Isn't it ironic that Classic Sonic now has more playable characters than Modern Sonic?

[UpCDownCLeftCRightC]

On 12/20/2018 at 11:16 PM, Scritch the Cat said:

I actually completely disagree with that diagnosis.  Even SA1 wasn't trying very hard to translate 2D gameplay into a 3D space, and they've deviated further since.  I could go for them trying to emulate 2D Sonic more.  I've come to the opinion that loops will almost always be pointless in 3D, but a lot of other things from the 2D games works fine in 3D if it's programmed well.

I disagree with your disagreement!

SA1's sonic stages were absolutely trying to create the same feeling of the classics in 3D. No question about it. They appreciated some of the differences between dimensions and so things are not exactly the same but the same style of point A to point B act progression is there almost exactly. You're still on a mostly linear path as well, but since the levels are designed to be "open" along the path within the 3rd dimension you have an illusion that it isnt. But make no mistake, the only difference in level progression is that sonic is primarily facing forward instead of moving to the right or left. The same exact style is present here. Problems arise from this though because now you have to design huge environments to be used within 3-4 minutes like sonic 3's levels were and this is very expensive for development. You should read Yuji Naka's interviews about sonic adventure when he talks about this exact thing directly. This is the primary reason the alternative gameplay styles were invented for the series.

Also yes! Sonic should take a lot of inspiration from the classics but my point is that it cant aim to port the gameplay directly to 3D because it will not work. I think at this point, 20 years later, that is more or less clear. But what has not been tried yet and what mario did in 1996 is figuring out to to translate the fundamental appeal of the 2D games into fully 3D context. What I mean by this is to design the 3D games like you're actually building a fully 3D game, not a 2D style point linear A to B platformer. Of course sonic's A to B gameplay will always exist within the framework on some level (and should) but I strongly believe the best thing to do is to build the game in such a way that you take full advantage of the 3D environment (probably the true vision of Hirokazu Yasuhara) so that you have a complete "zone" that can be traversed in numerous different ways and reused more easily than trying to essentially create a giant rollercoaster along a single track. Creating a huge Zone playground environment and then letting sonic loose (and also attaching story and goals, as well as more intermittent linear "boss" sections) is a great way to expand the core of the series in a way the 2D games couldn't. 

Think about it this way: the 3 tenets of appeal for most people with the classics are momentum, exploration, and platforming. All of the classics do this is varying ways to varying degrees, with S3K widely considered the best of the bunch in how it wrapped them all together in one harmonious package. Here I'm talking about focusing on those same elements but instead of putting sonic along a more or less linear track, giving him a full "zone" world to explore and traverse. Whatever you see on the horizon, you give Sonic the ability to go out and explore it by using these mechanics. It is easy to see how a full game can be built around this as it is not a novel concept but sonic can do it in a way that is different than any other platformer and in a way that I think brings him to his full potential even more than S3K did. And you're talking to a guy that has S3K as his favorite game of all time, by far, bar none.

[Sonic Fan J]

5 hours ago, Scritch the Cat said:

Sonic Heroes was my thought, too.  The game certainly has its faults, but they did manage to break it down into neatly working speed, flight, and power sections.  If you could broaden level designs to make multiple paths in the stages, with a better camera to match, you'd have levels that could be played by different types of characters by themselves, all the way through.  Making such levels would take time, but the result would be a game that had replay value, compared to Sonic Heroes, which got repetitive.

That's pretty much the level designers jobs after all; making levels that compliment the gameplay while building challenges that require getting better at the gameplay to overcome. It really does always amaze me how little is put on the level designers vs. the gameplay designers in why the 3D games don't support multiple playable characters. So many people are always so insistent on putting more and more work on the gameplay designers but never challenge the level designers to come up with and execute enjoyable levels that can work with cohesive gameplay and consequently make the gameplay designers' jobs easier.

