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Does Sonic really work as a game?


Mountaindewandsprite

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4 minutes ago, Sega DogTagz said:

If the name of the game is to make a profit, then wouldn't that make such carnival games a bastion of design due to their ability to acheive their intended purpose? 

Also who goes in thinking those games are fair? Everyone knows they are rigged and half the fun is trying to be the guy who beats the system for ultimate justice. 

No one would ever accuse Casio games and slot machines of being poorly designed. A lot goes into those as an art of separating chumps from their money. They acheive their goal and keep people coming back for more. No matter how nefarious, that is a Hallmark of good game design. 

Jesus christ are you serious

Are you next going to argue that literally stealing from people is good behavior because it serves its purpose of enriching yourself at the expense of other people?

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22 minutes ago, Sega DogTagz said:

Also who goes in thinking those games are fair? Everyone knows they are rigged and half the fun is trying to be the guy who beats the system for ultimate justice. 

No one would ever accuse Casio games and slot machines of being poorly designed. A lot goes into those as an art of separating chumps from their money. They acheive their goal and keep people coming back for more. No matter how nefarious, that is a Hallmark of good game design. 

That’s not fun, that’s exploitation and psychological manipulation, something people actually get addicted to and struggle with, which if that’s your intent and “Art”, then no, that isn’t good design meant to benefit the consumer 

 

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I can actually agree with the notion that game design rules only go as far as what the game needs to accomplish it's goal. There are games that don't play fair. There are games that are intentionally tedius or manipulative. There are games that are overly punishing. Sometimes these feelings come from mistakes or oversight but sometimes they're part of the point. They drive you toward a certain playstyle or create the feeling the game was trying to leave you with all along.

 

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That mindset is what lead to loot box culture in the AAA industry , and is almost universally despised, whether it’s intentional or not. It’s not good or respectable (like say playstyles made with the players enjoyment in mind) just because it’s intentionally designed that way from the start 

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4 minutes ago, KHCast said:

That mindset is what lead to loot box culture in the AAA industry , and is almost universally despised, whether it’s intentional or not. It’s not good or respectable (like say playstyles made with the players enjoyment in mind) just because it’s intentionally designed that way from the start 

Except that's wrong because theres an entire spectrum of games outside of the AAA industry you place undo importance on. 

The Souls games use punishing mechanics that create stress to hammer it into the player to play carefully. Their methods have been adopted by a wide spectrum of games in the indie scene. Are they wrong for this?

Papers Please is a game that uses the tedium of paperwork to lure players into making mistakes that have tangible consequences in the story. 

Negative reinforcement is a completely different thing than the AAA industry exploiting addicts. 

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Quote

 

If the name of the game is to make a profit, then wouldn't that make such carnival games a bastion of design due to their ability to acheive their intended purpose? 

 Also who goes in thinking those games are fair? Everyone knows they are rigged and half the fun is trying to be the guy who beats the system for ultimate justice. 

No one would ever accuse Casio games and slot machines of being poorly designed. A lot goes into those as an art of separating chumps from their money. They acheive their goal and keep people coming back for more. No matter how nefarious, that is a Hallmark of good game design. [/quote]

 

This is completely different from what you’re arguing. It’s using the accumulation of money as the measurement of good game design, likening it to casinos. Hence why I think that’s a bad way to measure quality and “good” game design. 

I agree that difficult games can still be fun and well designed, the souls games are still games that I feel positively attracted players to keep going even after dying. That’s a different argument entirely from mine 

 

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2 hours ago, Sega DogTagz said:

No one would ever accuse Casio games and slot machines of being poorly designed.

Considering there's already an exhausting amount of legislation and security in place to prevent cheating both in-house and by casino guests, I think more than a few people would be upset if they felt the odds were deliberately manipulated to go against them, even in a purely luck-based system like slot machines.

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Also shut up. You know how much money I make every year working at a place that separates dummies from their money?

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This is completely different from what you’re arguing. It’s using the accumulation of money as the measurement of good game design, likening it to casinos. Hence why I think that’s a bad way to measure quality and “good” game design. 

I agree that difficult games can still be fun and well designed, the souls games are still games that I feel positively attracted players to keep going even after dying. That’s a different argument entirely from mine 

You equated what I was saying to the strategies lootboxes and AAA microtransations use in the first place, which isn't what my post said. 

