Mystic removal discussion - The good and the bad

The only thing this proves is that the people who made that design decision have been ran out, and the people left made a different decision. This is actually the main thing that's been bugging me about this thread. There's a shocking amount of circular logic postulating that unpopular game design decisions make someone a bad person, and thus that bad people's game design decisions are themselves bad decisions. Mystic's terrible community management doesn't erase the positive contributions he made to the game over the years, just like his game design ability doesn't erase the fact that he mistreated the community for decades and needed to be removed for it! The fact is that strong game designers can be bad people, and bad people can be good game designers; this is something the community needs to acknowledge, lest they risk experiencing this again from the other side of the fence.

I understand what you're trying to say but his arbitrary view on super forms was not widely shared as he claimed to be and it's questionable if it was even based in reality. It's there anyway because Mystic micromanaged game decisions even out of his skill field because of his supposed level design experience fossilized in a level pack that's 99% nostalgia despite him not having made worthwhile content in a decade. That is evidence of a bad person and a bad game designer: no one's making undue associations here.
 
I can't comment on Mystic's skills, but he seemed a bit...closed-minded. He was stubborn, unwilling to compromise, and new ideas were shot down without much consideration. Maybe he laid some of the groundwork, but it seems like the dev team is doing fine without him. I'm actually very excited to see where things will go from here.
 
To comment on his skills, I won't say he was ENTIRELY without any worthwhile skills and identification... the issue is that how close-minded he was, alongside all of his worst decisions, made all of the good ones obsolete and, nowadays, I'm not sure if I can find many good ones anymore. I still enjoy MR from time to time, but I don't ever play it for speedruns unless I have a vertically oriented character in mind.

Honestly the only thing I know I can agree with involving him was his views on the beautiful simplicity of things like Crawlas- how multiple people throw them off as just a basic, forgettable enemy that can never amount to anything, when for me some of the most terrifying encounters I've had were when I forget a Crawla exists while falling under that mentality, only to find myself panicking and thrown off as it inches closer from behind the camera.

Even then, I've come to realize he's had a close-minded thought process on that too, with all of his ideas from the brief time we discussed being... eerily similar to eachother. I'll be damned if I can find the examples now, but that's basically my take on this whole thing. Ain't defending or attacking him, but I guess another view couldn't hurt.
 
A little elaboration on my previous point about uphill and downhill level design in Sonic: As I mentioned in my previous post, I do think uphill can work, there's just a time and a place for it. Mystic had a tendency of overdoing it, making too many levels too constantly uphill. Sonic can't gain speed going upward, so these levels tend to be a slog as him and Tails tends to complete these levels much faster. Mystic had a mentality that this made Sonic a weak character and Tails a strong character; power is ability to clear stages quickly and therefore ability to move vertically. Because Sonic isn't very capable of moving up quickly, he is weak.

I however see this more as a flaw of the level design than as a flaw with Sonic. Start making levels more primarily downhill and suddenly your ability to move up doesn't make you more "powerful", as Sonic is more capable of taking speedy ground paths towards the goal sign and flying actually takes you further away from it. It would still be possible to skip sections by flying (perhaps even moreso), but this would no longer be necessarily the fastest way to progress.

When I say there's a time and a place for uphill level design, here's what I mean: For a beginner player, it's not going to make much of a difference. They are still generally expected either way to take their time through the levels, carefully avoiding obstacles and exploring the various pathways. As a player's skill improves however, and as they memorize the layouts of levels more, they will start becoming more brave. This is where Sonic's spin state comes into play. In uphill level design, spinning is almost only ever useful to get under narrow passages, used for a few seconds at a time at most.

Downhill however, provided the player is on a pathway that allows for it, the spin state is something that can be maintained for tens of seconds at a time, potentially even whole levels in rare cases. The player zips through the level at high speed, skipping whole platforming sections provided they have the skill to keep the momentum going. Challenges that used to give them trouble as a beginner are passed by as if they are nothing, giving an exhilarating feeling of speed and personal progress.

However, sometimes uphill sections of levels or even whole levels can be necessary. Uphill sections can serve to slow the player down before they get to a more difficult part of the stage, or to give them a break from having to carefully maintain their speed and micromanaging their landing spots when launched into the air. Whole levels designed uphill can be placed to set a thematic mood; things are getting more difficult and treacherous, and Sonic won't necessarily be able to just zip past things anymore. These levels could even have more of an ominous, foreboding feeling to them to contrast the more bright and happy theme of the more downhill based levels.
 
