Are multiple playable characters still seen as an issue/

[knuckles20]

It’s been over a decade now. They can’t keep falling back on the “we can’t get Sonic right” excuse. 

The longer people use it as to write off why Sonic can’t have a game that’s actually plays in 3D without being dependent on 2D sections, have characters that aren’t just another form of Sonic (Classic Sonic in Forces) or something the player has to fill in themselves as opposed to the various characters that’s been benched since Unleashed, the more pathetic it looks on SEGA.

If I want to play as Knuckles, Tails or any of the characters that aren’t Sonic in a 3D game, I’m not stop asking for it because that’s what I want from games and the games haven’t been enjoyable when everyone became Sonic’s ass kissers who can’t do a damn thing without him.

[Diogenes]

34 minutes ago, knuckles20 said:

It’s been over a decade now. They can’t keep falling back on the “we can’t Sonic right” excuse. 

The longer people use it as to write off why Sonic can’t have a game that’s actually plays in 3D without being dependent on 2D sections ...

What? That's exactly the opposite of the point, the 2D sections are part of Sonic Team's failure to figure out how to make a proper 3D Sonic game.

[knuckles20]

22 minutes ago, Diogenes said:

What? That's exactly the opposite of the point, the 2D sections are part of Sonic Team's failure to figure out how to make a proper 3D Sonic game.

I’ve seen people use it to defend the 2D sections in the “3D” games hence why I brought it up.

[UpCDownCLeftCRightC]

20 hours ago, knuckles20 said:

It’s been over a decade now. They can’t keep falling back on the “we can’t get Sonic right” excuse. 

The longer people use it as to write off why Sonic can’t have a game that’s actually plays in 3D without being dependent on 2D sections, have characters that aren’t just another form of Sonic (Classic Sonic in Forces) or something the player has to fill in themselves as opposed to the various characters that’s been benched since Unleashed, the more pathetic it looks on SEGA.

If I want to play as Knuckles, Tails or any of the characters that aren’t Sonic in a 3D game, I’m not stop asking for it because that’s what I want from games and the games haven’t been enjoyable when everyone became Sonic’s ass kissers who can’t do a damn thing without him. 

SEGA hasn't been working on this problem for over a decade; They've been mostly avoiding it for that long. Clear difference. And its why fans need to push for this to be finally sorted out, so everyone can get what they want. Sonic needs to have good, solid gameplay in 3D that can be built upon sequentially for other characters and etc. to be added that makes the total game stronger, instead of meme fodder.

You in your own paragraph are complaining about wanting games that actually play in 3D without relying on 2D sections. You should easily be able to understand why it is so important that this be figured out. It is literally THE thing preventing you from getting what you want. 

Adding characters to 'broken' platforming games just to make fans happy is like painting over molded walls.

[Multikaris]

I wonder if the “we have to Perfect Sonic’s gameplay” is just a euphemism/excuse, and they have no real plans for them? Especially with the backhanded, sudden style-swap in Lost World, the whole “TwoWorldsGate” crapola recently, and the best of characters entirely missing from Forces? At least we got Shadow as a DLC...

[UpCDownCLeftCRightC]

5 hours ago, Miragnarok said:

I wonder if the “we have to Perfect Sonic’s gameplay” is just a euphemism/excuse, and they have no real plans for them? Especially with the backhanded, sudden style-swap in Lost World, the whole “TwoWorldsGate” crapola recently, and the best of characters entirely missing from Forces? At least we got Shadow as a DLC...

I dont think it is an excuse. They have known for a long time that they've had this problem and talk about it all the time. It's just that theyve been building around the problem rather than taking the time to actually solve it....lost world was the first real effort to do so. Lost world itself may not be the specific foundation needed and was itself very experimental, but they do need to go back in that direction of a true 3D platformer. They know that bringing in extra characters before the gameplay is worked out will not work for the franchise. Why? Because theyve done it many times in the past and saw the results. They wont do it again unless they become desperate.

Sonic Team should not release any more big budget sonic games until they invest all of their time and effort doing this because it will fix all of their problems almost instantly. And ours as a result.

[DabigRG]

20 minutes ago, UpCDownCLeftCRightC said:

 

Sonic Team should not release any more big budget sonic games until they invest all of their time and effort doing this because it will fix all of their problems almost instantly. And ours as a result.

That'd be a pretty decent step.

