So I'm curious about something regarding 2.2

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I remember this being explained in another thread, but I forget which one.
Humorously, it's actually one of my replies to the thread I posted earlier in this thread: http://mb.srb2.org/showpost.php?p=684351&postcount=226

I do think a lot of people in the gaming community at large really overestimate the value of unlockable rewards. They will often put lots of things in games that just encourage players to grind or do things they won't enjoy for the reward at the end. At the end of the day, games are something we play to have fun, and encouraging unfun behavior for some kind of reward is exploitative.

While I think we still have a long way to go on this, you might notice that we've intentionally set the rewards in SRB2 to match the activity you're doing. If you like hunting for emblems, you'll unlock things like the emblem hints and radar to help you with the activity you're doing. If you like NiGHTS mode enough to get all As, you'll unlock a super-challenging stage for the mode. The whole idea is to reward you with content you're likely to enjoy if you jumped through the hoops of unlocking the content to begin with.
 
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In S3K, collecting all the emeralds removed one of the best parts of S3K's design: each character plays significantly differently from each other. When super, each character is essentially the same, a speed demon which forces you to go fast to maintain the state. While the abilities vary somewhat by character, the way they play is always the same: move as fast as possible to continue to grab rings. The abilities that make Tails and Knuckles unique become a bad thing to use, as both flight and gliding slow the gameplay down significantly while super.

I'm going to have to disagree. I don't know when you played Sonic 3&K recently but those characters and their super form still stayed true to their characters even when they were super. Sonic 3&K cleverly designed both Tails' AND Knuckles' path to be filled with plenty of rings not only for player safety, but also so they could still go the intended path. Tails flies faster as super which makes ascending and getting around a breeze. Tails is not as fast as Super Sonic still but considering you collected both the chaos and super emeralds it was a well earned reward. You got them all, don't you think the player deserves a kind of infinite invincibility you worked hard. Same with Knuckles. He glides AND climbs faster. He still retains his original jump height if I distinctly. Ironically enough, here's a video of Super Knuckles Gameplay footage. Take note of how he still acts and plays just like Knuckles would except he's a bit faster and is invincible. It's his reward for getting the chaos emeralds

I would like to go more on the subject actually, but I get a little bit too ranty when I talk about these things so I'll just keep it short.

No. Letting Knuckles and Tails a super form doesn't just make them "like Sonic and defeat the purpose." Knuckles and Tails still play just like Knuckles and Tails except they're a bit faster and are invincible.

That's just my two cents anyways.

(also I find it a bit humorous that you found it humorous that you had a post which ironically had me being quoted. We've come full circle.)
(Edit Again: I agree with your linked post, Mystic. Getting the emblems in SA2 was a pain at times. Especially when you get to the later ones like Rouge's late-level missions. Ugh)
(Another Edit: Also thought I'd mention that going Super for Tails or Knuckles would make finding the emblems not easier, but quicker due to faster movement speed. Not sure how much that changes things other than trying to get unlockables faster)
 
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If I may say something about S3K Super Tails, even while super he didn't get infinite flight time. All he got was like a combo of the speed shoes, invincibility, and 4 homing flickies
 
I'm not saying that Super Tails and Super Knuckles removed their character abilities entirely. I'm saying that the mechanics discouraged their use as much as possible, even with the enhancements.

As an example, I'm going to point to time attack as Tails in SRB2 in areas where the spindash isn't good. The way we have things set up, Tails flies slower than he runs. Hence, it's in the player's best interest, when using Tails for time attack, to minimize the use of his flight as much as possible. Fly for short bursts and immediately land to regain your full run speed.

Playing as Super Tails and Super Knuckles in S3K is very similar. It's not that you can't use their abilities; you can and you occasionally should. It's that it's most efficient to use them as little as possible to maximize speed because using them is far slower than running. Since you're on a time limit thanks to the ring counter, the most effective strategy becomes to play them almost exactly the same as Super Sonic. It causes the characters to blend together instead of making them more unique.

This is what we're trying to avoid. We want our character choices to be more unique, not less.
 