So I'mma talk about my opinion on the whole thing

Alright I know that it seems like I haven't been around the srb2 message board for that long but I just didn't make an account so I know a little about this topic (specifically starting from March 4th 2018 and maybe December 2nd 2017).

First off I agree with time gear when it comes to mystic's level designing skills but I'm going to add to it, looking at the way he designs his levels it wouldn't be a surprise if he was a Mario fan but Mario level design doesn't really work in Sonic games but I will say I've played some Mario before which really helped me get through some of the levels he made but I know that not many people here are Mario fans because this forum site is dedicated to a Sonic fan game but I'm not going to go any further because many others here have already talked about basically every inch of mystic's level designing skills.

Whenever I look at his posts I usually just see him as the most aggressive user I've ever seen in the srb2 message board because I'm no expert when it comes to what's rude and what isn't but I gotta say some of the stuff he says I could never bring myself to say anywhere but you gotta admit some of the levels he's made are kinda fun.

I'm actually kinda interested for what's in store for srb2 because version 2.3 is kinda coming and it will be the very first major srb2 update to not include mystic so anything could happen with srb2 (for better or worse) but it feels almost ever so slightly sad that mystic is no longer helping with srb2 anymore (unless he's helping with srb2 privately).

Now sorry if this is super rude but it seemed kinda like mystic had an ego around the last few updates of srb2 he helped with when the soundtrack from mystic realm was added into the base game which I kinda feel like that was done by his choice but please correct me if that's wrong.

Now I will say unlike other people I chose not to make an account not because of mystic's behavior to people but because I already had previously decided to be an idiot and made way to many accounts for way too many things but I will say that I very much noticed that he was constantly being an asshole to others and it was very much noticable even though I didn't even have an account so him being banned was very much over due.

Well I got nothing else to say that isn't something that literally everyone else has talked about or just meaningless info that once again literally everyone else has at least mentioned (seriously all this information is enough to make a wiki page plus some) so that's the end of this post.
Thanks for reading.
 
First off I agree with time gear when it comes to mystic's level designing skills but I'm going to add to it, looking at the way he designs his levels it wouldn't be a surprise if he was a Mario fan but Mario level design doesn't really work in Sonic games but I will say I've played some Mario before which really helped me get through some of the levels he made but I know that not many people here are Mario fans because this forum site is dedicated to a Sonic fan game but I'm not going to go any further because many others here have already talked about basically every inch of mystic's level designing skills.

Yep, I believe he stated numerous times he preferred the Mario games while he was around. He also made it no secret that he gave up on the Sonic franchise when Sonic Heroes came out.

but it feels almost ever so slightly sad that mystic is no longer helping with srb2 anymore (unless he's helping with srb2 privately).

This is not the case, if Mystic were seen to still have any influence in SRB2's development, I could imagine the devs themselves would be all up in arms over such news for many reasons (some of which have already been elaborated in this thread). In any case, I believe Mystic has moved on from SRB2 and its community altogether by this point, he doesn't even go by "Mystic" anymore so I'm aware.
 
Now sorry if this is super rude but it seemed kinda like mystic had an ego around the last few updates of srb2 he helped with when the soundtrack from mystic realm was added into the base game which I kinda feel like that was done by his choice but please correct me if that's wrong.

Just to correct this, those tracks have been in the base game for a long time, since the final demo days, even. Redone versions by Cobalt were more recently added to SRB2 - his versions were included in Mystic Realm v5 but I think (?) he was planning to do them anyways as part of the broader soundtrack remaster.
 
I don’t know if we’re beating a dead horse by bringing back this topic again, but I always figured I’d throw my two cents in with my story if this topic was ever revived.

Now, most of you newbies will not recognize me. I did a couple of good character wads during the Final Demo era, which were considered to be the best of the best (until 2.0 came along and MotorRoach showed the community the true power of sprite talent,) and I also made a couple of levels. Mystic saw me as someone good enough to become a Moderator on the forums and asked me if I wanted to be one, and eventually I was promoted to Admin. I even became a Developer, but I forgot how that happened.

