Sonic's Ability Discussion

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I'm fairly sure the dev team's said that they have no intention of balancing the characters around Race or Ringslinger mode.

It was more so just for an example of why sonic is fine the way he is, I'm all for it being left the way it is seeing as it's worked for all these years, changing that would just be unnecessary.
 
Kitsune does bring up a fair point though. If Sonic's ability is to be changed in such a way as to be welcoming to newcomers, it should be in a way that doesn't make him the slowest character at clearing the campaign levels in the hands of an experienced player. He's Sonic, the fastest thing alive. This hardly feels like the case with Tails and Knuckles having more access to faster straight lines to the goal when Sonic can't clear walls like they can.

It's certainly quite the conundrum.
 
Kitsune does bring up a fair point though. If Sonic's ability is to be changed in such a way as to be welcoming to newcomers, it should be in a way that doesn't make him the slowest character at clearing the campaign levels in the hands of an experienced player. He's Sonic, the fastest thing alive. This hardly feels like the case with Tails and Knuckles having more access to faster straight lines to the goal when Sonic can't clear walls like they can.

It's certainly quite the conundrum.

Can Tails and/or Knuckles be balanced better, on the flip-side? Knuckles is fairly balanced, but Tails really just tears the level design apart on most levels.

There was an AGDQ run of the game the other day and the player basically cheesed the whole game. Would've been so much more interesting to watch a Sonic run, imo.
 
Can Tails and/or Knuckles be balanced better, on the flip-side? Knuckles is fairly balanced, but Tails really just tears the level design apart on most levels.

There was an AGDQ run of the game the other day and the player basically cheesed the whole game. Would've been so much more interesting to watch a Sonic run, imo.

If the design mentality is to make Sonic more welcoming to new players on the assumption that they will pick him first, then logically it makes sense that Tails should be nerfed to be more difficult. However, how to go about that without burning Tails mains and new players who choose to play him instead of Sonic is a conundrum of it's own. Tails' flight is fantastic for new players who just want to play through the levels without worrying too much about the platforming. If you nerf him to the point that he can't clear most walls just because of how he cheeses the levels, he becomes a lot less viable in general.

One potential solution could be to extend his flight time but nerf the speed he rises so he can go about as high as before but loses time in the process. This would also mean if he focused on horizontal flight instead of vertical, he could go further though.
 
Sonic is the generally hardest character to play in the classics, and it's the same way in SRB2. Except here the payoff for getting good with him here is much bigger than just getting a superform, making SRB2 much better than the classics on that regard while still following in the classic steps.

Sonic's always been intended the macho/showoff mode for people who wanna be the best they can be. There's no reason to make him easy in SRB2 because people suck at the game, you'd only alienate veteran players by eliminating Sonic's once high skill ceiling and letting him skip things like the rest of the cast (minus Amy).

Oh, and speed is kind of Sonic's entire thing. Not "generic platformer hero with a generic double jump". It shouldn't need to be said why he shouldn't have an ability that doesn't amplify his speed over the other characters in some way.
 
Can Tails and/or Knuckles be balanced better, on the flip-side? Knuckles is fairly balanced, but Tails really just tears the level design apart on most levels.

There was an AGDQ run of the game the other day and the player basically cheesed the whole game. Would've been so much more interesting to watch a Sonic run, imo.

Tails requires rebalancing, so I would caution against comparing Sonic to him. Knuckles may be a better metric to lean on.
 
Dearie me.


Let me try again in the hopes that if I specifically refute each point you make, you will understand. The homing attack does not make Sonic more accessible. I have played with it enough to say this with confidence. It doesn't solve the problem where Sonic struggles with platforming.

[1] All of the shields work just fine on their own and are designed for use with every character. The Attraction Shield is the only implementation of a homing attack that the developers have found acceptable enough to put in the main game. Giving Sonic the ability would be a net negative.