The post where Rumia rambles on about character balance for an hour

In it's current state, SRB2 in general is very much biased and based around Sonic and his speed, I play SRB2 every single day and it's immediately apparrent when I go hunting for paths for Tails and Knuckles to take that aren't available to Sonic. I feel I can get to every single path that I could with Tails or Knuckles with just about as much ease as they would. I've only seen two, maybe three stages where Tails and Knuckles have been specifically in mind (Techno Hill Zone 1 and ERZ3 (if only to give them a means of keeping up with Metal Sonic), possibly THZ2, but every route in that stage seems to be just as accessable by Sonic, just made quite a bit more difficult), granted this is significantly better than previous versions of the game, because only recently has the dev team updated the game's levels to feature such things. Again, this is not neccisarily a bad thing, however, this makes Tails and Knuckles feel underutilized, and it really shows that the dev team has worked more towards basing levels around Sonic's abilities and that Tails and Knuckles were just thrown in almost at the last second (I'm not saying this is what happened, I'm saying that this is how the game feels compared to Sonic 3K, which is the only thing we can compare this to due to being the only game that not only features all 3 characters utilizing their own seperate abilities, but also having seperate paths for each within the same stages). I realize not every stage in Sonic 3 and Knuckles had specific routes for each character, however, Knuckles was almost always accomodated for due to his lack of jump height. In SRB2, his lower jump makes it feel more like a handicap rather than a legitimate reason to go a certain route. Tails had a few character-specific routes as well, although not given as much attention as Knuckles, he had a few places that Knuckles either couldn't climb on or had spikes barring the way.

Tails and Knuckles's abilities both lent themselves to balancing the game out for things like races and competition, Tails' flight speed decrease is made to make him slow down the more height he gains. This keeps him from flat out outrunning Sonic in a footrace, and therefore keeps his balance in check, Knuckles can't just straight up glide, land, and glide again because his glide makes him slower than Sonic at first, but as he gains distance he also gains speed, given enough time, Knuckles can outspeed Sonic given enough time to climb up a wall, none of these abilities are neccisary with the exception of Knuckles' climb ability as you can run just as fast as Sonic on the ground. Tails' abilities translate well into SRB2 because it prevents him from just flat out running away from every ring thrown at him, however, due to his speed decrease, this ability is nerfed even further making him much more vulnerable to attacks, and absolutely killing him in race, more specifically the old circuit maps. Knuckles has been gimped as well but to a lesser extent, seeing as he doesn't gain speed while gliding and is instead set to a specific actionspd, he doesn't get the same reward for spending the time to climb up to the top of a mountain and gliding down as he would in S3K.

The abilities of each character's superform similarly balances each other out because Tails' increased ascent speed and lower cost of speed when flying horizontally serves to cover more of his weaknesses, giving him even faster access to secrets and items that only he can get, such as an attraction shield or maybe a few extra rings. Knuckles, similarly has increased glide and climb speed which give him more mobility (Which seems to be what he was based around in general) as well as make up for his lack of speed to keep up with, say, Super Sonic if he climbs that aforementioned mountain. Sonic's air-dash ability makes sense in 2D because it allows him to more easily acces stuff like Tails' routes or make a jump he would've missed otherwise, these don't translate well into 3D because there's no real way to give the player the same control over the direction Sonic goes in without extra buttons or a convoluted work around. To make up for this, SRB2 has given the player something else instead, the ability to float. This gives Sonic the ability to follow either Tails' or Knuckles' paths if he has enough height, which would be perfect... if the levels were designed with Tails and Knuckles routes as well.

I understand these things would be hard to impliment especially with how busy the dev team is right now, a step in the right direction though would be to change the characters to balance each other out, rather than focus on balancing Sonic and then worrying about the other two later.

TL;DR: The characters need to balance each other out rather than one single character being nerfed or balanced, also super forms help to keep this balance as well.

