Have you ever played a game, a good game, and it turned to shit after years of development and additional content? Just a game with a bright start, the bones to provide a fair share of fresh meat, and it suddenly turns to shit over time, given that it either becomes too casual or isn't the same game anymore. Because I disdain that, and most are optimistic about new shit being updated, but I often find that these things lead to ruin.
How can we fix it?
There's an array of games that were good and are now shit-tier games… You know, I can think of WoW, a game that was good until after WotLK. I've played other simple games, where the content was fine until the broke it and added pointless garbage that really didn't work – or they nerfed something that was fine enough. That kinda thing ruins it.
It begins when they try to fix what ain't broken, because sometimes a good game doesn't need an overhaul. Sometimes the base game is there to its best point, with bugs and other things fixed, and usually plays fine. Maybe it could refresh with content that could be added, but it shouldn't be filled with crap that doesn't belong there. Just the bare bones stuff that existed, can be developed, and otherwise remain relevant, I believe, should be developed for new content, but I absolutely hate new things that don't really fit in. It's probably when you know a development cycle is going downhill, tbh fam. It's when they try to make a really good game something it isn't.
Then there's removal and refining, then the point where it's too polished and refined; and maybe, when they clear up content, that's fine – but I can't stand when they start cutting off too much meat to simplify a game. In ways, the reality of that kind of refining is that it distances other halves of the fanbase. It gets bad when the end result is that the game is either too simplified or doesn't look the same.
I made a few principals when it comes to this stuff, and I follow them to determine whether a game is going downhill or improving. There are a few signs that give a warning, and I take note of that.
#1: If the game begins to separate from the base content, the base game, and goes off somewhere else. This is the point where it starts to appear the same. A good game is somewhat consistent in its lore and doesn't radically change gameplay aspects. It appears the same and remains true to the name. When this is broken, usually by throwing random content and changing things not broken, you can tell it's going downhill because it isn't the same anymore.
#2: Removal and nerfing go about to define the changes of a game. It isn't just fixing or adding content off the base game, but just refinement and cutting off the meat. Then they press it down and define these things in a worse way… The end result can make the game devoid of its original charm, or it could make it too simplistic when it wasn't really asked for.
#3: Adding useless, pointless junk that isn't asked for or doesn't make the game any better. Completely random and a sign that they're running out of ideas. If they milk a game and continue to go along with it, even though it's practically a finished product, then that's a sign that it isn't going in the right direction. And I'm not against new content, it's just that in order for that to work it should develop something already there, or it should root off that and improve upon it. Things are that barebones and could use update, not content that is pushed in. Unless it was felt that this was missing for the game, and that it should be added, I think this is the wrong path.
When these things do come out, and the fanbase is usually optimistic, I can't help but feel disgruntled because that routine thinking that new is better disturbs me. New content should be judged fairly as the previous content, and it shouldn't get a pat on the back because it's new. These type of things tend to go either way. There are just signs already there, with most games, to show that it could be for the better or worse.
Discuss…
#1: Stays true to the base game.
#2: Doesn't chop off too much content to refine the game.
#3: Avoids adding too much junk.
When A Game Goes Downhill
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Just a reminder that it's the internet that makes this even possible. It used to be that a game was released and that was it, until a sequel was released a few years later (if at all).
China.
Korea.
The source of it all.
Warfarm
Tribes: Ascend
Killing Floor
Solforge was ok for a while, then went to shit with nerfing everything but new cards and a horrible UI redesign.
Hand of Fate had the potential to be really interesting if only they tightened up the combat and took away maybe a half dozen of the cheap tricks the AI is allowed to get away with but you can't.
tbh fam, I also find it distasteful when the content creators can't say the game is finished. Instead, they do as above, and they go on to ruin it. My opinion is that if it ain't broken, don't fix it. That is all. I feel that there should be a new game instead, if they want something new, rather than making the base game something else.
LEAGUE OF LEGENDS
I'm going to make a confession.
I HATE CHANGE
And I'm intolerant. Don't chop off meat and call that change, then call for newer content. It seems hypocritical to me,
especially when they destroyed something they could have built off of to begin with.
The gaming communities should heed my word, take on these principals, and make these rules known to the content creators.
*principles
Killing FloorBecause of #1
Team Fortress 2Because of #3
And it still hurts
Thankfully not a game itself, but rather its sequel.
