But we are the one's buying and playing them. Just because we aren't game designers doesn't mean we don't know what we want or like. It also doesn't mean we can't study those things that intrigue or disappoint us, and try to take something away from it to better explain our thoughts on them. Otherwise we wouldn't have conversations like these. I'm not saying the boost can't be fixed, it's just that I don't see the obvious improvements everyone else does.
Exactly. I find it condescending. I'm confident in saying a lot of people on here have better visions for a 'new' modern game than Sonic Team has ever had. Third person perspective. Proper simple rolling physics. Beautiful, airbrushed 90's inspired art-style. Forward thinking music. A clear, singular vision with gameplay and art that is timeless. Get some proper graphic designers that are in vogue, musicians of the moment, maverick game designers just starting out with bags of energy, talent & enthusiasm. I'm sorry but it's really not that difficult. Sonic Team just makes it difficult.
It's a lot harder than you think it is, otherwise more people would've done it. But seriously, we should just make our own damn modern game instead of bitching in the Forces thread. I've written up two scenarios, one involving Classic Sonic retold in 3D, and another involving Blaze the Cat (though that one is more like Unleashed in that it's split 50/50 between traditional Sonic gameplay and, in this case, what I like to call "Metroidetta"). I don't care if I turn control of either one to someone who actually knows how to make a game. Or just write out someone else's scenario for them. Let's save the armchair gamedeving for the Fangaming subforum. If we all have a vision for making our own modern game happen let's do it, otherwise we just have to hope the next footage from Forces winds up being better.
Honestly, in theory, Sonic game design as a core basis isn't that hard to create the core momentum and emphasis of. In practice, we may have a crapton of fangames and romhacks but there's a reason why Taxman and Stealth, who have worked with three official Sonic games personally now in recreating them accurately and then some, stand on a level of their own. Level design is tough to do well, especially for Sonic who is now considered to be all about the "gotta go fast" memes in the casual consensus, and there's a dime a dozen hacks, mods and fangames that may have accurate core gameplay but sloppy level design. Assets, animations, music, enemies and bosses that aren't just the ball and chain with a new gimmick, and so forth; there's a whole world of difference between making Sonic roll into a ball, and creating a game around that rolling that can make it fun. And this is usually with the mindset of appealing to their own sensibilities of how a Sonic game should be, if not just for fun. Sonic Team have a vision and idea that contrast heavily to our own. We'll always be critics and consider this or that which seems obvious to us, but an outside perspective is always going to conflict with the internal opinion that is hard at work on creating these things with a tight schedule while we sit here shooting the same old Sonic "philosophy" back and forth about how SEGA doesn't understand Sonic. Not to mention the fact that Sonic Team has to create these games with a general appeal and consumer market in mind rather than strictly to the Sonic community.
I'd buy this if it weren't for the fact that when you really think about it, who else is really hot on the market for a Sonic game nowadays. Before 2004 you could probably get the average consumer to purchase a Sonic game on brand name and curiosity alone, but nowadays you'd have to make nothing short of a fantastic game for people to even consider giving the series a second shot. Sonic fans are primarily the ones who keep playing Sonic games. It's why even the series biggest shitstorms still sell reasonably well. The truth of the matter is that Sonic Team and Sega don't get Sonic. You forget that Sonic Team always had tight deadlines, variants of creative input, and issues during development. This is nothing new for Sonic Team, but the difference is, back then there was a very well established idea of what the franchise was, and where it was going. The team members did their homework and pounded the pavement to insure that they weren't just sitting on false gold. They were unconventional and bold because they really did believe in what they were making. But now I don't get that from Sonic Team. The current vision for Sonic has been very crystal clear. They want to capitalize on the series brand recognition and trademark speed to sell their games to people. But doing that subtly wouldn't create the immediate intrigue they want people to feel when they see a Sonic game. So they spend a lot of time on things like graphics and sound. Not sculpting a unique style for them to make the series more recognizable, but making sure they're very well made. And they are, I can't take that away from them. But the actual game part seems second nature for some reason. Like they do all of these wonderful things, but Sonic kind of has to be there too. Forces is just more proof of that. They completely remade the Hedgehog Engine 2, and I'm willing to bet that took up a lot of dev time. They went back to the boost gameplay, but they still consider it too dangerous to stay with it alone, so they drudge classic Sonic in as a safe way of divvying up the content. And in comes Mania, a brand new 2D Sonic game by a group of fans turned indie devs, that has managed to get people more excited than Forces ever could. Mania is supposed to strictly be for the fans, and that's ironically brought many of those fans back into the series after abandoning it for so long. Sega's not stupid. They're still a massive part of gaming history and have made various achievements even still today. And Sonic Team aren't awful developers. They pump these games out consistently and still manage to make them look and sound marvelous, even if what's in between there is shallow fluff. But they don't have the ambition or drive to turn Sonic into a powerhouse again. All of the important people who made the series what it was from both Sega and Sonic Team are gone. And what's left are a couple of dudes who got tossed Excalibur and use it to slice bread.
