Has "Solo Sonic" been detrimental to the series?

[Multikaris]

On 2/23/2019 at 6:01 PM, Diogenes said:

Was he, though? As Static said, he let the Master Emerald get broken and he got tricked by Eggman again, resulting in another pointless fight with Sonic. He even got his ass kicked by Chaos 0, who, according to recent discourse, is so weak that only dumb cowardly babies would be afraid of him.

Well, the recent discourse was much later than this game, and it thus doesn’t count. 

[Plasme]

On 2/24/2019 at 3:07 PM, Diogenes said:

What it shows is that they were willing to chump Knuckles to show off Chaos' strength when he first appeared because he's the kind of dopey musclehead who works for that kind of scene.

It's not like Knuckles went through some training arc or had some realization that allowed him to beat Chaos 6, he just did it. His story has nothing to do with him getting stronger.

No.

I know you ignored my pose, but go back and read it.

Knuckles was surprise attacked, the comparison is to Tails in Forces is completely wrong headed.

[Diogenes]

20 minutes ago, Plasme said:

No.

I know you ignored my pose, but go back and read it.

Knuckles was surprise attacked, the comparison is to Tails in Forces is completely wrong headed.

...Knuckles throws the first punch, dude. After they stare each other down for a good 20 seconds. He was not, in any way, surprise attacked.

[Plasme]

23 hours ago, Diogenes said:

...Knuckles throws the first punch, dude. After they stare each other down for a good 20 seconds. He was not, in any way, surprise attacked.

I rewatched it and you are right, Knuckles is aware Chaos is there.

However, after getting knocked back, Knuckles runs back ready to fight and then Chaos runs away.

So I don't know how on earth that is comparable to Tails bending over and literally being unable to fight back, only being saved by Classic Sonic. It's actually an even more absurd comparison than I had originally thought.

[Diogenes]

The point is that Knuckles got chumped by Chaos 0 because he's a doof, and if people are going to declare Chaos 0 to be incredibly weak when complaining about how Tails acted in Forces, that makes Knuckles look even doofier.

[Splash the Otter]

14 minutes ago, Diogenes said:

The point is that Knuckles got chumped by Chaos 0 because he's a doof, and if people are going to declare Chaos 0 to be incredibly weak when complaining about how Tails acted in Forces, that makes Knuckles look even doofier.

If I may play devil's advocate, that sounds more like the Worf Effect than anything else.

[Diogenes]

1 hour ago, Splash the Otter said:

If I may play devil's advocate, that sounds more like the Worf Effect than anything else.

Yes as a strong doof he is a prime target for the Worf thing.

[Foxthefox1000]

I wanna see Shadow become a victim of the Worf, because that'd actually make a villain seem impressive for once.

[Kuzu]

Knuckles is a popular character and people that like him wish for him to be portrayed in a favorable light. Rather than just being a constant joke.

 

Even if it is consistent with his character, it's not exactly fun to see a character you like be shown as incompetent just to highlight how much better the hero is. It goes from being funny to exhausting real fast.

[Wraith]

If you don't like it when knuckles does dumb shit how much do you really like knuckles

[Diogenes]

4 minutes ago, Kuzu the Boloedge said:

Knuckles is a popular character and people that like him wish for him to be portrayed in a favorable light. Rather than just being a constant joke.

 

Even if it is consistent with his character, it's not exactly fun to see a character you like be shown as incompetent just to highlight how much better the hero is. It goes from being funny to exhausting real fast.

I like Knuckles, though. And I like him being a doof. I like him in part because he's a doof. In the same way I like Sonic being kind of an ass and Eggman being a narcissistic man-child and Tails being a nerd. Flaws and quirks and imperfections are part of what makes characters fun.

[Dr. Detective]

It's whatever. Knuckles made a mistake. We know he's capable of fighting that thing in it's 2nd and 4th forms. Let him fall on his butt every once in a while. The Tails thing wasn't a matter of strength to me anyway. Not entirely at least.

It paints the picture of the missed opportunity with Tails being on his own journey to recover some lost confidence after being trapped in a world where he thought Sonic was dead and Eggman had won... for six months! That'd be understandable. Especially with a guy around who can trap people in nightmarish illusions and stuff. It'd be like soaking in Scarecrow's fear toxin!

 But Forces didn't really want to tell that story because it'd be too interesting. On it's own it just makes him look bad. It also doesn't help that Tails did nothing to help Sonic in the opening scene too. Putting those next to each other just gives off a different vibe. 

[Kuzu]

9 minutes ago, Wraith said:

If you don't like it when knuckles does dumb shit how much do you really like knuckles

Once again, nobody likes seeing their favorite character look stupid, no matter how "in-character" it is. It's not a difficult concept to grasp.

