Sonic X Shadow Generations thread, movie level out now

i'm glad you made this argument because it's helping me get to the core of the conceptual failure you're having here.

first, the score tallies at the end of the classic games are indisputably a ranking system. the ranking systems that emerged in future games are in a direct lineage with them, to the point where they have more-or-less identical methodology until sonic generations.

however, you're right that adding the explicit grades in sa2 changed things - but it was clearly a change for the better. yes, a number is only high or low when compared to other numbers, and that is the exact problem that the explicit grades were trying to solve. the score is not just an abstract number - it should, if well-tuned, be a reliable proxy for "stylishness," in exactly the same manner that dmc and bayonetta's scores are meant to be. it is the way that developers can directly provide you a rubric for what optimal play looks like, and having it be in explicit gradations works as a favor to you, because it shows you how close or far you are from the designer's imagined skill ceiling.

i did notice a lack of replay value in the classic games because of their lack of explicit grades! it is only very recently that i've taken to time-attacking sonic 3 and mania, and the reason for that is precisely because the lack of grades in those games doesn't really provide a good framework for what optimal play is supposed to look like. of course, in the modern age, you can look up speedruns - but often times speedruns are going to be making use of glitches, unintended techniques, or weird, edge-case strategies* that totally break the developer's scoring framework.

*(notably, for full-game runs of the classic games, speedrunners have to intentionally get worse times or avoid engagement with enemies because the score tally at the end of the level will artificially inflate their RTA time. that's fine, and even interesting in the context of a speedrun - but that is clearly a categorically different thing than engaging with the game on its own terms.
that can of course be fun in its own way, but that doesn't really give you an idea of what method of play that the game was actually designed around.)

others have (rightfully) deconstructed the other weak arguments you've made about this, but i just have to emphasize something - if you get to the end of a sonic level and literally get mad that you got a D, you're the sweaty tryhard. that's fine - from a sweaty tryhard to another sweaty tryhard, i think it is fun and cool to want to be good at things instead of being bad at them. but please stop pretending that you're somehow sweating less than the rest of us - if you were, you wouldn't be making this argument in the first place.

 

I can't really agree with the mentality that score or rank systems measure style, or that it's up to anyone not to care about any element in a game and it's solely their problem to deal with. I can see where Shaddy is coming from.

Struggling in a really hard stage, but managing to clinch a win in the end with 0 rings and on the verge of time over is pretty stylish if you ask me. The feeling of relief upon doing that, and the sudden surge of skill needed to do that, is pretty awesome. Score will never account for that, much less a rank system that slaps an E to my face after I did the most memorable run of a stage I possibly could. No speedrun will ever compare to that in style. "Just don't mind it for now", you say, but why should I ever mind it if the disconnect is this big?

But see, that's why lives (used to) matter. Score translates to a material reward in the game's own system, one that you may need to -- like Wraith said -- be able to circumvent your own failures at later stages. That matters, because it's you building your own narrative. So I can't agree classic games lacked replay value because there were no ranks. Again, surely there's a better way to implement performance measurements that are better done than what we have today.

 

I don't care if you think it's trivial. This whole thing is obviously a nitpick, but it's what we're talking about. Saying "u mad bro" or implying I'm not good enough at the game to have a point here doesn't do anything but make you annoying.

If you're not "supposed" to be doing well enough to get good ranks on your first run, then the game should keep the ranks wherever you are supposed to. If your first score is bound to suck anyway, why even bother?

Actually though, I suppose the phrasing of "prevented" from getting ranks in Lost World does raise a good counterpoint: you shouldn't be forced to play a level more than once if you can get a good rank on your first try. So if it records the ranks but just doesn't show it in the campaign, that's fine. I think SRB2 does that with it's medals, fittingly enough.

In a campaign with a linear structure, an abstract meaningless number is better, because that shouldn't be the point of playing the main story. Ranks should only be displayed when they matter and can actually be changed, and in the classic games, you can't even retry levels until you've beaten the game (or they just don't save at all). Telling the player "that playthrough sure did suck!" when their only way to not do that is to back out and retry it in a different mode when this wasn't even what they signed on for in the first place is just a dumb distraction. They don't "provide a framework for optimal play" because at least with regards to the classic games, "optimal play" is purely a social construct (other than the game killing you if you wait ten minutes). You know whether you're playing well enough for the developer's design because they designed the stages, you wouldn't be able to beat them if you weren't good enough at the game.