If I may, I'd like to give an idea as to how these abilities could be changed to better fit the character balance

Glide: Glide and Climb's actionspd shouldn't affect how fast the character glides, but rather the speed they start gliding at and possibly also the limit to how fast they can glide at higher speeds, also, make the actionspd determine how fast the character climbs a wall, going super should increase the actionspd and increase both of these stats. Super should also give him a super glide that, when gliding fast enough into a wall, he shakes the ground and any opponents with in a small range will be hurt.

Fly: 2.1 has given Tails a much better balanced flight than he had before, so this one's alright. Again, super should also increase the actionspd stat so that it makes the character fly higher faster, but super should also at the very least lessen the speed drop that the character recieves from flying. While not on the subject of the flight ability itself, Tails should also be given a speed boost for his normalspeed, as this would make him less vulnerable and helpless in match and a more worthy choice in something like race or competition.

Thok: In previous versions, the thok was pretty much a necessity, being that it covered up one of the major flaws of the engine prior to its fixes in 2.1: turning in midair would not send you in that direction, cutting your mobility drastically, the thok gave Sonic a way to combat this and thus gave him an advantage over Tails and Knuckles in things like match and race, as it also sent him flying over his normalspeed. 2.1 removed the necessity for such a move and instead made it way more broken than it has any right to be, attributing to one of the reasons Sonic is so overpowered. In my opinion this should just be outright removed and instead made into something akin to the instashield and possibly making Sonic the only one who can use shield abilities. I understand however nobody seems to want to let this go, as it has become Sonic's sort of signature move. I have another idea though as for how to make it more balanced and fit with the character's abilities more, the actionspd should be reduced for Sonic to about 5-10 fracunits less than his normalspeed, so it's a good start up move and still gives him a burst of speed, but still keeps him from just blatantly outspeeding every other vanilla character. And yes, super should also increase this stat as well to his normalspeed so it's not quite as nerfed and still useful.
 
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Rumia, you're incorrect about Glide. Go to the top of GFZ2's huge room and start gliding; your speed does increase. For example, here's a gif generously provided by MonsterIestyn.

srb20071.gif


Romio: What I said and what the homepage said don't contradict each other. Inspiration doesn't mean total copying.
 
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it may not mean total copying, but then it shouldn't say "closely inspired" either. That implies it's pulling a lot from the classics and not just for sonic.
I know it's just a small detail on the site, but even small details can have a big meaning.
 
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If you're that desperate to become super, you can still handle it with Lua or SOC. Maybe you might give the character an extra custom ability instead, like being able to crash Crawlas into one another by brute willpower on top of being able to float around as Silver. There's a lot of open-ended ways you could take on the problem creatively. You don't have to just turn super, they could give you some other hidden power.
 
I’ve finally found what I was looking for; a place where I can be without remorse

Most of the site hasn't been touched in a long time anyways; it allll needs updating.
 
it may not mean total copying, but then it shouldn't say "closely inspired" either. That implies it's pulling a lot from the classics and not just for sonic.
I know it's just a small detail on the site, but even small details can have a big meaning.
inspire /ɪnˈspaɪər/ to animate, as an influence, feeling, thought, or the like, does

Inspiration means we're evoking similar feelings to the classic games. It doesn't mean that we blindly copy mechanics over without giving them a good look over and deciding whether we think it's a good idea or not. For instance, we have a dedicated spindash button instead of implementing crouching, and our score chaining mechanics are slightly different (even though I still think not allowing chains with spinning is stupid).

And for that matter, this argument is stupid. We as devs aren't bound by how a few people interpret vague statements on the site. If you're going to justify your stance on why Tails/Knuckles should have super forms, try to come up with reasons that could improve the game rather than arguing semantics.

Also, regarding character abilities: don't take this as official word (please oh please don't start putting it down as confirmed fact on the indev page or I'll punch you myself) but we've been discussing those a lot in 'dev recently, and thok will probably be either nerfed or flat-out replaced. It does kind of ruin slope physics play.
 
In it's current state, SRB2 in general is very much biased and based around Sonic and his speed,

This is a necessity, Sonic has the least versatile moveset, there is only so much complexity a stage can provide. It makes it easy to navigate with sonic in mind.

