Why can only Sonic and Metal turn super?

I really don't feel like it hurts things nearly as much, but maybe that's just a sort of playtesting thing I'm unaware of where people who get super as characters with unique abilities just stop using their abilities.
The core issue is that character variety is the entire reason to have multiple characters to begin with. Our level design has a few alternate paths that require specific characters, but we simply do not have the manpower necessary to do things like S3K where Knuckles occasionally had entirely unique stages only for him. Thus, the characters are mostly going to be approaching the same obstacles as everyone else, and if the answer of how to approach those obstacles is always the same, why play as another character to begin with? This is why character differentiation is so important. It's key that when a player unlocks Fang and decides to play as him, they get a genuinely different gameplay experience than their first playthrough. Instead of talking about why Metal does it and thus why can't everyone else, the problem here is that Metal is already too similar to Sonic.

I can understand this reasoning. The problem now is I feel no incentive to get the tokens and emeralds if I'm not Sonic or Metal Sonic.
We don't consider this to be a problem. If you don't enjoy the process of getting the emeralds again, don't! Our game isn't trying to force you to grind the special stages six times for a significant benefit. We want you to play the game the way you enjoy, not do things because we attached an artificial repetitive requirement to get some kind of reward. I totally got the emeralds on most of my saves because I found it fun to replay the special stages a lot, but if you don't, we're not going to try to force you to do it again.

I'm of the opinion that everyone absolutely needs to be fast, invincible, etc.
The specific mechanic that causes the problem here is the timer on your rings. By making you need to move fast to keep the effect, the effect mandates overly similar gameplay across all characters. Thus, if we were going to do this by creating alternate effects as a reward, those effects would need to not have a timer, and therefore the invincibility is absolutely a problem because that's the reason the timer is necessary.

Mystic's issue seems to stem more with a personal play style than anything objective.
I am incredibly tired of people aggressively stating that my opinions on the camera, controls, or other game design elements are informed entirely by my own personal preferences. This is not the case. I am not stating that I speak for the entire dev team, but it is absolutely not just me that has this problem. Do not disrespect me with ad hominem fallacy. If you don't like my conclusions, provide evidence that contradicts those conclusions instead of questioning my competence. It's massively insulting.
 
I'm even still using Knuckles' move set with the Super Everyone lua in SRB2 and it feels natural.

I suppose I could record a play through of SRB2 with the Super Everyone script to show how natural it is for someone to still use the character specific ablities while super as Knuckles.
Would such a video suffice?


Also conversely, I'd like to see evidence of this slowdown too.
 
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If super forms are to be implemented to enhance character specific abilities, and the team is willing to consider deviating from the trends of other existing games such as Mania, then I would prefer that if not everyone is invincible and as such don't have ring loss over time, their super forms are still rewarded for collecting 50 rings and transforming, but the form doesn't disappear when you get hit.

Super forms in concept are meant to solely and entirely be a reward, and canceling the form after getting hit due to a lack of invincibility would act only as a constant distraction and pressure on the player, ironically encouraging the opposite gameplay style as a super form normally would, with players being overly careful to avoid losing their precious transformation.

I feel as though the similarity between Metal Sonic and Sonic is justified and even balanced however. Because of his hovering ability replacing the thok, Metal has more control and mobility than Sonic in his base form. However, in their super forms, Sonic takes the lead by matching that ability and retaining his thok from base form. This forces the player to choose whether they prefer Metals mobility in base form, or Sonic's superiority in Super form.

For the other characters, I feel like what others have suggested would work great as an alternative to the invincibility and speed that Sonic and Metal possess. In particular, buffing the character specific abilities.

For Tails, I would give him faster and longer flight, and the ability to swim underwater infinitely so long as he doesn't drown.

For Knuckles, I would speed up his gliding and climbing speeds, and give him the multi-glide. I would also give him the ability to swim at the surface of water in reference to the Advance games.

For Fang, I would make it so instead of firing at one enemy at a time, he fires at all enemies within range at the same time. He also gets a boost to bounce height and drops a bomb at the peak of each bounce.

For Amy, I would give her the giant hammer from Advance 3. It has longer range, boosts her even further when she hits a spring, and can be used multiple times in the air. It also counts as two hits for every one, so enemies that usually take two hits to destroy would only take one.

Perhaps make it so that taking a hit while in a non-invincible super form causes you to lose 10 or 20 rings instead of all rings, and you still suffer knockback. Reaching 0 rings would therefore still revert you to base form, but you wouldn't have to feel like you desperately need to avoid taking hits to remain transformed.
 
