I never strafe either.
I am very sorry, I can't agree with you on this :
"If it´s your first playthrough, you should lose at the zone."
"First playthrough" should mean what exactly ? 1 live ? 10 lives ? 99 lives + continues ? 1 day ? 1 month maybe ? What is this first playthrough ? Why should I lose there ? I mean game designing wise ?
No game should ever teach you by making you lose on purpose... If that's the kind of difficulty you're talking about, maybe you like playing Ghost and Goblins. This game is not only dreadfully hard, but its gameplay near the end is bullshit. You have to play one specific way, using one specific weapon just so you can end the damn game. Oh ! And you won't ever know it before losing unless you use a guide. The game will just troll you.
I don't like it when people think challenge = cheap, instant death happy festival, every damn time, until you have just somehow become a master, and then, you are actually allowed to enjoy the game's "challenge". This is not "good" hard (challenge) but "bad" hard (fake difficulty).
There is losing because you weren't good, and losing because the game is sh**ing on you. If making player get game over perpetually until they are just pro players is good design I applaud you.
Game over is there to punish a player for playing badly. It is not integral to the design of the gameplay itself, except as a form a punishment and a limitation. If then, the player use his loss for motivating himself, that's on him, not because of the game.
At this point I was not even talking about SRB2 yet, I just responded to your view of gaming.
It means in a game based on lives, losing at the last level of the game should be common, specially on games like this where you can beat the entire game on a single evening. Lives aren´t a gimmick just to punish you if you don´t play well, they are a way too to make the game longer and to make you repeat parts of the level in the progress (just like grinding on RPGs). If this wasn´t the case, all games would feature an infinite lives system and you would respawn next to where you died. And you would finish them in a breeze.
When you have a lives system, it´s because you have a Game Over system. And I´m sorry, but if you are not a super awesome player or you don´t know the game, you shouldn´t be able to beat any game with a lives system on the first try. I got several Game Overs in most versions of Sonic Robo Blast 2, and knowing perfectly ERZ1 and ERZ2 got a Game Over on ERZ3. That´s perfectly fine and it´s not any designing error. It´s like saying a guitar is awful because if I don´t know how to play it, I can´t play a song. You need to practice and you need to fail in order to learn. That´s how most platforming games have been for a good reason.
ERZ is far from being cheap, except for some particular rooms or objects which aren´t that hard to fix.
SRB2 is not like SMW. SRB2 follows the pattern of a classic Sonic game. SRB2 is a linear game with tones of secrets and unlockables. And a last zone which disrupts totally the skill ceiling and the game flow. You have to beat this zone to finish the main game, but you just cannot beat it. You cannot. You have to learn it first, very carefully. How do you learn it ? BY DYING. Die. Die. Die, until you just know how to breaze through the zone because you were beaten to the pulp so hard and so often, you begin to walk/run string like a pro.
ERZ doesn't care about your mastery and adaptation skills (AKA good challenge) if your are not very already above average from the get go.
ERZ just use your pure memorization of traps and instant death every corner (fake difficulty).
Learn by dying. Then you can play it eyes closed, like a boss. That's quite shitty if you ask me.
Tell me just one platforming game with lives where you don´t need to die to learn how to play properly, that´s actually challenging. All platforming games require that to be hard, specially when you have gimmicks. I can easily agree that all non instant death gimmicks of a platforming game should be shown before a instant death room, but there aren´t that many examples on ERZ.
The difference is is the sheer quantity and concentration of instant death in one spot. One centimeter wrong and you die. That's harsh.
Reverse gravity with pits. Crushing. Conveyor belts. Yellow snails shooting you.
Now combine 2 to 3 of the above together with bottomless pits before, during, and after rooms. Sure it is possible to complete it. And it is also very bad and long.
Oh and a race to the finish, when you never had to before, above reverse gravity, conveyor belts and bottomless pit festival ? Sure, let's go drink some tea some day.
The only one to blame here is the disruption of skill level between the elit players, mostly found here in this community, especially the dev team, and the playerbase, which includes average and lesser but motivated folks. I may complete it today or tomorrow who knows ? I will still say ERZ is BS, but it is just exactly that. I should not be the one pointing it. The developers should have known about it all along. SRB2 is a Sonic game, not some Kaizo SMW bad hack.
