Why do you reckon SEGA has done an about-face on Sonic's friends lately?

[Wraith]

16 hours ago, Scritch the Cat said:

Let's not fool ourselves, though, Mario was going to stick around anyway because it's Mario, and Odyssey does feature a bit of light genre blending due to Cappy.
 

Okay, and why do you think "It's Mario" is a thing you can just say to equate to unprecedented staying power? Do you think the brand is just magic or did Nintendo earn that momentum, somehow?

 

15 hours ago, Scritch the Cat said:

I'd argue you need at least a bit more than running and jumping to make a platformer a success, unless, again, it's Mario.  And even then, most Mario games have the costumes to give him special abilities like various different forms of attack.  I find it interesting that you blamed the downfall of platfomers on them trying to ape other genres that were overtaking them, when it might be worth considering that other genres were overtaking them because people were getting sick of just running and jumping.  That almost inevitably happens to any game genre that gets overexposed.  Sure, a game probably shouldn't be considered a platformer if most of its gameplay isn't running and jumping, but only in the realm of quick cash-in mobile games is it considered acceptable to make an infinite deluge of games that are literally just running and jumping, with the only major difference between them being the graphics.

Also, while it's understandable why someone would conclude that a pre-established franchise like Sonic shouldn't be shifting genres within one game, it's folly to say being a mix of multiple genres will doom every game and franchise, and even if everyone in 2000s Sony's camp "picked a side", that doesn't make that actually necessary.  Games that are mixtures between shooters and platformers are not new; they've been around since the 8-bit era.  Should Mega Man be considered primarily a platformer or a shooter?  Does it really matter?  Lots of people find it fun so it can keep being what it is.  It hasn't always, but it has always eventually come back to that combination established in the 8-bit era.  Not every gamer is fond enough of both platforming and shooting to enjoy Mega Man, but enough are that it's a success, so the same principle applies to plenty other series. 

On that note, I'm skeptical that this sort of cross-pollination would have developed such an aversion for the Sonic franchise if it hadn't sacrificed so much of its signature speed many times the other styles of gameplay came in.  Big the Cat being the textbook case makes the Sonic franchise's problems distinct from whatever was affecting Ratchet, Jak, etc in more than just degree, it really is principle.  It's repeatedly shown to be possible to blend fast running and jumping with shooting to form a mechanically coherent whole; the same is also at least sometimes true with melee combat.  You can't blend fishing with fast running and jumping; fishing demands waiting around in one spot.  The tastes they cater to is antithetical, but that's not true of every sort of gameplay.  In gaming, just like with food, some things just don't go together in many people's opinions.  But some things also do.

In the fighting game community we've got this term known as the 'mental stack'. To some it up, the more mechanics the game gives you to worry about, the less you're going to be able to meaningfully keep track of them all, which can cause frustration. When platformers went 3D, the stack went from moving in 2 directions, to a near infinite amount with a camera that also had to be nursed and the new problem of depth perception. It sounds trivial for those of us that had been playing 3D games for a while, but it was a legitimate issue for developers, critics and players alike. Even Mario Sunshine was getting dinged for it's shoddy camera. If Nintendo can't figure it out everyone's in trouble.

On the flipside, aiming and shooting a gun is remarkably simple and easy to understand. Controlling the camera is now where the majority of the gameplay lies instead of something you have to keep in mind along with your character, so it's intuitive in 3D the same way platformers used to be in 2D.

With 3D platformers, the stack had become large enough to shave their universal appeal down by to a noticeable degree. Most developers, including Nintendo at a point, saw the decline in interest and incorrectly assumed they needed features from those other genres to keep up. What Nintendo eventually found when they released New Super Mario Bros on the DS and it outsold every 3D mario game up to that point, and most of the ones that would come after, was that the opposite was true. A big part of a platforming game's appeal is that it's easy for anyone watching to understand, pick up, and start making progress in without much overhead. It's also why the Mario Galaxy and 3D World games take place on pockets of level design instead of open fields. They were scaling down when the genre as a whole was getting too big and too unfocused on what actually made it interesting in the first place.