Just for an example of how to design something to address Sonic, Tails, and Knuckles using the Boost or Drop Dash for Sonic let's go with an uneven half pipe like from Spring Yard Zone. Now in 2D this is a pretty simple puzzle with the most frequent obstacle being a spiked ball spinning around it requiring the player to either time jumping across or dropping in and using momentum to carry through the halfpipe. Now this can be achieved with all three characters in its most basic form with it being easiest for Tails due to his and hardest for Knuckles due to his weak jump. Sonic meanwhile has to approach it traditionally, though with the Boost or Drop Dash he can trivialize it as well by using his ability to dodge the spike ball followed up with instant speed to clear. To truly make the obstacle a challenge for all three characters you would have to add flying enemies and obstacles to hinder Tails just being able to bypass it safely, and you would have to make sure that the if you have a center platform to jump across that to challenge Knuckles and encourage using his abilities instead of just taking Sonic's route of going down below and Spin Dashing that the wall on the far side is too tall for Knuckles to jump over from the center platform as then he will have to climb. To further separate it from there you could make the platform a bumper so that way Sonic can't just jump up from it but have to go down and avoid the spike ball and use his instant speed gain abilities to clear while Knuckles can glide across and use the bumper to gain the height he needs to reach the flat part of the wall and climb up. Of course all three characters can still just go down into the halfpipe, get hit, lose there rings, and while flashing spin dash to clear the obstacle. You can clear the same way with everyone that is more timely and costly, but good play with all of their unique abilities get's you past quickly and proper use of enemies and obstacles also prevents Tails from cheapening it.
So how about in 3D? pretty much what was already done with Tails; add appropriate enemies and obstacles so as to not cheapen it. While Tails' and Sonic are both as simple as add more spiked balls in a 3D space, as well as some additional enemies and maybe Anti-Air projectiles for Tails, to keep it challenging should you use there distinct abilities, Knuckles looks harder if you think about just climbing along the wall on the sides and bypassing the halfpipe entirely. That really just shows a lack of imagination as there are still plenty of options. You could go the easy way and make it an un-scalable surface add (honestly the single easiest way to deal with Knuckles abusing his climbing to great heights to just glide over everything in any number of situations), you could add any number of obstacles and enemies onto the wall to make it the less idea route, or you can get really creative with the environment and make the sides waterfalls, wind walls, or even giant fan blades that spin to fast for Knuckles to grab onto and prevent him from reaching a wall behind them to gain any height to trivialize the obstacle by gliding over it.

So, while my examples may be a little wordy, I find that both provide level design options that challenge the characters' abilities to clear while still allowing to just clear using the basic gameplay. At no point did I have to redesign the characters or build unique levels just for them, or even go so far as to build three separate games and cram them into a single one. All I had to do was sit down and design the level better with the character abilities in mind, he same job that the level designers have in the first place. If someone as untrained and inexperienced like me can come up with simple reasonable solutions in just a handful of minutes if that long then I definitely feel that the onus is on the level designers to step it up and take some of the pressure off of the gameplay team.

[Roger_van_der_weide]

Well, people do pay closer attention to level design these days. Sonic Forces was constantly under fire on that. From fans, anyway.

And I have to say, it's kind of fascinating seeing the "Well it's easier to implant Sonic's friends in a 2d game" argument so often, even tough Modern Sonic's also 90% 2d gameplay.
Just kick Classic Sonic out of Forces and replace with Knuckles/ Tails. Voila. Problem solved.

 Ironically, the most 3d game Sonic games we had this decade, Rise of Lyric and Lego dimensions, had a full cast of playable characters.
Not that I count either as an example of a Good Sonic game or anything, I'm just sayin'.
 

[The 3rd Option]

10 minutes ago, Roger_van_der_weide said:

Just kick Classic Sonic out of Forces and replace with Knuckles/ Tails. Voila. Problem solved.

It's not that simple. How are they supposed to accomodate Tails and Knuckles into 3D when they can pretty much fly everywhere?

Are they going to shoehorn them onto Sonic's stages like 3&K and Mania? Or are they going to tailor their own stages to their abilities a la the Adventure games? It's admittedly a tricky question.

[Sonic Fan J]

2 hours ago, The 3rd Option said:

It's not that simple. How are they supposed to accomodate Tails and Knuckles into 3D when they can pretty much fly everywhere?