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3 hours ago, Diogenes said:

Jesus christ are you serious

Are you next going to argue that literally stealing from people is good behavior because it serves its purpose of enriching yourself at the expense of other people?

see there are a lot of purposes to games being unfair in situations like that. for instance a game being deliberately hard and uinforgiving means not one person can spend the whole night playing only one game so that other people can play too, a principle that arcades share as well. that and there is the fact like someone else said that the games are meant to stratify players heavily so as to make gaining a prize really special not to one person but to the game as a whole because the games are being played within a broader context. it's so innocuous and yet here you are throwing a fit like cultural festivals at schools should be illegal or something lol

it's abundantly clear that "rules of game design" are bound to the context in which games are being played because after all videogames did not invent games or the act of playing so it's stupid to try and frame a game through falsely objective criteria disregarding social aspects of playing that game. this applies all things considered to complaining about sonic for being "trial and error" when the legacy of sonic was more or less discontinued and that also happened to most sega games. the framework is based on what's influential today and sonic isn't that influential

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5 minutes ago, Catallena said:

see there are a lot of purposes to games being unfair in situations like that. for instance a game being deliberately hard and uinforgiving means not one person can spend the whole night playing only one game so that other people can play too, a principle that arcades share as well. that and there is the fact like someone else said that the games are meant to stratify players heavily so as to make gaining a prize really special not to one person but to the game as a whole because the games are being played within a broader context. it's so innocuous and yet here you are throwing a fit like cultural festivals at schools should be illegal or something lol

it's abundantly clear that "rules of game design" are bound to the context in which games are being played because after all videogames did not invent games or the act of playing so it's stupid to try and frame a game through falsely objective criteria disregarding social aspects of playing that game. this applies all things considered to complaining about sonic for being "trial and error" when the legacy of sonic was more or less discontinued and that also happened to most sega games. the framework is based on what's influential today and sonic isn't that influential

There's a very clear distinction between "Challenging but fair" and "Bullshit hard". Something like MegaMan is challenging but fair. Sonic Advance 3 is bullshit hard.

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is that right

because it looks like which games are challenging and which games are bullshit hard, it's all very arbitrary and by the way personal. is something like mushihimesama bullshit hard or what

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1 hour ago, DreamSaturn said:

Sonic Advance 3 is bullshit hard.

I disagree with this on principal.

But, you know what? This is absolutely true.

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2 minutes ago, Catallena said:

is that right

because it looks like which games are challenging and which games are bullshit hard, it's all very arbitrary and by the way personal. is something like mushihimesama bullshit hard or what

You know damn well you're cherrypicking. If you go gungho onto every platform, you see, then that's your fault for fucking up.

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Just now, DreamSaturn said:

You know damn well you're cherrypicking. If you go gungho onto every platform, you see, then that's your fault for fucking up.

i don't get it. does sonic advance 3 strap your fingers to the buttons you're not supposed to press at any given time and slowly injects poison into your blood vessels unless you force yourself to die or something. i can use this argument, "it's your own fault if you do whatever it is that makes you die", to justify whatever i want in any game. sounds like i'm not the one cherrypicking because i for one don't mind traps like these

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Just now, Catallena said:

i don't get it. does sonic advance 3 strap your fingers to the buttons you're not supposed to press at any given time and slowly injects poison into your blood vessels unless you force yourself to die or something. i can use this argument, "it's your own fault if you do whatever it is that makes you die", to justify whatever i want in any game. sounds like i'm not the one cherrypicking because i for one don't mind traps like these

No, Sonic Advance 3, however, is badly designed because the Chaos Emerald system is completely counter-intuitive to how the levels are designed, the partner system is poorly thought out (You pick Knuckles and Tails? Well, I sure hope you enjoy not being able to glide and climb with a character literally defined by his ability to glide and climb!), the screencrunch makes it borderline impossible to see incoming enemies, spikes, and instant kill death pits and crushers.

MegaMan, conversely, clearly choreographs that you're supposed to memorize patterns, take your time, take things slow. 

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how can the chaos emerald system be counter intuitive to how the levels are designed if they are the reason to how they are designed the way they are. you can even try as many times as you like with whichever teams you like. the characters are tools to achieve these kinds of goals and if you're not comfortable using a certain set of partners maybe switch them out? there's no hindrance whatsoever in doing so and this is the way the game makes a very unique feeling that the characters are a group of friends helping each other out the best way they can. something that no other game has achieved. it's about that

also i'm not sure how i'm supposed to take my time and take things slow when there are fading platforms specifically designed to kill me if i don't know beforehand what's going to happen but ok

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The Chaos Emerald system is counter-intuitive to the design of Sonic even if they kinda sorta designed around it.

It's not really Sonic like to force exploration like that as well as occasionally forcing different character combos just to slowly comb levels for 2-3 items for 100%.

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6 minutes ago, Catallena said:

how can the chaos emerald system be counter intuitive to how the levels are designed if they are the reason to how they are designed the way they are. you can even try as many times as you like with whichever teams you like. the characters are tools to achieve these kinds of goals and if you're not comfortable using a certain set of partners maybe switch them out? there's no hindrance whatsoever in doing so and this is the way the game makes a very unique feeling that the characters are a group of friends helping each other out the best way they can. something that no other game has achieved. it's about that

also i'm not sure how i'm supposed to take my time and take things slow when there are fading platforms specifically designed to kill me if i don't know beforehand what's going to happen but ok

I can see you make it a habit of deliberately misunderstanding what someone is saying.

