I dunno, you might be surprised. The majority of team members I've spoken to regarding ringslinger either doesn't play it or agrees that it's trash.
Why can only Sonic and Metal turn super?
- Thread starter CowboyJoseph64
- Start date
I dunno, you might be surprised. The majority of team members I've spoken to regarding ringslinger either doesn't play it or agrees that it's trash.
time gear
Eternity in an hour
I have been giving it some thought, and since my previous ideas don't seem to be particularly liked regarding this topic perhaps an alternative compromise is in order. Therefore, here is a new approach:
Instead of changing what type of Super Form characters like Tails and Knuckles use, what if it's simply made slightly more difficult to unlock their Super Forms? In particular, what I'm thinking of is placing it not only behind the requirement of collecting all seven emeralds, but also having a cleared save file of the character you wish to transform with. I would also extend this to Metal Sonic, since he isn't the main character and is already quite powerful in base form.
This way, people get the invincible Super's they want, but cannot use them in their first playthrough. The only character who would be able to transform immediately after collecting all seven emeralds on their first playthrough would be Sonic. For everyone else, you are forced to play through the entirety of the main campaign in base form at least once.
This also brings incentive for the other characters who aren't Sonic to collect the Emeralds, even though they won't be immediately useful, as after they clear the game that save file will effectively be in "New Game +" mode with their Super Form unlocked.
Instead of changing what type of Super Form characters like Tails and Knuckles use, what if it's simply made slightly more difficult to unlock their Super Forms? In particular, what I'm thinking of is placing it not only behind the requirement of collecting all seven emeralds, but also having a cleared save file of the character you wish to transform with. I would also extend this to Metal Sonic, since he isn't the main character and is already quite powerful in base form.
This way, people get the invincible Super's they want, but cannot use them in their first playthrough. The only character who would be able to transform immediately after collecting all seven emeralds on their first playthrough would be Sonic. For everyone else, you are forced to play through the entirety of the main campaign in base form at least once.
This also brings incentive for the other characters who aren't Sonic to collect the Emeralds, even though they won't be immediately useful, as after they clear the game that save file will effectively be in "New Game +" mode with their Super Form unlocked.
time gear
Eternity in an hour
List them as unlockable with the other unlockables in the extras section of the main menu, as well as after the credits when the game shows you what you have unlocked.
Jake
Member
There's a pretty good chance that someone who is playing SRB2 for the very first time isn't going to get all of the emeralds on their first run, even if they're playing as an easy character like Tails. And if a seasoned player is replaying the game for the 500th time then not being able to transform on a new save is going to be pretty annoying for them. I don't think that extra step is really necessary... and personally, I think some people are really overthinking what has always been an extremely unbalanced god mode that you get as a fun bonus, nothing more. If anything, someone coming into SRB2 after playing S3K and Mania is probably not going to understand why the other characters can't turn super. Maybe they could be able to infer why when playing past versions, but not when a random character like Metal is also able to turn super.
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Or just change how their special stages work, while potentially making them harder/requiring more tokens/etc. They are the only parts of the campaign that are exactly the same as every character. When doing Metal Sonic playthrough (I was doing it last), I purposefully avoided collecting the tokens because these special stages were getting a bit tedious and I knew that there was no reward like with all the previous characters... felt a bit cheated when I found out...
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time gear
Eternity in an hour
Would still be a step up from not being able to go Super at all.
JEV3
There and back again~
I like learning about the decision making process when an artist or designer does makes certain changes, both those I liked and didn't like. I spent a lot of time watching director commentaries as a kid for that reason and still find it interesting.
However it almost sounds more like you're saying that any questioned decision made by the dev team needs to be fully documented, logged, and shared in public domain so that we can decide whether you like or dislike the logic. The creative process would be exhausting if you had to completely defend every single slightest change to everyone's satisfaction while under intense scrutiny.
(...actually that's kinda why I went to school for art and then decided never to pursue it as a professional career. I still have to work with customer expectations as an application developer but it doesn't feel as much like I'm on trial as it did during my Senior Art Seminar...)
The dev team doesn't need to defend themselves... and we can discuss however much we want what we do and don't like about their decisions. I've been having a little trouble following the discussion in this topic but it's interesting seeing what people's perspectives are on this.
time gear
Eternity in an hour
The dev team is subject to criticism every bit as much as anyone else who submits something they have worked on to the internet. If they make a decision that is largely unpopular, and it appears as though their decision making process is lacking transparency due to them not properly addressing it, that's a problem.
In particular, mentioning that they had other reasons for not implementing Super Forms for everyone, but then not elaborating on what those reasons are ends up feeling like a lack of transparency. It creates a look of the developers not properly interfacing with their community on issues that a lot of people are passionate about. It also doesn't do the controversy any favors if we are left feeling like there's reasons we don't know about and they won't tell us for why this particular decision was made.
Perhaps the reasons are trival, or even obvious. However, after stating that there are other reasons for why the decision was made that led to this controversy, I don't think it's unreasonable to want to know what those reasons are. The purpose of criticism is to provide feedback that can potentially be used to better a project that is ongoing, or a future project. I wouldn't even really call it fair to portray it as them needing to "defend themselves". I would rather think of it as properly addressing concerns during an ongoing dialogue between themselves and their community.
DiscardedBiscuit
Member
I'm sort of on both sides here.