You can't appeal to that same market when your platformer is also a beat em up shooter RPG with the most epic story ever and 7 unique characters. There's definitely a large niche for that, but not as large as 'simply move right and avoid danger' So yes, you literally do not need more than running and jumping to be successful. You can add whatever features you think you need to stand out, but you have a better shot if yo stick to some core principles. If Mario's not enough proof for you, there's a whole 2D platforming boom from both big companies and indies in the 10s serving as evidence while 3D platformers remained a seasonal thing. No one was sick of 'running and jumping' from every metric we can measure.

Even Sonic Team themselves are aware of this to a degree. The boost gameplay is an incredibly streamlined version of the 3D Sonic we know and love, with a lot of things peeled out to focus on simplified platforming challenges. Say what you will about Sonic Colors, but it found more success than the Adventure titles despite the fandom hangups.

With Megaman I'd link back to the example above. I think there's a reason 3D Megaman games aren't so common The game stayed 2D where dropping additional elements on top of the player is easier without overloading the stack. 3D shooter-platformer hybrids in general were rare, with Ratchet and Clank deciding to focus more on the shooting as it went and Metroid Prime committing more to platforming with it's lock on system. It's more common now to see shooters that expect you to juggle complex movement challenges with precise shooting mechanics, but just look at what respawn decided to prioritize when it came to transforming Titanfall 2 to Apex Legends. Titanfall 2 was focused heavily on movement, most of which was chopped clean out of Apex Legends for mass appeal. Blending shooting with running and jumping, as it happens, isn't so simple.

Add the logistics of controlling Sonic to it and you get even more issues. Sonic isn't just a fast character that will stop on a dime if you ask him. He's also meant to be loose and imprecise to a certain degree. That fundamentally flies in the face of lining up a reticle exactly, and relying on auto-aim takes a lot of the fun of the genre away. It's why no one is thirsting for shooting mechanics back even though they were technically a part of every game in the 2000s. The concessions to get them to even work with sonic in the first place robbed them of their fun! You could argue Sonic Team could have kept working to make their unique take on shooting fun, and I agree. I've had several ideas over the years on how to salvage most of the alternate gameplay styles, but that doesn't change the reality of what we do get. Maybe Sonic Team had the vision all along and just needed more time to execute it or maybe they never had a clue. We'll never really know for sure, but the games they did release are locked in.

I'm not saying genre blending isn't okay. Of course it's okay. The original Sonic games are an eclectic blend of platformer and pinball. You just have to consider what concessions you're making to accommodate both of them and whether you can still a fun game around that. Since Sonic was already a unique mix of genres, adding more onto the top is going to be more challenging problem to solve than most. It would take a more discerning, precise designer and I don't know if ST's ever had that instinct.

[CrownSlayers Shadow]

2 hours ago, Wraith said:

It's more common now to see shooters that expect you to juggle complex movement challenges with precise shooting mechanics, but just look at what respawn decided to prioritize when it came to transforming Titanfall 2 to Apex Legends. Titanfall 2 was focused heavily on movement, most of which was chopped clean out of Apex Legends for mass appeal. Blending shooting with running and jumping, as it happens, isn't so simple.

Isn’t Titanfall 2 making a comeback?

I thought the whole reason they dropped that game was because Titanfall 2 was somehow unplayable because of a hacker crashing the system, so Respawn focused on Apex instead?

Nowadays, I’m seeing a mass rejoice and attention toward Titanfall 2 being playable and even receiving updates—and mind you, I don’t have Twitter, so the fact that I’m even noticing this is telling.

I haven’t played either Titanfall 2 nor Apex at this time, but for what it’s worth I think Titanfall 2 seems to nail the blend of running and jumping together with shooting if this resurgence and demand for more is anything to go by.

Mind you, this is just my observation from several YouTube sources, so feel free to verify that further if needed.

[Scritch the Cat]

8 hours ago, Kuzu said:

Not for nothing, but the most critically acclaimed Sonic game to date is the game that focused on the franchise's fundamentals. The most critically acclaimed 3D games in the last decade were games that built on the core gameplay as opposed to trying to throw in other styles.

Meanwhile, all of the other games that try to diversify themselves and dilute their central appeal are generally pretty divisive between the people who tolerate it and those who don't.