[Ultimate Victory 64]

The literal fact that Sonic's friends are in the game pisses people off

[knuckles20]

 

14 hours ago, UpCDownCLeftCRightC said:

SEGA hasn't been working on this problem for over a decade; They've been mostly avoiding it for that long. Clear difference. And its why fans need to push for this to be finally sorted out, so everyone can get what they want. Sonic needs to have good, solid gameplay in 3D that can be built upon sequentially for other characters and etc. to be added that makes the total game stronger, instead of meme fodder.

You in your own paragraph are complaining about wanting games that actually play in 3D without relying on 2D sections. You should easily be able to understand why it is so important that this be figured out. It is literally THE thing preventing you from getting what you want. 

Adding characters to 'broken' platforming games just to make fans happy is like painting over molded walls.

I may not like games such as Colors or Generations with the over reliance on 2D sections and boost to win but I wouldn’t call the games “broken”.

As much as I complain about the 2D/3D hybrid it’s not the biggest deal breaker for me. Hell I would had bought Forces if instead of Classic Sonic and the create-your-own they finally got at least 2 non Sonic characters playable from the start of the game and not some last minute DLC. 

5 hours ago, Ultimate Victory 64 said:

The literal fact that Sonic's friends are in the game pisses people off

And those people can bitch all they want because I’m tired of the bland monotony that came from the cast’s exclusion.

[Salamander]

5 hours ago, Ultimate Victory 64 said:

The literal fact that Sonic's friends are in the game pisses people off

Stepping aside from the question of execution for the moment, and thinking purely in terms of theory: I doubt that jaded longtime fans are Sega's primary audience for any Sonic product, save perhaps Mania - and did anyone complain about the friends being in that?  (Of course, there's a certain school of jaded longtime fan which will buy anything with Sonic's name on it anyway, just in case.)  Sega's pitching for open-minded and less critical children, who don't come saddled with all the baggage of associations from Sonic's tarnished history.  Sonic's friends aren't a particular sales risk on their own, I suspect.

[UpCDownCLeftCRightC]

6 hours ago, knuckles20 said:

I may not like games such as Colors or Generations with the over reliance on 2D sections and boost to win but I wouldn’t call the games “broken”.

Dont misunderstand me here, I'm not saying the boost games are broken games. Far from it. They're good for what they are and I think definitely were a success for SEGA during that late 2000s-early 2010s time period. In my first paragraph I thought I made clear that i was separating them from this idea of a true 3D platformer, because they are not true 3D platformers. They are more of a 2D racing hybrid than a true 3D platformer (even Christian Whitehead has commented on this). That is the only point I was making about those specifically, not that they are bad games in and of themselves. But they are the best "3D" games sonic has right now and they're not really 3D platformers. 

6 hours ago, FFWF said:

Stepping aside from the question of execution for the moment, and thinking purely in terms of theory: I doubt that jaded longtime fans are Sega's primary audience for any Sonic product, save perhaps Mania - and did anyone complain about the friends being in that?  (Of course, there's a certain school of jaded longtime fan which will buy anything with Sonic's name on it anyway, just in case.)  Sega's pitching for open-minded and less critical children, who don't come saddled with all the baggage of associations from Sonic's tarnished history.  Sonic's friends aren't a particular sales risk on their own, I suspect.

Exactly. No one cares that they exist, they're fine on their own. People obviously like Tails, for example, he's extremely well known in gaming. Same with other characters. The problem was always that they were often shoehorned in games, while also being given gameplay styles that are fundamentally different than the primary gameplay...while also being extremely dull, generally speaking. This was the thing that started the Sonics sh*tty friends meme, not people hating them on their own. They have a stigma because they were often terrible to play as. 

If sonic's friends gameplay was like S3K where it complimented the main gameplay nicely, that meme would never have started in the first place. But the devs knew most people didnt want to play those alternative styles, which is why they started to get axed. Iizuka has said this numerous times in interviews, including that he wont be going back down that path of alternative gameplay for that reason.

[Rowl]

I would say yes. At least in the 3D games. When it comes to the 2D games, people seemed to be okay with it. But the acception of other characters been playable in 2D games, has mostly to do with the positive reputation of the 2D games. People seemed to only have a huge issue with multiple characters in the 3D games. 

[Plasme]

The other reason why the friends got a lot of hate was because Sonic became increasingly irrelevant, and his friends overtook him with grand melodramatic stories. Adventure 2 was really more about Shadow than Sonic. Team Sonic probably had the most boring story in Heroes other than maybe Team Rose. Shadow and Silver have more of a right to protagonist than Sonic does in 06. Does Sonic even do anything worthwhile to the plot in 06 other than turn Super? 

