New CEZ is Odd

The new Castle Eggman Zone level design not ideal. I wouldnt call it bad per say but I had a very hard time on my first go just trying to figure out which direction to go and I cant say that was a good feeling. The most obvious path isnt very clear and I am not sure if this was the intention. If this Zone gets another pass it would be good if it was better signposted.

Yeah CEZ1 is the most confusing level by far, especially if you have a character who can hover like the secret one. Sometimes I truly had no idea where the hell I was and just had to bumble around until I found a new star post telling me I was going the right way. It's a really cool level, but definitely labyrinthine...which to be fair fits the theme of the level.

I disgree. I had more trouble with Deep Sea 1 due to the maze like ruins.

CEz1 is quite open so it does make it difficult to see where to go but no one wants a linear map.

I hardly remember much of my first playthrough of either CEZ act, besides giddy laughter at how great it looked and how cool it felt to traverse act 1's greener parts as Sonic. It definitely didn't feel like the kind of level that was meant to wow a first play; it felt more like a mid-game gauntlet, the first real indication of SRB2's later difficulty.

What I have found is that *repeated* playthroughs of Castle Eggman have been immensely satisfying. When you can navigate its traps, you get to focus more on the overall structure, I guess. Where each "room" starts and stops, where paths meet up. And the zone is really complex! The CEZ1 path where you follow some springs up a hill, into the trees, only to then spring back across the entire massive "room" to the other side? That really got me. That got exactly what I wanted out of a level. The skyboxes are beautiful! The colour scheme and the textures! And the challenges, how I love the challenges now! Castle Eggman taught me to no longer be afraid of the swinging spike balls! I've *always* been wary around those in SRB2! Now I'm running through them, intuiting their patterns at a series of faraway glances!

Oh but the greatest part, at least for me, is Castle Eggman's most defining feature: The sense of size. The Firelink bonfire wasn't the only Dark Souls allusion; Eggman must have learned architecture at Anor Londo, because who the heck needs walls to be spaced that far apart all the time, ceilings to be that tall? Better question: what effect does that sheer scale have on players navigating the castle? It makes us uncomfortable in specific ways, and it offers a chance to focus on mastering the game's combat mechanics. ...like Anor Londo in Dark Souls. (And.. it's a mid-game challenging bottleneck. Like Anor Londo.) Like, combat is a much bigger mechanic in CEZ than in any of the previous zones, and I doubt it's an accident. You can also very easily run past everything, again because of the size of the rooms, but when you do stop to fight a Facestabber, or when a Facestabber catches you off guard, you will get some good practice in with circle-strafing, and thus Castle Eggman facillitates that the player is better equipped to enjoy the game in the long-term.

It may be an odd one, but it's also trying a lot of really cool things. These two things can produce *great* stages.

That's interesting.
CEZ 1 is my favorite stage, and on Sonic too.
It took me a bit but I enjoyed it thoroughly
Can you elaborate on what made you confused?

On the subject of Castle Eggman, I... kinda like Forest Fortress more than Castle Eggman 1... in terms of level design, that is.

I mean, CEZ1, visually speaking, is excellent, there's no doubt about that! But FFZ, as a level, felt more open and natural, while the actual Castle Eggman 1 felt like a series of corridors over a giant bottomless pit. It also felt linear somehow, as if there was only one or two paths to the goal. If Forest Fortress was improved upon by changing the weakest parts (like the muddy water), added more castle-like structures, and used CEZ1's best elements, I think it would be perfect.

As for Castle Eggman 2, as a Castlevania fan, I love it! It was huge, majestic, and really fun to explore. Some of the external areas need to be improved on a bit, they look too busy and confusing (I even got lost once in one of those areas), but other than that, it is excellent!

Castle Eggman 1 is a cursed stage—every new update to the game has replaced that level with something new, and 2.2 even brought us two new versions of it.

I like the current CE1, but I also liked the previous versions so my opinion is worthless.

Disagree, I had a blast going through it and it's even better with subsequent playthroughs, path was clear.

I actually thought that CEZ1 was a lot more straightforward than many of the other acts, but I think most issues with direction (for the single player campaign in general) likely could be resolved with checkpoints that indicate the "forward" direction.

When I played CEZ for the very first time I found myself trying to find all of the secrets of the stage when I could and often found that I was always guided into the right way forward. This was true even for when I was playing a lot of the other zones. The way of progression was never unnatural. Everything felt good. I'm curious to know what exactly made SamVision's playthrough so rough

I've watched a lot of new players play through the game, and while not everyone gets lost, some players certainly do. The main issue is that a lot of players who have been playing a while inherently pick up on the signs that they're running backwards, whereas new players frequently do not.

It's definitely an issue we're planning to address, but our brainstorming over the best way to fix it was interrupted by actually releasing so we haven't come up with a solution we're happy with yet.

I think the easiest way to alleviate which path to go would be lighting. Castle Eggman Zone is a mostly dark stage, so if you used a brighter spot with proper lighting to illuminate the way to go that would be the simplest way to direct players towards the path of progression. Add some torches in those spots as well. Light is very easy way to attract players' attention. If you condition them early that torches lead towards the way forward it can truly make progressing much easier I think, and not require you to change too much of the level design.

That's just my two cents anyways.

There's one problem with that though, if you're going backwards you'll still see torches, even though you're going backwards. What you could do is make some sort of particle effect that drifts towards the correct direction, but it might be hard to make it not so subtle that people won't see it.

perhaps the torches would only light up if youre going the right way? so like, if youre going back they wouldnt light up. the game detects youve already passed that point, and wont light em up anymore. thats how i view it, at least. no idea how it would actually work. CEZ1 can get a bit confusing, but its not too bad. (CEZ2 on the other hand.... not as much as confusion as just laggy as all hell)

Now that I think about it, I had similar navigation problems in Sonic Mania's CPZ2 and TMZ, despite it being a 2D game. I just assumed the levels were starting to become more difficult. I like that you guys are trying to make the game more accessible but hopefully you won't go too far with that.

SCOTT0852 said:

There's one problem with that though, if you're going backwards you'll still see torches, even though you're going backwards.

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Just put 'em against a wall or a pillar
If you're coming the right way you'll see them, if you're not then you won't

SCOTT0852 said:

There's one problem with that though, if you're going backwards you'll still see torches, even though you're going backwards.

Click to expand...

Not the first to propose a solution to this, but maybe the torches could put themselves out once you pass them? Something like the more modern Sonic games' checkpoint lasers - at least as far as detection would go - and it'd be a neat aesthetic to be able to snuff torches by "going so fast that the wind puts them out".

The key problem here is that it's more than just CEZ. The entire game has this problem, and thus the plan is to adjust star posts such that they provide direction information. We just got to release before we came up with a good method of doing so and implemented it.

CEZ is actually my favorite zone now

Mystic said:

The key problem here is that it's more than just CEZ. The entire game has this problem, and thus the plan is to adjust star posts such that they provide direction information. We just got to release before we came up with a good method of doing so and implemented it.

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The idea occurred to me actually while playing it a few days ago, but I'm surprised you guys want to try this out. I would have assumed it would have been too hand-holdy in your opinion.