 

4 minutes ago, Diogenes said:

I like Knuckles, though. And I like him being a doof. I like him in part because he's a doof. In the same way I like Sonic being kind of an ass and Eggman being a narcissistic man-child and Tails being a nerd. Flaws and quirks and imperfections are part of what makes characters fun.

True, but I don't think I need to say that this series kind of goes too far with that at times. 

It's fine for Knuckles to be a doofus at times, I'm not saying he shouldn't. But without being balanced with some level of competence. He goes from being a flawed but likable character to a liability. At which you begin to question why he's still around...which is where we're at now.

It's why people like characters like Shadow and Blaze, because they can get shit done even if they might fuck up here and there. Knuckles (and other characters) don't get that luxury.

[Wraith]

It was kind of a faulty comparison at the start since they're too completely different situations. Diogenes threw out a dumb jab cause hes holding a dumb grudge. It wasn't worth humoring as a serious argument

3 minutes ago, Kuzu the Boloedge said:

Once again, nobody likes seeing their favorite character look stupid, no matter how "in-character" it is. It's not a difficult concept to grasp.

 

 

I love seeing my favorite characters do dumb shit and would heavily condone more content that featured shadow and blaze doing dumb shit

[Foxthefox1000]

But Shadow's "the coolest" and can't be shown being imperfect or infallible because he's supposed to give off the vibe of total competence and badassery, even if it's at the cost of dumb decisions; it looks cool and he's being edgy, so it fits.

 

[StaticMania]

2 hours ago, Kuzu the Boloedge said:

...nobody likes seeing their favorite character look stupid...

That's an unfortunate side effect for fans that don't understand their favorite character.

It's justified sometimes.

Not in Knuckles' case though, I like to bring up that there is at most 2 scenes per game where Knuckles is stupid and people will just ignore that.

[DabigRG]

Just to put a cap on this, the issue is less Knuckles doing less than wise or intelligent things and more him doing so being ALL he's recognized for. Especially since it got to levels where he can barely do anything else.

3 hours ago, Foxthefox1000 said:

I wanna see Shadow become a victim of the Worf, because that'd actually make a villain seem impressive for once.

His own game, Order to Chaos, and almost anytime Eclipse was nearby.

[Foxthefox1000]

His own game? In what way? I don't remember him getting one-upped in that game. 

As for Eclipse and Order from Chaos? Isn't that Archie? I'm mainly talking games, here.

[Wraith]

30 minutes ago, Foxthefox1000 said:

But Shadow's "the coolest" and can't be shown being imperfect or infallible because he's supposed to give off the vibe of total competence and badassery, even if it's at the cost of dumb decisions; it looks cool and he's being edgy, so it fits.

 

I like Shadow and always thought this mindset was dumb. Let him be silly

[Foxthefox1000]

I'd just like to see more done with the character. But I guess this holds true for most of them as well.

 

 

[Plasme]

11 hours ago, Diogenes said:

The point is that Knuckles got chumped by Chaos 0 because he's a doof, and if people are going to declare Chaos 0 to be incredibly weak when complaining about how Tails acted in Forces, that makes Knuckles look even doofier.

Knuckles has always been a doof, but that's a really weird example to use. Knuckles just gets knocked back in a fight, it only looks goofy because of the game's animation and voice acting. It's literally just Knuckles getting hit in a fight; the game doesn't play up his goofiness at all. I would also hardly say he gets chumped seeing as he immediately runs back and Chaos 0 runs away.

Better examples in Adventure would be Knuckles getting tricked by Eggman about Sonic and being called out for it after they fight. 

And as I said earlier, while Chaos 0 isn't very strong in Adventure (and keep in mind that he runs away from Knuckles), he's far stronger than the illusions in Forces. So the Forces comparison is totally wrong; you are comparing two completely different creatures.

Tails is just a lot weaker in the modern games: he's the tech guy and is incapable of fighting.

[Foxthefox1000]

But the illusions "had the same powers as the originals" according to Shadow.

I know it's literally made irrelevant when every character solos multiples copies at once, but still.

[StaticMania]

Solos multiple copies and every single copy goes down in one hit...besides Zavok and Metal Sonic.

[DabigRG]

11 hours ago, Foxthefox1000 said:

His own game? In what way? I don't remember him getting one-upped in that game. 

As for Eclipse and Order from Chaos? Isn't that Archie? I'm mainly talking games, here.

When Black Doom took the Chaos Emeralds from him while secondguessing what he was doing, paralyzed him with his mind, and managed to elude him long enough to teleport out of the Comet and transform into Devil Doom.

2 hours ago, Foxthefox1000 said:

But the illusions "had the same powers as the originals" according to Shadow.

I know it's literally made irrelevant when every character solos multiples copies at once, but still.

 

1 hour ago, StaticMania said:

Solos multiple copies and every single copy goes down in one hit...besides Zavok and Metal Sonic.

