Why can only Sonic and Metal turn super?

Here is my thoughts on the matter.

I disagree with the notion that Super reduces character diversity. When replaying S3K/Mania, I found myself changing my strategy as Super depending on what character I played. As Sonic or Ray, I typically just made sure to go as fast as possible, picking up rings while moving through the level, which is what you believe Super boils all characters down to. However, as slower characters like Knuckles, Tails, or Mighty (whose abilities don't really make them go fast, especially in the case of Mighty, as his stomp completely halts his momentum), instead of just zooming through the level, I prioritize hitting all the big rings and finding hidden caches of rings.

Simply just blitzing through the level isn't the only way to use Super, but you have to give the player the options to use different strategies. The Big Rings in S3K/Mania gives players the choice to sustain their Super Form by exploring the level for secrets. SRB2 doesn't have an analogue, especially since Tokens don't give you 50 rings anymore. This isn't the only way to vary the way to use Super. For example, in games where Super is a toggle, players could just go Super for a few precious moments to cheese a particularly brutal part of a level, and then not have to worry about trying to collect as many rings as possible.

I'm not trying to suggest adding a Super toggle, or to make Tokens give you 50 rings again; you just have to give player options. Right now, the only thing they can do while Super is just blaze through the level with an attraction shield trying to suck up every ring they come across, and that's obviously not ideal.

Of course, this is just a personal anecdote, and most likely not something everyone experiences, but I still believe it's something to keep in mind.
 
I do admit that traditional Super Forms are indeed very fun. However, keep in mind that they are a concept that stretches back all the way to Sonic 2, and have been largely unchanged in gameplay since then.

That leaves a lot of room for experimentation. Not only do I see no harm in attempting something new, I actually see a lot of potential for benefit. Just because everyone else seems to treat Supers as a sacred thing that must not be altered doesn't mean SRB2 has to do the same.

In this regard, SRB2 experimenting with new concepts for Super Forms is comparable to explorers of old, charting out newly discovered land in search of profits, resources, or even just a better place to live. Traditional Super Forms are familiar, but to immediately make the claim that they are the best way to do things when pretty much nobody has experimented with the concept in decades is a bit much.

Super Forms haven't changed much since Sonic 2 because of a sense of tradition, not efficiency.
 
If Super is going to change at the core, then why keep the chaos emeralds for those not getting super?

Sega experimented with Alternate supers before with Darkspine Sonic and Golden armor sonic. Using the World Rings and Sacred Swords Respectivly for the transformations.
 
If Super is going to change at the core, then why keep the chaos emeralds for those not getting super?

For the purposes of this discussion, it's not that the characters aren't getting Supers, it's that the gameplay mechanics of their Supers are different from Sonic's. That is to say, the same transformation lorewise, but in gameplay they are functionally different.

SEGA has done things like this too. For example, in Generations the Ring Drain for Super Sonic is much faster while using him in regular stages. They also gave him an autopathing air-boost that allows him to "fly" at the cost of even faster ring drain. Despite this, it's not a "different form", it's just functionally different from other games. The same applies here, except the difference is on a character by character basis.

The key exception to this being Fang if they go with him getting his bike instead, in which case the reason for the Emeralds is that he either uses them to fix the bike, or he sells them to get the money to do so.
 
If Super is going to change at the core, then why keep the chaos emeralds for those not getting super?

I'll remind you that nothing changes when you achieve all emeralds as Sonic. We're reinterpreting the emeralds as having broader effects depending on the character who collects the emeralds.

Though if the concept warrants changing the chaos emeralds into a different set of McGuffins, I wouldn't necessarily be opposed to that.

Sega experimented with Alternate supers before with Darkspine Sonic and Golden armor sonic. Using the World Rings and Sacred Swords Respectivly for the transformations.
How have those transformations deviated from the standard super?
 
Sega experimented with Alternate supers before with Darkspine Sonic and Golden armor sonic. Using the World Rings and Sacred Swords Respectivly for the transformations.

How have those transformations deviated from the standard super?

I can answer this one. Darkspine Sonic and Excalibur Sonic, to my memory, don't have ring drain. They also however are not invincible and therefore can lose rings. Honestly I wouldn't consider either of these "Alternate Supers" so much as "Alternate Power Ups" or "Alternate Transformations".
 
For the era they were used in, they were the alternate supers as they took Super Sonic's Spot as the Final Battle Power up.
 