I hope you realize that neither of them can just fly indefinitely for free as your argument implies. If Knuckles does not have a high point to glide from his glide will take him nowhere and Tails can only fly for so long before having to land. Not to mention that neither flight method is particularly speedy reducing their effectiveness to dealing with platforming only with the current tendency of levels being built to resemble long hallways that stretch on forever. A lot of your argument as you present it is implying using there abilities as they are presented outside of gameplay instead of based on their actual gameplay mechanics which haven't really changed since their inceptions. Right now that's the only way you can claim that they'll just fly over the whole level since you are speaking about there abilities with zero consideration for level design to challenge said abilities or even the limitations of said abilities, nor have you even addressed the gameplay functionality and intention of their abilities. You keep speaking exclusively in the extreme of their abilities as presented solely outside of gameplay as though that is how they play and it is honestly weakening your argument.

3 hours ago, Roger_van_der_weide said:

Well, people do pay closer attention to level design these days. Sonic Forces was constantly under fire on that. From fans, anyway.

Really it's just a shame that people are only now starting to take notice, but even then from what I've seen it is more just focused on Sonic and not in any realization of how much more important good level design is in regards to multiple playable characters. Or at least for those who complain about only Sonic being playable.

3 hours ago, Roger_van_der_weide said:

 Ironically, the most 3d game Sonic games we had this decade, Rise of Lyric and Lego dimensions, had a full cast of playable characters.

It is interesting to say the least that entities outside of SEGA are willing to gamble on multiple playable characters, playing through the same stages no less, as it circumstantially lends weight to my concern about the skill of SEGA's level designers that have worked on or are still working on Sonic.

[Multikaris]

3 hours ago, Roger_van_der_weide said:

Well, people do pay closer attention to level design these days. Sonic Forces was constantly under fire on that. From fans, anyway.

And I have to say, it's kind of fascinating seeing the "Well it's easier to implant Sonic's friends in a 2d game" argument so often, even tough Modern Sonic's also 90% 2d gameplay.
Just kick Classic Sonic out of Forces and replace with Knuckles/ Tails. Voila. Problem solved.

 Ironically, the most 3d game Sonic games we had this decade, Rise of Lyric and Lego dimensions, had a full cast of playable characters.
Not that I count either as an example of a Good Sonic game or anything, I'm just sayin'.
 

LEGO Dimensions only had Sonic, plus tons of characters outside the franchise entirely. Not to mention that it had a fuller contingient of side characters than anything else pre-Forces. Though only 1 non-relevant quest giver in the hubs.

[DabigRG]

4 hours ago, The 3rd Option said:

It's not that simple. How are they supposed to accomodate Tails and Knuckles into 3D when they can pretty much fly everywhere?

Are they going to shoehorn them onto Sonic's stages like 3&K and Mania? Or are they going to tailor their own stages to their abilities a la the Adventure games? It's admittedly a tricky question.

I think he meant give them 2d stages.

[Scritch the Cat]

Roger's idea might have been fitting at one point, but now that we have Sonic Mania Plus and will most likely get other such games, it's not a sure thing that Modern Sonic will include 2D sections, guest-starring Classic Sonic or not.

 

I don't think they should, either, since the feelings the two sorts of games invoke feel antithetical to me.  The officially 2D games, at least in the best cases, promote a sense of freedom; encouraging players to build up speed, zip up walls and off cliffs and explore.  When 3D games force you into 2D, it's restrictive; essentially there to force you to go through sections in a way you might not if you had more choices.

Edited December 25, 2018 by Scritch the Cat
Added a preposition.

[The 3rd Option]

20 minutes ago, Scritch the Cat said:

Roger's idea might have been fitting at one point, but now that we have Sonic Mania Plus and will most likely get other such games, it's not a sure thing that Modern Sonic will include 2D sections, guest-starring Classic Sonic or not.

 

I don't think they should, either, since the feelings the two sorts of games invoke feel antithetical to me.  The officially 2D games, at least in the best cases, promote a sense of freedom; encouraging players to build up speed, zip up walls and off cliffs and explore.  When 3D games force you into 2D, it's restrictive; essentially there to force you go through sections in a way you might not if you had more choices.