Which could probably have made sense, as an indication of both how strong the characters had become and due to Zavok & Metal being tougher than Shadow & Chaos anyway...except that Forces wasn't really all about making sense and was just going with what was convenient at the time.

[Iko]

Solo Sonic (or Sola Sonica as someone liked to call it back on the Sega Forums) is IMO the most stupid decision Sonic Team had in the history of Sonic. Especially because they replaced Sonic's friends with more versions of Sonic: werewolf Sonic, kirby abilities Sonic (Wisps), Sonic but 2D and with no boost... and the avatar, that's not Sonic but still a replacement for the friends.

The funny thing is that they removed the characters people loved, without removing the issues people had with them: alternate gameplay.

Honestly, I like the characters more for their gameplay than for their stories, so I would like to see many of them being implemented as playable, even if it happens in a secondary mode with no story.

Though, I think that all of them should have an interesting gameplay, else it's useless to have them playable for the sake of it.

I also think that Tails and Knuckles should be updated because their gameplay is not fun at all.

I have some ideas for the movesets of some characters, I might put some of those concepts into a post soon but I'm not sure.

Now some random comments on some random posts that interested me:

On 2/21/2019 at 1:21 PM, Indigo Rush said:

Sonic Advance is the only example we can really point to for this, and I don't think I've ever used a character's special attack once, aside from Amy, who was gimped to begin with. It was inoffensive at best, but fluff at worst. We don't need it.

I think that the Sonic Advance trilogy was unbalanced moveset-wise, but IMO the special attacks for some characters was actually useful. And those characters are NOT Knuckles and Tails (I hated them in the advance trilogy, I only played as Amy, Sonic and Cream as far as I was not forced in order to complete the game).

Amy obviously has her gameplay based on the attack button, while Sonic's slide kick move was actually useful in some situations: (I usually use Advance 2 as a reference)

-when you are going too fast that a roll would make you fall from a platform, you can either jump and brake mid-air, or use the attack to stop just before the end of the platform. It can be useful at times

-The attack will make you stop, but it gives you a small boost at the beginning: you can use it to climb some hard slopes, or to exploit it on the edge of a platform: if you fall while performing this move, you won't lose momentum and Sonic will curl into a ball: I think this is actually cool.

-You can use it to hit a spring or a monitor on landing when you are speedrunning.

-You can use it to dodge hazards, similar to how Kirby and Megaman's slide moves work.

I think it's an useful move, but maybe Sonic is not the best character to use it... maybe someone like Rouge would benefit of a move that involves kicks, like this one.

And Cream uses the attack button to drop on enemies while flying, as I mentioned several different times in the past... that move is actually fun to experiment with, since you can place Cream in air with the right trajectory, then drop and bounce with precision. This only works in Advance 2 though, and probably it's possible to implement it in a character without using an attack button... there are several ways to do it.

On 2/21/2019 at 4:03 PM, Indigo Rush said:

Mkay I think my post addressed most of this after all, but I still think the single-button route is the best. My concern is over-complicating things. A secondary button is, as I said before, at best inoffensive. It's not the end of the world, but it could force a mindset that everyone needs some kind of melee move. 

Anyway, that's my tea.

I think that the Sonic games since Sonic 2 already feature a 2-actions gameplay, it's just that the second action is mapped to a combination of keys instead of a separate button (down + jump); I'm not sure if it's simpler to have the spindash mapped to a key combo or to a different button (from the point of view of a casual gamer), though I think that if a Sonic game has a second button for the spindash, it can be used for other moves by the characters who don't have such move, and having different gameplays (like Advance 1 Amy) would be easier without making the layout too complicated. With the down+jump combo it's less intuitive if you give different moves to the characters to replace the spindash, because that combination of buttons is probably not seen as a different action by the player, and having unexpected results (when you are expecting a spin-dash) from different characters may result in frustration.

Having 2 buttons used this way may also open the doors to more combinations (for example, double jump does the insta-shield, jump + action does the air dash instead), but that would make the controls slighty more complex for real.

I'm not against the single button gameplay though, I think that there is still a lot of unexplored potential in that as well, and I was surprised at how fun Ray's gameplay came out even if it's based on Mario stuff (cape from SMW and acorn from NSMBU).

20 hours ago, Kuzu the Boloedge said:

Once again, nobody likes seeing their favorite character look stupid, no matter how "in-character" it is. It's not a difficult concept to grasp.

I may be strange, but part of why I like Knuckles is because he's funny at times.

I dislike what they did with him in Boom, where he's so stupid that he can't even distinguish right from left; but I'm totally ok with him occasionally being tricked by Eggman and the other characters making fun of him because of that.

And Fang is another character that I like because he's goofy (add in Big the Cat if you want).

So, as long as it's fun, I'm ok with characters being stupid. Being more specific, Knucklesis even better because even if he's silly at times, he still knows when he has to take a matter seriously (at least, this until the end of the Adventure era more or less).