As you're likely aware, it's been announced that the most recent Super Mario Maker 2 update was the "third and last Major Update". It was a meaty update to be sure, but it also has the feeling of bigger plans being cut short. You can argue whether or not that's justified, but taking Nintendo at their most direct word, we can't expect anything as big as this again for Super Mario Maker 2. The majority of the team has probably been shifted to work on other projects, especially as Breath of the Wild 2 likely eats up any development resources it can get.
So, let's think small. Things that don't require lots of asset creation, or major restructuring of the game's internal systems. Minor things about the games, even post-launch, that could make it just that bit better. Here are a few to get started, but I want to hear your suggestions.
I could keep going, but what are some of your bite-sized ideas for continuing to improve Mario Maker 2?
(Also, why did they include the Stone in multiple Story Mode stages if we were never going to get to build with it? The Toads I get for resource reasons, but the Stone?)
So, let's think small. Things that don't require lots of asset creation, or major restructuring of the game's internal systems. Minor things about the games, even post-launch, that could make it just that bit better. Here are a few to get started, but I want to hear your suggestions.
- More "states" of an object available in the editor. There are some objects that are handy to have, but for some reason you can't place them directly in the editor. For example, Chain Chomp posts have to be farmed using Bob-ombs in a very unnatural way. You can't just place a shell in the 3D World style; you have to get the Koopa out of it first, despite this feature being available in other game styles. How about just spawning the 3D World Car, with no Koopa Troopa inside? I understand the community has figured out a bunch of ways to make getting to these item states simpler, but it shouldn't be this complex to begin with.
- "Empty" Bullet Bill Blasters. Creators have often wanted a basic "physics block" to use in their levels, and the Bill Blaster is maybe the closest thing to that. Unfortunately, if you don't give a Bill Blaster anything to fire, it shoots, surprise, Bullet Bills. To combat this, level makers often put coins or 1ups inside them, but that ends up looking messy and cluttering the level. These Blasters might be marked with an "X" instead of the current Skull symbol to indicate they're inactive.
- 1-Way Pipes and Doors. People shouldn't have to make weird setups to push people away from pipes when the majority of pipes in real Mario games are usually 1-Way anyway. Maybe the Door or Pipe turns gray. (The door could "poof", but Multiplayer might look a little odd.)
- Reset Doors. Doesn't count against your Door count; it's a door with a "Reload" š icon on it. The only function is to reset the scene and put you back at that exact point. It also makes the function of Reset Doors less guesswork. (Edit: As Stopdoor pointed out, Multiplayer makes this complicated.)
- Reusable Checkpoints. The current setup requires you to go through this process to hit a checkpoint, then go through a pipe to hit a second checkpoint to save your progress. This is a flag that saves your progress every time you touch it. Maybe it has the option to give you the power-up it holds each time, maybe it doesn't. (Also, spawning from Checkpoint not giving you the power-up it holds feels like something that should change.)
- Longer and/or Infinite Timers. Sometimes the Timer just gets in the way of a really long stage. I understand it's there for younger and inexperienced players who may not understand the menus, but these stages likely shouldn't be showing up in Normal mode anyway.
- Restart from Checkpoint. I know, there goes all the Anti-Softlocks, but there are way more actual Softlocks than there are fun Anti-Softlocks for CarlSagan42 to suffer through. If they really needed to keep it simple, all this would have to be is a pause menu option that kills Mario/Luigi/etc.
I could keep going, but what are some of your bite-sized ideas for continuing to improve Mario Maker 2?
(Also, why did they include the Stone in multiple Story Mode stages if we were never going to get to build with it? The Toads I get for resource reasons, but the Stone?)
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