Why can only Sonic and Metal turn super?

The problem is that at the end of the day, what you want is something we're not aiming to deliver. The reasoning, at the end of the day, doesn't really matter here. It's already quite clear that the core reason, character diversity, isn't something that the people in this thread care about as much as we do, and having super forms is something that the people in this thread care about a lot more than we do. It's a difference in priorities. Nothing I say other than "everybody's super now!" will appease the people in this thread.

I understand that a vocal minority cares very strongly about super forms and wants them to exist for everyone in vanilla. I've known that for a very long time. I simply have a differing viewpoint than you with different goals and priorities, and the things that I consider important and unimportant are not going to line up with what you do. Hence, it's not really worth sitting down and making an itemized list because that's not going to make you happy. No amount of transparency about the process is going to do that because at the end of the day the conclusion is what you object to, not the process.

I can't speak for everyone, but to be quite frank you can't really tell me what I will and won't be satisfied by. Yes, it's true, my major goal in this is to have everyone be able to turn Super. However, should you provide the thought process that led to the decision not to have this feature my secondary goal of at least understanding the situation will have been achieved.

What I am saying is I object to the conclusion based on the information given. Should more information be presented, I very well might no longer object to the conclusion. Failing that, I would at least understand your viewpoint on this properly, which would be enough for me to be at least somewhat satisfied.

I get that this has likely been a topic of controversy for a long time, probably much much longer than I have been here partaking in it. You are tired of it. I get that. Basically giving your community a "This is what we decided to do and you just have to trust us that it's for the best because it's not worth it to tell you our reasons" however I really don't think is the right way to handle this. All it does is add logs to the fire.
 
Not sure how fair it would be to frame this as a vocal minority unless we were to do actual polling on this. We don't have any real numbers on the census -- all we really know for sure is that some people want everybody to be super, some people don't, and some people don't have strong opinions one way or the other.
I distinctly mean that the vocal minority cares very strongly about it, not that if we put things to a poll on what people want, super forms aren't something people care about.

You can tell this because of the demographics of the people who post in this thread. The people who don't care or actively like the lack of super forms aren't going to post in this topic. The people who care but not strongly might post once. The people who care very strongly are the majority of the posts in the thread. This is a pretty normal distribution for this kind of thread, and can give you a general baseline for how many people, among the people with active forum accounts, care very strongly about a topic. Obviously this isn't a scientific poll, and you shouldn't use this kind of data for a research paper, but it's good enough to make general statements like "a vocal minority cares very strongly about super forms"

Also, on this one this has been a point of contention for some people for a very long time, so this isn't even the only thread you can go to to look. You'll even see some of the same people bringing it up because their opinions have not changed since the last thread.
 
It's already quite clear that the core reason, character diversity, isn't something that the people in this thread care about as much as we do, and having super forms is something that the people in this thread care about a lot more than we do.

This is not it. Shutting everyone else down as if they "didn't care about character diversity" when what they're trying to do is understand why exactly super forms would destroy character diversity in SRB2 when the example presented is S3&K, all of the disparities considered, is extremely disingenuous.

You can tell this because of the demographics of the people who post in this thread. The people who don't care or actively like the lack of super forms aren't going to post in this topic. The people who care but not strongly might post once. The people who care very strongly are the majority of the posts in the thread.

This obviously ends up being skewed due to the actual percentage of the players that are active on the MB, but for the sake of constructivity I believe a discussion or poll on Discord about the subject would be more appropriate, just like what was done about the control scheme, if there's any will to do actual polling about this issue.
 
You can tell this because of the demographics of the people who post in this thread. The people who don't care or actively like the lack of super forms aren't going to post in this topic. The people who care but not strongly might post once. The people who care very strongly are the majority of the posts in the thread. This is a pretty normal distribution for this kind of thread, and can give you a general baseline for how many people, among the people with active forum accounts, care very strongly about a topic. Obviously this isn't a scientific poll, and you shouldn't use this kind of data for a research paper, but it's good enough to make general statements like "a vocal minority cares very strongly about super forms"

Also, on this one this has been a point of contention for some people for a very long time, so this isn't even the only thread you can go to to look. You'll even see some of the same people bringing it up because their opinions have not changed since the last thread.