I am mostly famous for SRB2 Riders, which began as a community project and ended with me wanting to do the entire multi-project alone. By noticing that moving forward and side-strafing at the same time gave the illusion of drifting, I was able to add real drifting into Riders and into the Mario Kart mode. Once that demo got released, Kart’s popularity grew exponentially. Soon I moved to Boston, Massachusetts in 2012 and (more or less) got a life, so I took my usual monthly break. When ZarroTsu noticed from our PMs that I was taking a break and playing other games, he borrowed the Kart code and created Super SRB2 Kart Z which focused only on the Kart engine. I didn’t care to claim it as stolen because it’s all still fair use, but I could have easily locked the topic and removed the links. But a few days after, as I still contemplated to do so, I noticed that I was demoted to a regular user. Oh well. Guess I am no longer an active member here, but just a lurker.

Anyways, I suppose I never had any direct problems with Mystic himself. Or Rob/Dark Warrior, or Prime 2.0. Even JTE, who out of all of them together I spoke to the most. Not sure if he knew my age, but he never came on to me. Not here to defend them, just pointing out that they were okay during my active time before 2012.


Now the real problem I had here with the community (which is also beating a dead horse but might as well bring it up,) is with Spazzo. Everyone loved him back in the day, but I never spoke to him directly at first. During the time when Super Sonic was just Sonic with a Superman cape, I figured I could recolor Sonic with the Super Sonic head. Easy enough. This is when Spazzo sent me a clearly obvious desperate PM asking if he could lend a hand. It went something like “Let’s team up and make Super Sonic together! You tell me what to do and I’ll do it! Together we can do this!” I lol’ed at the message but I said fine. Big mistake, as he was clearly inexperienced and would only forward me one new spinning sprite every once in awhile where only the main green color was swapped with yellow, and claimed to be done. I had to clean up his mess every single time. When it was finally done, HE made the topic so he could be seen as the original author, and he would go on netgames and tell people that it was officially made by “Spazzo and CZ64.” That pissed me off so much that I decided to take his name off, and replace it with Mikel93 who actually wanted to help, fixed some sprites, and kept trying to keep that WAD alive for a few years.

Now when I became a Developer, I was clearly not invited. SSNTails was the only dev friend I had. I mostly only had access to the forum’s Sky Sanctuary, which was clearly inactive. The IRC’s #srb2dev was where everyone went, but they kept changing the password. I always had to ask someone for it, and just before I left in 2012, no one responded to my requests. I remember hearing that Spazzo was the one changing the password, and he ignored my request for it. I figured no one in dev cared about me coming back, and that he coerced them all into not letting me join back. Of course, I have no proof so it’s still just speculation. The only thing I did by AJ’s request was realign the old THZ2’s textures everywhere around the map, and I also did Tails pickup sprites which were missing at the time. I was annoyed when the next versions were released and saw the same outdated sprites for Tails. I guess the only reason why I’m even in the credits was because Alam_GBA asked permission to use some of my Riders code to be merged into Vanilla. At least that’s something.

Spazzo never changed. His giant ego is still there, even nowadays as proven from page 18 of this topic. I looked over my PM folders for proof of his bad sprite work, but I realized that I deleted all his messages after the Super Sonic incident. One thing I pointed out decades ago on the IRC chat is that he loves to have his name up in lights by manipulating his way into the team, and once the mod is getting old and stale, he tells the community to stop playing it and move on. I’ve seen it with Flame’s old Super Smash Bros. mod, and heard about it when he tried pulling devs away into RPP:PC. That one still amazes me. You will never convince this community that SRB2 is old and finished, and to move away from developing it. SRB2 is like a diamond that looks shiny and perfect but is polished every year and looks shinier with each new version released. Spazzo still hangs around the Discord and jumped into the SRB2 Kart bandwagon, so he's clearly not done. All he genuinely wants is just to keep his cult followers. He will always pretend to be innocent and nice, until he ends up burning you and moving on with a smirk on his face.
 
Don't worry, this thread is staying open for the numerous oldbies who drop in now and then, because some people only visit the forums a few times a year and I think it's important that people who have things to say are allowed to say them without it being "too late" or something.

I do have my eyes open for anyone who feels the necessity to constantly post in this thread as soon as anyone else does though: at least one person has already been banned for this.

