It states on the SRB2 Wiki that the thok will be replaced by some generic ass dropdash bounce thing. (stated HERE: https://wiki.srb2.org/wiki/In_development)
Personally, I feel like this is bad tbh.
The Power Spin is not some “generic Drop Dash thing.” It is a move that lets you double jump, skim across water, and even climb walls for a bit.
The Thok has been a problem for the game for a while. It completely breaks any multiplayer gametype that isn’t co-op, it has no skill ceiling at all, and it encourages shallow play. Want to get the fastest time? Just mash the jump button down the ideal route. There was even an unofficial contest a couple years ago where people submitted their own ideas for what the Thok should be replaced by.
Furthermore, the devs plan to focus on momentum more in future updates. This means you’ll have to get your speed from the momentum, and not a generic, spammable Air Dash with as much speed as the Boost. There’d be no reason to actually use the momentum mechanics to go fast if you can spam jump to go faster.
This conversation has been had so many times over the last three years, but it’s pretty clear now the Thok is doomed. Just as it should be.
The Power Spin is not some “generic Drop Dash thing.” It is a move that lets you double jump, skim across water, and even climb walls for a bit.
The Thok has been a problem for the game for a while. It completely breaks any multiplayer gametype that isn’t co-op, it has no skill ceiling at all, and it encourages shallow play. Want to get the fastest time? Just mash the jump button down the ideal route. There was even an unofficial contest a couple years ago where people submitted their own ideas for what the Thok should be replaced by.
Furthermore, the devs plan to focus on momentum more in future updates. This means you’ll have to get your speed from the momentum, and not a generic, spammable Air Dash with as much speed as the Boost. There’d be no reason to actually use the momentum mechanics to go fast if you can spam jump to go faster.
This conversation has been had so many times over the last three years, but it’s pretty clear now the Thok is doomed. Just as it should be.
Putting it like this is a bit exaggerated and misrepresents the reasoning behind the changes, as the primary reason for said changes was always just that it's too difficult of a tool for new players which is an issue when it's the title character's main ability. Also, the last I heard of it the Thok was never "doomed", it's just being moved away from being Sonic's primary ability.
One of the big considerations for it, which I personally have never been really the biggest fan of, was to simply kill two birds with one stone by replacing Metal Sonic's overpowered hover with the thok instead. This fixes Metal Sonic from being overpowered, keeps the thok in the game so fans of it still can use it, and places it on an unlockable character so as to help prevent the issue of first time players getting themselves killed with it.
Personally, I've always preferred that they find a way to keep the move on Sonic so that Metal can be more unique than just "Old Sonic", such as perhaps mapping the thok to another button or making it an unlockable alternate moveset. To go so far as to outright remove it entirely however is probably the least elegant and most dumpster fire inducing route they could possibly take, and I can only hope that the plans haven't changed to that since last time I've heard. I and countless others have gotten used to skillful play of the thok after decades of playing the game, so it being gone would outright force a drastic shift in playstyle for those of us that prefer using it and see the benefit to keeping it. It would be like if wave dashing was removed from Smash Bros Melee.
Putting it like this is a bit exaggerated and misrepresents the reasoning behind the changes, as the primary reason for said changes was always just that it's too difficult of a tool for new players which is an issue when it's the title character's main ability. Also, the last I heard of it the Thok was never "doomed", it's just being moved away from being Sonic's primary ability.
One of the big considerations for it, which I personally have never been really the biggest fan of, was to simply kill two birds with one stone by replacing Metal Sonic's overpowered hover with the thok instead. This fixes Metal Sonic from being overpowered, keeps the thok in the game so fans of it still can use it, and places it on an unlockable character so as to help prevent the issue of first time players getting themselves killed with it.
Personally, I've always preferred that they find a way to keep the move on Sonic so that Metal can be more unique than just "Old Sonic", such as perhaps mapping the thok to another button or making it an unlockable alternate moveset. To go so far as to outright remove it entirely however is probably the least elegant and most dumpster fire inducing route they could possibly take, and I can only hope that the plans haven't changed to that since last time I've heard. I and countless others have gotten used to skillful play of the thok after decades of playing the game, so it being gone would outright force a drastic shift in playstyle for those of us that prefer using it and see the benefit to keeping it. It would be like if wave dashing was removed from Smash Bros Melee.
I’m not overexaggerating, every reason I have had been cited by a dev in discussions past, at least one as early as 2015. The option of giving it to Metal was floated in 2020 but nobody really liked it after a while, since it would just shift the problem to a different character.
Removing the Thok from any vanilla character would kill it. After all, when’s the last time you’ve used any of the other unused abilities programmed into the game?
The Thok has a very low skill ceiling, but is incredibly easy to spam. It has little place in the momentum-based game SRB2 will likely soon be, and that will ensure its total removal. The Power Spin will have way more potential for skillful use.
Terrible idea.