I'm honestly starting to think that 2D sections are little more than a budget saver at this point. The Boost games are so intrinsically fast that they need very long "racetracks" in order for them to feel substantial at all. Add up the visual flash that is outright part of Sonic's image, and the boost games become a money sink for so little content. This is why they need 2D to cut down on complexity while adding a way to extend the level. Is it any wonder that Unleashed and Generations have so few day/Modern stages despite them having the best levels of the boost games?

On this point, I have to concede that despite how thrilling the boost style is, it's just an inefficient style development-wise.

[DabigRG]

Can't they just use the enlarge tool to stretch out the levels?

[The 3rd Option]

9 minutes ago, DabigRG said:

Can't they just use the enlarge tool to stretch out the levels?

They can either do that or keep repeating scenery and terrain over and over again. But we need to give them credit, they won't resort to that to pad out the "main" gameplay.

[DabigRG]

9 minutes ago, The 3rd Option said:

They can either do that or keep repeating scenery and terrain over and over again. But we need to give them credit, they won't resort to that to pad out the "main" gameplay.

I wasn't been that genuine, but it'd be more cohesive than just doing 2d sections at this point for some people, right?

[Scritch the Cat]

4 hours ago, The 3rd Option said:

I'm honestly starting to think that 2D sections are little more than a budget saver at this point. The Boost games are so intrinsically fast that they need very long "racetracks" in order for them to feel substantial at all. Add up the visual flash that is outright part of Sonic's image, and the boost games become a money sink for so little content. This is why they need 2D to cut down on complexity while adding a way to extend the level. Is it any wonder that Unleashed and Generations have so few day/Modern stages despite them having the best levels of the boost games?

On this point, I have to concede that despite how thrilling the boost style is, it's just an inefficient style development-wise.

I agree with all of your points, except that I wouldn't even necessarily call the boost style thrilling, because it sucks out most challenge.  Sonic up to that point had to choose between several moves that each had strengths and weaknesses; usually some trade-off between speed and offensive capability.  Running accelerated Sonic in motion, but made him vulnerable to hitting enemies.  Somersaulting and jumping decelerated Sonic in motion, but let him damage enemies on contact.  The spin dash accelerated Sonic and let him damage enemies on contact, but required him to stop moving.  Boost effectively does everything that all of those do except jumping, and even that it can make less useful.  It doesn't just give Sonic all the acceleration he usually needs; it also lets him damage--and when they have no HP, destroy--any enemy he passes through.  Also, while it's limited to a meter, that meter recharges when you destroy enemies, meaning that sometimes you can basically boost to charge the boost.  Absurdly, there will be enemies allegedly sent to stop Sonic placed in a line for that purpose alone.

Frankly, the lesson here is that overpowered heroes are not interesting.  At least not unless they power up the villains to compensate, but that doesn't seem to be how the Sonic series operates now.  They want to give people an ego-trip instead of a good game.

4 hours ago, DabigRG said:

Can't they just use the enlarge tool to stretch out the levels?

 

3 hours ago, The 3rd Option said:

They can either do that or keep repeating scenery and terrain over and over again. But we need to give them credit, they won't resort to that to pad out the "main" gameplay.

 

3 hours ago, DabigRG said:

I wasn't been that genuine, but it'd be more cohesive than just doing 2d sections at this point for some people, right?

Stretching out the levels to compensate would make boost games even more boring, since that would increase the amount of space where nothing is happening.  When Sonic speeds through a place that has nothing happening, he might as well just be standing still.  Forced 2D segments may be cheap, but they're preferable to something that bad.

[Roger_van_der_weide]

10 hours ago, Scritch the Cat said:

Roger's idea might have been fitting at one point, but now that we have Sonic Mania Plus and will most likely get other such games, it's not a sure thing that Modern Sonic will include 2D sections, guest-starring Classic Sonic or not.

Aww, so optimistic and logical.

I don't know if Sega thinks like that. I mean, look at Sonic Generations. Came out right after Sonic 4, and had half of it's game dedicated to 2d Classic Sonic and yet STILL felt the need to make Modern Sonic's levels into 2d for huge chunks. While there's also Sonic Generations on the 3ds that's entirely in 2d.
Clearly fair balance wasn't on the menu.

