Why all the SMS wad hate?

[Lunarman.exe]

I'm not exactly well versed in or actively on this site very often... But every time I've seen somebody so much as mention the old SMS wad from prior to the 2.0 days, everyone else just starts bashing the very idea of it into the ground while praising the completely unrelated HMS123311 wad like it is the equivalent of their religious beliefs in wad file form! I know HMS is a funny and seriously overpowered character, but I don't see why that warrants such deep hatred in SMS!

Feel free to move this if I'm in the wrong place; I just didn't know where else to put it!

 

[Mystic]

SMS and HMS are both awful characters. The difference is that HMS is a parody of awful characters (especially SMS) by intentionally doing all the things you shouldn't do, whereas SMS is genuine and acts like it's actually a good idea.

 

[Lunarman.exe]

Thank you the quick response! though I still don't see why SMS hasn't had a chance at being made better like HMS has...

 

[GreenKnight9000]

SMS and HMS are both awful characters. The difference is that HMS is a parody of awful characters (especially SMS) by intentionally doing all the things you shouldn't do, whereas SMS is genuine and acts like it's actually a good idea.

In my opinion, people shouldn't criticise a character wad by how the character itself looks, but how it plays

 

[Monster Iestyn]

Thank you the quick response! though I still don't see why SMS hasn't had a chance at being made better like HMS has...

At this point I'm not sure if SMS could be made better without ...not being SMS. The character design is a yellow version of Sonic with no shading (?) plus red and green stripes a la shadow.

In my opinion, people shouldn't criticise a character wad by how the character itself looks, but how it plays

Oh boy. If you were around for the transition from 1.09.4 to 2.0, you'll remember how the options for character skins were changed and limits placed on certain speed stats. As far as I recall this is directly because of SMS, or at least linked to the reasoning for doing so. He was, if my memory is correct, a faster Sonic with all sorts of special options such as running on water turned on. No sense of balance, just boring and overly powered.

On top of that, SMS was apparently slated to be part of some massive mod that was overly hyped up but was really never going to be.

 

[Mystic]

Thank you the quick response! though I still don't see why SMS hasn't had a chance at being made better like HMS has...

In my opinion, people shouldn't criticise a character wad by how the character itself looks, but how it plays

That's the thing. SMS's core concept is bad, from the visuals to the gameplay. SMS's concept is to just be overpowered and flashy. That's it. There's no finesse. There's no real thought into it. It's just someone trying to be "cool". HMS's concept is "let's make fun of SMS by doing everything he does and dial it up to 11".

SMS and HMS are both bad designs. They're absurdly overpowered with awful sprites. The difference is that HMS is a joke WAD and therefore many of us, myself included, find him funny. SMS is a genuine edgelord, and if we want an edgelord, Shadow does a way better job.

 

[TerrierJen]

SMS is just plain silly, its like when you are a 8 years old kid and you draw goku going super saiyan 25 billion, or just a character written by Shun Nakamura. I find both HMS and SMS funny tbh, but SMS is funny for the wrong reasons.

 

[Sapheros]

I think part of the reason people see SMS as fun is because of how much of a sandbox the modding is when you have the tools and know-how to make your character overpowered, better than sonic, faster than light, etc. SMS is a good example of what not to do, but it's probably the farthest you can go without not playing the game.

I'll admit I kinda enjoyed SMS at one point because his abilities were just as unique, not to mention it would be difficult to find a server back in 2.0 without him on since he implemented the emerald gimmick. But now I can't see the same kind of interesting stuff because breaking the game and not actually being challenged by the level design takes the fun out of playing the game.

 

[Lunarman.exe]

What would have made SMS an actually good character? And more importantly, what could be done with what we have of him to make him better? It would be really cool to hear some ideas!

 

[glaber]

I suspect the common responce would be "nothing", but What if he was the transformation rather than the base character?

 

[Lunarman.exe]

I suspect the common responce would be "nothing", but What if he was the transformation rather than the base character?

That's actually a really good idea! I'm sure there's plenty of other ways to improve him too! Some of the ideas I had involved nerfing/modifying some of his abilities/stats, slightly altering his sprites to make him look better alongside the rest of the game, and buffing the SP difficulty while playing as him! I just want to see how we can make things a little more balanced and good-looking.

