90-minute experience for a game with that requires the budget of a $50 or $60 title. It doesn’t work.

So, the alternative is to pad the game out in some way. Unleashed did it with the Werehog. Colors did it by mostly limiting the game to 2D and fillin it with half-baked boxy additional stages. Generations introduced Classic Sonic which really doesn’t even do enough to create a normal length gameplay experience if you’re only getting one act. A 90-minute experience maybe becomes a two or three hour experience. Forces packs the Avatar on top of this.

Point is, something always ends up half-baked. Full focus can never be placed on Sonic’s main gameplay style because so much effort is consumed hiding its shortcomings.

Maybe in a perfect world, you could get 30 Unleashed-size stages and you’d have a great Boost game—but it’s impossible to actually make from a financial perspective and fitting it on a disc might still be challenging.

Think about games like Breath of the Wild or even Grand Theft Auto with huge detailed maps. How long do you think it would take for Modern Sonic to boost from one end of those maps to another? How long would it take Modern Sonic to travel across all of the stages in Mario Odyssey laid end-to-end?

It’s so wasteful. What’s fun in theory is not necessarily viable in practice. It’s time to stop trying to make Boost work. It’s not going to happen. If 3D Sonic is going to succeed, the solution is to slow down. 

[DonWaffleleven]

3 hours ago, Spooky Mulder said:

It’s so wasteful. What’s fun in theory is not necessarily viable in practice. It’s time to stop trying to make Boost work. It’s not going to happen. If 3D Sonic is going to succeed, the solution is to slow down. 

We did slow down. We got Lost World.

All snark aside, I do agree with your points. Just wish Sonic Team could understand that while not going "full sonic team" in their attempts.

[Spooky Mulder]

6 hours ago, DonWaffleleven said:

We did slow down. We got Lost World.

All snark aside, I do agree with your points. Just wish Sonic Team could understand that while not going "full sonic team" in their attempts.

Well, (unpopular opinion incoming) I really like Lost World. I think it’s probably a worse game overall than Generations and Colors, but I like what it tries to do better. I think it comes closest to getting Sonic’s controls right in 3D, although I do hate the run button. I think the parkour is broken and the wonky almost Mario Galaxyish level design is not an approach I liked, but there’s something soooo satisfying about spin dashing off a ramp in Desert Ruins.

I wish Sonic Team had attempted to build on what Lost World got right rather than revert back to the Boost approach. I think that was the early beginnings of the right path whereas Forces seems like the culmination of a failed path.

[Tornado]

What a strange topic. Could have sworn they already made a bunch of Sonic games that were decently received that didn't use boost or anything like it; nevermind anything they try in the future.

[NintendoSoul]

Oh I have nothing against the Boost. It's pretty fun and I've seen some sick things done with it in speed runs.

[EdsonBubsy]

On 11/18/2017 at 9:23 AM, knuckles20 said:

I fully disagree with that since it's not actually 3D if you have to make half the game with 2D sections. So you're advocating for SEGA to be lazy with their 3D games by not having the games in 3D.

 

Uh... I used Unleashed as the example of this thread.

19 hours ago, Spooky Mulder said:

I have the opposite opinion. Boost will never make a good Sonic game, unfortunately. I’m not saying that Boost stages aren’t fun, but technical limitations related to this style mean it will basically never be able to support a full game that is also financially viable.

From a developmental perspective, the Boost style is incredibly wasteful. The speed of these levels requires HUGE stages that are incredibly resource intensive, and most of those resources basically amount to wasted backgrounds that you zip past in seconds. There’s huge incentive to keep stages as narrow and linear as possible because of this.

Even in a best case scenario, the nature of this gameplay style means you’re only going to get between 7 and 10 stages that take anywhere between 3 and 8 minutes to complete. You’re talking a 90-minute experience for a game with that requires the budget of a $50 or $60 title. It doesn’t work.

So, the alternative is to pad the game out in some way. Unleashed did it with the Werehog. Colors did it by mostly limiting the game to 2D and fillin it with half-baked boxy additional stages. Generations introduced Classic Sonic which really doesn’t even do enough to create a normal length gameplay experience if you’re only getting one act. A 90-minute experience maybe becomes a two or three hour experience. Forces packs the Avatar on top of this.

Point is, something always ends up half-baked. Full focus can never be placed on Sonic’s main gameplay style because so much effort is consumed hiding its shortcomings.

Maybe in a perfect world, you could get 30 Unleashed-size stages and you’d have a great Boost game—but it’s impossible to actually make from a financial perspective and fitting it on a disc might still be challenging.