Anyhow, it's pretty crazy how hard you got shafted re: SRB2 dev. Pretty wild hearing that, and also upsetting.

Also, just for the record, Spazzo is banned from the SRB2Kart discord (and was day 1 of release).
 
When ZarroTsu noticed from our PMs that I was taking a break and playing other games, he borrowed the Kart code and created Super SRB2 Kart Z which focused only on the Kart engine. I didn’t care to claim it as stolen because it’s all still fair use, but I could have easily locked the topic and removed the links. But a few days after, as I still contemplated to do so, I noticed that I was demoted to a regular user. Oh well. Guess I am no longer an active member here, but just a lurker.

Would like to point out just since I'm on Kart Krew

Back when Zarro was still on the team I remember him still being roasted up until he left for how he handled that, renamed it after himself with the "Z", and crossing out your name on the intro ... so yeah pretty much the entire team agrees with "jesus that was really scummy". Dunno if that makes you feel better about the situation though :V
 
I can understand the argument that he would've been tainted over time. It seems he was a kid himself when he was put into a leadership position that he was never prepared for and he just got stuck. I've seen other badmins go down the same path, especially when they're running communities with a majority younger audience where they're rarely held accountable or forced to grow up. They get too comfortable and start acting irresponsible and creepy.

That being said though, I still can't excuse the things he did as an adult like sharing porn with minors or bragging about his desire to diddle young girls (fictional or not). I'm not going to say that makes him the embodiment of evil, but those aren't things a good person does.

I'd understand the cancel culture argument more if we were saying he needs to be stalked and harassed or if this was all about level design, but it's ignorant to think that an open discussion is too harsh on someone that's acted abusive and inappropriate towards kids for as long as he did and would continue if he weren't removed. There's a huge difference between being bullied for a tweet or a youtube video and someone being held accountable for genuinely bad behavior.

EDIT: I just want to add too, that I think everyone's voice should be heard on the issue. It's important that everyone gets to vent, even toward those venting. This is just the way that I feel about it.
 
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My response and going from said response to another strong point

I can understand the argument that he would've been tainted over time. It seems he was a kid himself when he was put into a leadership position that he was never prepared for and he just got stuck. I've seen other badmins go down the same path, especially when they're running communities with a majority younger audience where they're rarely held accountable or forced to grow up. They get too comfortable and start acting irresponsible and creepy.

That being said though, I still can't excuse the things he did as an adult like sharing porn with minors or bragging about his desire to diddle young girls (fictional or not). I'm not going to say that makes him the embodiment of evil, but those aren't things a good person does.

I'd understand the cancel culture argument more if we were saying he needs to be stalked and harassed or if this was all about level design, but it's ignorant to think that an open discussion is too harsh on someone that's acted abusive and inappropriate towards kids for as long as he did and would continue if he weren't removed. There's a huge difference between being bullied for a tweet or a youtube video and someone being held accountable for genuinely bad behavior.

EDIT: I just want to add too, that I think everyone's voice should be heard on the issue. It's important that everyone gets to vent, even toward those venting. This is just the way that I feel about it.

Wow I genuinely mostly agree with you, the only thing I don't agree with is the whole venting thing because things have gone down because of venting before but other than that you are spot on.

Yeah I gotta say some of his threads that he created felt really childish when it came to what he would often say, now yes the forum rules dictate that you must be 13 or older in order to make an account but that doesn't stop people from lying about their age and in fact I know this because I've done it before.

Don't worry I am older than 13 right now I assure you but back on topic this community alongside many others have to account for people lying about their age and if the person has done just enough research to know how to avoid age restrictions but not know the dangers of avoiding the age restrictions which is why the removal of mystic (in my opinion) has improved this community.

One thing that always has to be accounted for is corruption which is why so many game creating companies have gone corrupt because they didn't account for corruption (and also mostly because of Halo 4 but that's an entirely different topic) in which places like this are no exception too, mystic was in such a powerful position for so long and he was already kinda childish in the beginning so the power obviously got to his head and things went down hill from there.