The drop dash's drop dash functionality is no better than the thok, it just lowers the potential of the ability (at least within the current level design.)
The water skid functionality seems like it was only implemented for coolness factor, and doesn't seem to have much use, especially since you can do the same thing with spinning, and that already doesn't have many uses.
The wallclimb seems useless within the gif, and annoying. It also conflicts with Knuckles ability, unless you use the climb for more than about a second, to which it already becomes exclusive to the Knuckles' path, or a time waster, mitigating the potential for Knuckles to have interesting ways to get around the level, being outclassed by Sonic.
The jumpthok seems situational, as it looks like it's intended for air-stalling to get over large gaps since it doesn't give you much speed, but using the drop dash to gain speed before the gap seems like a better way to cross it.
Furthermore, with the addition of slopes, the thok now has more skillful usage, as jumping off of slopes at a 45 degree angle can provide Sonic with vertical mobility without directly compromising his horizontal design, which ties into the momentum-based gameplay the team is leaning towards.
In my opinion, a better fix would be to make it so you can brake mid-air specifically after a thok to mitigate new players dying, and change the thok from a fixed speed to a momentum based speed. Maybe even rename it to the Air Dash.
At lower speeds, the thok will go about as fast as FSonic's thok, maybe a little slower.
At higher speeds, the thok will increase in speed multiplicatively, but suffer from the new air drag, which could connect with the slope example I made earlier.
A cool gameplay section could be rolling down the hill in Greenflower Zone Act 2, maintaining your speed through the valley, getting to the area with a slope behind the tree that has rings along it, thokking onto the slope, and jumping high, to which you could jump to the checkpoint, getting to the checkpoint quickly utilizing momentum and the thok in conjunction.
But what do I know, nobody has brought up any specific examples to where the new ability could have fun gameplay experiments to my knowledge. Only that it could theoretically happen. So it could be really good and everyone is just making a really bad argument. My opinion probably won't change much, but if you are reading this and you are an STJR member, consider what I've said. Mostly because I think the new ability looks bad (no offense.) If you were to replace the thok, please work to improve the new move and work with the community to find the best fix.
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Using Lua, I made a mockup of what this ability could be like. In the first gif, I build up momentum on the slope, then use the speed from the slope with the thok to launch off of the upwards slope. I'm using XMomentum as a stand-in for the momentum changes in 2.3, but you get the point.
Removing the Thok from any vanilla character would kill it. After all, when’s the last time you’ve used any of the other unused abilities programmed into the game?
Quite frequently, but even that aside the thok is very popular. I guarantee you one of the first mods to come out after the update will be a thok restoration if there's no vanilla way to use it.
This is completely false. It has a very high skill ceiling, and in fact seems to almost not have a ceiling at all. You can just keep getting better and better at using it. It can also only be used once per jump, and it's incredibly rare for there to be an area where using it every jump is viable. Even if the once per jump limitation is still considered a problem regardless though, it could be fixed through alternative means such as giving it a cooldown period, giving it diminishing returns within a particular time span, tying its strength to your momentum, making it a shield ability, making it a super ability, giving the player a limited number of uses that gradually recharges over time or is restored by defeating enemies or etc., or any number of other potential solutions that aren't the scorched earth middle finger to everyone who actually enjoys using it approach.
If the thok has a problem, it definitely isn't its skill ceiling. I definitely couldn't pull off nearly as many cool tricks with the thok when I first started playing, and I'm still nowhere near as proficient with it as some players I've seen in online videos. For example, the upwards-facing springs in the wide-open section of GFZ2 can be thokked-into to launch yourself across the area with great vertical and horizontal travel, but it took a while for me to get good enough to actually pull this off.
If anything, I'd say the thok almost doesn't have a skill ceiling, and that's actually a good thing, because it means there's always room to become more skilled at applying it.
I think a more appropriate complaint would be the thok's skill *floor*, and I suspect some people are unintentionally conflating the two. When you first start playing, the thok feels nearly uncontrollable, and there are many sections where, if you're used to air dashing in other Sonic games, a you'll likely thok and overshoot. I can think of several sections in Egg Rock where you might think you should thok, but doing so will usually just kill you, and the actual solution is to just jump and take advantage of air momentum.
In many ways, the thok *is* like the boost... in that the challenge is not gaining speed, but rather *controlling* it. The better you get at the game, the more you'll be thokking.
I'm on the camp where the thok shouldn't be replaced. Not only is it an incredibly useful tool in both regular gameplay and more specialised gameplay like speedruns, but the thok has been an iconic staple of SRB2 since it went 3D back in 1999/2000. Whatever would replace it (the wiki article doesn't say what would replace it, it just says it would be replaced) would have a hard time living up to the legacy of the thok.
If it does end up being replaced with no alternate method of obtaining it (eg, unlockable skill like Mania or given to another character), I agree with Time Gear: a Sonic with a thok would be one of the first addons released because, again, its a massive staple of SRB2. It wouldn't feel right.