Think about games like Breath of the Wild or even Grand Theft Auto with huge detailed maps. How long do you think it would take for Modern Sonic to boost from one end of those maps to another? How long would it take Modern Sonic to travel across all of the stages in Mario Odyssey laid end-to-end?

It’s so wasteful. What’s fun in theory is not necessarily viable in practice. It’s time to stop trying to make Boost work. It’s not going to happen. If 3D Sonic is going to succeed, the solution is to slow down. 

Hmm.

See Sonic Heroes many times went faster than boost Sonic and roving the gimmicks Sonic Heroes would still be a longer game than say forces. I don't think it's wasteful at all I think it just hold down to Sega being incompetent.

You also have to consider they made the boost less complex after each game but they are still having trouble?

 

[knuckles20]

44 minutes ago, EdsonBubsy said:

Uh... I used Unleashed as the example of this thread.

 

And it didn't stop them from adding more 2D sections in what's suppose to be a 3D game. At that point it stops being 3D and becomes 2.5D.

[Spooky Mulder]

1 hour ago, EdsonBubsy said:

Uh... I used Unleashed as the example of this thread.

Hmm.

See Sonic Heroes many times went faster than boost Sonic and roving the gimmicks Sonic Heroes would still be a longer game than say forces. I don't think it's wasteful at all I think it just hold down to Sega being incompetent.

You also have to consider they made the boost less complex after each game but they are still having trouble?

 

Sonic Heroes occasionally being faster than the Boost games is not the same thing as Sonic Heroes being more technically demanding than the Boost games.

Look at the glitches exploited in this speed run from Unleashed to get a sense of how massive the stages here are.

There’s nothing comparable to stages of this size or detail in Sonic Heroes—a game which by the way requires you to play through each act FOUR times to make up for the length of a single campaign.

You know, there’s many things that you can point to and say are signs of SEGA and Sonic Team’s incompetence. This isn’t one of them. There’s no developer in the world today that could make a Boost game that was significantly larger without increasing staff or development time to the point that the game wasn’t financially viable.

Eventually with Boost, devs are always going to hit some sort of wall. Whether it’s time, money, or hardware limits, there will always be something restraining a Boost campaign to under 3 hours unless you pad it out dramatically.

[Mad Convoy]

This kind of thinking irritates the crap out of me. There is no "only way" to make 3D Sonic. Several 3D Sonic styles have potential to be really good as well as having kinks that need to be ironed out. Doesn't matter if its boost, Adventure, etc.-- there's reasons to want future games to be like 'em and reasons to not want future games to be like 'em. 

And I don't really see how, with modern technology expanding, it wouldn't be possible make large open worlds for Boost gameplay. To evince this, I will point out that Sonic Lost World has the boost-y spindash that if you google how, you can consistently spindash indefinitely. Its not a sometimes sort of thing, you can do it pretty much wherever Sonic can stand. And yet, it has a lot of content and alternative paths for you to explore (even if you cut out the stupid gimmicks), not to mention it has many incentives beyond just stupid stuff like snowball Sonic to urge the player not to just infinite boost-spindash all the time (some enemies are immune to it, you can't use Parkour when spindashing, etc.). Does quantity equal quality? Well not, I would argue that Lost World has several problems including needless gimmicks, poorly explained controls, etc. But you know, the level design is smart in as many ways as it is stupid. It maintains the impression of you moving forward while in actuality the maps have Sonic moving to platforms to his right, left, etc., which also makes adding background stuff to round out appearances less necessary since the more widely scattered platforms become part of the aesthetic. Would I have done it exactly like Lost World? No, instead of those floating capsules I'd do this with more natural looking hills, rocks, buildings, etc. But I totally think some aspects of Lost World's design philosophy could be successfully applied to the Boost.

But again, Boost and Parkour stuff aren't our only options here. We still have SA1 and crew to look over.

Ultimately, I feel like these sorts of conversations don't get anywhere or lead to good debates. The only or best options according to people are always the ones they like, and they will use anything and everything to justify it, while the worst or impossible options are always the ones they don't like, and no argument against that impossibility will ever be valid to them. Its got not nearly enough basis in the feasibility aspect or game content because it tends to be about pushing some kind of agenda.

Well, I ain't doing that. I have my preferences for Sonic styles, yes, but Sonic Team and Sega are under no obligation to make them happen nor are any fans obligated to share my preferences. The best gameplay style for 3D Sonic is the one that Sonic Team is able to extract the good from and refine, and I will enjoy said game even if it is not precisely tailored to my preferences.

 

[Razule]

1 hour ago, Mad Convoy said:

 

And I don't really see how, with modern technology expanding, it wouldn't be possible make large open worlds for Boost gameplay.