Granted, but I'd also point out that Super isn't a large portion of our gameplay anyway. The people who don't care very strongly about it are often the ones who don't come across super that much in their normal gameplay. What if it was a more frequent part of their gameplay? Would their reactions be positive? Negative? It's hard to gauge this without actual feedback from those who've experienced it.

As for my own opinion on how standard super for everyone might play out: it would be better for single player, and worse for coop. It's better for single player because the player feels like they have incentive to go for all of the emeralds as their favorite character, as a reward for achieving all emeralds with that specific save file. It'd be worse for coop, because everyone would be competing for rings in a cooperative environment, which is entirely contrary to the kind of behavior we want to encourage. But these are largely issues relating to the way the game modes work themselves, and could potentially be resolved without modifying super itself. As for character variety itself, I think we can at least make each super form feel more distinct by spicing up the kind of advanages each character gets from being super -- if not a change to their invincibility and ring drain, then at least boosts to their special abilities which make them play more distinct from Super Sonic.

If the question is "what do we gain or lose by giving everyone super?" then I think there's enough demand, incentive, and design space to try working with the possibility of everyone receiving the ability. Whether our test runs pan in favor of everyone being super is a different question from whether it's worth trying or not.
 
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As for my own opinion on how standard super for everyone might play out: it would be better for single player, and worse for coop. It's better for single player because the player feels like they have incentive to go for all of the emeralds as their favorite character, as a reward for achieving all emeralds with that specific save file. It'd be worse for coop, because everyone would be competing for rings in a cooperative environment, which is entirely contrary to the kind of behavior we want to encourage.

The first solution to this that comes to mind would be to simply disable Supers in general in vanilla coop (even for Sonic and Metal), if players insist on having them they could simply use a lua to enable them since you don't unlock anything in online coop anyway. Then for single player, they could be enabled by default since a player obviously isn't going to be competing with themselves for rings. If someone doesn't want to get emblems/other unlockables as Super, nothing would really be forcing them.

The only problems I can think of this would present is that players would be expecting to be able to carry over the game mechanic into online games, and would be confused by the lack of being able to. Also, it would raise the question of what the point of doing special stages in online coop even is.

I don't have all the answers myself right now. It's definitely something worth taking some more time to think about.
 
The first solution to this that comes to mind would be to simply disable Supers in general in vanilla coop (even for Sonic and Metal), if players insist on having them they could simply use a lua to enable them since you don't unlock anything in online coop anyway. Then for single player, they could be enabled by default since a player obviously isn't going to be competing with themselves for rings. If someone doesn't want to get emblems/other unlockables as Super, nothing would really be forcing them.

The only problems I can think of this would present is that players would be expecting to be able to carry over the game mechanic into online games, and would be confused by the lack of being able to. Also, it would raise the question of what the point of doing special stages in online coop even is.

I don't have all the answers myself right now. It's definitely something worth taking some more time to think about.

I don't think players *being super* in coop is the problem per se, I just think that too many players with super creates a sort of toxic environment where everyone is trying to steal all of the rings for themselves to maintain super. Like, I think the proper way to fix this would be to add some sort of ring sharing system so that resources aren't always eaten up through the super mechanic.
 
Also, it would raise the question of what the point of doing special stages in online coop even is.
Hol up, you can do special stages in co-op ?! What is this madness ? You are telling me that a single-player orientated minigame that allows only a single player to go in while everyone else can just fiddle their thumbs around as they wait said player to finish while the player can very well take their happy little time to leisure around and stall up, is an actual thing in multiplayer ?!

F**k this "super" controversy, THIS is what needs to be fixed.
 
Hol up, you can do special stages in co-op ?! What is this madness ? You are telling me that a single-player orientated minigame that allows only a single player to go in while everyone else can just fiddle their thumbs around as they wait said player to finish while the player can very well take their happy little time to leisure around and stall up, is an actual thing in multiplayer ?!