I am personally not a fan of the power spin based on what we've seen of it so far (that being one GIF and a document written by someone who isn't a member of STJr). It seems like it does too many things compared to the other characters, who only have one or two jump moves. There's something of a trend in classic Sonic fangames where developers put too much focus on Sonic's ability and give Tails or anyone else who's present their standard abilities from the official games, almost unmodified.
I personally think something like Krabs' rebound dash or Inferno's modified air drill could be a decent replacement for the thok. Both of these mesh nicely with the game's design philosophy while offering more affordance to newer players who may be unfamiliar with the game's physics and movement.
I feel like a simple move that doesn't need extra usages and has plenty enough charm for how it's like the air dash from adventure is just good enough for me to play the game, which is more than what i can say about the extremely unusual move that they'll replace the thok with.
I think a more appropriate complaint would be the thok's skill *floor*, and I suspect some people are unintentionally conflating the two. When you first start playing, the thok feels nearly uncontrollable, and there are many sections where, if you're used to air dashing in other Sonic games, a you'll likely thok and overshoot.
While the concept of the thok is simple enough, it is still very horizontally powerful. It basically amounts to tapping the air boost, and this can cause inexperienced players to get themselves killed. Therefore, I agree with the sentiment that it should be at the bare minimum moved off Sonic's base moveset. The point at which I and many others start taking issue is when it reaches the point where the decision being made is the removal of it entirely. It's a very useful tool in experienced hands, and has become the preferred playstyle of many veterans such as myself after decades of honing our skills with it. To go so far as to remove it from the vanilla experience entirely would feel like a betrayal, especially given the fact that there are alternative measures that could be taken, as brought up in this thread already.
As for what to replace it with in Sonic's base moveset, I would prefer to reserve most of my judgement of the new move they're implementing until I've had a chance to try it. I was pleasantly surprised by how good the new physics felt when I tried them out before, and I can imagine that the context of the new move being made with those types of physics in mind changes things quite significantly. Especially given the detail that the thok didn't feel as good to play in the new physics as it does in the legacy physics we're all used to, and would require some tweaking to replicate the same practicality we are used to.
However, one potential criticism I do have with it is that it seems to allow Sonic to climb walls to a limited extent. While I don't take big issue with this in and of itself, I do worry that this is being done in an attempt to keep the mostly uphill level design philosophy moving into the future by giving Sonic an upward vertical tool to use in competition against Tails and Knuckles. The reason this worries me is because the core appeal of the Classic Sonic gameplay that SRB2 is attempting to emulate comes from building up speed and momentum by making clever use of your moveset while interacting with the terrain, and then using the mostly downhill design to maintain that speed and momentum while in the spin state. Mostly uphill level design makes this style of gameplay difficult, as it's incredibly hard to maintain speed uphill while spinning.
Instead of giving Sonic more tools to compete with Tails and Knuckles horizontally upwards, I would prefer that Sonic be given tools that advantage him from taking the longer main pathway by boosting his speed in interaction with the terrain while Tails and Knuckles can make use of their powerful verticality to take otherwise out of reach or un-crossable shortcuts that don't require as much speed to get get from point A to point B.
Likely, the thok was not supposed to be not in this. At first, this is a basic move. Like the homing attack, SEGA didn't do this same thing anyway, which am SOOOOOOOOO proud of the fact this is what Sonic Team Jr didn't do at all. Due to the New Staff to STJR, they can make changes on whatever things. That's why the thok could be doomed, I mean we got lua script so we can just code this back in and make what sonic was in the regular/old versions of him. And removed theses new abilities he has in 2.3, It can be impossible at the same time but modders do what they do. While Sonic Team Jr don't.
I don't think it's a good idea
it's better to upgrade the thok like in the final demo, that was nerfed but balanced
personally the best way to enhance sonic is with the rebound dash (from krabs) and the spindash on the walls.
It states on the SRB2 Wiki that the thok will be replaced by some generic ass dropdash bounce thing. (stated HERE: https://wiki.srb2.org/wiki/In_development)
Personally, I feel like this is bad tbh.
I think the best way to gauge whether it's really a good idea to replace the thok or not is to bring some newcomers who are totally unfamillar with the game, let them play as Sonic and see how they react or fare while playing.
But since the devs have already decided to replace it (apparently?) they "might" have already gotten complaints about it from newcomers or who knows what soo....
I don't know why you all are acting like the thok is this great and deeply nuanced move. Any depth in a move that is just "make player go fast" is completely accidental and some of you are jumping through so many hoops just to make it "balanced" like it needs saving. The thok is a lost cause and it's probably by far the least interesting move in the game so there's no point in tweaking it to make it slightly less game breaking and the best option would just be to make a brand new move.
I personally cannot judge this "Power Spin" as I have never seen or heard of it before, but really I just want a move that gives sonic at least some uniqueness that sets him apart from the rest of the cast and makes it at least possible to design a custom path around him.
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