Well, first off, the removal of black is because I remove any exploits I find myself using. It's not that I removed it because I was losing to people playing as a black skin, I found myself changing to black myself for the explicit purpose of abusing the game. I've removed several game mechanics that I found abusive, and that was one of them. I understand that many people don't like it, but it was a necessary change.
Silver in Thunder Citadel isn't nearly as overpowered as there are plenty of non-silver things in the stage. In a dark level, everything is black, so you blend in everywhere. In Thunder Citadel you only blend in to a few walls, making it a rather small advantage, if any, especially in the new version of the stage. I understand that black was a "cool" color and extremely awesome or something, but you must understand that the balance of the game is important and easily exploitable things should be removed.
Originally, the shields were the following:
Basic (blue) - Protected from one hit. No special effects.
Elemental (green) - Protected from one hit, all elemental damage, and drowning.
Attraction (yellow) - Protected from one hit. Attract rings to the player.
Armageddon (black) - Protected from one hit, exploding for a massive AoE when damaged.
That's it. Only four, one of which had no special abilities at all. Later, we added the Inferno Shield and split the Elemental Shield's three elements onto the three elemental shields, like Sonic 3, making a Liquid Shield which protected from slime and drowning. We also replaced the Basic Shield with the Whirlwind Shield as the Basic Shield was rather boring.
However, in 1.1 we're going to a very different system more similar to the original SRB2 design. The 1.1 shields will look similar to the following:
Whirlwind - Protects from one hit, double jump by pressing jump-spin.
Force - Protects from two hits. Can reflect projectiles by pressing jump-spin.
Elemental - Protects from one hit, drowning and all elemental damage. Can lay down fire trails with the spindash.
Attraction - Protects from one hit. Attract rings to the player.
Armageddon - Protects from one hit, exploding for a massive AoE when damaged. Explosion can be activated with jump-spin.
The old elemental shield is back, taking the effect from the Inferno Shield in the process. The old attraction shield is also back, removing the immunity to electricity. Armageddon keeps the jump-spin activation we added somewhere along the lines, and the Basic Shield is now replaced with two shields which are far more interesting. Obviously, 1.1 is not done yet and this is entirely subject to change. We may find that these don't work out as well as we like, and we can mess around with them again. The basic concept here, though, is very likely to stay, with only minor tweaks done to the details.
The final thing I'd like to address is the complaint that we keep removing or replacing features instead of simply adding more. The reason we don't just add, say, a new Force Shield and Elemental Shield on top of what we already have is a lack of focus. It's highly important to the game to keep things from getting out of hand. If we simply added every cool idea we had, we'd have an overload of material and the game would get far too complicated. While I understand the appeal of adding a bazillion options (as I tend to love adding stuff as well), the bottom line is that to keep player sanity, having a limit on the number of powerups, weapons, options, and features in the game is essential, and creative destruction is the only method we have to keep creeping complexity under control.
Silver in Thunder Citadel isn't nearly as overpowered as there are plenty of non-silver things in the stage. In a dark level, everything is black, so you blend in everywhere. In Thunder Citadel you only blend in to a few walls, making it a rather small advantage, if any, especially in the new version of the stage. I understand that black was a "cool" color and extremely awesome or something, but you must understand that the balance of the game is important and easily exploitable things should be removed.
Originally, the shields were the following:
Basic (blue) - Protected from one hit. No special effects.
Elemental (green) - Protected from one hit, all elemental damage, and drowning.
Attraction (yellow) - Protected from one hit. Attract rings to the player.
Armageddon (black) - Protected from one hit, exploding for a massive AoE when damaged.
That's it. Only four, one of which had no special abilities at all. Later, we added the Inferno Shield and split the Elemental Shield's three elements onto the three elemental shields, like Sonic 3, making a Liquid Shield which protected from slime and drowning. We also replaced the Basic Shield with the Whirlwind Shield as the Basic Shield was rather boring.
However, in 1.1 we're going to a very different system more similar to the original SRB2 design. The 1.1 shields will look similar to the following:
Whirlwind - Protects from one hit, double jump by pressing jump-spin.
Force - Protects from two hits. Can reflect projectiles by pressing jump-spin.
Elemental - Protects from one hit, drowning and all elemental damage. Can lay down fire trails with the spindash.
Attraction - Protects from one hit. Attract rings to the player.
Armageddon - Protects from one hit, exploding for a massive AoE when damaged. Explosion can be activated with jump-spin.
The old elemental shield is back, taking the effect from the Inferno Shield in the process. The old attraction shield is also back, removing the immunity to electricity. Armageddon keeps the jump-spin activation we added somewhere along the lines, and the Basic Shield is now replaced with two shields which are far more interesting. Obviously, 1.1 is not done yet and this is entirely subject to change. We may find that these don't work out as well as we like, and we can mess around with them again. The basic concept here, though, is very likely to stay, with only minor tweaks done to the details.
The final thing I'd like to address is the complaint that we keep removing or replacing features instead of simply adding more. The reason we don't just add, say, a new Force Shield and Elemental Shield on top of what we already have is a lack of focus. It's highly important to the game to keep things from getting out of hand. If we simply added every cool idea we had, we'd have an overload of material and the game would get far too complicated. While I understand the appeal of adding a bazillion options (as I tend to love adding stuff as well), the bottom line is that to keep player sanity, having a limit on the number of powerups, weapons, options, and features in the game is essential, and creative destruction is the only method we have to keep creeping complexity under control.