There are several knukles exclusive routes, throughout the game, which you have not mentioned. But I can agree that tail's routes, are either incredibly non-obvious or missing some amount of fun.

Thok: In previous versions, the thok was pretty much a necessity, being that it covered up one of the major flaws of the engine prior to its fixes in 2.1: turning in midair would not send you in that direction, cutting your mobility drastically, the thok gave Sonic a way to combat this and thus gave him an advantage over Tails and Knuckles in things like match and race, as it also sent him flying over his normalspeed. 2.1 removed the necessity for such a move and instead made it way more broken than it has any right to be, attributing to one of the reasons Sonic is so overpowered. In my opinion this should just be outright removed and instead made into something akin to the instashield and possibly making Sonic the only one who can use shield abilities. I understand however nobody seems to want to let this go, as it has become Sonic's sort of signature move. I have another idea though as for how to make it more balanced and fit with the character's abilities more, the actionspd should be reduced for Sonic to about 5-10 fracunits less than his normalspeed, so it's a good start up move and still gives him a burst of speed, but still keeps him from just blatantly outspeeding every other vanilla character. And yes, super should also increase this stat as well to his normalspeed so it's not quite as nerfed and still useful.

spoilered for venturing a bit off topic.
I just want to say stop trying to destroy the most fun and enjoyable ability in the game. Every day somebody says THOK OP, and tries to re-work it into a more balanced ability. They ignore the majority of the playerbase doesn't play match, or race, or even multiplayer, and just likes haveing fun with the characters. Instead of Nerfing thok focus on making tails and knuckles better OR come up with tweaks to the levels that make playing those characters more rewarding.

Also to people who say nerf the sonic thok speed so that it is just under his max runspeed, I say buff his max runspeed so it is just over his thok speed
 
The idea of an OP thok is in the game but people usually relate this 'OP Thok' via the multiplayer.
 
This is the best idea for rebalancing the thok I've seen on the message board, 10/10 new Sonic meta.
 
Also, regarding character abilities: don't take this as official word (please oh please don't start putting it down as confirmed fact on the indev page or I'll punch you myself) but we've been discussing those a lot in 'dev recently, and thok will probably be either nerfed or flat-out replaced. It does kind of ruin slope physics play.
There is no quicker way to ruin this game than to fuck with its signature mechanic. The thok's immediacy of acceleration and the ability to change your aerial vector on a dime is really 40% of the game's appeal, so you couldn't slow it down or outright remove it. The best you could do would be a 1-2 second cooldown after 2 consecutive thoks to mitigate ground spamming, which is just dross; it has to be 2 consecutive thoks to account for fine platforming situations where you might jump backwards off a small platform, thok back onto the platform for speed, jump and then thok again to alter your trajectory. AGZ is all about that maneuver. It can't just cooldown after 1 thok if it means risking the input getting dropped, or having the action behave differently (like if you were to dampen the player's speed with successive thoks).

If that felt like a tedious read, or if it sounds like a circuitous addition to what's currently a pretty simple and intuitive action, then you should probably leave it alone. Slopes made this discussion necessary, but I'd focus more on how they can assist the player's movement over hindering it (and they currently do assist- thokking onto a slope and immediately jumping boosts Sonic's jump height, right? Added platforming utility). If anything, they're just finally giving us a tool for designing Sonic-only routes. Moreover, unless the netcode is getting a complete overhaul, then I wouldn't worry about character balance period. And even if it were, 2.0 ruined deathmatch's design anyway, so I still wouldn't prioritize it!
 
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If Sonic's Jumpdash is very powerful enough to Break the balance between Characters, then it might be better to Remove it or at least Decrease it's speed.
 
Or instead we could just remove Knuckles and Tails since their abilities only enable you to bypass all the platforming that actually makes this game fun. Balance

Sonic is the model unit and has been for, what, 17 years? Any tweaks need to be made around him.
 
This is why I didn't want to mention anything about possible tweaks happening...

Whatever the outcome of the thok debate, I will say this with certainty: the internal consensus is that thokking into a slope sending you high into the air is undesired behaviour and makes mapping with slopes (especially considering path splits) a nightmare.
 
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