N

No

Please collect an emerald token in coop and then come back
 
I don't think players *being super* in coop is the problem per se, I just think that too many players with super creates a sort of toxic environment where everyone is trying to steal all of the rings for themselves to maintain super. Like, I think the proper way to fix this would be to add some sort of ring sharing system so that resources aren't always eaten up through the super mechanic.

Would there be any way to "instance" rings in coop so that players aren't competing for them? For example, I can see my friend run across a line of rings. For them, they just picked the rings up and the line has vanished, but for me the rings are still there and can be picked up.

If this is possible, perhaps setting it as an optional toggle in coop would solve the issue.
 
Weird. Haven't touched Coop yet. Coulda sworn rings and monitors regenned for just that reason.

They do (Or at least I can confirm rings do, haven't noticed if monitors do or not), but it's not exactly the fastest thing in the world. It is entirely possible for a player to hog all the rings in such a way that someone else in Super Form has a hard time maintaining their form. Mostly, it ends up encouraging players to take entirely different paths so as to not compete for the same rings.
 
Far worse than only these two being able to super is the fact that going super overrides the music. WHYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY did they bring back this awful trait from the classic games. I don't want to have to not go super just so I can actually hear the amazing OST instead of one song for 80% of my playthrough!
 
Far worse than only these two being able to super is the fact that going super overrides the music. WHYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY did they bring back this awful trait from the classic games. I don't want to have to not go super just so I can actually hear the amazing OST instead of one song for 80% of my playthrough!

I actually prefer the music, because it makes me feel like an awesome badass. Having the music speed up or not change at all feels incredibly underwhelming in comparison.

And, to give credit where credit is due, the song lasts quite a while in 2.2. It's not nearly as repetitive as the super music in Sonic 2, or holy shit, just literally invincibility in sonic 3.
 
Even if the song is good--and it's definitely not bad--the music to me is nearly inextricable from the experience of each zone in any Sonic game, official or otherwise. Half the reason I love ACZ is the song that just immerses me in this wild west canyon, or the calm serenity of DSZ. I can't imagine those zones, or Hydrocity, or Stardust Speedway, or City Escape, or Sky Scraper Scramble, etc. without their associated music. A Sonic game simply is not a Sonic game if each level--hell, each *act* in some cases--doesn't have its own totally bespoke music playing.

Thankfully there's a console command to revert the music back to the stage song.
 
A simple toggle in the options menu to enable/disable Super Music should probably satisfy everyone in that regard.
 
A simple toggle in the options menu to enable/disable Super Music should probably satisfy everyone in that regard.

Despite the Super Theme being my favourite song in the entire game, I agree that this should have been a feature added long ago. Even I want to turn it off every now and then. :p
 
From the answers we've always gotten over the decades, there's not an actually good plausible reason to prevent literally canonical super forms for other characters. No one gets rewarded for actually doing the special stages, and there's this crazy arbitrary...mentally reaching excuse about it creating an invisible "balance" for a SINGLE Player Mode; removing the option entirely when you could just avoid transforming in the first place.

SRB2 is one of the most polarizingly unbalanced multiplayer experiences I've ever witnessed, I never understood why it suddenly mattered for the mode where you're literally on your own and some characters almost invalidate others with their usefulness.

Let people enjoy their personal preferences and just have crazy fun, that's the entire motive. At this point, it's just blatant stubbornness.

FYI: consistently throwing out the excuse to criticism as the people being a "vocal minority" is very irritating and probably just downright wrong. Any person who's played the titles this very game is inspired by will be confused and immidiately question the decision if they finish the Special Stages. That's exactly why this topic comes up year after year and never ceases.

It almost feels like a condenscending projection.
 
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I've been pushing for all chars super for a long time. I get pushed back. My reasoning has probably been said in here already, so I won't repeat it, just know I'm on the side of those who want to be rewarded as any character when they collect all the emeralds.
 
I think my stance has always stayed the same here.
We currently have two (previously one) character who gets an immediate "fun" bonus unlockable to going out of their way to get the emeralds, that effects the current Single Player playthrough of the game. It's frustrating that depending on who you play, going out of your way can have nothing gained in the same way.
Super is obviously the most obvious answer since it maintains consistency and player expectations, but I'm not opposed to other similar concepts.
 
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