For the era they were used in, they were the alternate supers as they took Super Sonic's Spot as the Final Battle Power up.

Super Sonic being a Final Boss Power Up was never a requirement. Super Sonic's Debut in Sonic 2 had no such instance, and it was a new concept in S3K. It was the Adventure games that made this tradition, years after Super Sonic had become a concept to begin with.

In terms of mainline console games after SK3, only SA1, SA2, Heroes, and 06 followed this trend before it was broken by Secret Rings with Darkspine Sonic, brought back for Sonic Unleashed, broken again for Black Knight with Excalibur Sonic, remained broken in Colors, was brought back in Generations, was broken again in Lost World, brought back in Mania, and broken again in Forces.

Overall, it's hardly a rule and struggles to keep a consistent streak. It's actually much more prominent in the handheld titles than in the mainline games.
 
please explain how it was broken.

Instances in which I said the trend was "broken" are just that, the games I mentioned in those instances did not feature a Super Sonic final boss fight, at least not in the console version. This includes Sonic and the Secret Rings, Sonic and the Black Knight, Sonic Colors, Sonic Lost World, and Sonic Forces.

You can extend this to some handheld titles as well. Sonic Battle, Sonic Rivals and Rivals 2 (as far as I have heard, I never owned a PSP).

I don't count Shadow the Hedgehog one way or the other because that game didn't feature Sonic as a playable character in the final boss encounter. I also refrained from counting the Sonic 4 titles and various spinoffs as I really don't need them to make my point.

Basically my point is as I stated previously. Super Sonic final bosses aren't really mandatory and never were, and struggle to even maintain a streak in terms of appearances. S3K was the first time it happened despite Super Sonic making it's debut in Sonic 2, Sonic Adventure made it into a tradition, and it's been hugely inconsistent since then, with a much more consistent presence on handheld titles than the mainline console titles.
 
If Fang gets his bike, I really hope that the screen that says something like "Sonic can now transform to Super Sonic!" is changed to "Fang sold the Emeralds to obtain the Marvelous Queen!"
 
An idea I had for Metal Sonic is when he is Super: You can "spindash" in the air to charge the V. Maximum Overdrive Attack (The state Metal is in when he can break spikes and badniks by touching them). While charging, you cannot move horizontally and slowly drop downwards. Touching the ground while in this state would effectively turn it into a peelout. Releasing before the V. MO attack is ready would just give you a burst of speed, but not enough to break spikes.

This could be used in combination with the hover ability to cancel momentum and make multiple sharp turns, though at the cost of some height and being slower than Super Sonic's single thok at making said sharp turns.

To help balance out Base Form Metal and also stay true to the canonical appearances of this ability, I also had the idea of a temporary debuff that would cause him to be unable to surpass "walking" speed after losing the glow indicating V. MO state. This would help differentiate Metal from Sonic in gameplay and also help to ensure that players are being careful about when they allow themselves to attain the V. MO state and when they hold it back by making use of the hover ability. This debuff could last, say, 5 seconds.

Drifting out of canon back into fanon, this could be used to make the Super Form feel more powerful in comparison to base form, simply by not giving him the debuff and as such allowing him to abuse the crazy speed possible with it much easier.
 
Instances in which I said the trend was "broken" are just that, the games I mentioned in those instances did not feature a Super Sonic final boss fight, at least not in the console version. This includes Sonic and the Secret Rings, Sonic and the Black Knight, Sonic Colors, Sonic Lost World, and Sonic Forces.

You can extend this to some handheld titles as well. Sonic Battle, Sonic Rivals and Rivals 2 (as far as I have heard, I never owned a PSP).

I don't count Shadow the Hedgehog one way or the other because that game didn't feature Sonic as a playable character in the final boss encounter. I also refrained from counting the Sonic 4 titles and various spinoffs as I really don't need them to make my point.

Basically my point is as I stated previously. Super Sonic final bosses aren't really mandatory and never were, and struggle to even maintain a streak in terms of appearances. S3K was the first time it happened despite Super Sonic making it's debut in Sonic 2, Sonic Adventure made it into a tradition, and it's been hugely inconsistent since then, with a much more consistent presence on handheld titles than the mainline console titles.
I thought you were talking functionally broken.
 
"How can we be a vocal minority when the other side isn't posting nearly as much as we are?"

I'm not saying "vocal minority" as an insult. It's just the reality of it. The people who are on the other side are already happy and therefore have no reason to post in this thread.