I´m totally sure we´ll see more pits on the missing acts, and probably a racing boss (if ACZ plans haven´t changed) before Metal Sonic. Of course there´s a huge change on difficulty, the last completed zone is CEZ, and I´m sure all 2nd acts will be harder than the 1st ones, just as CEZ2 is actually harder than most of ACZ1. And I´m sure Metal Sonic will be nerfed, as the final boss was nerfed on the last game.
Developers actually know that ERZ is a lot harder than the rest of the game. They have a hole to fill between zones and they will make it smoother as they progress. THZ, DSZ and ECZ were a lot harder in their previous versions, because there wasn´t content after them. Now that there´s content, they have been nerfed. The main difference is that ERZ is not a previous zone, but a last one, and you are missing 4 hard acts and 3 hard bosses between them where you should keep learning how to play.
I hear you, who think I am just a sucker, whereas you are awesome because it gave you no problem. I say : Just look at it, how and when it was implemented in the game, and imagine some new SRB2 player sweating his way through the limiting Act 2, and then facing that. Not cool to be him, even if the concept of the race is very epic, his game over screen is not, neither is his save blocked at Act 1.
I actually congratulate any newbie actually reaching ERZ Act 3. *clap clap clap*
I clearly told you on my answer that you are not a sucker. You are playing the hardest zone of the game with the hardest character to control. It´s expected for you or anyone else to have trouble on it. The game clearly states now when you select Sonic that it´s for expert players. That´s the main reason I never play a new version of SRB2 as Sonic first. You did it, and you made it to ERZ3. You are not a noob or a bad player.
I will end by saying that the final levels Sonic 1, 2, 3&K never had bottomless pits combined with so many threats and were still challenging. If you managed to take an upper route, you were not forced into them.
_ Scrap Brain (Sonic 1) had some sometimes, crusher other times, converyor belts other times again. It also had a harder water section without instant death, and a secret shortcut.
_ Air Fortress (Sonic 2) ONLY had bottomless pit as a real threat.
_ Death egg (Sonic & K) didn't even really need them.
It is all about moderation and measure.
I clearly remember getting a Game Over on all three games on the last boss of the game (none of which have any rings, BTW), and having to restart the entire game on all of them (yeah, back on the day I didn´t have Sonic 3 so I couldn´t save on Death Egg Zone). I´m not saying those games were harder than SRB2 (they are clearly not), but you may be forgetting how those games were the first time you played them. Scrap Brain, Metropolis and most of the final bosses seemed cheap for me too back in the day. And yeah, you die instantly on many parts if you don´t know the level or the boss. But again, it´s expected.
I just want to state a different point of view from yours. If I breezed through ERZ on my first playthrough I would have been dissappointed for sure. You see deaths like a punish for bad players or bad design. I see it like a way to learn a game and repeat an already known part to become better at the game. It doesn´t matter if you are a good or a bad player. Mastering a game means learning both the controls AND the levels. If mastering the controls on GFZ meant you could beat ERZ, then why add that zone? Gimmicks are there just so the level is intereseting even if you mastered everything else on the game. That´s good level designing.
Again, that doesn´t mean there are some parts of the levels that need improvement IMO:
1) The snail on the start of the crusher part on ERZ1. It´s not a challenge for anyone who knows the room, but it may be annoying to new players.
2) Pit rooms with lasers on the walls may be too hard comparing to other rooms, I think they should have either more platforms or walls shouldn´t damage you.
3) The snail on the Megaman part on ERZ2.
4) I would separate ERZ bosses from ERZ1 and ERZ2, so people who beat both zones shouldn´t need to replay both of them. That way they can keep being challenging while not destroying new players as much.
5) ERZ3 needs some nerfing. On the race, I would either slow down Metal Sonic or make some rooms easier. The battle is okay for the most part, but I think it should be a little harder to fall to the pit.
Not much more to say, personally no air rooms have been greatly improved from last version, which personally were some of the hardest parts on the level.