Do people enjoy long SRB2 stages? (From a level designer standpoint)

[Aquavine]

While creating my stages I noticed that they are pretty long. (atleast for SRB2 standards) If you were playing one of my stages as a character with no abilities it would take you around 4:30 to beat it. And my perfect time that "can" be reached by all vanilla characters is 3:30, and by "can" I mean with help of dozens of speed shoes monitors and flame shield monitors. (With flame shield you can build on top of your speed as long as you don't lose it.) I also need to add that I create my stages with only one path in mind so there's no faster path avaliable. (Even just thinking about making several paths that connect toghether makes my head spin )
And that's what bothers me as a level designer, do people enjoy playing Emerald Coast/City escape like stages? When there's only one path that you can take with the only way to beat it faster is by using skips? Now imagine if EC was like 6 or 8 minutes long, would people still like this stage as they do now even if it's long and has barely any alternate paths to make it shorter? Because that's kinda how all my stages look like now.

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Here's a map of one of my stages for example. If you were playing in the scenario I talked about earlier it would take you 3 minutes, and it's not even done yet.
And it's less open so there's less avaliable skips that will save time.

 

[BLU3]

long stages are good as long if there's a way to complete them quickly. Take for example sonic 3's level design, there's always at least two paths to complete a stage, upper, where the most fun things and speedy sections are located in and the lesser that mostly consists of platforming sessions but always has a few ways to go to the upper part of the stage.

 

[SnocSock the Hedg]

Like BLU3 said, long stages are good as long as they can be beat quickly. But, I would also like to add something: if they are well-made. I'm not saying your level isn't well-made, I'm just saying this in general. If it looks like a level and has really cool design, it doesn't matter how long it is...in my own opinion, I guess.

 

[Mr Beagle]

I am fine with long stages, heck the modding scene for this game allowed me to do something I have dreamed of doing since childhood, which is to make long Sonic levels that keep going (I am 35 and even played the original 'not for resale' build of Sonic 1 for the Genesis, and the cartridge still works). Though I usually work to bring my levels to a close after starpost number 6 is placed (I do not place them real close together and I need to preserve ideas for the second act).

There is one important thing to note though, and that is a stage that is very long does not wind up near as fun if a good chunk of it feels like what you have already gone through but with the geometry rearranged. Make sure you have a variety of landmarks, areas of interest, and challenges to keep things somewhat fresh and give the player something to look for when replaying the level with a different character or as an emblem hunt.

 

[icomplainlots]

Honestly, I just wanna go fast! But in a level like cez2, that's just not really possible imo

 

[ChaseSP]

Length depends largely, but not entirely, on the ability for the map maker to continue to change up or offer new combinations of whatever level gimmicks they're using as a base for their stage. The longer the levle is, the most difficult it is to continually shift things up without having to either introduce more gimmicks, or figure out even more complex setups and often ends up one of my general issues with longer maps that fail to do this. It's much easier to make a simple short level interesting than a simple long level.

 

[XtremeXavier]

How long a level oughta be depends on multiple factors like difficulty, genre and context. I'd think less about actual duration and more about how many challenges you want to throw at the player: too few and they walk away underwhelmed, too many and you risk fatigue setting in and them possibly giving up.
Fast-paced athletic stages need a lot of variety given you move through them quickly, while complex puzzles or platforming challenges are likely to take a few minutes and shouldn't be strung together in vast quantities. Lastly, if you're framing the level within a larger campaign, its complexity should correlate to its placement in the level order.

 

[DylanDude]

In general, the rule for the Sonic franchise has always been that if a level goes above five minutes, it's pushing it. A general rule of pacing in the series is that you shouldn't stay in one environment for too long.

 

[Avalice]

I think that in order to have a long level it just can't be repetitive. Basically just have the level introduce something cool and new every now and then and you should be good. My level, Doomship Zone Act 2, goes pretty long depending on skill and that's never the complaint. Unlike other people are saying I don't think that you HAVE to be able to beat the level quickly. You can have a long level where you go fast, and get through sections quickly, but not the whole level.
Edit: Also 4:30 isn't very long. I will say that from the grid-view your level looks repetitive but I can't really see it so maybe it isn't.