This is making me realize Palas actually has a point about the lives system. It still sucks and shouldn't be forced on players, but it did test their skill, even if that skill mostly came down to attrition. You kinda need one system or the other if it's that important that people don't just coast through the game on autopilot. Personally I don't give a shit about that, but I bet players that care most about ranks also cared about lives, so making it so you can't get ranked when you turn lives off might be a nice middle ground.

Actually I've seen mostly arguments that ranks have a right to exist in the series, which I never actually disagreed with - I've not really seen anyone make a good case for why I shouldn't be able to turn them off in the campaign mode (other than Blue Blood mentioning that the game probably shouldn't stop you from getting the rewards of a good rank in that mode, which wasn't even necessarily his point), which is the thing I've actually been talking about this whole time. Wraith had to basically make a kind of darwinist argument about it selecting the truly good players to do that, even though none of this actually matters.

"Mad" is the wrong word for it. I feel like I've made it plenty clear that this all totally is trivial -- it's a small change, but it's a change they should make anyway. I'm not trying to act above anyone here. Again, I already spend time getting good ranks in these games. But I don't do it in the campaign mode! I'm trying to enjoy the environments and the movement and abilities and the audiovisual splendor of the game (and yes, sometimes the story), and that's why they put challenge modes in these games anyway. It's just weird to shove part of that into the thing that's supposed to be a well-paced structured experience, especially in games where you can't retry the level from the results screen. That was a good addition if they're going to keep throwing the ranks back in your face, but it doesn't solve the problem.

 

Sonic X Shadow Generations.

 

Shadow do be looking like he doesn't approve no matter what rank you get.

 

Okay, more serious post.

I think this is actually a fun or a design problem more than a difficulty or ranking problem. If I enjoyed the level, I am going to replay it because I had a fun time playing it (like you with the Act 1s), regardless of the rank I got. The "I got an S Rank on my first try, never playing that stage again" only applies to stages that aren't inherently fun to play on their own terms. If I got a shitty rank my first time, that's only going to be a legitimate bummer if that stage sucked and if getting an S Rank on it is necessary to unlock something I want (like, say, more gear for my Avatar in Sonic Forces). If, for instance, they had made the Act 2s more fun, a lot of this discussion probably wouldn't be happening.

 

So that you can gauge your performance on repeat runs.

If the level itself is identical between story mode and trials, why not keep the rank?

It's been established time and time again that the rank typically means nothing to a story playthrough, but records are worth keeping regardless. Exceptions to this are games like Unleashed Wii and Rush Adventure, which both tie progression to a ranking system and that always proves to be unpopular. Gonna guess a lot of people resorted to just buying keys in the latter parts of Frontiers rather than go they the slog of Cyberspace.

I can't begin to understand why the matter of ranks being displayed is such a big issue to you or anyone else in the first place (and I say that understanding that it's probably not a big issue but has instead just become more of a taking point in this thread than intended). The the games set you goals; clearing a level and mastering a level. Measuring your progres in clearing a level is simple, and awarding a letter grade for your performance serves to indicate how close you are to mastering it. There's really nothing else to it.

However, fact is that I have seen your sentiments expressed by other people too. A while ago it made me think about a solution. What if the games simply didn't display a rank and score upon clearing a level for the first time? The record would be saved as usual, it would be viewable in menus and repeat playthroughs would show the rank. But just for that first time in story mode? It would be hidden.

It's not an elegant solution, because you could just as easily argue that it would be obscuring information. And if you displayed scores without a rank, that wouldn't help either because rank thresholds tend to be consistent within games. But I'm just trying to gauge where your problem lies, and what could possibly be tolerable short of removing ranks altogether.

 

Ranked mode like they do in fighting games.

 

Looks like we're in agreement.

It's all in the framing, which I think has more of a huge effect on the way people perceive of games without knowing it, and which goes under-discussed in almost every community because it's often kind of intangible.

