How do we fix it?

>Video intro

Nah, I'm not watching this.

Yeah, but if it's done right, each playthrough is different enough, by virtue of each character approaching each stage differently.

A competent level design team also helps.

fix the god damn controls.

No. No it doesn't. The fact of the matter is you're still forced to the same stages multiple times. And not enough of the characters have different enough gameplay to warrant that anyway.

Besides, speed-type gameplay's a pain in a 3D setting without the Homing Attack. Sonic's stages are all built around going fast.

>gut 90% of the bottomless pits
>Super Sonic playable in stages
Excellent points, I'd like to extrapolate by saying getting rid of the hedgehogs only Super form shit that started with SA is something also to be considered.

Mucking about with the rest of the cast would feel much more fulfilling if you could also replay their stages with invincibility and speed shoes at your disposable when you feel like dicking around. To be clear I have nothing against the true story concept itself since it technically started with S3&K and it is a good way to make replaying the game and collecting everything worthwhile, but I feel it would work better if the draw wasn't limited to just the one extra boss for one character. Collecting the emeralds with any of the characters, and really it should always be shared collection 7 special stages done more than once without Super Emeralds as a reward is just bullshit, to get their super forms for all the levels and then just so happening to get an extra boss fight for Sonic is much less frustrating.

You must not have played 3K.

>getting rid of the hedgehogs only Super form shit that started with SA
Agreed completely.

>the true story concept technically started with S3&K
Not really. Clearing Tails' and Knuckles' stories don't tell you anything more about Sonic's story. Unless you mean "get all the emeralds to unlock the TRUE last boss" thing. Which is fair, but at least it doesn't require you beating everyone's story to get Sonic's final boss.

On the other hand, it would feel like a wasted opportunity to not reward the player in some way for clearing all of the stories. Any ideas there?

I did. The stages don't really change that much. The majority of the stages are still running through more or less the same routes and obstacles. There are some differences thanks to the ability to fly/glide/climb, but those differences are fairly minimal.

And that still doesn't change the fact that Sonic stages are built around going fast.

Who the hell cares about Super Knuckles or Super Tails?

Personally, I think it's fine to make going super a Sonic only thing.

>Sonic stages are built around going fast.
Refer to my earlier posts where I suggested good level design, which would remedy that.

Personally, I think it's better to just build all the stages around a specific character. It allows for tighter level design and maximizes the levels in which the character interacts with the stage.

Being a specialist is always preferable to being a jack-of-all-trades.

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>How do we fix it?
You play the Internation version on Dreamcast

I think that's the worst way to handle multiple characters. That makes it so that each character is functionally a different game than Sonic, rather than an expansion on Sonic's game.

It's better for resource management, as you only have one game to polish.

In that way, making multiple characters their own game is trying to be a jack of all trades.

If they can't be expansions on the speedy platforming, they don't belong in the game. They can have their own little spinoff title, developed on its own. It doesn't need to bog down the development of this game.

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You can quit while you're behind, no one cares.

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If the stage is too generalized, it can become boring. They'd need to be careful to make each character just as viable as the next, which means they'd have to take care to make sure the stage design isn't biased towards anyone in particular. And this gets worse the more characters there are.

Take Tails' flight ability for instance. His limited flight is actually pretty worthless in a 3D environment, hence why in Sonic Adventure, they had to add a bunch of stuff into the stages to make it more useful. The distances between areas on which Tails can land on, trick rings that would allow Tails to stay in the air longer, tighter level design so that Tails has more places to go while in the air. The larger and more expansive the stage is, the less useful Tails' flight ability becomes since it's slow and can't be used for very long.

Then bring Knuckles and his glide/climbing ability. You'd need more climbable walls, tall objects so that Knuckle's ability is actually useful. Make the objects too tall, however, and Knuckles' climbing ability's usefulness would be diminished since he'd take too long to reach the top, wasting precious time. But due to the nature of the 3D setting, you'd also need to make it so that Knuckles can't simply skip large portions of the stage and reach the goal through the air.

The more characters there are, the more "safe" you have to make the stages so that everyone can be used equally and no one gets left behind. In 2D, this isn't that much of a problem since you only have two dimensions to work with, but in 3D it becomes a nightmare. That's why Sonic Team basically gave up on this method since Adventure.

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