I used myself as an example in my post, so I'm being condescending to myself? And I'm confident people here have a ton of ideas for what modern Sonic should be like. And I'm sure plenty of those ideas seem good on paper. But that's the thing about armchair game devs: they only know if those ideas sound good on paper. But that doesn't mean they'll work, or that they're thought out enough, or that they're even feasible. It's very unlikely that you, me, or any of the other posters on here who have come up with ideas for the sake of forum arguments actually know if these ideas would work well. We don't even know if people at Sonic Team not having good ideas for how to make a proper 3D Sonic game is even the problem. We don't even know how Sonic Team works. Yes, you can easily point out problems video games have. But just having played a video game doesn't mean you know how to design it, or how the studio behind the game could improve it. Just like how having a driver's license doesn't make you a car mechanic.
You should be careful not to throw that argument around too much. Don't forget where you are. There is not too much of an excuse for Sonic Team to get anything wrong this time. They know the score, they know what works, and they are only a port, polish, and a tiny spark of creativity (in terms of gameplay) away from nailing the ultimate 3D Sonic Game of this formula. Next year is year 20 of 3D mainsteam Sonic games. They have had two decades to get it right, and it's not that far off from being right. There are features from those Sonic Utopia and that one Super duper blitzsonic game that I can't remember the name of that got right what Sonic Team could not, and it was fun as shit. The way you could preemptively roll into a ball before landing on a slope to gain momentum is the absolute most perfect way to translate holding down in midair in the 2d games, to 3D. If Utopia had some direction to its level design, some objectives, and a few little extras, maybe a light (less) gameplay gimmick, it would be the ideal sonic game. 8 years ago, we almost got a fantastic Sonic game. It was muddied by a mediocre story that would spit out The Werehog (a stupid idea), some gameplay quirks with Sonic, and a very unfluid corridor based level design. People want to play video games. Generations had many of the same flaws, and had a bit of a way to go yet, which is why the modding scene for it blew up the way it did, but it was ultimately a pretty great game, with a lot of improvements. It showed the world that platforming can work pretty well at high speeds, and that taking pages from the past wasn't too bad of an idea. Sonic Forces is looking a lot like it's just more Sonic Generations, but with nice lighting and particles.
There are people here who work at Sonic Team and know exactly how they do things and how they could make boost Sonic better? :v: If you're talking about Generations modders: yeah, they can have a bit of an idea of how to improve things. Though not to the extend most armchair game devs here are talking about.
That's not really the same thing here. Maybe we're just a bunch of guys with ideas, but I think that's the big take away from this. No one's saying, "I bet I could make this game better than a professional dev team". They're trying to say that this professional dev team should be more than capable of making this series turn to gold again. Yet we still get things like same-y gameplay, simple and predictable level design, and an end product which is okay enough to get on people's good side. So maybe they should play around with new ideas. But when they do go out of their way to experiment with stuff, they always half ass it. This is less about how brilliant our ideas are, and more about how Sonic Team has lost it's touch. Yeah the boost game's sell well enough, yeah they've gotten pretty good reception, and yes they're objectively the best games Sonic has had in years. But when you compare it to the decade of garbage where we'd be happy to get anything that was decent, and the series peak popularity, which it has yet to reclaim, how can you argue that Sonic Team just can't hack it anymore? Either they need to seriously develop an idea of what they want Sonic to be, so that they can find an audience willing to stick with them (y'know what they said they were going to do), or they need to just give the series to someone who respects Sonic enough to make those tough decisions.
Nah, y'all are still trying to tell Sonic Team how to do their job. Even though you all don't even know how Sonic Team works. You don't even know if the problem is that Sonic Team doesn't know how to design good games. I mean, yeah, it's possible that Sonic Forces doesn't improve much on Sonic Generations did because Sonic Team doesn't know how. But is that really why there don't seem to be that many gameplay changes? Or is it for some reason not feasible for them to be making huge changes to what Generations did? Are the problems with Sonic Lost World there because of Sonic Team being incompetent, or is there another reason why the mechanics seem underdeveloped? Does the second half of the game re-use so many assets/environments from the first half because of laziness, or because of time and/or budget constraints? Does Sonic Heroes have bad level design because Takashi Iizuka and Eitaro Toyoda are bad level designers? Or does that have more to do with shitty working conditions? Yeah, it's possible that Sonic Team are just incompetent at making games. It's also possible that the problems have to do with budget or time constraints. It's also possible that shitty working conditions come into play. There are probably a ton of other possible reasons I can't come up with. What I'm saying is: we're not really in a position to talk about how Sonic Team should do their job when we don't even really know how they're currently doing their job anyway.