Here's another example: Dark Souls 2 and Dark Souls 3 both have a limited-use consumable that you use to get powered-up and do multiplayer. When you're not powered-up, you're docked to 75% of your max health. So I'm simplifying, but these are essentially the same idea, right? Well, DS2's mechanic is more forgiving, but DS3 has the much more popular version. Why? Because DS2 shows a health bar with a block on it that shrinks as you die and only caps at 75%, so it's like a ticking timer that gives you worse chances each death. Dark Souls 3 takes it all at once, but reverts your health on the loading screen where you can't see it, and even has an animation when you crush an ember of your healthbar extending. In DS2 you go from shriveled corpse -> human, in DS3 you go from human -> human with cool fire effects. It makes it feel like you're making yourself stronger where in the last game it felt like you were treading water, even though it's basically no different in terms of gameplay.

There are a lot of little things about games like this, where the organization of UI elements or menus or just the order stuff happens in can be mechanically irrelevant but provide a different emotion to the player.

 

"A number is only high or low when compared with other numbers" so emphasizing your low score on your first run is good since it gives you a reference for what a high score is. I'd be pissed if I happened to do an A-rank run of City Escape in the story only for my record to not be counted because some hypothetical other player needs Sonic to thank them for going slow. My anger there is just as valid as this hypothetical player's sadness at seeing a low rank when they get a low score.

 

The story campaign of a structured linear adventure where your goal is to move from point A to B should not have you worrying about your score in the first place, and the game shouldn't distract you with it.

It's not valid, though. You're inventing a hypothetical scenario nobody actually suggested in order to make that anger exist. Look back through my posts, I never said that I want ranks gone, I have been very explicit this whole time that I want the option to turn them off (or even just the display) in the campaign. Not being able to do that is a possible factor in why Sonic Team gutted rank difficulty in the first place, since they're forcing the results on, for instance, inexperienced playtesters who might complain that the game judged them for a test they weren't prepared for.

Have you considered not acting like a dickhead? It's a lot less satisfying when you're not listening to the people you're actually talking to.

 

This isn't quite true - full game speedruns of the classic games are typically timed using RTA-TB, or "real time attack minus time bonuses", where the timer pauses while the score tally is counting the time bonus, precisely because it isn't interesting waiting in front of the signpost for the timer to tick over the 30s mark. Avoiding rings is still a very real tactic in speedruns though, because if your ring bonus is higher than your time bonus then you lose time on the score tally for that.

 

Let's change the topic. In what universe Ian Flynn's rewrite plot is too wordy? Not that it matters because the story is same.

 

These aren't actually antithetical is the thing. Off the top of my head Star Fox 64 is a masterful example of both an A to B linear adventure and a score attack game at the same time. You absolutely need to be mindful of your score to get the good path and ending, not to mention optional medals for doing even better, and the game maintains its story and atmosphere just fine.

Presenting the player with an option to show ranks or not before they're even sure what the ranks are or what they're being ranked on would be awkward. It's not necessarily a thing the player needs to consider in a game that already doesn't prioritize the rankings as much as is being implied. I don't like treating it the same as a test in school just because it uses letter ranks. You seem unironically fixated on the letters themselves and I'm still not sure why. What I described before about wasting a good record on story mode happens to me all the time in SRB2. Keeping records only in Time Trial mode is the standard sure but I really don't think it works that well for Sonic at least compared to SA2's universal solution.

I was obviously making a point and you've already dismissed everyone else's points with "you're just telling me to git gud" anyway. Going fast is explicitly important to not only SA2's story but Sonic's character itself. I'd argue SA2's ranking system actually assists with the immersion, and the main story already has shit like countdowns that kill you if you fail anyway.

 

The real solution to maximize immersion is to add a time limit to every stage in the campaign. Escape from the city before the military closes in on you!

 

If you're progressing through the game...and...the game has a decent difficulty curve.

Would the player not inherently be doing better in later levels than they did in the first level, because they're learning even in the face of new level specific challenges?

So you would get better ranks in later levels than you did in the first few levels.

---

Ideal Scenario

 

Well, a decent difficulty curve is one where the game gets harder as the player gets better (with a small amount of inflation in the later parts), and that would extend to ranks as well. If a level is harder to complete, it's probably harder to complete quickly (or with whatever metric of difficulty you prefer ranks to follow, which I'm not really debating here).