 

[Mystic]

What would have made SMS an actually good character?

Nothing. The entire concept is flawed from the start.

Let's imagine I'm making my own character: God the Hedgehog. He can do everything. Walk on water, invincible at all times, jump higher than a red spring and fly, you name it. What's interesting about this character when actually playing as him? Nothing. There's no vulnerabilities. There's nothing the character can't do. He has nothing to fear by any part of the game, and this makes him incredibly boring. What makes a character interesting is their weaknesses, not their strengths. When you play as Sonic in SRB2, he can't go up without outside assistance. He has to use springs, bounce, and do other things to gain vertical height. This vulnerability is core to our game's design, and all three characters have something they're bad at. SMS has none.

SMS has this problem at the very core of the design. He's simply a self-insert fanfic character, nothing more. There's nothing to fix here because the core is so rotten that it cannot be fixed. On top of this, SMS's author continuously bragged about his character like he was the best thing on God's green Earth. He bragged about (false) system requirements, and acted like SMS was SRB2's best feature. Hell, he STILL does this at last check. I remember him porting that garbage to Smash and official Sonic games, and actually labeling him as "from SRB2" like we endorse that garbage. SMS is the epitome of terrible fan character cringe, and this is why he's so reviled by such a large percentage of the community.

Essentially, SMS is this old video in a nutshell: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QPtit-yjy34

 

[Lunarman.exe]

Nothing. The entire concept is flawed from the start.

Let's imagine I'm making my own character: God the Hedgehog. He can do everything. Walk on water, invincible at all times, jump higher than a red spring and fly, you name it. What's interesting about this character when actually playing as him? Nothing. There's no vulnerabilities. There's nothing the character can't do. He has nothing to fear by any part of the game, and this makes him incredibly boring. What makes a character interesting is their weaknesses, not their strengths. When you play as Sonic in SRB2, he can't go up without outside assistance. He has to use springs, bounce, and do other things to gain vertical height. This vulnerability is core to our game's design, and all three characters have something they're bad at. SMS has none.

SMS has this problem at the very core of the design. He's simply a self-insert fanfic character, nothing more. There's nothing to fix here because the core is so rotten that it cannot be fixed. On top of this, SMS's author continuously bragged about his character like he was the best thing on God's green Earth. He bragged about (false) system requirements, and acted like SMS was SRB2's best feature. Hell, he STILL does this at last check. I remember him porting that garbage to Smash and official Sonic games, and actually labeling him as "from SRB2" like we endorse that garbage. SMS is the epitome of terrible fan character cringe, and this is why he's so reviled by such a large percentage of the community.

Essentially, SMS is this old video in a nutshell: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QPtit-yjy34

What does all that have to do with any of this? I didn't say anything about his design, or even his concept! I was talking about graphics, gameplay and how he can be made to work with the game! I feel like the moment I say anything has potential, people start ranting about anything wrong they can find about it, regardless of relevance... It's depressing, really.

 

[clairebun]

Thank you the quick response! though I still don't see why SMS hasn't had a chance at being made better like HMS has...

You might be misunderstanding the context. HMS is an inside joke, of sorts.... The sort of people it's popular with (and in fact, the person who MADE the character) are the people who believe that fancharacters:
* Require very little effort to make
* Are gross and painful to look at
* Have pretentious backstories that try to make the character seem cooler, but fail to give the character any real depth or likability
* In terms of gameplay, they're pretty much just better versions of Sonic -- easy to play yet also lacking any unique abilities to make the gameplay memorable.

In order for SMS to become "better like HMS", it would have to become a parody of itself. SMS is a serious character wad where the creator either didn't understand, didn't agree with, or didn't care about the criticisms that were thrown his way regarding his fan character, and as such garnered a lot of the hate you see toward fan characters in general.

What would have made SMS an actually good character? And more importantly, what could be done with what we have of him to make him better? It would be really cool to hear some ideas!

Truth be told, it might actually be possible to make SMS a likable character in terms of concept and gameplay; I'm just not sure that it would be worth it.

