Yeah, I wouldn't have axed emblems entirely. There's still value in having them around, just inherently. It gives people a reason to go back and replay the stages, rather than just going through them once and never touching them again. Since it doesn't affect anything, there's no harm in leaving them in for the people who liked them. And for the people who didn't, they can just ignore them.
But honestly? I liked the emblem progression, and I find it to be a bit of a shame you decided to just discard it entirely. I understand there were gripes with them, but that didn't mean it had to go full stop. Personally, what I would've done is:
- Add emblem radar to make it easier to find emblems.
- Slash emblem requirements so that you need, maybe about 1/3 to unlock all the levels. That seems like a good balance without being too much of a grind. The rest of the 2/3rds can just be for fun.
- And finally, if you didn't feel like revamping the hub, you could change the unlock messages from just saying "new level", to actually telling you what level you unlocked + their location in the hub, so people don't have trouble finding them.
I think those would've been good changes to make without totally compromising the original progression flow of the pack. Ultimately though, it's up to you, and if you genuinely felt like removing it, that's your prerogative. Just keep in mind, you don't have to completely give into everything people say about your mod. It's still your creation, and you should to try and balance what you want it to be, with what other people are saying it should be.
This would have been good, although I also do really like having a "just the levels in order" version like we have now. SA2Blast has a second version called a "multiplayer patch," so I know it's at least
possible for the two to coexist.
Personally, while the hub thing would be fine for the first playthrough if it were toned down a bit, it would suck for replays. For SRB2 mods I typically do not, as some people say emblems kept them from doing, "speed through the game and then move on to the next." SRB2 tends to hit me like a days or weeks long fever, it usually goes more like this:
Speed through a mod, then go back and replay with different characters or record attack or emblem hunting if there's emblem hints and radar and the levels are interesting enough. (This pack would definitely have gotten some emblem hunting out of me eventually, if it had those and didn't already ask me to find every emblem.)
And then
move on to a previous mod, because there's so rarely multiple stage mods I'm interested in between SRB2 obsessions. And the original format of this is
kryptonite for that, outside of the first playthrough and especially after doing the amount of emblem hunting and time trialling it asked for, I would probably
never come back to this mod in the future, I'd finish something else, think about what to play next, remember Junio and say "yeah but the hub, though," and possibly even "yeah but I already basically 100%ed that," and replay a different mod.
Like at the end of the day the original vision should be the main focus, but I will admit:
This version or an updated version that still allows this normal structure is gonna get a ton of replays from me, up there with Angel Island Tour, Sol Sestancia, and Neo Emerald Coast. I'm probably going to start running out of save slots eventually. (I suppose Marathon Mode would offer similar functionality, albeit without saving.)
--edit
I was just playing some more and realized I should add:
Thank you for making a more normal version of this. While it is sad to see you completely abandoning your original structure for it and I do think they can coexist, putting together a "compromise" version like this isn't something everyone does and I really do appreciate it. I for one intend to replay this mod basically every time I get back into SRB2 in the future, especially with as many new characters as possible, and really want you to know that your efforts for both the original mod and for making said replays more possible cannot be praised enough.