[Shadowlax]

On 11/26/2018 at 3:40 PM, Rowl said:

I would say yes. At least in the 3D games. When it comes to the 2D games, people seemed to be okay with it. But the accepting of other characters been playable in 2D games, has mostly to do with the positive reputation of the 2D games. People seemed to only have a huge issue withe multiple characters in the 3D games. 

I don't think the people who get pissed off at that are sega's market, or at least they shouldn't.

On 11/26/2018 at 4:19 PM, Plasme said:

The other reason why the friends got a lot of hate was because Sonic became increasingly irrelevant, and his friends overtook him with grand melodramatic stories. Adventure 2 was really more about Shadow than Sonic. Team Sonic probably had the most boring story in Heroes other than maybe Team Rose. Shadow and Silver have more of a right to protagonist than Sonic does in 06. Does Sonic even do anything worthwhile to the plot in 06 other than turn Super? 

Well yeah, sonic is a baseline character. Not all the stories should be about him. And if people have an issue with that, they can grow up I guess. I think people more so have issue with story and character quality than anything its why shadow's debut went well and Silvers didn't. I don't think it wasn't about sonic being important, its about what that character they put in the drivers seat did. And silver, effectively did kind of nothing , ironically enough it was shadow who solved everyone's issues in 06. This is in combination with, game quality

[E-122-Psi]

SA2 at the very least was a 'Franchise Original Sin', despite being more Shadow's story and the Sonic universe being retooled excessively into a sci fi epic to make it work, it still found a way to keep Sonic and the main cast relevant throughout. It was the gameplay balance that was the bigger issue. Next Gen suffered from BOTH those problems exacerbated. Sonic vs Eggman was practically a forced in extra within a completely abrupt change in aesthetic and genre and it shoved in TONS of new characters and forced you to play as several of them per level, sometimes even the ones from the campaigns you DIDN'T choose.

[Plasme]

On 11/27/2018 at 10:43 PM, Shadowlax said:

Well yeah, sonic is a baseline character. Not all the stories should be about him. And if people have an issue with that, they can grow up I guess. I think people more so have issue with story and character quality than anything its why shadow's debut went well and Silvers didn't. I don't think it wasn't about sonic being important, its about what that character they put in the drivers seat did. And silver, effectively did kind of nothing , ironically enough it was shadow who solved everyone's issues in 06. This is in combination with, game quality

The game is about Sonic the Hedgehog. Sonic the Hedgehog should be the main character.

[Shadowlax]

2 minutes ago, Plasme said:

The game is about Sonic the Hedgehog. Sonic the Hedgehog should be the main character.

No

There are plenty of stories where the " main character " isn't the main character and the story is about other characters because it serves a better narrative. This is fairly common.

So no, doesn't really have to really. Would totally play a game that's really about tails, and sonic's just along for the ride. Not everything has to be about him, and not everything should be. You got a whole cast of characters, use em.

[Plasme]

Just now, Shadowlax said:

No

There are plenty of stories where the " main character " isn't the main character and the story is about other characters because it serves a better narrative. This is fairly common.

So no, doesn't really have to really. Would totally play a game that's really about tails, and sonic's just along for the ride. Not everything has to be about him, and not everything should be. You got a whole cast of characters, use em.

In the above example, it would be a spinoff starring Tails. When games have other characters taking the limelight in a franchise, they typically do so as spinoff series. It is very uncommon for a game not to have the protagonist as the main character.

If the game is called Sonic Adventure 2, Sonic Heroes or Sonic the Hedgehog, then Sonic should be the main character. 

[Shadowlax]

Just now, Plasme said:

In the above example, it would be a spinoff starring Tails. When games have other characters taking the limelight in a franchise, they typically do so as spinoff series. It is very uncommon for a game not to have the protagonist as the main character.

If the game is called Sonic Adventure 2, Sonic Heroes or Sonic the Hedgehog, then Sonic should be the main character. 

No, you can just have someone be the key character and sonic's name be on the box. Or you can just put , sonic and tails adventure.

Its not uncommon, in fiction. It shouldn't be anything, it should be what they feel provides the best game play and narrative. He shouldn't be the main character all the time, and if your sole reason is " Well is his name is on the box " then you don't have any reasoning.

[Diogenes]

Not every story should be about Sonic exclusively, and not every story needs to be about him primarily, but if you're going to make a game in the Sonic the Hedgehog series, with Sonic's name in the title, and with Sonic as one of the main characters, then you damn well better make good use of him, or you're writing a shitty story. You don't put any character into a story without their existence serving some purpose, and you don't follow a character through a third or more of the story and have what they're doing amount to almost nothing.

