New Questions for Masters (For real this time)

Going back to a post I made a few weeks ago, I went on to say I was interested in figuring out why a video games movement can effect a players enjoyment of a game. This interest comes along with my passion for my favorite video game genre, being platformers such as Super Mario, Banjo-Kazooie and Rayman.

Whenever I first pick up a platformer the first thing I will pick up on and analyse is how the character feels to control. I believe THE most important thing for a platformer to be enjoyable is if the player character "feels" good to play.

Super Mario 64 went on to sell over 10M copies, received
 numerous awards and is highly rated by critics and fans alike.

This thought can be backed up with some of the most critically acclaimed platformers that have been released. Super Mario 64 being a prime example of a 3D platformer (one of the first of it's kind to be exact) that was well received by critics for it's great movement controls and abilities that helped shaped it into the widely considered gaming classic to this day.

So here is my main question along with a couple of sub questions that I want to be able to answer with backed up research evidence and practice.

How can a characters controls and movement in a platformer effect the enjoyment of a game?  

How can a characters movement abilities tailor to a game's level design and environment?  

How can I create a character that controls in a way that allows the player to form their own playstyle/play at their own pace?

How can certain visual and audio cues effect players reactions to gameplay? 

What makes a good character ability? How does giving a character more abilities add depth to traditional gameplay? 

Do players prefer a more traditional control scheme for platformers? How can a game's button layout effect player accessibility with the controls?

What is the best way to introduce players to a game's control scheme? 

In the coming week I will be researching these questions thoroughly while applying my findings to practical work with regular builds in Unreal Engine of a short game.

These builds will be sent to various people to play so i can gather feedback from them. I can discover what they like and dislike as well as general feedback on the game. I would like to get at least 15/20 people to test these builds each time as well as having a broad range of testers in order to gather diverse feedback.

Gathering this info from people means I can understand if my research practices are working. For example, if I discover that people like to learn a games controls through intuitive level design, I will create a level which will introduce a mechanic in this way. Then I can see if players prefer this method and if they do I will therefore have the proof that my research worked.