Yeah, but to reiterate, Sonic's kind of in a league of its own in terms of its history of experimentation.  That it bungled is undeniable, but I reject Wraith's thesis that this says anything about platformer design in general.  Yes, Sonic Mania was the most critically acclaimed Sonic game to date, but I highly doubt they can keep just doing what it does and expect long-term success.  Even in the Genesis era, they were adding things, such as power-ups, and now they're doing it some more in Superstars.  (We'll see how that goes.)

To be fair, Sonic being so much faster than most platformers does place some extra restrictions on what sort of supplements you can slap on it and have them work.  Even when we do limit ourselves to thinking only about the core essence of platforming, arguably Sonic isn't as well-suited to conventional precision-based jumping challenges as slower characters are.  I don't think the sort of platforming gameplay that demands a character's velocity be in that exact Goldilocks zone to cross the chasm on one side of a tiny platform but not overshoot it to the chasm on the other side, will ever feel good for a character whose speed is not only so high, but so varied.  They sort of made that sort of precision jumping challenge work in the Silver Sonic fight in Sonic 2, but that took place in a constrained arena where Sonic wouldn't be going his max speed anyway.  So yeah, I get it; designing gameplay that suits a fast character can be hard.

But to beat this horse again, that difficulty in designing such gameplay was usually not the main reason Sonic Team's gameplay experimentation got so much backlash.  The problem wasn't that they absolutely sucked at thinking of gameplay innovations that complement Sonic's speed, it's that they fully intended most of those innovations to disrupt Sonic's speed.  That self-defeating mindset is still present in Sonic Frontiers, in fact, whatwith them making you grind to upgrade Sonic's speed and boost gauge and putting that stupid invisible wall in the middle of the drawbridge, not to mention the originally capped speed when jumping.

It is absolutely possible to design gameplay innovations that go well with Sonic's speed; the problem is they usually designed ones that flat-out cancel Sonic's speed.  It's not incompetence on their part, it's shitty motivations.

[CrownSlayers Shadow]

I don’t know about “fully intended” as far as disrupting Sonic’s gameplay goes, but I’m positive they didn’t really consider how badly that would be received over what they intended with their ideas.

Frontiers’ 3rd update being a prime example from observation alone.

Heck, this goes all the way back to ShTH where it became more noticeable. They threw a gun on Shadow with some nerfed mechanics from Heroes and figured that was good enough. They thought that would be well received enough to show case it, but it came out pretty divisive-to-negative at best from announcement to release.

[Scritch the Cat]

8 hours ago, Wraith said:

You can't appeal to that same market when your platformer is also a beat em up shooter RPG with the most epic story ever and 7 unique characters. There's definitely a large niche for that, but not as large as 'simply move right and avoid danger' So yes, you literally do not need more than running and jumping to be successful. You can add whatever features you think you need to stand out, but you have a better shot if yo stick to some core principles. If Mario's not enough proof for you, there's a whole 2D platforming boom from both big companies and indies in the 10s serving as evidence while 3D platformers remained a seasonal thing. No one was sick of 'running and jumping' from every metric we can measure.

I'm sorry, but reducing the description of New Super Mario Bros down to "simply move right and avoid danger" is absolute horsehshit.  That isn't even an accurate description of the first Super Mario Bros.  You can move left and in some cases it's important to do so, and you also have very means of attacking danger instead of just avoiding it.  So likewise, it's absolute horseshit to claim that any of the Super Mario Bros games prove that a game can be successful with no other mechanics than running and jumping, because all of them have more mechanics than just those, and if they hadn't, nothing much would make them seem any more special than the original Pitfall.

Are there any other successful games that prove this claim of yours?  Well, as I said, auto-runners really are basically just moving right (or forward) and avoiding danger, and they're successful, but how much do profits made on the basis of being simple enough to appeal to the lowest common denominator equate to what can be called good game design?  Clearly, auto-runners made for mobile phones based on theoretically just about every franchise ever, have a large audience because they are, as you said, easy to understand, but at this point they're also the video game equivalent of Monopoly: [Insert Franchise] Edition.  No innovation, no or almost no gameplay variety, basically nothing to recommend one over another except it being painted with the image of one franchise a consumer likes better than another.  If this sort of creative bankruptcy is the price of sticking to the bare essentials to maximize accessibility, then at least from the perspective of seasoned gamers with rising expectations, as well as people who value game creation as an art instead of just a business, it's high time to devalue that maximum accessibility.