[UpCDownCLeftCRightC]

1 hour ago, Shadowlax said:

No, you can just have someone be the key character and sonic's name be on the box. Or you can just put , sonic and tails adventure.

Its not uncommon, in fiction. It shouldn't be anything, it should be what they feel provides the best game play and narrative. He shouldn't be the main character all the time, and if your sole reason is " Well is his name is on the box " then you don't have any reasoning.

It should be because he's the central character. The series is primarily about him and his adventures, so yes he should be the star of the games almost 100% of the time. It's very misleading to put "Sonic" on the box and then have the game be primarily about someone else. Why would this happen for Mario, crash, batman, amongst dozens of other popular franchise leads but somehow be different for sonic? 

If you want to have a story about another character primarily, then put their name on the box. Luigi's mansion....etc. This is exactly how most franchises handle things, so as to not confused their consumer/fanbase.

If a different character would suit a planned narrative better, then build and market the game around them. Oh wait, this already happened in 2005 with shadow....hmm.

Dont know what there is to even talk about with this. It's as I said before....there are a ton of sonic fans who are not actually sonic fans, and come to the series primarily for things that have little to do with sonic or his gameplay. That by itself doesnt have to be an issue if you create a spinoff franchise to cater towards these gamers.

 

[Shadowlax]

1 hour ago, UpCDownCLeftCRightC said:

It should be because he's the central character. The series is primarily about him and his adventures, so yes he should be the star of the games almost 100% of the time. It's very misleading to put "Sonic" on the box and then have the game be primarily about someone else. Why would this happen for Mario, crash, batman, amongst dozens of other popular franchise leads but somehow be different for sonic? 

That happens to batman all the time

This happens to franchises all the time

My favorite batman comic isn't about batman

Quote

If you want to have a story about another character primarily, then put their name on the box. Luigi's mansion....etc. This is exactly how most franchises handle things, so as to not confused their consumer/fanbase.

Or its just about them, and the " main character " takes a backseat for a while, and you stop being a baby who needs their main character to be the coolest and strongest, grow up and get over it.

Or not like it and do something else

Quote

If a different character would suit a planned narrative better, then build and market the game around them. Oh wait, this already happened in 2005 with shadow....hmm.

I don't know what this sentence means?

They should do that, shadow's game in 05 wasn't great? It being focused around him wasn't the reason why if that's what you are implying. But you are on full on sonic jerk off mode so I'm not expecting you to use logic here. To the degree in which you seriously implied having things not about the main character has never happened in fiction ever.

And then use a character batman who it happens to frequently.

Quote

Dont know what there is to even talk about with this. It's as I said before....there are a ton of sonic fans who are not actually sonic fans, and come to the series primarily for things that have little to do with sonic or his gameplay. That by itself doesnt have to be an issue if you create a spinoff franchise to cater towards these gamers.

 

I would like more spin offs

I would also not mind if some games weren't really about him but was about his world and other characters

There are plenty of stories told like this, the main character doesn't have to be the coolest and strongest nor does he have to be important all the time. The ability for a main character to do that speaks to the strength of that character. Grow up

[DabigRG]

A game's story should be focused on whoever and whatever it's primarily about with reason.

If the story is primarily about Knuckles, have him get a significant amount of focus, again, with other characters helping flesh the narrative out.

If the story is primarily about the new villain, have a considerable chunk of the story explain who they are and what they want, with the rest of the story featuring Sonic and the other heroes working to stop this new threat.

If the story is just meant to be an adventure, then just treat it like that with Sonic or whoever as the protagonist with other characters playing some role in it to help flesh things out.

 

[E-122-Psi]

I have no problem with games where Sonic is the supporting character, but the problem was that some of those games were slowly leaning into making him an IRRELEVANT character and slowly morphing his universe to befit the glorified new additions than what should be the other way round, making new additions that compliment and flesh out his established world. You want to do that, make a spin off game with just the new character.

Shadow was at least a foil and a rival for Sonic, same for Knuckles before him. How many other extra characters had any sort of noteworthy chemistry with Sonic?

[DabigRG]

20 minutes ago, E-122-Psi said:

 

Shadow was at least a foil and a rival for Sonic, same for Knuckles before him. How many other extra characters had any sort of noteworthy chemistry with Sonic?

Off the top of my head, mainly Jet, Blaze, Chip, and maybe Infinite.

I also wanna cite Emerl and in theory Zazz and Zor, but they were nowhere near as exercised as the others, from what I know.