I mean, I agree with your statement that 3d games shouldn't cripple themselves with pointless 2d gameplay anymore now we got Mania, but that's clearly not Sonic Team's thinking process.
Probably what the 3rd option said, it's cheaper.
Not to mention the level designers have no idea how to intergrate actual level design within the 3d boost gameplay so have to rely on 2d to get any kind of level design in that's more advanced then "Run trough tunnel".

I do see more people complain about it, so who knows, maybe it'll get trough to Sonic Team.


This is why I'm so annoyed they spend so long making a new engine for Sonic Forces that focuses on Realistic lighting, of all things.
If you're going to make a new game engine for boost games, how about focusing on an engine that makes creating enormous quanities of level real estate easier and more dynamic, so you can actually make the game last longer then 30 minutes?
So they spend months making a hyper detailed and complex looking town, and then plop down one street containing 30 seconds of gameplay.
Brilliant.

For Unleashed, at least I can understand, that game has the slower and atmospheric Werehog, and Hubs. Forces' only excuse is the scale of the story, which they already botched up, so whatever.


And I have a problem with their thought process of speed. To me, speed isn't just about the technical speed, it's about the rhytm and dynamic use of speed as well.
Consider a spaceship and a skateboard.
A spaceship is clearly faster then a skateboard, yet watching a spaceship fly in empty space still feels slow.
While watching someone roll down a mountain on a skateboard, dodging traffic and making sharp turns and jumps feels super fast.
I think a slower Sonic game but one where you're constantly dodging and jumping and doing dynamic things feels faster then a Sonic game where you move faster but just run straight all the time.

And when there's more dynamic level design, that means the skills of the character you're playing start mattering more, and thus Tails, Knuckles and co can become useful again. Amazing.

[Scritch the Cat]

Speaking of Sonic Team's weird thought processes when it comes to this series, what's up with their imperative to restrict Mighty and Ray to Classic Sonic?  If they want to declare it's a separate subseries in an alternate universe, complete with an explanation for the divergence involving time travel altering history, fine.  But why do any characters, as core concepts, have to be restricted to one universe while others aren't?  More than half of what you'd consider the primary protagonists now in the modern series originated in Classic Sonic.  

This is particularly bad since, given Mighty, Ray, and the Chaotix were confined to spin-offs, a lot of people had no idea they existed until well into the dreamcast era, thanks to the Internet and Sonic Heroes.  I found out about Mighty only when the rest of the Chaotix returned and prompted me to look their history up, and now the Chaotix can't be whole anymore?  That is super-lame.

[Roger_van_der_weide]

Agreed, the split up is really weird and confusing in who can co-exist in multiple subseries and who can't.
At least there's 2 consolations, 1 ) At least characters not allowed to get into Modern Sonic are spared from terrible writing and 2 ) there's a 159% chance Sonic Team will change their mind and retcon their rules 5 or 6 times before the next interview where they gets to explain how this mess is supposed to work again.

[Your Vest Friend]

Mighty and Ray (and Fang, Bark and Bean who are often overlooked in this conversation in the wake of Mania Plus)'s segregation is consistent with what they've been doing for 15 years up to this point. They don't want them in modern Sonic so they're not in modern Sonic, whether it means no appearances at all or a home in classic Sonic. 

Heck, they've gone harder on it since Mania Plus, which is bitterly hilarious. 

[Diogenes]

2 hours ago, Scritch the Cat said:

This is particularly bad since, given Mighty, Ray, and the Chaotix were confined to spin-offs, a lot of people had no idea they existed until well into the dreamcast era, thanks to the Internet and Sonic Heroes.  I found out about Mighty only when the rest of the Chaotix returned and prompted me to look their history up, and now the Chaotix can't be whole anymore?  That is super-lame.

The Chaotix haven't been "whole" since Chaotix itself, nothing's really changed on that front. Like VEDJ-F said, there's always been characters that got left behind; Sonic Team's never considered every Sonic character who ever existed to be important enough to continue existing.

[DabigRG]

4 hours ago, Scritch the Cat said:

Speaking of Sonic Team's weird thought processes when it comes to this series, what's up with their imperative to restrict Mighty and Ray to Classic Sonic?  If they want to declare it's a separate subseries in an alternate universe, complete with an explanation for the divergence involving time travel altering history, fine.  But why do any characters, as core concepts, have to be restricted to one universe while others aren't?  More than half of what you'd consider the primary protagonists now in the modern series originated in Classic Sonic.  