What you'd need:

* A functional purpose for SMS's existence. Why should the player want to experience SMS in SRB2? Perhaps the creator could use the concept of a "corrupted" super form -- where Sonic has a Super Mystic form with all of the broken gameplay concepts present and possibly more, but with a crippling drawback to put the player on edge. Perhaps the player's rings slowly drain, and once the ring counter hits zero, Sonic loses a life instead of just de-transforming.
* Better aesthetic. SMS lacks a sufficient amount of shading to provide visual depth, and the "glow" effects on the sprites are poorly implemented. With lua and a competent spriter, it would be very easy to improve the character aesthetic on all fronts.
* Explain the character using Occam's Razor: don't complicate the backstory, just provide enough info to let the viewer understand what SMS is all about. Example: "Sonic has recovered the Mystic Emerald, which has enhanced the abilities of his super form! However, the Mystic Emerald is cursed -- detransformation at any point will cost Sonic his life!"

 

[Monster Iestyn]

In truth, SMS is pretty dated as a character now anyway, come to think of it. Especially since 2.1 now allows us to script new abilities for custom characters using the Lua scripting language. If you've tried out the most recent versions of Shadow and Silver, or perhaps the original character Dirk the husky, you'll find they all have unique abilities to make their gameplay different and interesting: Shadow can sort of teleport-thok in any direction, Silver can use telekinesis, and Dirk can make platforms of ice for him to climb up with.

SMS, on the other hand, has none of those: all he ever was was a more powerful clone (or some bizarre alternative form) of Sonic himself. He probably wouldn't cut it anymore in this day and age.

 

[clairebun]

Here's an example of a character that's pretty well-liked on this forum: https://mb.srb2.org/showthread.php?t=42033

Might seem kind of arrogant to use my own character as an example, but I'm just using it so I can explain the design process I had for it:

Functionality: I created Proto because I wanted to play as a character that was focused around midrange combat, but was also balanced in a way to where combat was interesting, exciting, and uniquely incentivized for the player.
Theming: Form follows function. I came up with many of the central gameplay mechanics well before I had a concept for the character's looks or backstory. As I was developing the character, I came up with a limited-resource jetpack, which gave me the idea of using a Jetty-Syn model as a base design. This idea also gave me ideas on how to make the gameplay more interesting in a way that would thematically suit the character.
Aesthetic: I am a fairly decent spriter, but I lack the time or resources to do anything as extensive as a character wad from scratch. Using a Jetty-Syn as a base made it very easy for me to produce a lot of sprites since the core design was so simple and easy to work with. It also meant I had plenty of time to work on finer details, such as fluid animation, natural poses and expressions, and fine-tuning to small details I might not have gotten quite right the first time.

Jetty-Syn Proto is not a very original character design, visually speaking. However, the wad works well because the character is easy enough to look at and has a lot to offer in terms of gameplay.

 

[MascaraSnake]

What does all that have to do with any of this? I didn't say anything about his design, or even his concept! I was talking about graphics, gameplay and how he can be made to work with the game!

...and these things are somehow not related to design and concept?

 

[sluggard]

I didn't even know people hated it.

 

[GreenKnight9000]

That's the thing. SMS's core concept is bad, from the visuals to the gameplay. SMS's concept is to just be overpowered and flashy. That's it. There's no finesse. There's no real thought into it. It's just someone trying to be "cool". HMS's concept is "let's make fun of SMS by doing everything he does and dial it up to 11".

SMS and HMS are both bad designs. They're absurdly overpowered with awful sprites. The difference is that HMS is a joke WAD and therefore many of us, myself included, find him funny. SMS is a genuine edgelord, and if we want an edgelord, Shadow does a way better job.

I mean, I actually had a kick out of playing SMS way back in 2.0, and still do now just because of the thrill of pulling off epic Crawla Bounces and other neat tricks


(please don't maul me for that)

 

[Mystic]

I mean, I actually had a kick out of playing SMS way back in 2.0, and still do now just because of the thrill of pulling off epic Crawla Bounces and other neat tricks


(please don't maul me for that)

Nothing wrong with enjoying bad things. 2K6 has provided lots of entertainment to many. Doesn’t make it any good, though.