And moving it back to Sonic, I consider those auto-runners to be something close to a time bomb for the boost formula as its core design ethos.  Did that formula fit Sonic, thematically?  Sure.  But now that more and more series are doing almost exactly the same thing as what Sonic's main gameplay had become, I think it's time to stand out again.

4 hours ago, CrownSlayer’s Shadow said:

I don’t know about “fully intended” as far as disrupting Sonic’s gameplay goes, but I’m positive they didn’t really consider how badly that would be received over what they intended with their ideas.

Search for the essay entitled "Why Sonic games do non-Sonic things".  I don't know if it's still available online, but it was an expose by a disgrunted SEGA employee who explained that yes, that was exactly their rationale, and warning about the Werehog as the next iteration thereof before it was officially revealed.

4 hours ago, CrownSlayer’s Shadow said:

Heck, this goes all the way back to ShTH where it became more noticeable. They threw a gun on Shadow with some nerfed mechanics from Heroes and figured that was good enough. They thought that would be well received enough to show case it, but it came out pretty divisive-to-negative at best from announcement to release.

The backlash against Shadow's self-titled game was notably different than that against anything before (though definitely not after) because that game's announcement was the first time a sizable number of people decided to hate a Sonic game out of principle.  Before anyone seeing it was even thinking much at all about how a Sonic game with guns would play, they were sussing it as exactly what it was, a desperate attempt to look cool by aping more "mature" games.  The designers' priorities probably went in the same order; they started with an attempt to capture that edgy vibe of most gun-related games with high-stakes stories, and only afterward tried to figure out how that should play.  So how'd it all work out?

I'd say that ironically enough, the first thing most people ever deplored about Shadow the Hedgehog, the guns, were probably the least deplorable of its gameplay additions, faint praise as that may be.  The game's projectile-based combat, I feel, is at least cleaner, more fluid, and less accident-prone than the combat in Sonic Heroes, so for what ridiculous concept they had, they didn't do too badly. 

But it's the game they built on the back of that gunplay that really bogged down.  The enemies in Sonic Heroes were at least challenging, even though only some of that was due to the variety of moves needed to take them down and the rest of it was due to how several of those moves tended to throw your characters off cliffs.  They really did at least try to make enemies engaging to fight in that game, instead of just time-consuming.  By contrast, I can't recall any time an enemy I fought in Shadow the Hedgehog was ever challenging or really required any strategy beyond "make sure you have enough ammo and then hold the fire button".  Instead, the challenge, if you can call it that, was almost always in hunting down whatever enemies you needed to fight and eliminating them all, so what had been at least mechanically inoffensive gunplay was used so basically and rarely that the game was tedious. 

And this placed the game in what we call an anti-Goldilocks zone.  Regardless of how offensive or inoffensive any given player found the combat mechanics of Sonic Heroes, none of them originally came to Sonic Heroes expecting or seeking that sort of gameplay.  But when the first thing you show off about a game is that the character has a gun, that's a whole other matter; naturally it repulsed a large amount of players by its presence alone, but what really put the other nails in the coffin is that even the remaining players who were, as they intended, attracted by that premise, wouldn't find the sort of action they liked in Shadow the Hedgehog.  They would find dull scavenger hunts where the mechanical line between "Destroy all the ____", "Turn on all the _____", and "Collect all the _____" was usually paper-thin.

Of course, the game has many other problems too, but this post was in response to one specifically about shooting.

[Wraith]

13 hours ago, Scritch the Cat said:

I'm sorry, but reducing the description of New Super Mario Bros down to "simply move right and avoid danger" is absolute horsehshit.  That isn't even an accurate description of the first Super Mario Bros.  You can move left and in some cases it's important to do so, and you also have very means of attacking danger instead of just avoiding it.  So likewise, it's absolute horseshit to claim that any of the Super Mario Bros games prove that a game can be successful with no other mechanics than running and jumping, because all of them have more mechanics than just those, and if they hadn't, nothing much would make them seem any more special than the original Pitfall.

