Aren't Modern Sonic stages generally filled to the brim with rings everywhere? Not really seeing how it's a problem. Sonic Unleashed did it this way as well iirc.
I think I may be misunderstanding this. So it's only Sonic being unable to recollect dropped rings? But all other rings in the stage are still collectable? Am I getting this right? If so it's not actually that terrible. I took the quotation in the interview too literally I think. I thought it meant being unable to collect any and all rings once getting hit which would just make zero sense hence the confusion.
Oh yea pretty sure that's what they meant. You won't be forbidden from rings once you've been hit, you just can't pick up lost rings. It'll be like it was in Unleashed.
For Modern Sonic it's not that big of a deal. But for the OC and especially for Classic Sonic, it just makes no sense. If they pepper the stage with tons of rings, that just means they're making up for the fact that you can't recollect them, which begs the question why did they even bother excluding the feature to begin with if the concern was difficulty. Besides that though is the fact that you go right back to zero with every character. It just feels so out of left field, and the best explanation is, "balancing difficulty". Like the rings would somehow make the game too easy, even though there are a ton of different ways you could keep the system without sacrificing such a key component. I'm inclined to agree with the idea that rings are sort of currency you use to buy gear for the OC. It could pad out game length by encouraging you to redo stages or missions where you can get a lot of rings to get more gear. And if there really is a lot of stuff to put on your character as they say, then it makes more sense than unlocking it all through missions or red rings (unless they have a TON of those, which seems unlikely). But even then it seems like it would just be way too lazy. Sonic Team wouldn't stoop that low just to drag the game out...right?
Note that you don't lose all of your rings when getting hurt in Sonic Unleashed - you lose half or 20, whichever is higher.
The difference being that this time it isn't out of technical limitations, but rather due to some bone-headed decision that should only make a difference during boss fights anyway. And even that depends on the actual ring placement.
For Classic sonic this both doesnt make sense and outright clashes with the design of Sonic Mania, which is an *issue* since Classic Sonic, or more specifically MANIA SONIC is in this game. The same character behaving differently--COMPLETELY differently--in two games a few months removes from each other is going to make things frustrating for nearly everyone playing. I get they can probably--and WILL probably--handwave the issue by going "oh yeah Mania sonic adheres to the rules of this world." That's still not that good an answer, though, because at that point why have Mania Sonic in the game??? It's just more evidence of the game just trying to throw together something and pray they get some result. I can't tell from reading that if he means "Classic" Sonic won't be able to collect rings he drops either, but if thats the case, then what i said applies--this is going to be confusing and dumb and not really help anything, it seems. However, if this only applies to "Modern" Sonic, or him and custom character, then thats at least kind of *fine* while still making for some game inconsistency-at the very least if the current ring loss system is as it is, 20/half your rings lost each step makes this kind of reasonable, but I can see this being *hell* for some boss fights unless you're constantly fed rings. Challenge is fine, but if sonic bosses have any consistency, it's that they're either easy or annoying, so... I can only see this being a bigger issue. Also yeah if the game comes out in 2 months and the director says "this has been a hotly contested issue in the dev team, I'm still trying to digest it," I do have to wonder what the FUCK they were doing for 4 years???
Only that game (and its sequel) did it that way because of the limited capabilities of the hardware not because of "genius" design, the same reason why it featured short levels and a limited supply of rings. But, yeah, Forces is innovation, they gave an 8-bit design to a modern game and updated it by adding tons of rings. On the chemical plant reused assets topic, I must say those assets don't seem to be directly reused, but more like recreated with some design differences, which doesn't save them from laziness with the frequent reincarnation of levels and art designs, but at least they did a bit more than just changing the background. I'm a bit more worried about chemical plant being now next to green hill instead of emerald hill, because, you now, they were on different islands and that stuff. The apparent lack of respect to plot consistency reaches really far, which isn't a great surprise to me but it still hurts. EDIT: Two people posted before I wrote this. HP zoner: Ninja'ed me, partially at least. Chimera: Yeah, it's some kind of dimensional effect which Mania Sonic doesn't understand it either, but he's happy having an easier trip this time.And yes, Casino Forest showed that, both the ring loss system and the easiness of the trip.
Classis Sonic (currently at least) can not recollect rings upon taking damage. The only character capable of doing this in the game so far is the Hedgehog OC, because that is his "special ability".
And the Cat OC keeps one ring left over after every hit so long as they have more than one. It's nonsensical and feels like they threw the baby out with the bathwater to encourage one unique ability for the avatar. Just as well, Forces easily has the highest rings-per-second ratio I've ever seen in a Sonic game. In just a minute of tag team footage at TGS, they had upwards to two hundred rings, and four hundred by the end of the same stage less than a minute later. With no lives and all, all rings serve a purpose for beyond that as far as we know is for your Ranking, seeing as enemy and ring scores are vital towards getting S-Ranks instead of blazing through stages as fast as possible like Generations. People have been theorizing that they can buy Avatar customization items, but for some stupid reason Sonic Team's even excessively tight-lipped about that.
Let's not forget that the Dog OC restarts with 5 rings after it dies. The "unique abilities" of 3 out of the 7 OC choices are just variations of the ring system. I just don't even...
I see this theory being thrown around a lot, but you usually can't recover more than 20 rings anyway, and that's if you're lucky enough to get hit in a small space. Not to mention people are just going to replay Casino Forest over and over to buy items, since you have to try really hard to actually lose the hundreds of rings that level throws at you (maybe they should consider placing hazards there besides a spiked ball or two). This just seems like a very pointless change no matter how you look at it. I have to agree that it feels like Sonic Team is just trolling at this point.
So GAME has a pre-order bonus for Forces, which includes four exclusive art cards to the existing Bonus Edition (Epi. Shadow, DLC accessories/character skins). There's one featuring the pyramid cave, that has a giant familiar thing in the sky... Guess we'll have the Death Egg coming back as a level as well. Credit to BlueParadox for spotting it.
If it ends up being a full stage, I wonder if it'll use the assets from the All Stars Racing games' Egg Hangar track. I wouldn't mind it if we got expanded versions of boss only stages from either version of Generations.
Nah, I'm pretty sure that's just an excuse to re-use more assets from Generations :v: Actually, I think that the Death Egg is the location of that scene of Sonic falling/floating on a metallic shaft from the last trailer. When I saw that I knew that there was going to be a space station level and I should've expected it to be yet another iteration of the Death Egg.
I'm cool with having the Death Egg as a stage. It's rehashing a setting but they've never done a proper level for it in 3D, and I've always loved the thing itself.