This is particularly bad since, given Mighty, Ray, and the Chaotix were confined to spin-offs, a lot of people had no idea they existed until well into the dreamcast era, thanks to the Internet and Sonic Heroes.  I found out about Mighty only when the rest of the Chaotix returned and prompted me to look their history up, and now the Chaotix can't be whole anymore?  That is super-lame.

I think that's them trying to make Classic even more special. Especially given the mixed reception of a lot of Modern characters.

[The 3rd Option]

1 hour ago, DabigRG said:

I think that's them trying to make Classic even more special. Especially given the mixed reception of a lot of Modern characters.

It all boils down to how Sonic Team just needs to make the other characters just "play like Sonic" for them to be well-received. Hell, people actually liked the Avatar for that very reason.

[Scritch the Cat]

7 hours ago, VEDJ-F said:

Mighty and Ray (and Fang, Bark and Bean who are often overlooked in this conversation in the wake of Mania Plus)'s segregation is consistent with what they've been doing for 15 years up to this point. They don't want them in modern Sonic so they're not in modern Sonic, whether it means no appearances at all or a home in classic Sonic. 

Heck, they've gone harder on it since Mania Plus, which is bitterly hilarious. 

 

4 hours ago, Diogenes said:

The Chaotix haven't been "whole" since Chaotix itself, nothing's really changed on that front. Like VEDJ-F said, there's always been characters that got left behind; Sonic Team's never considered every Sonic character who ever existed to be important enough to continue existing.

While obviously bringing back characters isn't a priority, that didn't stop them from bringing back Metal Sonic, Vector, Espio and Charmy. Moreover, I can't remember any other time that Sonic Team declared an intention not to bring back characters.

47 minutes ago, The 3rd Option said:

It all boils down to how Sonic Team just needs to make the other characters just "play like Sonic" for them to be well-received. Hell, people actually liked the Avatar for that very reason.

Except Mighty plays like Sonic, or at least he can.  Maybe not Ray, but Mighty could.  Also, characters that don't play like Sonic haven't been playable often lately, but it's not like they've disappeared.

22 minutes ago, Miragnarok said:

I mean characters like the Freedom Fighters, Heavy & Bomb, the SSSSS Squad,  The Kukkus, Witchcart, etc.

To be fair, games can't really "bring back" or "kill off" characters who were never there.  I'm not counting American-developed spin-off games.

[Diogenes]

20 minutes ago, Scritch the Cat said:

While obviously bringing back characters isn't a priority, that didn't stop them from bringing back Metal Sonic, Vector, Espio and Charmy. Moreover, I can't remember any other time that Sonic Team declared an intention not to bring back characters.

Yeah, they use the characters they want and they don't use the characters they don't, and they're free to change their minds on any character at any time. And there's usually no reason to specifically say they're not going to use certain characters; we can already see well enough who is and isn't being used.

[DabigRG]

4 hours ago, Scritch the Cat said:

 

While obviously bringing back characters isn't a priority, that didn't stop them from bringing back Metal Sonic, Vector, Espio and Charmy.

 

Metal Sonic already in due to the necessary CD reference in Adventure and The Chaotix were convenient, already made templates for them to rework for Heroes.

4 hours ago, Scritch the Cat said:

Moreover, I can't remember any other time that Sonic Team declared an intention not to bring back characters.

 

Big.

[Scritch the Cat]

12 minutes ago, DabigRG said:

Big.

That was an April Fool's joke started by this site, and then a lot of haters just didn't look their gift horse close enough in the mouth before spreading it.  For a character whose original playstyle was so antithetical to what they're doing now, Big is absurdly popular with Sega these days, and some of the fandom, too.

[DabigRG]

2 hours ago, Scritch the Cat said:

That was an April Fool's joke started by this site, and then a lot of haters just didn't look their gift horse close enough in the mouth before spreading it.  For a character whose original playstyle was so antithetical to what they're doing now, Big is absurdly popular with Sega these days, and some of the fandom, too.

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