Bad thing it finally killed game in question for real.
Good thing game itself didn't go anyway and I still can play it by myself. Alone.
Here is a sort of infograph I conjured. If you want, you can go ahead and take it, mess with it, but this is the overall theme of the thread.
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Payday 2
I had real hopes for it, but we all know the story by now.
ohno
I'm really tired of your whining, faglord. Boohoo, woe is me, everyone's playing (shit) current version when my superior gem with its Force Breaks and Slashbacks withered and died.
Minecraft
Yeah I know
It needed a sequel badly. It'a shame some things got cut but it must live. GG is the only fighter I truly enjoy.
Thanks for reminding me. HiRez deserves only the worst fate imaginable.
But the bed was a good addition, how dare you suggest that a cheap way to skip a vital gameplay aspect is a terrible idea.
The only games that get butchered on that kind of scale are multiplayer games. And I don't play multiplayer games. So no.
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yea…just multiplayer
well theres often times i disagree with balance changes. if it keeps happening i might lose interest in a game
I remember the fun I had back when the only class update was the medic one. Back when the community here wasn't a bunch of kids and hues.
ASSFAGGOTS in general, EVERY decent MMORPG that existed or is going to exist, Ace of Spades.
Wakfu is the best example of this shit.
On top of this the devs are just so fucking incompetent. The game is constantly plagued by duping and item disappearance bugs that sometimes take weeks or even months to be fixed. There are some class unique bugs that have existed for years that are still incredibly disruptive and annoying. But the most visible bug is the horrible optimisation and memory leak in the game, within an hour or two of opening the game you need to close it, as opening in-game interfaces and fighting consumes memory but does not release it, quickly leading to huge memory consumption. Combat is actually pretty fun, some classes being really satisfying to use, but pretty much everyone plays their class more or less the same as there is a complete lack of viable builds bar a few gimmicky ones on some classes which basically come down to building tanky to grief people in PvP. On the subject of PvP there is still no decent PvP system even though the game has been officially released for 4 years and in development for 10. There's a barebones merit and reward system, but there is only open PvP and it is heavily susceptible to abuse. 80% of people high up on the PvP leaderboards just use low level overgeared characters or PvP classes,one of which is obscenely broken and can kill nearly anything with impunity as it can summon shitloads of chaff summons, then heal and armor itself while letting them kill the opponent.
If anyone every tries to get you to play Wakfu tell them to fuck off and that they have fucking terrible taste and standards.
I'd take kids and BRs over the aimbot fest it is now
I remember Dofus. I played it early on the BR server and I came back to Wakfu it to play with my friend last year thinking it was the same, and I wondered when the sandbox part was going to start. It never did.
that's what i get for staying awake for 30+ hours
UO live servers turned to shit but then the freeshards came out and it was saved.
TF2, Tribes Ascend
Fuck Valve, Fuck Hi Rez
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Dofus is almost a sadder case. At its core it's a great game (as far as mmos can be great), but the community is stuffed with people who just multibox or beg to be leeched, which kills a lot of the potential the game has. Apparently Dofus Touch resolves this but I'm not buying a walled garden tracking device just to play an MMO. I sometimes sub for a week or so and play it a bit since I have some friends there, but I can't really play it at a stretch as I often end up just doing stuff alone.
An upcoming update is apparently going to add spell variants which could inject some variety into the game (a lot of classes are pretty boring if you're only playing one character, which is one reason so many people multibox).
>no flag music
I knew those days.
Tibia and Runescape were great games that were ruined down the line. WoW was shit from day 1, I don't know what you're talking about. Also your post was tl;dr AS FUCK so I only read like 6 words of it.
TF2
Tribes
Payday
Darkest Dungeon
Kerbal Space Program
Binding of Isaac
I used to think like this before I started playing the game seriously. It's not even bad.
also Runescape and Dwarf Fortress (Kinda)
fucking flag.
sage for doublepost
Dwarf Fortress just got gay animals which you can mod out easily, it's still great.
I don't understand any complaint about Kerbal Space Program. Sandbox mode is pretty much exactly the same as the base game used to be before they added research and stuff, except there are more parts and it looks better.
And I've been playing it since like 0.0.9, back when literally the only thing you could do was get into orbit.