Tech isn't the issue, money is.

[DonWaffleleven]

6 hours ago, Spooky Mulder said:

You know, there’s many things that you can point to and say are signs of SEGA and Sonic Team’s incompetence. This isn’t one of them. There’s no developer in the world today that could make a Boost game that was significantly larger without increasing staff or development time to the point that the game wasn’t financially viable.

And heaven knows that AAA game budgets are already disgustingly inflated as is. It's not enough to just buy the game anymore, gotta stuff in DLC, microtransactions and now Loot Boxes just to break even. And since Sonic doesn't really sell to the same level as the AAA super stars of the industry, making a full boost game on that budget would basically be impossible to turn a profit.

I think scaling back and being more economical with their design is something that a lot of developers could learn to do, not just Sega/Sonic Team. Just not to the level of being so obviously phoned in like Forces where it impacts how people enjoy the game.

[EdsonBubsy]

9 hours ago, knuckles20 said:

And it didn't stop them from adding more 2D sections in what's suppose to be a 3D game. At that point it stops being 3D and becomes 2.5D.

The other boost games do that and remove the elements people praised in unleashed. Not sure why your implying they are all the same game. Unleashed was the most 3 D mainline Sonic in the last nearly 10 years.

8 hours ago, Spooky Mulder said:

Sonic Heroes occasionally being faster than the Boost games is not the same thing as Sonic Heroes being more technically demanding than the Boost games.

Look at the glitches exploited in this speed run from Unleashed to get a sense of how massive the stages here are.

There’s nothing comparable to stages of this size or detail in Sonic Heroes—a game which by the way requires you to play through each act FOUR times to make up for the length of a single campaign.

You know, there’s many things that you can point to and say are signs of SEGA and Sonic Team’s incompetence. This isn’t one of them. There’s no developer in the world today that could make a Boost game that was significantly larger without increasing staff or development time to the point that the game wasn’t financially viable.

Eventually with Boost, devs are always going to hit some sort of wall. Whether it’s time, money, or hardware limits, there will always be something restraining a Boost campaign to under 3 hours unless you pad it out dramatically.

This is just excuses.

Sonic aunleashed had large areas but most of it had nothing going on, Sonic Heroes had more going on in screen and had way more effects going on in stage the detail was even often off your path they have areas in Heroes you can barely see and in some cases can barely, or not at all, reach, with additional details and polygons just to say they did. It also ran well.

Unleashed constantly drops frames all the time and also tears occasionally with static environments and some quick reuse of assets. The only really big areas are in the were hog stages and those are mostly empty, reused objects, and have repeated enemies pasted 95% of the time.

After aunleashed Sega got more staff to work on Colors engine which was on the Wii so the budget would be smaller than unleashed, or maybe even generations, yet they gimped the stage design and the boost itself that half the time you were boosting through empty trails and they increased the 2D stages extensively. Explain how that's not incompetence? In generations they gimped it again and make it even worse. In forces, it's been slowed down it's rarely useful, there's even more empty paths, and in quite a few areas you just dash through a row of enemies for a 3rd of the stage.

There has not been one real iteration to how unleashed did it and it has nothing to do with manpower, budget, or anything else, their level design is bad across the board and getting worse even without the boost, they had generations as a template and couldn't do anything impressive or at least a slight improvement over it. The definition of incompetence. 

1 hour ago, DonWaffleleven said:

And heaven knows that AAA game budgets are already disgustingly inflated as is. It's not enough to just buy the game anymore, gotta stuff in DLC, microtransactions and now Loot Boxes just to break even. And since Sonic doesn't really sell to the same level as the AAA super stars of the industry, making a full boost game on that budget would basically be impossible to turn a profit.

I think scaling back and being more economical with their design is something that a lot of developers could learn to do, not just Sega/Sonic Team. Just not to the level of being so obviously phoned in like Forces where it impacts how people enjoy the game.

Sonic has already made a game on a budget and the boost formula still was made worse than unleashed, it's called colors. There are zero excuses for Segas constant incompetence and considering they have been going continuously down hill in almost every area for years now I don't understand anyone buying the excuse boost is "expensive" when boost becomes less mechanical and more linear every game it's featured in. 

6 hours ago, Razule said:

Tech isn't the issue, money is.

No it's not 

7 hours ago, Mad Convoy said:

This kind of thinking irritates the crap out of me. There is no "only way" to make 3D Sonic. Several 3D Sonic styles have potential to be really good as well as having kinks that need to be ironed out. Doesn't matter if its boost, Adventure, etc.-- there's reasons to want future games to be like 'em and reasons to not want future games to be like 'em. 