As I have stated before I've usually seen mystic as one of the most aggressive members of this message board and now that I look at it, it seems like mystic was more of a person only speaking his mind even if it hurted others so it seems like he kinda didn't care about srb2 and wanted to just do his own thing, I can estimate that he lost interest in srb2 around 2003 or 2004 because that was around the time when he stopped updating his Sonic 2 mod which is around Sonic heroes meaning tha- oh... Well that was pointless but my point is on the whole estimated time thingy is that he was already losing interest in srb2 in the early 2000's so after 20 years it was very clear that he just wanted to move on to something for a while.

I slightly understand why he would want to leave the community because... seriously there's no way anyone can keep their passion in a non profit Sonic fan game for even 10 years let alone 20, but he should have done it and should have done it in a good matter instead of bullying the community and using that as his reason for not caring.

If even SSNtails and Sonikuu two out of three of the original creators left development of srb2 then I would actually assume that working on the same thing for that long would leave any one drained and completely changed permanently and not in a good way but as I once saw that someone said on this thread (but I can't remember their name) mystic's biggest mistake was not leaving the community, now I don't know what drove mystic towards staying in the srb2 community but there is obviously a reason that kept him staying but the cause of him staying seemingly for no good reason was him being a jerk to others and sometimes even supporting the wrong people.

The lesson of this post is that before going into a place of power be prepared to leave the position even if it's by choice or you'll change most likely for the worst if you keep doing the same thing over and over again every day and if you want to leave then just leave or talk about with others that are trustworthy.
 
Well, I guess the thread won't die down for some time to come... but on that point.




I slightly understand why he would want to leave the community because... seriously there's no way anyone can keep their passion in a non profit Sonic fan game for even 10 years let alone 20, but he should have done it and should have done it in a good matter instead of bullying the community and using that as his reason for not caring.


Yeah, I can kinda see that. This community attracts a lot of younger audiences, which results in let's say less sophisticated discussions. I couldn't endure that for a longer time period either way and I am glad I can take breaks from it anytime I want.
And yet I am still amazed what this community can achieve when you bring in some tolerance and creative freedom. So every once in a while I can have a blast.


So what I want to say is not that I want to excuse his behaviour but that I can somewhat share this sentiment as I can easily see myself snap being exposed this for a longer period (looking at my older posts makes me realize where we all might have started...)


Well, take breaks before you let out your frustration on someone innocent. That fair to say?
 
At this point I think it's pretty fair to say it's been covered in detail how the reasons for Mystic's removal (both properly and self inflicted) were for reprehensible things he actually did both as a person and as a moderator/administrator, and not for personal squabbles people have against him for his level/game design philosophy and etc.

I can understand how for some people it might be easy to get confused since many, myself included, have engaged in discussion regarding his backwards approach to Sonic game/level design and how some, myself included, feel that it had a negative overall impact on SRB2 as a whole. However, I see such discussion as not only a chance for members to vent their emotional baggage that they had pent up from fear of voicing it while he was around, but also as an opportunity for members to voice their opinions that they feel could set SRB2 on a more positive path. It's not that these topics have anything to do with his removal, it's that these topics have to do with his negative influence on the game and community overall and we feel as though it's about time for some changes now that he's gone.

The hope, at least for me, is that such conversations are treated as suggestions by the team moving forward, and get taken into consideration. Even if that means ultimately much of it gets silently rejected, it's nice to at least have a place where such conversation is now possible, whereas back when he was around Mystic would have undoubtedly silenced anyone who dared question his design mentalities. First by calling us wrong, then when that failed by locking topics while delivering his final word (often with an accusation), then finally by making continued discussion on it an infractionable offense.
 
back when he was around Mystic would have undoubtedly silenced anyone who dared question his design mentalities. First by calling us wrong, then when that failed by locking topics while delivering his final word (often with an accusation), then finally by making continued discussion on it an infractionable offense.

wait, he actually did that kinda stuff.

Wow is that petty, like as every game designer should be open for constructive criticism mystic would just say "you're wrong" then lock the thread and leave it at that?!

I guess that supports mine and Silver Sonic's posts about how mystic was more childish with all that power but geez, yeah if it ever gets to the point to where the person in power is refusing constructive criticism and actively making sure receiving criticism of any sort then something obviously needs to change so that's very clearly one of the big reasons why mystic was banned.

Well I gotta add something important to this thread sooo...

