2.3 Discussion

[time gear]

Counterpoint: Metal Sonic should be very powerful.

From a lore perspective, yes. From a gameplay perspective, there's ways to make characters feel powerful without breaking game balance. Just giving Metal hover in his base form at all is already very powerful, and we're talking about giving him thok on top of this. Nerfing the hover a little bit to compensate wouldn't be the end of the world.

If you want another way of looking at it though, it would also be a good way of highlighting how much more powerful his super form is than his base form. It would be kind of like how in Sonic Mania the drop dash goes faster and causes the screen to shake while you're playing as Super Sonic.

 

[MetalGermany]

From a lore perspective, yes. From a gameplay perspective, there's ways to make characters feel powerful without breaking game balance. Just giving Metal hover in his base form at all is already very powerful, and we're talking about giving him thok on top of this. Nerfing the hover a little bit to compensate wouldn't be the end of the world.

If you want another way of looking at it though, it would also be a good way of highlighting how much more powerful his super form is than his base form. It would be kind of like how in Sonic Mania the drop dash goes faster and causes the screen to shake while you're playing as Super Sonic.

I see where you're coming from, but speaking from my experience with the game, that's never really harmed my enjoyment of the character. I think lore and gameplay should be linked and I think it's fine for additional characters to be quite powerful and break level design to an extent. That's been a sort of Sonic tradition since Tails and Knuckles in S3K, and it's part of the fun of using them... Especially if the character's playability is your reward for beating the game, as is the case with Metal Sonic. Comparing Metal Sonic's hover to Knuckles' glide (which I hope we agree requires no change), it's not really more powerful, lacking its offensive properties and means of unrestrained vertical ascension, climbing on surfaces. In fact, I'd argue it would be more fun and balanced with the likes of Tails and Knuckles if Metal Sonic didn't lose any altitude while hovering.

 

[time gear]

I see where you're coming from, but speaking from my experience with the game, that's never really harmed my enjoyment of the character. I think lore and gameplay should be linked and I think it's fine for additional characters to be quite powerful and break level design to an extent. That's been a sort of Sonic tradition since Tails and Knuckles in S3K, and it's part of the fun of using them... Especially if the character's playability is your reward for beating the game, as is the case with Metal Sonic. Comparing Metal Sonic's hover to Knuckles' glide (which I hope we agree requires no change), it's not really more powerful, lacking its offensive properties and means of unrestrained vertical ascension, climbing on surfaces. In fact, I'd argue it would be more fun and balanced with the likes of Tails and Knuckles if Metal Sonic didn't lose any altitude while hovering.

As is the case with Super Sonic, Metal wouldn't lose altitude while hovering unless he was unable to maintain a decent amount of speed. This would be even more achievable with the thok added to his toolkit, as if you found yourself in a predicament where maintaining speed was difficult and you have not yet used the thok during that jump, you have it there in your back pocket as an instant burst of speed to resume maintaining your altitude after only a brief drop. You can toy around with this already while playing as Super Sonic. It's already very powerful and balanced, and wouldn't be all that much weaker than base Metal is right now. If anything, skilled Metal players would find themselves able to achieve even greater heights than ever before thanks to having thok bounces in their toolkit. Once again, you can get a feel for what this would be like by experimenting around with Super Sonic. It's really quite fun.

The true proper hover that never loses altitude even when losing speed would then be the reward for transforming into your super form. It wouldn't be a massive buff but it would function as an added safety net which players could take advantage of in some of the trickier sections such as in Egg Rock, spending rings in exchange for ease of navigation.

 

[C.D. Dinosaur]

On the topic of character abilities, I don't think metal sonic should have the hover at all. Why does the character most often portrayed as reckless and willing to do anything to get an edge have the safest, most non-comital move in the game? On the topic of comparing it to flight or gliding, those abilities both have weaknesses float just doesn't have. the glide's height loss mixed with knuckles' already low jump height create a playstyle where the climb is not only welcome, but often required. flight at the very least have a strict limit of use, so the player can't get to greedy using it. all the float has is an incredibly generous speed requirement, one that the player will never fail to meet as long as they're inputting a direction at all.
the thok, on the other hand, an often risky move that can be a death sentence if used incorrectly, I feel fits metal sonic far better. in fact, why shouldn't the character you can only play after beating the game be the hardest to learn?

 

[time gear]

On the topic of character abilities, I don't think metal sonic should have the hover at all. Why does the character most often portrayed as reckless and willing to do anything to get an edge have the safest, most non-comital move in the game? On the topic of comparing it to flight or gliding, those abilities both have weaknesses float just doesn't have. the glide's height loss mixed with knuckles' already low jump height create a playstyle where the climb is not only welcome, but often required. flight at the very least have a strict limit of use, so the player can't get to greedy using it. all the float has is an incredibly generous speed requirement, one that the player will never fail to meet as long as they're inputting a direction at all.
the thok, on the other hand, an often risky move that can be a death sentence if used incorrectly, I feel fits metal sonic far better. in fact, why shouldn't the character you can only play after beating the game be the hardest to learn?

I'd argue that both Knuckles and Tails also have strengths that Metal doesn't have access to as well; they both have potential to gain height through their abilities. Tails more directly through outright flying and Knuckles by grabbing onto a wall and then climbing up it. Tails has a strict limit to how high he can go due to his flight timer, while Knuckles' only limit to how high he can go is how high he's given access to climbing by the geometry.

Metal is kinda in the middle between them. He's not limited in how far he can go but he is much more limited than both of them in how high he can go. This makes him very horizontally powerful but he's still very vertically challenged, though not quite as much as base Sonic as his hover gives him more options in where to drop from than Sonic has.