And the only irredeemable (?) flaw I can remember of holidays-mode is the forced switch that SRB2 pushed down my throat twice a year. I fail to remember more other flaws maybe because I tuned it off by the said mean every time it popped out in my computer screen. If holidays mode was that bad, maybe because the texture and sprite replacement didn't turn out well. Am I right?
100% the reason I had it removed right here. I did the same thing year after year.
So are we trying to produce a game that has high production value, or are we trying to produce a game that - for lack of a better phrase - makes people happy? Christmas mode wasn't high in quality, but it evoked the feel of the season inside SRB2. That was a definite service and it had an observable effect. SRB2 is a game for people.
There's a lot of pre-conceived notions in this community (or at least, in myself) about what makes good content and what doesn't. If it's fun, if people enjoy it, does it matter if it's good? Quality is just one method of creating content so that people can enjoy it. If I made content with the end goal of people enjoying it, I might meet the standards of quality as well, but I think my players might enjoy it more.
Personally, I find I enjoy games with high production values a lot more than games with no focus and low production values. I find myself playing more, having more fun, and getting more joy from classic Sonic than the aforementioned Bubsy series. Clearly both games were made with the goal of making a fun game for people; one just succeeded more than the other. Even my childhood self understood that Sonic 2 was a better game than Bubsy, despite my having fun with Bubsy. There's a reason I became a Sonic fanboy in my youth instead of a Bubsy fanboy, after all.
My goal isn't to say that you can't have fun with bad things, because it's obvious that we can. Just watch a few Sci-fi original movies for a basic proof of this. I just personally would prefer our game to actually be of consistent high quality and of good polish so that we can continue to enjoy the game and present a good initial impression to new users that may not have played the game back when we had all sorts of problematic features still intact. People are more likely to come back and play our game again if it's good than if it's bad, after all.
Ever since my hard drive crashed, I never bothered redownloading SRB2. I may never redownload SRB2 until the next version or a popular user-created level comes out. If Christmas was still there, I would of tried out the game again for a fresh feel. Now this is where my original suggestion comes in with only changing the title screen and first zone. I would only play GFZ and then be done with it. At least it would of made me come back for a little bit.
To be honest, I don't see the benefit here. Even if people are easily amused and replay the stage for the amusement of it, what have you really accomplished here? You replayed GFZ for the lulz, way to go? This doesn't really add anything to the experience whatsoever.
The real original goal behind the Christmas mode in SRB2 was as a nod to Christmas NiGHTS. It wasn't originally intended to be a way to extend replay value, but as it was set up as a date-based trigger, it ended up that way. The problem is that it didn't really work very well. Let's look at all the old date-based secrets we've had, and look at where they succeeded and failed:
New Year's Day - Mario Mode
Yes, believe it or not, Mario mode originally existed as a trigger that only worked on January 1st in its original implementation. While I won't go into the quality of Mario Koopa Blast in this thread, I think we can all agree that this didn't really work as nobody even knew the levels existed, as it triggered on a single date only. We simply made it into a normal unlockable later on, which was much better.
April 1st - Old Intro
This is an unobtrusive and fun little extra, and doesn't affect gameplay whatsoever. IIRC this actually is even still implemented, and I have no objection to this one at all.
April - Easter Egg Hunt
This is the only removed time-based unlockable that had any merit whatsoever, as far as I'm concerned, and is also the only one added with the actual intent of generating replay value. Not only was it as unobtrusive as possible and single player only (therefore preventing any issues with netplay), it actually legitimately added a real gameplay reason to come back and play again, in the form of hidden eggs that weren't there when the event was running, encouraging the player to play through the demo levels again to try to find them. The problem is that this is essentially the intent of the emblem system, and was kinda redundant. We are considering revamping the emblem system in 2.1 in order to bring the fun of this feature back into the game, just without the date requirement.
Christmas Season (dates actually vary by release, originally December 25 to January 5, not including January 1st) - Xmas mode
As I've stated before, this was a cute nod to Christmas NiGHTS, putting in retextured levels and Christmas music, also implemented ages ago. As a cute nod it actually works quite well, but the old Christmas textures leave a lot to be desired, and the application of it in multiplayer caused all sorts of headaches back in the old days, especially when it actually changed more than just the textures. The original version made thrown rings snowballs, which caused all sorts of hell on servers as people conflicted on what files were loaded and what weren't, causing massive consistency failures (remember, system clocks differ between different players). After a couple years of these problems, it became standard practice online to have to state before starting the server whether or not your system clock was set into that mode or not.
The essential problem here is that basing gameplay changes on the system clock doesn't work well in multiplayer because the system clock is different for all players in the game and it's easy to manipulate. Many modern multiplayer games have date-based events and features, such as World of Warcraft. These games are based on a centralized server that determines what resources are and aren't involved in the game, and this allows them to provide little events that affect all players at the same time and never end up breaking things. Even better for these kind of games, these kind of things break up the grind that is often associated with them, providing something different for the player to do with their friends for a few weeks at a time. Since they're also based on a subscription model with the goal of having the player play them for a long period of time, this works out heavily to their benefit.
SRB2 really isn't designed with that in mind. We aren't trying to break up some kind of grind with events, or trying to sucker you to buy limited edition skins like freemium games frequently use events for. Instead of gating content artificially by requiring you wait for the content, I would far rather let you play everything we have at once, and let you determine the pace you'd like to play the game on your own. We aren't here with the goal of tricking you into paying a subscription fee or logging into the game server every day so you see our advertisements; we're here providing a free game we made with the hopes you enjoy it and nothing more. At the end of the day, SRB2 is a single player game with multiplayer modes attached, just like classic console games were back in the day. If you want to grind for event-based hats, you'll have to play another game. =P