I don't know about you guys, but am I the only one who's seeing a lot more "Kek the Sonic Fanbase will never be satisfied" articles and videos as of late? I mean obviously its because of the mixed reception Forces is getting so far, but I don't see how any of this is suppose to be news. This has always been how this goes down, the past decade+ of game quality kinda gives people the right to not buy into the hype of barely 2 minutes worth of gameplay. Anyway, I'm not terribly pleased with how Forces is looking so far, BUT I doubt it's going to be a bad game either. Not to say anyone here is claiming that, I just think some people can't indentify "Preference and criticism" from "Blind hatred and nit picking". Just because I don't like what I see so far doesn't mean the entire game is like this, but it doesn't mean the entire game ISN'T like this either. But if it follows as closely to Generations as it seems to be, it's at least going to be a "sound" game, or at least I think so. This third character is really going to make or break this game for a LOT of people, I can tell that much.
It's moreso that we have an uncertain third character that'll likely take up a majority of the gameplay, it's pretty worrying, imo.
Surprise twist: Classic Sonic doesn't make it after green hill and dies in sand. The rest of his levels are taken by the 3rd character.
Okay, don't remember calling Sonic Team incompetent at making games. In fact I recall saying they were quite good at it. But this isn't about how they go about doing their business, or how they go about making games. This is about how they've presented Sonic, and how they've chosen to further develop the franchise. Do we have any right to tell Sonic Team how to do their job? No, we don't. Do we have a right to say that they aren't handling their flagship franchise with care, and that maybe the current team just isn't the right fit anymore? Absolutely. Regardless of whether or not they have the budget or time to be making radical changes and doing all of these major improvements to their games, they have chosen to take on the development of a system which already pushes those aspects to their absolute limit. And this isn't anything new. Sonic Team have always had strict deadlines, development issues, people working way into the night to get things done. Yet they still managed to pull out a couple of solid games that people herald as classics still to this day. Sonic 06 is a bad game. But why is it a bad game? Is it because it was unpolished, unfinished, and pushed out for the holiday season? Perhaps. But maybe it's also because the initial concept wasn't all that good. 06 With better controls, visuals, and less bugs is still a game where only 1/3 of it is arguably anything remotely close to what the vast majority consider to be "Sonic", and even that is tied to some of the worst possible aesthetic and thematic choices for the franchise. That's the problem. Not the fact that the team sucks at making games. But the fact that the team just doesn't really seem to understand Sonic anymore. (as an aside I actually liked Sonic Heroes level design :v:/> )
Fully agree with you, but most posts on this thread I've seen weren't just bashing Sonic Team assuming we even know how they work or what their constraints are. For the most part, people here were discussing what parts of the game design we've seen in the little gameplay we got, and how it may or may not indicate flaws in the final game. Yeah, there are people talking as if they know the situation inside out, but don't make it sound like the majority. Pointing out that they're reusing assets for example doesn't mean "Everyone, hate Sonic Team!", it points more towards trying to meet time constraints and making as much efficient use of resources even now. Just saying, not too many people here fit the description you mentioned, at least from what I read.
I'm talking about the fact that a lot of people here are gamedevs, and if you keep throwing around 'muh armchair gamdev' as if people aren't allowed to have an eye for quality, or know what's wrong with a product when it cockslaps them in the face, plain as day, then you're going to get shut down right quick. There are people here who know better than them. Sonic Team are not some godly monolith, and they're not the same Sonic Team that put out the Genesis games. They can be, and frequently are, wrong. What you're doing here is a crypto-defense of the shortcomings that have plagued this series for years. Any mongo can point them out, and some people even know what's wrong internally, that caused these flaws. Look, people here have made more fluid character movement mechanics for 3D Sonic games than any official attempt from Sonic Team. Sonic Team do not have their hearts in their projects quite like we do here. They don't know what works, and they don't care to know. If they knew what worked, they would do what worked. Making effective, fluid, character movment does indeed take a lot of time (took me almost a year for my own game!), but that matters more than literally any other aspect of a game. You do that first, and you don't stop working on it until your game goes to market. This part IS the video game, fuck everything else. The best part? In those occasional instances where Retro puts something out that outdoes Sonic Team, well... That's right. They do it for free. A bunch of amateurs, on a whim, put more effort forward than those who are paid with the expectation of doing a better job than the consumer. And it shows. Can our projects achieve the same production values? No, that requires a budget, but what has been demonstrated many times, is the fact that core gameplay is something that Sonic Team either don't give as much of a shit about, or they simply don't try to polish it. They are lazy, they are tired of making Sonic games, they're overworked, take your pick, any one will be true. Don't believe me? Go dig up those Wentos posts from 4Chan on the internal behaviors of Sonic Team, right before Unleashed was announced. There are a lot of factors at play that make a shitty game, but Sonic 06/Lost World, for instance, don't deserve any defense. These games suffered from flaws that should have been addressed within the first couple months of development. I'm sure that Forces will end up being a fine game, but the moment I see something wrong that any internet chimp could fix with a hex editor, then yeah, you bet that we're going to call it out.