I don't think adding a ring loss penalty would work either. As you said:
Super forms in concept are meant to solely and entirely be a reward, and canceling the form after getting hit due to a lack of invincibility would act only as a constant distraction and pressure on the player, ironically encouraging the opposite gameplay style as a super form normally would, with players being overly careful to avoid losing their precious transformation.

Loosing even more rings on damage would also encourage players to be careful so they don't burn through their transformation even faster than the timer.
 
I don't think adding a ring loss penalty would work either. As you said:


Loosing even more rings on damage would also encourage players to be careful so they don't burn through their transformation even faster than the timer.

Players already have to be careful in base form to avoid losing rings anyway, so only losing 10-20 rings per hit in super form would actually feel more durable than normally, since in base form if you have, say, 100 rings and take a hit, you lose them all and can only pick up like 20.

Sure, you would still need to be careful or you would lose your form faster than just running down the usual super form timer, but you wouldn't need to be so careful as to consider getting hit at all the worst thing ever, and you would be rewarded for not taking hits by having a form that lasts longer than the timer forms and is, in most cases, easier to maintain without needing to rush to find rings.

The general expectation would be that by the time a new player collects all the chaos emeralds, they have gotten at least decent at the game from exploring through the levels for emerald tokens and possibly completed at least one playthrough with less than seven emeralds, so I don't really consider it unreasonable to expect players to be able to avoid the attacks of most of the badniks in the zones by the time they unlock the forms.
 
I don't know. the player may get teh form expecting it to be a true super only to run into a badnik or hazard and discover it's a pesudo-super form that just bulks up defenses. Plus there's still the matter of the other Classic games giving you full super to all characters like S3K, KIS2, and Mania. We could even through in Sonic 1 and 2 Mobile as well.
 
I don't know. the player may get teh form expecting it to be a true super only to run into a badnik or hazard and discover it's a pesudo-super form that just bulks up defenses. Plus there's still the matter of the other Classic games giving you full super to all characters like S3K, KIS2, and Mania. We could even through in Sonic 1 and 2 Mobile as well.

If a player expects it to be a typical sonic style super form and takes a hit, they will learn from this experience and know not to get hit again in the future. While it's best to avoid forcing the player to endure harsh punishments, there's no better way to teach a player than through experience.

It seems pretty obvious at this point that SRB2 isn't at all trying to be traditional with it's design mentality. It's not trying to be like the official games. The developers seem to be of the mentality of going with what works, rather than what is standard. My suggestion on the matter is an attempt in that direction. A way of making super forms viable for each character without them all focusing on clearing stages faster, rather than relying entirely on the traditions of the franchise. If you insist on invincible supers, there's always addons, or you could just go play Sonic 1 and 2 on mobile or Sonic Mania. Mystic does make a valid point however that if everyone is invincible with the countdown timer, they are encouraged to go fast through the levels, blazing through enemies and collecting as many rings as possible.

It's true not everyone plays that way, but from a design standpoint it is encouraged, and as such is more in line with the playstyles of Sonic and Metal who are meant to go fast as opposed to the other characters more focused on combating enemies and/or exploring the levels in more detail.
 
Let me ask you this. why should a player that's collecting chaos emeralds expect anything other than Super? Even among fan games, the use of Chaos emeralds has been mostly consistent.
Even in official games, you don't get different powers without a different set of power items like say the Chaos Rings, the Sol Emeralds, The World Rings, the Sacred Swords, or even say the Phantom Ruby.
 
Let me ask you this. why should a player that's collecting chaos emeralds expect anything other than Super? Even among fan games, the use of Chaos emeralds has been mostly consistent.
Even in official games, you don't get different powers without a different set of power items like say the Chaos Rings, the Sol Emeralds, The World Rings, the Sacred Swords, or even say the Phantom Ruby.

I counter this point with this: Why should player expectations define the limitations of what a game can do? This certainly doesn't apply to designing a musical number, in fact it's generally encouraged for a piece of music to defy expectations during the first listen so as to not be stale, and therefore be more interesting.

I feel like a game can easily be the same thing, especially when not bound to official canon. If Tails used the chaos emeralds to power up in an official title, then sure, he would probably have invincibility and ring drain. The question is though, is that something that needs to be the case in SRB2? Should tradition and player expectation take priority over what is practical from a game design standpoint?

In my opinion, the answer is no. It's not only more interesting to do something different, but it presents the opportunity to perhaps even do better than that which came before, should it be handled correctly. People playing SRB2 aren't expected to assume it's canonical to the Sonic franchise to begin with, so there's no harm in changing things up from the norm for the sake of making the gameplay better.
 