[2] We just said no to this. We, as in me and several other people who may or may not be actively designing this game and are firmly planted in their decisions. Sonic gets one jump ability and it should stay on jump. What happens if he gets a shield? He loses thok and now his decision making is warped around that. You know what's dumb? Intentionally taking a hit just to get back your speed ability. Also, you have put a double jump, an actually desired ability in platforming, on the same button as the move that will uncontrollably fling Sonic toward whatever the game deems acceptable. I shouldn't have to explain why this is a bad move.

[3] This isn't about the radius, it's about any enemy. Have you tried to homing attack a Snapper? Or a Pyre? Or a Crushtacean? You're more likely to get hit by those than you are to actually hit them. That's a fact. That's what I've observed with every character with a homing attack. It's bad.

[4] That will give people more reasons to hate this game than they do right now and it'll go back to the problem of getting abilities you didn't ask for when you wanted to use the other option on the same button.

[5] Then why not just argue for the double jump on its own? The homing attack isn't a benefit here. Try having it in Aerial Garden and then have fun getting dragged off course by random flying bees, going straight down to hit monitors and having your progress lost, or hitting springs you didn't mean to and losing all of your momentum.

[6] Whatever.

[7] No it isn't. No other character can situationally lose their mobility just because they're near a hazard, not even touching it. Rooms full of TNT or exploding mines aren't a problem for Tails, Knuckles, Metal Sonic, or Fang because they don't lose their options. You give Sonic a homing attack and then suddenly he can't have his air dash or double jump without running the risk of flying into them automatically, getting hit and/or dying.

[8] You don't see why it's bad that a basic ability would not be useful in record attack? You think it'd be just fine if Sonic using his ability would cause him to get stopped in place bouncing on one spring for a few extra seconds just to keep moving again?

[9] I can't even respond to this. Refer to anything Mystic has said and then try again.

[10] I've experienced this as every character with a homing attack. It's targeting range borders on being a full 180 degrees in front of Sonic. The reticle will not be on screen and Sonic will move toward it anyway. You can't be mindful of something you can't even see or hear.

Why not just use the triggers for the camera, allowing the face buttons to be used for actions like in most games? Refraining from adding a third action button because some people are used to more eccentric old control setups like that sounds like the "tradition over progress" problem mentioned previously in this thread to me.

Are we going to just shun people for their control setups now? I can't even bind the triggers to the camera because the deadzones in SRB2 are not configured to allow it. The camera will spin endlessly. And if I wanted to use Standard controls comfortably, the best option would be a twinstick setup where I would not have very many buttons left to bind that I can use without the whole thing feeling clumsy. Right now, just Jump and Spin is the maximum.

Or better yet why not consider the fact that adding a third button and systematically changing the whole game just so Sonic could have a toggle on his jump ability is absolutely ridiculous and would probably result in sweeping changes the game doesn't need just to justify that third button outside of playing as Sonic.



And then as for everything else, why is the discussion on how to fix Sonic's jump ability turning into nerfs for Tails and Knuckles? That's not productive, that would be actively detrimental. You're just going to make the overall experience for everyone worse like that. Right now the game is the hardest for just Sonic, out of six total characters. We only need to bring him up, not drag everyone down just to "balance" a primarily single player game, especially now that Ringslinger and Race are considered dead gamemodes.
 
Alrighty, we are most definitely going in circles and I don't think having a massive thread that's a sinkhole of tealdeers is actually benefitting anyone.

I'm going to set the record straight for how STJr is handling this. These are the official bullet points:
1) We recognize that thok has problems where it is.
2) We believe it is best if the main 3 characters do not have thok.
3) Sonic would need a new ability. The default is double jump right now. We have discussed at length in this topic what we're considering and what we don't want.
4) Removing thok from Sonic means it goes somewhere else. The thok is a net positive for the game.
5) No changes regarding the removal of thok from Sonic will happen in a 2.2.X patch. This is a change for the next major version.
6) We will be discussing different ideas that have been brought up here and elsewhere for Sonic's ability. But the two absolutes are that Sonic will not get a homing attack, and we will not be adding a 3rd button to the game for Sonic.

I don't think this topic is healthy at this point. So I'm closing it.

Locked.
 
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