The partner system also doesn't help when some paths that lead to the Chao are blocked off unless you have very particular characters, some of which are borderline impossible to reach without particular partner combinations.The level design, particularly in places like Route 99 is also designed closer to something like Sonic Rush, which in of itself would be fine if the screencrunch wasn't a factor.

It's almost as if I also mentioned memorizing patterns and paying attention to your surroundings, something you conveniently left out. What a concept.

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13 minutes ago, StaticMania said:

The Chaos Emerald system is counter-intuitive to the design of Sonic even if they kinda sorta designed around it.

It's not really Sonic like to force exploration like that as well as occasionally forcing different character combos just to slowly comb levels for 2-3 items for 100%.

...why? it's there, it exists and it's a sonic game. don't you have to look around for rings if you're short on them for the special stage even in sonic 1? don't you have to backtrack? don't you have to be on the lookout for giant rings in sonic 3 and use specific abilities to reach them sometimes even if it's not absolutely obligatory? i could agree that in these other games you don't have to do all of the exploration to get what exploration offers (you only need maybe 10 out of some 30 giant rings in the game, or 50 rings out of maybe 150 rings on the stage), but to say that exploration is antithetical to sonic sounds just plain wrong.

12 minutes ago, DreamSaturn said:

I can see you make it a habit of deliberately misunderstanding what someone is saying.

The partner system also doesn't help when some paths that lead to the Chao are blocked off unless you have very particular characters, some of which are borderline impossible to reach without particular partner combinations.The level design, particularly in places like Route 99 is also designed closer to something like Sonic Rush, which in of itself would be fine if the screencrunch wasn't a factor.

It's almost as if I also mentioned memorizing patterns and paying attention to your surroundings, something you conveniently left out. What a concept.

you talk like what you said about patterns or surroundings made up some sort of cohesive argument about the series which it doesn't and then again if it did it'd be already undone by even the slightest mishap like the one i showed and that you never cared to acknowledge because "oh it's a one-time thing" well i thought there shouldn't be one-time things especially ones as deliberate as that in a game so well rounded like you claim megaman to be. i understood what you're saying you're just not acknowledging how is the best way to play the game out of your free will and just so that you can keep complaining. if you approached sonic advance 3 as a game in which you have to constantly tweak your tools and strategies you'd surely get more fun out of it, instead of choosing partners out of (not saying it's your case just as an example and in fact a fair one, it's not wrong) choosing your favorite pair like it's an expression of your personality.

and you know what that's fine because as i said the line between challenging and bullshit is not clear contrary to what you said. there's things you're willing to put up with and there's things you're not willing to put up with. you play your way because you want something out of the game which for many reasons including your relationship with the series sonic advance 3 just doesn't deliver. just don't bring any of this clear line crap because it's not true

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1 hour ago, Catallena said:

don't you have to look around for rings if you're short on them for the special stage even in sonic 1?

If you're bad and don't know how to do the skill, yes you do.

1 hour ago, Catallena said:

don't you have to be on the lookout for giant rings in sonic 3 and use specific abilities to reach them sometimes even if it's not absolutely obligatory?

Exploring means you find more/have more chances to do them. You could easily get all 7 gem stones just by playing the game normally and being the bare minimum of observant.

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16 minutes ago, StaticMania said:

If you're bad and don't know how to do the skill, yes you do.

Exploring means you find more/have more chances to do them. You could easily get all 7 gem stones just by playing the game normally and being the bare minimum of observant.

first you can lose all of your rings even if you have 999 of them by the end of a stage and all will be for naught. if you take any hit anywhere in the stage you'll lose them, recover maybe 20 and then have to search for more. second what's the problem with being bad exactly? you speak as if you were born speedrunning sonic but we all were bad at some point and found difficulties in "playing the game normally and being observant"and maybe we finished the game without the emeralds the first time. and that's okay because we found the games fun all the same, or else we would've dropped them. are you only ever allowed to have fun if you don't fail? that's absurd

and that's why sonic obviously works as a game. it never teaches you everything about it like good game design principles tell us games should but it does teach you enough for you to want to know more by yourself. that's enough for me and I don't understand why it shouldn't be

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1 hour ago, Catallena said:

are you only ever allowed to have fun if you don't fail? that's absurd

Turn on the skill cap, become a fun hater.

That's the true secret to enjoying video games.

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5 hours ago, Tracker_TD said:

If you're considering something as broken as Heroes

I still don't get what people hate about Heroes that much. It wasn't perfect by any stretch of the imagination, but it was a good game. I had waaaaaaaaaay more fun with it than Sonic Colors, Generations and Lost World put together.

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2 minutes ago, Tarnish said:

I still don't get what people hate about Heroes that much.

The fact that almost any action with any measure of speed risks throwing you to your death on all but the earliest levels, primarily.

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