I counter this point with this: Why should player expectations define the limitations of what a game can do? This certainly doesn't apply to designing a musical number, in fact it's generally encouraged for a piece of music to defy expectations during the first listen so as to not be stale, and therefore be more interesting.

I feel like a game can easily be the same thing, especially when not bound to official canon. If Tails used the chaos emeralds to power up in an official title, then sure, he would probably have invincibility and ring drain. The question is though, is that something that needs to be the case in SRB2? Should tradition and player expectation take priority over what is practical from a game design standpoint?

In my opinion, the answer is no. It's not only more interesting to do something different, but it presents the opportunity to perhaps even do better than that which came before, should it be handled correctly. People playing SRB2 aren't expected to assume it's canonical to the Sonic franchise to begin with, so there's no harm in changing things up from the norm for the sake of making the gameplay better.

Here's the key difference with music: it's not part of the lore of the world. It is nothing more than something to set the mood properly, the characters are not supposed to actually be hearing it within the world.

The chaos emeralds, however, are. They have, and always will, grant you a super form. Nothing will change this. That is the canon. While you bring up a good point about game design, it should not also so clearly contradict the source material that the game is based upon. This isn't some obscure detail, the chaos emeralds are a very significant part of the sonic series. You should be at least somewhat adhering to these things when you are basing your game on a pre-existing world.

While I can agree with your philosophy to an extent, you absolutely shouldn't ignore stuff like this entirely. Here's my thought: If you want to do something original with the reward for completing all of the special stages... make a new set of jewels entirely. They should not be chaos emeralds to begin with.
 
The reason why Metal can go super is because he has Sonic in his name and thus is given the Sonic rights to go super.
Personally I don't really see the big issue with this sort of argument. I do think it's pretty ridiculous to assume that supers remove the unique traits of a character but super itself is a pretty big cheese towards the game anyway regardless on who has it.

Sonic and Metal don't have too much in the way that gives them much of an enhancement to platforming and whilst thok and hover respectively have their uses, there's no extra ability giving them extra height which makes the reach of the higher pathways all the more rewarding to get to.

If the other characters had access to supers through the base game then it kinda makes them more enticing to try and run through the game instead of learning two other characters who are considerably harder to speed through the game with (Though as someone dabbling in a lot of 2.2 I find it hard to call Metal a difficult character to handle unless you're using his boost).

Besides I think being upset over this is a bit ridiculous with options like modding offering it to characters anyway. I mean sure you can't get emblems or other secrets if you do that but I think at least having that sort of option still makes it valid and hey I think trying to go for 100% on whatever file is a perfectly fine bar to go to feel like you earned that.
2.2.1 when if that is ever gonna be fixed?

EDIT: Okay I've been pondering on the mod part for a bit and I do realize it's definitely a cheap argument to make especially towards any problems of the game itself but to try and elaborate what I mean, I think supers for characters that aren't Sonic or Metal at least in the context of SRB2 does pretty much make it so that they're ultimately way better than those two. In a 2D game like S3K or Mania it's less of a hassle since there's not a lot of things you can do to bypass say a wall or something in those games, but in SRB2 which is a 3D game I think the utility difference would still be night and day. The only full game runs that would have any sort of viability for anything would be Tails, even if he didn't have the extra benefit of infinite flight since the speed would be more than enough for him to abuse.
 
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I am incredibly tired of people aggressively stating that my opinions on the camera, controls, or other game design elements are informed entirely by my own personal preferences. This is not the case. I am not stating that I speak for the entire dev team, but it is absolutely not just me that has this problem. Do not disrespect me with ad hominem fallacy. If you don't like my conclusions, provide evidence that contradicts those conclusions instead of questioning my competence. It's massively insulting.

I'm sorry but you're not making this easy for yourself. People are not going to understand when you testify that "super characters is the same" (in S3&K nonetheless) and they don't personally experience it. You are using your experience (and some unspecified others') as evidence, after all. There's no way to empirically pin this issue down. If you have to go to the lengths of saying that if people don't like the process of collecting emeralds for nothing then they shouldn't be doing it, and if they want to go super anyway, they should mod it in, you might as well answer that you (plural you) are making the game and thus you decide what's going to be in the game. It's less convoluted and gets the message through.