On the one hand I don't see why not give them basic super forms anyway, on the other hand I feel like it'd trivialize some of the emblem challenges which I enjoyed if anyone could just pick up 50 rings and cheese them.
On the one hand I don't see why not give them basic super forms anyway, on the other hand I feel like it'd trivialize some of the emblem challenges which I enjoyed if anyone could just pick up 50 rings and cheese them.
Which is kinda already resolved with the 200 emblem rewards except Tails can't go super which is curious.
It doesn't help that with previous Super topics, the topic was just flat out shut down. (closed)
Tails can't go super even with the Cheat menu? Bad timeing for that restriction with Mania only requrieing the Chaos Emeralds.
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That's because after a while we're going to end up with the entire thread just doing a rabbit/duck season routine with the same shit over and over again. It's not our fault that people here get too heated over super forms for some reason and we end up needing to close the thread.
This is just a guess, but maybe the reason we get heated over Super forms has to do with how the old genesis games handed them and how they conditioned us to expect super forms for gettin all 7 emeralds with sonic or knuckles. Toss Mania into the mix and we're now expecting super for everyone.
Another reason could be that reasons for not including super for all come off as subjective without evidence to back it up. Like the one about super causeing a reduction in character diversity for example.
Another reason could be that reasons for not including super for all come off as subjective without evidence to back it up. Like the one about super causeing a reduction in character diversity for example.
It's not really that impressive a phenomenon. Super forms are an expected mechanic in a large scale Sonic game like SRB2 and people not only get confused when it doesn't meet their expectations, but double down on the confusion when the explanations put forward don't actually explain it or are outright dismissive ("not everyone's going to like what we decide!"). Of course, it's not something people should get heated about, but it's more the reason to break the loop than to treat the discussion as taboo or as kicking a dead horse.
JEV3
There and back again~
Oh anyone can be subject to criticism though I'm not sure if two or four people having a heated debate about something in a forum topic counts as "largely unpopular." All the same, you're free to offer criticism and they're free to take it or leave it.
It's this "lack of transparency" idea that seems a little strange to me and is why it sounds to me like you're asking for them to "defend themselves". And I'll bet that even if they gave us every little factor that played into this decision it wouldn't please the people that feel strongly about this because this really doesn't have the same priority for the team as it does for the people in this topic... based on part of the first official response in this topic (emphasis added):
Mystic said:
I'm not going to keep up this transparency debate, I don't know that nitpicking their responses and what they should or shouldn't have been is really doing us any good at this point anyway. I just pointed it out because I've seen it in other gaming communities and it always seems to bring out the worst in that community's response to the game. I am just a little exasperated by how that's dominated the conversation around a certain high profile game that came out this year.
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In any case, other than finding some of the discourse strange, I don't feel as strongly about the issue myself. I personally like the idea of SRB2 trying something different if they use super forms for other characters even if it's not consistent with older games. Replacing ring drain with a twenty ring loss would be more helpful than a glorified shield while also rewarding a more deliberate and less speedy playstyle.
time gear
Eternity in an hour
It would at least give us more to work with to take into consideration when delivering criticism and coming up with suggestions. Without all the necessary information, we will be stuck in the same situation we are in now. At least if the information wasn't being held back there's a chance the decision making process would make more sense to us and we could support their decision not to give everyone Super's more.
Assumptions like "Well it probably wouldn't satisfy you anyway" just come off as an excuse to me. It can't satisfy us if it isn't given, but if it were to be there is a chance it might. Even if it didn't, as I mentioned earlier it would give us more to work with when coming up with criticism and suggestions. As such, however trival the information might be, it can only benefit the discussion for them to be transparent.
They may be the ones developing the game, but we are all the ones who end up having to play whatever they make it into. That is why healthy communication between them and us is important, as it helps to ensure that what they are making is actually desirable to the community it's being made for.
I doubt anyone is trying to make the dev team look like villains or anything in this, but speaking for myself the intention is merely to either convince them to implement Super Forms, or failing that at least develop a proper understanding as to why they believe doing so to be a bad idea. So far, neither of these goals have been met, and their official explanations on the matter only ever seem to contain small pieces of the puzzle and on occasion can even seem dismissive, as if to say "We have really great reasons for doing it like this, trust us." when what we really want to hear is "The decision making process that lead to us coming to this conclusion involved this, this, and this." Failure to deliver this information only plants the seeds of doubt that it even exists, making the controversy even worse.
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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.
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'm not sure if we've ever tried integrating super on everybody toward the base game, so I can't even say for sure whether it would be seen as an improvement or a detriment to gameplay by the majority of testers.
What I do know is that anyone who's played S&K before hopping into SRB2 is going to find it really weird that Metal gets super while Knuckles gets nothing. This is another reason why I was against Metal getting super in the first place during beta -- not only does it disincentivize playing Sonic in a coop environment, but it exacerbates the total inconsistency with how we apply super as a game mechanic compared to classic Sonic, and rubs salt in the wound for players hoping that their preferred character might get the opportunity to go super. Our current super formula doesn't match player expectations, and it isn't necessarily better for gameplay that Metal is the sole competitor to Sonic for super status. If there's a correct way to handle the super formula, our current method wasn't it.
I don't think its fair to say the people who want supers care less about character diversity. One of the biggest points talked about throughout was keeping the diversity with supers, like having special abilities that make them different.
And besides, while the conclusion is what made people unhappy, that doesn't mean we don't put value in the process. That's why people specifically asked about more details involved in the process, we care.