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Remember when TF2C was actually pretty decent when Holla Forums first discovered it? The most fun I've had with the game was the first Friday Game Night and the drama with Jason Grant. That was a blast. Shame AlphaBlaster decided to fuck things up and the devs turned the mod into TF2 with certain weapons the devs like.
WHAT?
How do gay animals affect anything?
They don't breed.
They ruin animal culture and animal civilization.
They turn animal children into gays and open pizza joints in which to molest them secretly.
I had some good times on that map despite the steam roll it usually ended up being.
Oh, That's shitty. How many are gay?
It's a random low probability. I don't know the exact number.
You can make 100% of a species gay and they will never have children and will die out.
All you had to do was leave it alone valve. Maybe new maps, but that was it.
You just couldn't leave good enough alone, and now your actively shitting all over it.
EU4 suffers from a lot of these problems too.
The initial release was a lot of fun. You could play the game in a lot of different ways. You could blob all over and conquer the world if you wanted to.
But Paradox and their DLC fetish added "feature" after feature to justify each expansion. Of course most of the new systems are little more than more buttons to press every now and then.
The second problem is the railroading into the way Pdox thinks the game should be played. Took out a lot of the freedom and fun of initial release
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To be bought by EA? But that would strengthen the Great Evil.
Greatest example of all time: Star Wars Galaxies. It started off as a sandbox with no classes, a player-driven economy, and good pvp. After the developer gave it cancer AND aids, it ended as a themepark with classes, dead economy, dead pvp, no social interaction, and the only people who stayed were casual cucks.
Payday 2 was actually a lot of fun at launch, but Overkill had to do its very best to nerf the fun out of the game by making stealth useless and adding blatantly OP DLC. It's a fucking joke now.
World of Tanks, despite its faggotry, was a fun game. But over time they kept building on the faggotry, like new vehicles with massive power creep, premium shells, and RNG artillery that either missed or one-shot you. It sucked the fun out of the game. At least the old development team has been removed: maybe the game can be salvaged? Probably too late for that.
Sucks doesn't it?
Runescape
I'll never understand why anyone on Holla Forums saw promise in a fat fuck like Notch.
Reminder that Savage Resurrection has a peak player count of 20 on weekends, the rest of the week it sits between 0-2
Global Agenda
Tribes
Kenshi
Overgrowth
TF2
By the time I uninstalled, I had around a year and a half worth of hours on the game. How does one move on from something that they loved so much, and watched die so slowly?
Those were shills and useful idiots.
Garry's Mod
It's all come tumbling down.
I visited the Holla Forums server a few weeks ago. Everyone was using wire, it'd been the first time in years I'd seen someone actually playing sandbox. I wanted to join in but I just feel like its been too long. I can't get into it anymore.
Holla Forums didn't have shills back then you twat.
but there's gay dwarfs too. Unless that got patched out
Shattered horizon was cool as hell at launch. Astronauts fighting in space, among the ruins of fucked up space stations. You could fly around in full 6dof, anchor onto walls and stuff, turn off your lights and thrusters and go dark, at the expense of maneuverability and HUD. You got one gun, no matter what side you were on, but it had a good feel to it, and it could become a sniper rifle or launch a variety of grenades. It was all about situational awareness, and getting the drop on your enemy in crazy fucked up 3d environments, and there wasn't much like it out there.
But it didn't sell very well, since it required DX10, at a time when a lot of people were still on XP, and the system requirements were high for the time because it was made by fucking futuremark. Also it launched with only 4 maps, which is a bit inexcusable considering it shouldn't be terribly hard to half-ass a few extra maps by just randomly sticking space props in space.
Anyway, I guess whoever was in charge got the idea that it wasn't selling because it only had one gun, so they took that one out in a mandatory "Free DLC", and put in a bunch of different, more specialized ones, and nerfed fun stuff like using the concussion grenades to rocket jump around the levels. Long story short, that didn't get any new players interested, and pissed off everyone who was already playing it, so the playerbase immediately went from low to nill, and the game died forever, so hard it's not even sold on steam or GOG or anything.
I'm still a bit salty.
Can this count for series of games? Because Halo fits this bill pretty well.
CK2 went to shit because they kept changing shit to benefit multiplayer at the expense of singleplayer. So in essence, yes multiplayer