As for me, I reject the "all the characters become the same" rhetoric entirely for a simple reason: this isn't S3&K. It is possible to design gimmicks and obstacles that can endanger even super players to the point that going super may as well become a strategy for a higher survival rate. Tails should go full baby mode and blaze through ACZ1 in 10 seconds too, for all I care. Shouldn't the beginners also get their broken reward for going through the same set of Special Stages as the other characters'? There's a lot to unpack here, but only for the sake of discussion at best.
 
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Here's the key difference with music: it's not part of the lore of the world. It is nothing more than something to set the mood properly, the characters are not supposed to actually be hearing it within the world.

The chaos emeralds, however, are. They have, and always will, grant you a super form. Nothing will change this. That is the canon. While you bring up a good point about game design, it should not also so clearly contradict the source material that the game is based upon. This isn't some obscure detail, the chaos emeralds are a very significant part of the sonic series. You should be at least somewhat adhering to these things when you are basing your game on a pre-existing world.

While I can agree with your philosophy to an extent, you absolutely shouldn't ignore stuff like this entirely. Here's my thought: If you want to do something original with the reward for completing all of the special stages... make a new set of jewels entirely. They should not be chaos emeralds to begin with.
The point they are making isn't that they should do something besides Super, it is that Super should do different things for different characters.
Super isn't always consistent anyways. Sometimes you can drown, sometimes you can't, sometimes he can fly and then can't in normal gameplay, sometimes he's invincible, and sometimes some attacks can hurt him, etc. So rules can be bent. Besides, this game originates from a time where Super forms had a single digit number of appearances.
Perhaps instead of constant ring drain, Super Tails could, for example, be able to extend his flight time at the cost of some rings? This would alleviate the "Rings, Rings, RINGS!!!" mentality by allowing one to use up their rings at their own pace. The extended flight time would allow some more height and thus, more exploration, and thus would enhance Tails' normal gameplay rather than turn it into a speedfest. The player could also use this time to maneuver around some obstacles normal Tails would tire out before dodging.

Just saying, disregarding all lore talk, would something like that be preferable for other characters?

Either way, I've heard talk about a potential Super Sonic boss in the future, and I hope that the lack of being able to go Super doesn't screw other characters out of that.
 
The point they are making isn't that they should do something besides Super, it is that Super should do different things for different characters.
Super isn't always consistent anyways. Sometimes you can drown, sometimes you can't, sometimes he can fly and then can't in normal gameplay, sometimes he's invincible, and sometimes some attacks can hurt him, etc. So rules can be bent. Besides, this game originates from a time where Super forms had a single digit number of appearances.
Perhaps instead of constant ring drain, Super Tails could, for example, be able to extend his flight time at the cost of some rings? This would alleviate the "Rings, Rings, RINGS!!!" mentality by allowing one to use up their rings at their own pace. The extended flight time would allow some more height and thus, more exploration, and thus would enhance Tails' normal gameplay rather than turn it into a speedfest. The player could also use this time to maneuver around some obstacles normal Tails would tire out before dodging.

Just saying, disregarding all lore talk, would something like that be preferable for other characters?

Either way, I've heard talk about a potential Super Sonic boss in the future, and I hope that the lack of being able to go Super doesn't screw other characters out of that.

Could you provide examples of where these inconsistencies you speak of can be found?

As far as I can tell, in level super is not the same as final boss super. Super Sonic being able to fly for example, tends to be reserved for final bosses and cutscenes even going as far back as 1992's Sonic 2 on the Megadrive, or even Sonic & Knuckles in 1994.
 
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Mystic's issue seems to stem more with a personal play style than anything objective.
He believes that you shouldn't use your character abilities because they supposedly slow you down, yet when you're super Knuckles, you can glide and climb faster than normal knuckles. Super Tails has faster flying too in both S3K and Mania.

The problem wasn't that their abilities slowed you down, the problem was that you'd always want to be collecting rings - which are normally on the ground. Essentially, this means that all Supers will want to be on the ground, where the rings are. You end up wanting to use your character abilities less because otherwise, you'd end up running out of rings. So your options become "hover close to the ground", "fly close to the ground" or "don't glide, because landing slows you down".
 
Here's the key difference with music: it's not part of the lore of the world. It is nothing more than something to set the mood properly, the characters are not supposed to actually be hearing it within the world.

The chaos emeralds, however, are. They have, and always will, grant you a super form. Nothing will change this. That is the canon. While you bring up a good point about game design, it should not also so clearly contradict the source material that the game is based upon. This isn't some obscure detail, the chaos emeralds are a very significant part of the sonic series. You should be at least somewhat adhering to these things when you are basing your game on a pre-existing world.

