I'm on the anti-letter rank side. The game telling me that I suck at the end of a stage is not motivating. It's something I specifically remember not liking when I played SA2 as a little kid. Seeing the score tally up in the classics was always fun, but slapping an arbitrary and objective "you did good/bad" after it completely removes any meaning you could've otherwise taken from your score.
I think a ranking system that rewards score is a good thing. Compare it to Gens onward where all you gotta do is go down the one optimal route without losing a life to be given an S-rank (which kinda affects the sacred replay value of the series), I mean you could argue that SA2-Unleashed are the same way if you look at it a certain way but it's more involved than just boosting forward. And we've seen what happens when ST laser focus their level design on just boosting forward. Also, it's not like you need to get good ranks for content, like Crash's Time Trials. You don't really miss anything of value by not getting S ranks (unless people suddenly desperately wanna unlock Green Hill in SA2)
I definitely prefer time for S ranks over score. Mashing the homing attack or spamming wisps to boost up your meaningless score is just way less rewarding to me than clearing a level quickly. I prefer it when both are incorporated like in SA2 and Unleashed. Games like Colors that give you jack shit for doing a level quickly and instead make you do tedious busy work to get a good rank are just not fun to me.
Ahh, summer 2001. Good times. Great times! While like I said, I'm pretty ambivalent about having/not having a ranking system, I'd actually argue the opposite. Watching my score tally up never meant anything for me, it was just nebulous numbers. But a ranking gives those numbers context.
I think the ranking system is fine but I don't think it should appear on your first go - it should be something that only shows up in repeat plays. One of my biggest pet peeves in SA2 is to spend 15 minutes trudging through emerald hunting and finally finish only for the game to tell me "fuck you, you suck lmao". I do think the ranking system is a good idea and encourages replayability, however. So I'd say it should be handled like the Red Rings in Generations, where they don't appear on your first go but show up when you replay it.
I do agree the parameters for rankings should change, but I don't agree it should be entirely about time either since that means once you figure out the optimal path, that's kind of the only way to win it. A combination of sorts that isn't too tedious feels like a nice middle ground.
I think it may be worth considering how a letter grade system actually might affect a new player's enjoyment of the game subconsciously, but I can only speak to my own experience, much like anyone else. I do think it's a little silly that a completely new casual player can load up SA2, play one stage just running around trying to get a hold of the character and the controls, and the game will be like "wow that was absolutely awful". It is funny to us that Sonic Unleashed's E Rank tells you that you suck if you royally screw up, but for players with disabilities or issues with certain motor skills I can see how that is really counter-intuitive. If you don't go fast enough, SA2 Tails will deliberately tell you that you have to do better next time, whereas Mario will just tell you that you got a Star, or you got a Moon, or you beat the stage, and immediately congratulate you for it and make you feel cool. You may not be a power user who can dominate every stage, but you did still get a Star! Personally, I don't think I really cared about the bad ranks I was getting when I started playing these games. I think I was moreso just interested in how anyone could actually A/S-rank a stage, and I assumed it was some next level shit. Rouge telling me she was "ashamed to call herself a hunter" because I sucked at Security Hall didn't exactly make me feel like a pro, but the game still rewards you in some way for progressing. But I'm also not everybody, and I don't think it makes sense to immediately discard someone's experience with the game. I also agree that the A-D ranks feel almost useless when there is only a reward for one rank, so it's ostensibly just a time trial challenge with more fanfare. There is not much reward for getting better at a stage, only for doing the absolute best. I like that idea of not showing ranks until the second playthrough, or something like that. The game could just tell you if you got an S-rank or tell you nothing at all, so it's a straight forward experience for new players, but the potential for speedrunning is still built into the game.
I feel like you're severely overplaying how much these rankings impact a person's perception about the ranking system. If that were true, those games would not be as popular as they are with the generation that grew up with them. Evidently the children who played those games enjoyed them and didn't really care or just used the experience to improve, which is the whole point of the ranking system to begin with. I understand everyone's experiences are different and maybe some people did get discouraged, but I can't imagine how you could find the motivation to beat any game in that sense. Its not like the game is telling "you fucking suck, don't play anymore" it's simply motivating you to learn and get better.
Huh, that's actually a pretty good idea, SA2 would be fine with a system like this. You essentially play Story Mode and get ranks in level select.
Fan projects like Sonic 3 Complete and AIR have provided unrealistic expectations for customization in official sonic games. Like there's people complaining that I can't change the sprite style in each game or turn off super music and add smooth sprite rotation and it's like come on lol. No average consumer is gonna care abt this, only diehard fans.
Which brings me to my unpopular opinion, that Sonic's Sonic 3 sprites are way better than Sonic 1 and two... And Mania would be better with upgraded Sonic 3 sprites.
Unpopular opinion: This thread has been a net positive on the rest of the board, because it gives everyone a place to vent. Thanks, @Londinium !
I've thought this for a long time but didn't really bother to voice it. There's a lot of absurdly specific things that people were demanding Origins to have and let you customize. It feels exactly like the kind of thing that would only be in a hobbyist project, not a game being made available to the general gaming public. I'm surprised that debug mode, toggling monitors, level select, and other things got in at all for these remakes.
To be somewhat fair, given how Sega has been handling Sonic, I don't think fans are unjustified in wanting more.
We could always demand for more, especially from Sega. But am I going to actually expect stuff like this? No, not really, I can't even expect a remake of theirs to have appropriate physics or optimization.
Isn't all the more reason to hold them to that higher standard? Its not like we're asking for anything that's unreasonable. We're talking about one of the most iconic video game franchises of all time, is it really unreasonable to want things that fans can do? I don't think any of us want to hate to Sonic, but the way Sega handles him just makes it frustrating overall and Origins is a prime example of that.
I don't really care for being able to modify the zone order, to make specific jingles play, to make one level instead play at nighttime, or to change Sonic's sprite. It's not anything I'm interested in, much less expecting from a developer like this. You can want this all you want, but I think it's a wholly unrealistic expectation. It's pretty far outside of the scope of this project and just not really a thing you really see in official releases. I think it's a weird thing to hold against this game.
I've always found S3K's sprites more interesting than Sonic1/CD/2's. But, as you said, I also thought I was in the minority... ^^"