 

[time gear]

A tip I'd like to share is this: If you have multiple sections that make use of the same gimmick, try to space them apart from each other and find a way to make each one stand out from each other. Think of City Escape from SA2; There's multiple sections in which you're basically just following a linear pathway along the road, but they're spaced out between platforming sections and there's something unique about each one. First you're sliding down the road on a narrow piece of metal akin to skateboarding, then in the next one it's more of an on foot section with tighter controls, and then finally the last one shifts the camera perspective in front of Sonic as he's chased by the iconic G.U.N. Truck. All three of these sections feature a similar gimmick yet it's immediately identifiable at a glance which of the three sections you are in. The result is one of the most iconic stages in Sonic history despite the difficulty not increasing much from the start to the end (unless you care about score, in which case you're going to be spending a lot of time memorizing ramp locations in the chase section).

By making use of this technique, you don't have to do much in the way of upping the difficulty or complexity to keep the player invested because there's still a clear sense of progress as the player moves through the level. You can think of it as each individual section of level being its own little mini-level with the entire stage being the combined result of fitting them together like puzzle pieces. So long as each individual "slice" maintains an identity of its own you should be able to avoid players getting bored as they progress through the combined stage.

I'd recommend thinking about it as a form of visual storytelling. Have progress through the stage equate to progress through the "narrative" of the stage with the individual gimmicks not only serving the gameplay but also acting as a vessel to progress the narrative. In City Escape, the narrative in question is that Sonic is on the run from the authorities. He slides down the road on a chunk of metal, eventually ditches it to run on foot as he starts to think he's somewhat lost them, and then makes a final sprint to the finish as he's suddenly ambushed and chased by the truck. Each of these "chapters" of the story is conveyed through the gimmick of each individual section, with progression through the stage revealing what happens next and how in the narrative. This enhances the sense of progression, helping to keep the player invested.

 

[Aquavine]

I think I won’t post much in this thread myself because looking at it, it could be used as a level design handbook of some kind. Especially because I didn’t found any other discussions about long Sonic stages on this website nor on any other social medias that I know of.
And I myself don’t have any tips so I will stop myself from writing 10 page essays on significance of a singular palm tree in my stage. But even without knowing about these ideas, I somehow knew what I should do to make things fresh, and I even made some l o r e for one of my stages. (Even if act 2 is a complete liminal space in terms of anything lore related)

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Thank you all for all the replies! It may be unfortunately a bit too late for me to use these tips because most of my stages are nearing completion, but I’m sure that I and other people will use these tips to make thier stages better in the future.

 

[GS_HD]

I'll take it as long as it doesn't take me more than 30 - 35ish minutes to complete, because you know SRB2 (and Sonic games usually in general) does not have manual saves or checkpoint saves

 

[Mr Beagle]

35ish minutes to complete, because you know SRB2 (and Sonic games usually in general) does not have manual saves or checkpoint saves

Can you clarify that a little, the Sonic games since Sonic 3 at least saved your progress automatically on completion of a zone and all of the games expressed different levels of generosity in terms of in-level checkpoints (which is essentially a form of level save primarily regarding your location).

Generally, to create your own save points at any time is meant to be a cheat more than anything else. In the case of SRB2 levels, it is the responsibility of the mapper to determine whether a pair of checkpoints are too far from each other (though I more commonly see them overused such as the existence of maps where the first one is literally around the corner from where you start).

 

[GS_HD]

Can you clarify that a little, the Sonic games since Sonic 3 at least saved your progress automatically on completion of a zone and all of the games expressed different levels of generosity in terms of in-level checkpoints (which is essentially a form of level save primarily regarding your location).

Generally, to create your own save points at any time is meant to be a cheat more than anything else. In the case of SRB2 levels, it is the responsibility of the mapper to determine whether a pair of checkpoints are too far from each other (though I more commonly see them overused such as the existence of maps where the first one is literally around the corner from where you start).

They usually only saved your progress at the beginning of the level, some of us don't have a lot of time to spare and may want to leave the game and come back to finish the stage later and having to restart a 1 hour long stage is not ideal for situations like this.

 

[Skay]

Long levels are OK as long as they have I guess a distinctive theme, sections and check points? If a level becomes too wild and varied with what it expects from you, unless that itself is the theme? Then you're probably better off splitting those things into seperate levels. Imo people fear/hate long levels a lot because of the punishment for mistakes. People hate eggman land in sonic unleashed for that exact reason.