Mystic, this is a glaring logical fallacy.

There's so many reasons someone wouldn't post in this thread, one of the main reasons being people really don't like to use forums as often as before. I'm willing to bet about 40-50% of people playing SRB2 today don't know the forums exist. Plus, even if they did, they'd be going against one of the head admins, which might have huge consequences in their minds.

You can't just say "They're happy already" when you haven't had their input yet, especially if you're not even willing to make a poll about it. Even having a discussion like this on the official discord would be a better option, because there's over 1,200 members in that.
 
Mystic didn't say "the people who are not posting in this thread are happy with how things are". He said "the people who are happy with how things are are not posting in this thread".
 
Mystic, this is a glaring logical fallacy.

There's so many reasons someone wouldn't post in this thread, one of the main reasons being people really don't like to use forums as often as before. I'm willing to bet about 40-50% of people playing SRB2 today don't know the forums exist. Plus, even if they did, they'd be going against one of the head admins, which might have huge consequences in their minds.

You can't just say "They're happy already" when you haven't had their input yet, especially if you're not even willing to make a poll about it. Even having a discussion like this on the official discord would be a better option, because there's over 1,200 members in that.
Closest we're likely going to get to any kind of input outside of this topic is this poll on Sonic Retro: https://forums.sonicretro.org/index.php?threads/a-question-about-supers.39036/
But even then, that's only about the argument of "does super everyone reduce character diversity or not?"
(7 people think it does while 39 think it doesn't as of this post.)
 
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From a purely "storytelling" standpoint, Sonic going super makes sense because he's the main character and is treated better by the world because of main character logic. Metal Sonic can go super because it's a robot built after Sonic's likeness, and the super ability was built in using chaos emerald magic or something idgaf. Since the other characters are not the main character nor are built to resemble the main character, they don't get super because the world doesn't like them as much. Bam, perfect in-universe explanation. Fuck official Sonic lore: none of it makes sense anyway, plus all storytelling is bullshit and can be selectively ignored by this fanfic game story.

From a gameplay standpoint, Sonic being the only default character to go super makes sense because he's the hardest of the default characters to get through the base game with. (I said base game, not special stages. If you'll kindly note, nobody plays differently from each other in special stages in any other Sonic game either.) Tails and Knuckles have abilities that make platforming easier and Sonic doesn't. Ergo, he gets a special reward if the player manages to get through the game as him up to whatever point is required to get all the emeralds, while Tails and Knuckles just get the satisfaction of having got them.

"But why can't Amy go super despite being harder to play as than Sonic?" Super being on more characters dilutes the novelty, and if it was exclusive to an unlockable character then people who started as Sonic would feel gyped. "But then why can Metal turn super if it's easier to play as than Sonic and is a second character to unlock?" Uhhhh let's call it a New Game+ reward. Remember you have to beat the game before you can play as Metal Sonic. Also fall back on the storytelling excuse above.

"What's the motivation to get the chaos emeralds if you can't go super, then?" Does there have to be one? What's the motivation for getting a perfect bonus now that there's no emblem for it? What's the motivation for getting to the 80-ring alcove high above GFZ2 as Sonic with some sick crawla bounces? The answer is "the satisfaction of having done it". If you don't get satisfaction from doing it, then don't.

"Why not just let everyone go super, though? Do you hate fun?" If you've gotten to this point, honestly, please just go grab any one of the numerous "all characters go super" addons in Releases and play the game the way you find fun. You don't have to let the vanilla game define how you play if you don't want to. That's the beauty of an easily-moddable game!
 
My biggest problem with the "just mod the game if you don't like it" point that's been brought up in the past is that it disables saving & unlockables -- ever since 2.1, I basically had to ignore one of the biggest & one of my most favorite additions to the game, the emblem system, because if you add even one mod you're locked out of them (unless if you do that silly custom gamedata exploit).

Otherwise, if there were not legitimate downsides to adding a mod, I would totally agree with that :P
 
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..."What's the motivation to get the chaos emeralds if you can't go super, then?" Does there have to be one? What's the motivation for getting a perfect bonus now that there's no emblem for it? What's the motivation for getting to the 80-ring alcove high above GFZ2 as Sonic with some sick crawla bounces? The answer is "the satisfaction of having done it". If you don't get satisfaction from doing it, then don't.
Getting sonic that Armageddon shield that's also hidden up there
 

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