Star Fox moves you from point A to B automatically most of the time, you're just responsible for staying alive through all that. Moreover, if your performance actually effects the outcome of the game, then it's serving an entirely different purpose than "mastery over mechanics" or whatever the hell we were talking about before.

I'm not "fixated on the letters"? In fact, I'm pretty sure I'm the only person who hasn't brought up any particular letter grade. If this were gold, silver and bronze rankings (which some Sonic games use) it wouldn't change much, although those don't typically come with an accompanying voice line, which is better.

Either way, again, this is all in presentation and framing. I don't care if you record a rank in campaign without telling the player until they actually start up challenge mode. Also, I swear SRB2 did exactly this. Does that not happen?

And you go fast no matter what your rank is, or indeed your skill level usually. This is a non-argument. And I know it is because you can't say "being competent and finishing each stage with finesse is important to SA2's story", because it isn't.

No, I've dismissed some of mostly your retorts with that because they lack proper substance and tease at lackluster performance when it doesn't actually matter.

Case in point: you've made a transparently horrid attempt at an argument here. "This guy says ranks are disruptive in a campaign, well what about this OTHER thing???" is bad enough, because ranking the player's performance and a timer that can blow you are completely different. But even then, the bomb timer is diegetic, it's part of the stage gimmick, and you know exactly why it's happening. Not having a timer for that would erase the tension of anyone who was fast enough (and therefore not know there was even a threat) and completely bewilder anyone who wasn't (by blowing them up when they had no way to expect it). Sonic's heroism is enhanced by the tension that timer creates. Ranks don't do that.

I'll give you this: if you design a Sonic stage where he's being obsessively tracked and followed around by contest admins rating and testing and ranking and grading and judging everything he does (probably designed to look like Sonic Retro users, let's be honest), then I will be okay with that campaign stage having a rank at the end.

 

You were acting as if an A to B adventure can't prioritize score which is patently false and is the opposite of SF64 using its score mechanics to expand its story.

I could take an hour in City Escape if I wanted, and without a ranking system the game wouldn't really do anything to acknowledge that. If the letter E is potentially immersion-breaking then I think the opposite here could have a similar effect.

If we're allowed to have timers that literally disrupt the player with death then I don't see how just showing a letter grade counts any moreso as a disruption. Sonic's heroism is enhanced when you do the fast thing faster than you did before. In stages like Crazy Gadget going as fast and skillfully as possible is absolutely a diegetic priority for Sonic.

Nah suddenly introducing a mechanic like that for one level would be more disruptive than just making a universal ranking system.

I think you're right about SRB2 but it was in a recent patch and isn't conveyed that well.

 

But Star Fox is not "a structured linear adventure where your goal is to move from point A to B", which is what I said. It's a partially non-linear score attack where your goal is to survive and additionally change which goal you get by doing well at the shooting. It's doing a different thing. If Sonic games radically changed based on your performance...I wouldn't like that, but it would be way more justifiable to include those scores as part of the main campaign. I guess parts of Shadow's missions kinda do this. And, go figure, fuck that game.

I don't think I needed to modify "you go fast no matter your rank or skill level" with "unless you play slow on purpose". And the game would acknowledge it. You'd get a really high time and no time bonus on your score. I have no problem with that, as previously established.

If you want to argue that crazy gadget should have a timer before Amy gets a hole in her skull, then fine I guess? But it should be obvious what the difference is. The bomb on prison island exists. Ranks do not. Eggman's gang planted it, and it blowing up has ramifications. It's not "disruption" because it's what the level is about, the same way an enemy standing in your way is not a disruption because having robots to fight is what Sonic is about. The levels are designed in such a way that even if someone did play badly on purpose like you suggested, they would still necessarily interact with terrain and mechanics and objects that make Sonic go fast, because it's still about going fast. It's not about getting graded, because if it was, then that sure is shocking news for the mountain of Sonic games that don't have them.

It wouldn't be, because it would just be a stage gimmick at that point. If the detonation sequence from Press Factory 2 was present for the entirety of Superstars, that would actually be a way bigger fucking deal than it existing in that level and that level alone.

 

This is the part I just can't get over. "A linear adventure where your goal is to move from point A to point B" describes the vast majority of action games that exist, let alone the many of them that implement some kind of ranking mechanic. Did you pout your way through Bayonetta when the game continued dropping stone trophies on you even as the narrative escalated?