What we care about here is the opinions and reactions of people who are legitimately new to SRB2, and those people aren't going to be coming onto our forums to provide their opinion.
First of all, while I know that obviously won't automatically make everyone (nor even most) visit our forums, why not add a link to them, like, in the game tutorial for example. Chances are people who want to get involved more in the game and/or its community (or even just want some help) will actually do so, and I hope you know just how important the forum/community is for this game. Not the main site, the actual forums.
The tutorial clearly states that you can change the settings and there's already text explicitly saying that you can change, say, the mouse sensitivity.
Okay, that is awesome. Why not text explicitly saying that you can disable vertical mouselook if you find yourself having trouble with it? Or if you feel like it isn't particularly useful to you? Once the sensibility adjustments get applied to the exe, of course, if some are needed.
That would definitely help fight the issue with people
oh so unaccustomed to a game mechanic (mouselook with vertical) that, despite being maybe unconventional in platformers, is the standard in
many other genres, and definitely
not unheard of.
But of course, we cannot expect players to have ever played other games, am I right? Or grasp the concept of ...simply moving the camera back up once you realize mouse down means camera down, and in the future maybe trying to just move the mouse to the side if you want to just look to the side. Again, this when the mouse sensitivity issues get sorted out.
The less complexity in the default controls, the better they are for that purpose.
This is exactly the kind of statement that ends up producing ever more dumbed down versions of games. No, simple doesn't always mean better.
Would you cut the number of controls of a plane simulator game in half because "Nobody ever uses flaps anyway" or "Newbies have trouble with flaps at first"? or actually improve your tutorial on them?
This game isn't just "Sonic 1/2/3 but in 3D", it has way more depth to it, and hiding this away behind a default setting means people won't be getting the full experience the game has to offer. Be it crawla bouncing, or seeing where you're meant to go next in an ascending section (past just the next platform) or even just admiring the levels themselves (who knows, that up there could be a secret cave...).
SRB2 can be beautiful if you play it at its fullest potential, let's teach people how to do that with a badass tutorial instead of having people look for a setting they might never even find.