While I can agree with your philosophy to an extent, you absolutely shouldn't ignore stuff like this entirely. Here's my thought: If you want to do something original with the reward for completing all of the special stages... make a new set of jewels entirely. They should not be chaos emeralds to begin with.


What is canon and what is part of gameplay are two different things. Chaos Emeralds grant you Super Forms, yes. That is canon. How those Super Forms function in gameplay on the other hand is entirely different.

Considering how Super Sonic can in some games drown and be crushed, it's safe to say that Super Forms aren't actually invincible canonically, they are just a significant power up. Out of all super forms, the only ones ever directly spoken to require rings to fuel themselves are Sonic and Shadow in SA2.

Therefore, making it so Chaos Emeralds turn certain characters Super but not give them invincibility and ring drain is strictly a contradiction to traditional gameplay mechanics, and not a contradiction of canon. The canonical requirement of Chaos Emeralds making them go Super is still met.

Super Forms even in gameplay are able to lose rings when being hit in certain games. For example, Sonic Advance and Sonic Rush Adventure. So even the devs have on occasion tried different things to prioritize balance and game design over traditional mechanics for Super Forms, even without using different forms to do so.
 
What is canon and what is part of gameplay are two different things. Chaos Emeralds grant you Super Forms, yes. That is canon. How those Super Forms function in gameplay on the other hand is entirely different.

Considering how Super Sonic can in some games drown and be crushed, it's safe to say that Super Forms aren't actually invincible canonically, they are just a significant power up. Out of all super forms, the only ones ever directly spoken to require rings to fuel themselves are Sonic and Shadow in SA2.

Therefore, making it so Chaos Emeralds turn certain characters Super but not give them invincibility and ring drain is strictly a contradiction to traditional gameplay mechanics, and not a contradiction of canon. The canonical requirement of Chaos Emeralds making them go Super is still met.

Super Forms even in gameplay are able to lose rings when being hit in certain games. For example, Sonic Advance and Sonic Rush Adventure. So even the devs have on occasion tried different things to prioritize balance and game design over traditional mechanics for Super Forms, even without using different forms to do so.

Do you have any in level examples? The ones you presented are Final boss examples and even S3&K/S&K's final boss doesn't follow the same rules of super as say Mushroom Hill act 1.
(Missels that throw super sonic back)
 
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Do you have any in level examples? The ones you presented are Final boss examples and even S3&K/S&K's finak boss doesn't follow the same rules of super as say Mushroom Hill act 1.

Honestly you just proved my point for me, so I don't really need to give any examples. I will later in this post though, sorta. By your own admission here, super forms are so inconsistent that they don't even function the same in boss fights designed around them as they do in the actual levels. You mentioned earlier that Super Forms can fly in most of their bosses, but in regular gameplay typically cannot (The closest I can think of is the autopathing in Generations). The ring drain amount is also inconsistent in Generations, being 1 ring per second in the boss but 3 rings per second in gameplay.

As for my promised examples, I can't give any regarding Super Forms losing rings aside from their typical drain in levels aside from maybe the smoke in Oil Ocean Act 2 in Mania, it's been a while since I have played Mania so I forget if that smoke still drains rings even while you are Super.

I can give many examples of Super forms being crushed in levels however, it's possible in Sonic 2, Sonic 3&K, Sonic Mania, pretty much any game where you can go Super in levels and there are things that could potentially crush you.
 
The only two characters to actually lose out from a super form would be Fang and Amy, but mostly Amy. In a super form, Fang could hypothetically jump higher with his ability and go faster and have more control, but Amy actually just gets nothing. Because use of her hammer is specifically for attacking enemies, this becomes pointless when you are perpetually invincible. Amy Lacks any platforming abilities of her own like the rest of the case, so there would be no way to give her a super form that supplements her gameplay directly. Fang might not need to use his pop gun but he still has his spring tail bounce that can be enhanced.


If Amy had the hammer jump from the adventure games as a part of her move set, it wouldn't be so bad.
 
Because use of her hammer is specifically for attacking enemies, this becomes pointless when you are perpetually invincible. Amy Lacks any platforming abilities of her own like the rest of the case, so there would be no way to give her a super form that supplements her gameplay directly. Fang might not need to use his pop gun but he still has his spring tail bounce that can be enhanced.

If Amy had the hammer jump from the adventure games as a part of her move set, it wouldn't be so bad.
To be fair wouldn't the hammer jump be the perfect upgrade for her super form? She'd instantly be rewarded with a surge of mobility that in her normal set would be only reserved to springs. It doesn't sound bad at all.
 

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