Are there any other successful games that prove this claim of yours?  Well, as I said, auto-runners really are basically just moving right (or forward) and avoiding danger, and they're successful, but how much do profits made on the basis of being simple enough to appeal to the lowest common denominator equate to what can be called good game design?  Clearly, auto-runners made for mobile phones based on theoretically just about every franchise ever, have a large audience because they are, as you said, easy to understand, but at this point they're also the video game equivalent of Monopoly: [Insert Franchise] Edition.  No innovation, no or almost no gameplay variety, basically nothing to recommend one over another except it being painted with the image of one franchise a consumer likes better than another.  If this sort of creative bankruptcy is the price of sticking to the bare essentials to maximize accessibility, then at least from the perspective of seasoned gamers with rising expectations, as well as people who value game creation as an art instead of just a business, it's high time to devalue that maximum accessibility.

 

I think you misunderstood my point so let me try and clarify.

 

When I say 'move to the right and avoid danger' I'm talking about the bare minimum you need to understand to progress. Most 2D Mario games have additional layers to them, but that low skill floor and near universal understanding of them is a big part of their success. Compare the understanding required to get going in the 3D Mario games which, while still popular, have always lagged behind them in sales. 

 

14 hours ago, CrownSlayer’s Shadow said:

Isn’t Titanfall 2 making a comeback?

I thought the whole reason they dropped that game was because Titanfall 2 was somehow unplayable because of a hacker crashing the system, so Respawn focused on Apex instead?

Nowadays, I’m seeing a mass rejoice and attention toward Titanfall 2 being playable and even receiving updates—and mind you, I don’t have Twitter, so the fact that I’m even noticing this is telling.

I haven’t played either Titanfall 2 nor Apex at this time, but for what it’s worth I think Titanfall 2 seems to nail the blend of running and jumping together with shooting if this resurgence and demand for more is anything to go by.

Mind you, this is just my observation from several YouTube sources, so feel free to verify that further if needed.

Titanfall 2 is a cult hit and my personal favorite shooting campaign of 8th Gen but the IP has always struggled with sales and retention. When Respawn went to the drawing board to figure out why, they found that testers didn't respond well to the expansive emphasis on movement and positioning compared to the 'boots on the ground' gameplay or something like Call of Duty. It was simply too hard to manage your own mechanics and track your opponents at the same time. For me and many others it was a dream game, but Respawn de-emphasized movement in their next game and made a more successful title. 

[CrownSlayers Shadow]

17 hours ago, Scritch the Cat said:

Search for the essay entitled "Why Sonic games do non-Sonic things".  I don't know if it's still available online, but it was an expose by a disgrunted SEGA employee who explained that yes, that was exactly their rationale, and warning about the Werehog as the next iteration thereof before it was officially revealed.

I can't seem to find that essay anywhere with a google search, and I've no clue where else I could look, so you're gonna have to link it to me if possible.

That said, however, I do recall hearing how Sega of America told the Japanese division that the werehog was not going to be a good idea and would recieve backlash, but SoJ decided to do it anyway. So, I don't think where you're coming from is wrong, but I still struggle to process why having Sonic games do non-Sonic things (outside of a mini-game anyway) would be a good idea on their end.

So, it's not unbelievable, but it's just...you'd think they'd learn from experience. 

17 hours ago, Scritch the Cat said:

The backlash against Shadow's self-titled game was notably different than that against anything before (though definitely not after) because that game's announcement was the first time a sizable number of people decided to hate a Sonic game out of principle.  Before anyone seeing it was even thinking much at all about how a Sonic game with guns would play, they were sussing it as exactly what it was, a desperate attempt to look cool by aping more "mature" games.  The designers' priorities probably went in the same order; they started with an attempt to capture that edgy vibe of most gun-related games with high-stakes stories, and only afterward tried to figure out how that should play. 

I take it you were around here on these forums during that time? Because I saw curiousity more on the idea, only for hate to come out when ShTH was announced.

And me being the dumb teenager that actually showed interest in the game at the time, these responses you mentioned are those I saw after the game was announced and shown. I remember one Sonic fansite changed their name with Sonic's name in the title to Shadow's name around that time--I wish I could remember the name of the site because I almost confused it for Sonic United and I don't think that was the one.

Needless to say, I remember more of the hate coming out after the announcement, not beforehand. Especially considering people wanted to know how Shadow survived SA2 from his appearance in Heroes.

Goodness those were chaotic times...