And I don't really see how, with modern technology expanding, it wouldn't be possible make large open worlds for Boost gameplay. To evince this, I will point out that Sonic Lost World has the boost-y spindash that if you google how, you can consistently spindash indefinitely. Its not a sometimes sort of thing, you can do it pretty much wherever Sonic can stand. And yet, it has a lot of content and alternative paths for you to explore (even if you cut out the stupid gimmicks), not to mention it has many incentives beyond just stupid stuff like snowball Sonic to urge the player not to just infinite boost-spindash all the time (some enemies are immune to it, you can't use Parkour when spindashing, etc.). Does quantity equal quality? Well not, I would argue that Lost World has several problems including needless gimmicks, poorly explained controls, etc. But you know, the level design is smart in as many ways as it is stupid. It maintains the impression of you moving forward while in actuality the maps have Sonic moving to platforms to his right, left, etc., which also makes adding background stuff to round out appearances less necessary since the more widely scattered platforms become part of the aesthetic. Would I have done it exactly like Lost World? No, instead of those floating capsules I'd do this with more natural looking hills, rocks, buildings, etc. But I totally think some aspects of Lost World's design philosophy could be successfully applied to the Boost.

But again, Boost and Parkour stuff aren't our only options here. We still have SA1 and crew to look over.

Ultimately, I feel like these sorts of conversations don't get anywhere or lead to good debates. The only or best options according to people are always the ones they like, and they will use anything and everything to justify it, while the worst or impossible options are always the ones they don't like, and no argument against that impossibility will ever be valid to them. Its got not nearly enough basis in the feasibility aspect or game content because it tends to be about pushing some kind of agenda.

Well, I ain't doing that. I have my preferences for Sonic styles, yes, but Sonic Team and Sega are under no obligation to make them happen nor are any fans obligated to share my preferences. The best gameplay style for 3D Sonic is the one that Sonic Team is able to extract the good from and refine, and I will enjoy said game even if it is not precisely tailored to my preferences.

 

I'm going off critic praise and age over time and people still praise the day stages in unleashed, however trash adventure and heroes gameplay styles.

[Tornado]

"People" do huh? Tell us more.

[Natie]

"Only". How narrow-minded of you. Sonic's got a lot of great unexplored potential for 3D, It's silly to think something as stiff and bare bones as the boost is the best anyone could do.

[EdsonBubsy]

11 minutes ago, Tornado said:

"People" do huh? Tell us more.

Those reviews on MC free to read? Also the fans?

[Tornado]

So I'm supposed to take the fan and critic opinions into account that support your point, but ignore the ones that don't. Gotcha.

[EdsonBubsy]

3 minutes ago, Tornado said:

So I'm supposed to take the fan and critic opinions into account that support your point, but ignore the ones that don't. Gotcha.

Vast majority of critics that give Sonic the ratings on mc that make Jon Sonic fans consider if they want to buy the game or not?

Sure I guess you could ignore them and have Sonic sell less each entry, oh wait,its already been doing that for years.

Sometimes you have to think business wise when a company is involved.

[Tornado]

5 minutes ago, EdsonBubsy said:

Vast majority of critics that give Sonic the ratings on mc that make Jon Sonic fans consider if they want to buy the game or not?

This is a sentence?

5 minutes ago, EdsonBubsy said:

Sure I guess you could ignore them and have Sonic sell less each entry, oh wait,its already been doing that for years.

And this is proof that relying on the boost formula is a winning one? I'm increasingly beginning to wonder if you have these responses typed up before you even have anything to respond to.

5 minutes ago, EdsonBubsy said:

Sometimes you have to think business wise when a company is involved.

Still waiting for financial info in the other thread, oh wise business master.

[EdsonBubsy]

32 minutes ago, Tornado said:

This is a sentence?

And this is proof that relying on the boost formula is a winning one? I'm increasingly beginning to wonder if you have these responses typed up before you even have anything to respond to.

Still waiting for financial info in the other thread, oh wise business master.

I suspect when the news hits you'll magically vanish.

[Tornado]

11 hours ago, EdsonBubsy said:

I suspect when the news hits you'll magically vanish.

I've been on this forum for fourteen years. You've been on it for four days.

 

 

Try me.

[knuckles20]

13 hours ago, EdsonBubsy said:

 

I'm going off critic praise and age over time and people still praise the day stages in unleashed, however trash adventure and heroes gameplay styles.

At least with Adveture and Heroes it actually gives a 3D experience and doesn’t rely on half the game being in 2D.

And despite Unleashed day stages getting praise, SEGA still try to pass off future boost games as “3D” when they keep adding more 2D in these games.

If they can’t commit to the dimension why call it 3D in the first place?