With how rude and selfish mystic was while he was here I'm kinda glad that I chose to wait on making my account but let's talk important stuff, as many others have talked about mystic's level designing skills and his stubbornness while developing srb2 I think it's time I fully talk about my opinion on his game designing skills.

His whole Mario instead of Sonic mentality with making levels I feel like was him projecting how he had just wanted to move on ages ago and his stubbornness with only allowing Sonic to go super showed how much effort he was putting into srb2 which was quickly decreasing, I think that mystic wasn't putting much effort into anything before he was banned because before he was banned he was only working on srb2 really.

From what I hear he was mostly rude to everyone and was defensive about his development skills which I feel like he might be working on something else but I also think that he might just be done with developing stuff in general because he might have a family and I think this because one time he made a thread titled get a life or somewhere along those lines and in the thread it just said stuff like get married and have a family in which is both breaking the rules (yes it did get locked) but is also hinting and or just flat out saying that he has a family so I feel like we will never really see him again.

When looking at his decisions mystic was always too straight forward and didn't care if it wasn't the right game design style for the game and mostly felt prideful of his skills not because they were what worked but because it was the skills he wanted but when making a game you have to be open for learning but mystic wasn't open for learning new skills but in stead learning more about his own skills that he already has, mystic was in general refusing in learning useful stuff for srb2 and the message board which lead to him not knowing that most of the things he said hurted others and or just didn't care about the people he was hurting.

At the end of the day his huge amount of stubbornness is what lead to him being a bad person.
 
I guess is fine, If they remove thok we know that modders will add it back. Removing add-ons however will completely make the game lose it's playerbase. as that grew the game as a whole.
 
wait, he actually did that kinda stuff.

Wow is that petty, like as every game designer should be open for constructive criticism mystic would just say "you're wrong" then lock the thread and leave it at that?!

He didn't always lock topics, but he did do a lot of telling people they are wrong, usually with his backed up evidence from him and other devs watching playtesters and their reactions to certain gameplay aspects and such. Effectively "You're wrong because what you have to say doesn't line up with what we have seen happen with playtesters" as a way of shutting people up and enforcing his preferred way of playing the game. When topics did get locked over this, trying to continue the discussion in another thread was considered an infractionable offense, so whatever his final word on the matter was when the topic got locked was just that: The final word.

I myself even engaged in a particular argument with him in regards to his tutorial design, the details of which I won't get too into here as I have linked the topic in at least one previous post. I genuinely believed my own side of the argument, but he locked the topic with a final word that included an accusation that I was only being contrarian for the sake of it, with the rest of the post effectively being "I'm right, you're wrong, shut up, discussion is over". Textbook how not to moderate your forum. It's incredibly toxic and authoritarian.

In another topic, specifically the one not too long before his removal in which we were discussing other characters not being able to go super, he also was ironically transparent about his intentional lack of transparency, the reason he gave at the time being something along the lines of "Even if we were transparent, it wouldn't change your minds anyway so there's no point. The decision has been made, so shut up about it, it's not changing". Which in my opinion is a really weak excuse for a lack of transparency. That topic ultimately also ended up being locked, this time by Rob IIRC, with the same enforcement of further discussion being infractionable, even in the suggestions topic. I think it also got unlocked after his removal.

Edit: I'm confused by this infraction for the following reasons; I do not believe I have made new posts almost every time anyone else comes into the thread. In fact, the last time I posted in this thread before this streak was back in late October. While I acknowledge that I'm not adding much new to the table, that was the entire point as my initial post tonight, briefly pointing out that the current discussion was generally rehashing topics already covered, while also briefly giving my viewpoint on how the topics at hand could be confusing and the distinction between why Mystic was removed and nitpick discussion as well as why such discussion can and should be valid. I also was not the one who bumped the topic, the post before mine was only nearly a day old.
 
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In the case of the Super argument though. Trying to stop it was futile as it would just come back over and over and over again. Some of the reasons Mystic gave for why he didn't want to give super to anyone else were really bad too. Like "Once you go super you play them just like Super Sonic", or same reason different words "Super everyone reduces character diversity". That second one I was able to debunk with a couple of videos.


At one point he even tried to argue that Super Knuckles doesn't exist. This was during a Super Argument that pre-dated Sonic Mania when I wanted just Super Knuckles as a bear minimum. (It's super everyone now after Mania.)
 

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