Great games that were completely wrecked by the end

[Techwright]

List/describe games you perhaps absolutely loved at one time, but something completely wrecked them.

 

I can tell you two that I absolutely loved, but became terrible games because of the development teams involved.   I'll put links throughout so those not familiar with them get a better feel for them.

 

The first was the MMO  Tabula Rasa.  Great concept: you're one of a few plucked from the Earth when it is overrun by an alien invasion.  Trying to survive with a coalition of remnants from other devastated worlds you realize the only hope for re-population is to use your alien buddies' perfected cloning technology. With a growing clone army, you begin to push back planet by planet with hope of retaking Earth some day.   Nice look for its day and age, though the graphics are quite dated in 2023.  Some cool original gaming concepts, several of which have surfaced in other games since.  The problem was the development team headed by Lord British (known in this game as General British.) Turns out, he was seeking the funds to become (briefly) an astronaut like his dad.  Once he had them, he more or less left the team hanging, and NCSoft completely botched it from there.  All kinds of bug issues including mid-level zones you had to work with that were almost unplayable.  One of them was ironically called The Mires, and it was true because you couldn't move more than a foot ever 30 seconds leaving you incredibly vulnerable for 5 levels or so.  Incredibly frustrating game because the potential was unmistakable, but the in-house fighting of the developers (NCSoft and Lord British had a court fight over this, or so I heard) resulted in a game getting cancelled far too early.  I really do believe this game could be rebuilt for today and succeed, but then, we at CoH Homecoming know something about how the company likes to hold tight to otherwise-abandoned titles.

 

The second was Firefall.  (also see cinematic trailer.) It was the only game that got me to stop played OG CoH. Great concept:  Due to an unknown factor in the first hyperwarp jump of a starship, a hole between realities is rent and something ghastly falls through onto Earth, spreading like an inky kilometer high blanket killing 95% of the planet.  The survivors discover a technology running in their area is repulsing the threat, and they begin manufacturing more of this technology but with limited manpower and resources, it takes time.  The game only opened a new zone with this technology occasionally.  Great archetypes and concept:  single character, but can wear any archetype as a battleframe.  Advancement is related to skill in using the archetype, rather than focused on the person themselves.  Cool mode of flight & fight.  Some great zone events not unlike our iTrials, but far more dynamic.  "Street fighting" handled much, much better, and a major factor in gameplay.  Mining for minerals using rocket piledrivers, called thumping, was one of the great bits of fun. "Thumpers" enraged the altered wildlife, flooding the field with lethal creatures.  The higher the class of rocket miner, the greater number of threats appeared.  Something of a tower defense mini-game.  Great look to the game, and fun crafting system.  The problem was the executives. One in particular, spent money like water and on ridiculous promotional things the game didn't need while development still needed funding.  They even got John Cena to cosplay one of their main character.  Funding dried up, game was playable but only a handful or two of (admittedly massive) zones were open.   They opted to sell and sold to the worst company: a Chinese speculative company that had no idea how to finish the game but promised the world to us.  Each patch and rollout after that broke the game worse than before.  Then the entire American development team was fired in a day.  It continued downhill from there with some of the best PvE zones I've ever played breaking and not being repaired.  So much potential.  So much stupid in control.  Nothing but a wreck on cheap life support at the end. 

[ThaOGDreamWeaver]

I think the one that I got most into - but got most disappointed by - was Secret World.

 

Nice power system. Great mythos. Fun (if occasionally confusing) storytelling. And a properly open-world first act in...

...a seaside town in Maine. Really? Really. (It's even called Kingsmouth, FFS.)

 

But even Molly, The Thing Of Evil would never deny it felt like walking into her master's work. It was gloriously creepy, genuinely disturbing without over-reliance on epic bosses, jump scares or setpieces. (Though it did have some FUN stuff. ESPECIALLY the obligatory Abandoned Theme Park Of OMGDoomzor. Yes, I know, but... it's GOOD.)

 

But after that point, once you get to Egypt, things got very much more on-rails, grindy, and shabby around the edges, and I rapidly lost interest.

Apparently, so did the dev team.

Edited June 1, 2023 by ThaOGDreamWeaver

[TheOtherTed]

DC Universe Online.  This game had so much going for it when it was released.  For those who hadn't played way back when, you'd choose a powerset (e.g., Fire, Ice, Nature, Mental - I think there were about half a dozen choices) and a weapon skill (from Hand Blasts to Martial Arts to Dual Pistols), and you'd level them up independently.  Each powerset had two branches - one "role" branch (e.g., Tank, Controller, Healer) and one DPS branch; you could either specialize in one branch or mix and match the two.  Surprising amount of versatility there.  Weapons also had branching trees, but with a lot of "no-brainer" choices, as the later weapon skills gave you passive stat bonuses that you kind of needed.  That said, starting at level 10 (IIRC), you could choose to invest in different weapon types instead of the one you picked at character creation.

 

The world had three "open world" leveling zones - one in Gotham, and two in Metropolis - and you could mix-n-match the quest lines you followed.  For example, you could do the 1-8 level chain in Gotham, hop over to Metropolis to do a 9-16 (?) chain there, back to Gotham, etc.  So for concept players like myself, the game allowed you to customize your characters' experiences.  (Side note - IMO the music and world design for all the zones were really good, so much so that they kept me coming back, even after... The Streamlining...)

 

Chapter 2:  The Streamlining

As with many other MMOs at the time, the devs decided that it would be a great idea to offer the players a "streamlined" leveling experience, rather than leave all those silly, distracting, confusing options open.  After all, if that's the optimal way to play, who wouldn't love that?  This happened in two ways, though I can't remember the order in which it happened:  1) The power trees were not only condensed into one branch, but the element of choice was taken away.  In other words, you were railroaded into an immutable linear progression with respect to your powers.  2) Once you completed your starting arc, all choice of which story arc to follow when was also removed.  You were railroaded into a linear story progression, no matter what your characters' goals were.  To this day, I have no idea why this second decision was made.

 

You may note that I haven't said anything about weapon skills.  That's mainly because I tuned out to weapon skills around the time "Weapon Mastery" made its appearance.  WM rewarded you heavily for investing in two different weapons, IIRC, maybe to the point where you'd gimp yourself if you didn't.  In retrospect, that may have been the beginning of the end...

 

The Streamlining is what killed my interst in the game.  To be sure, the game had many intrinsic issues, but for my money (literally), it still had a fair amount of replayability before The Streamlining.

[Techwright]

On 6/1/2023 at 8:02 AM, TheOtherTed said:

DC Universe Online. 

 

 

I played DC Universe Online twice: once when the game opened, and once again back in either 2017 or 2018, before I discovered in 2019 that CoH had returned.  While I did like some things, such as speedsters being able to wall run, I disliked others, most notably the highly repetitious dialog by street-level thugs and the inability to equip my character with the right costume options up front, and for quite a few ranks. I still have nightmares about that one section where all the street demons are saying "the wrath of a hero...delicious!"  It's worse than Mark Twain's "Punch, Brothers, Punch".   Costumes, at least initially, were a pain to assembled because they came from drops, and you might go through quite a few unusable parts until you found a good one.  By then, you might already be level 30.

 

 

[biostem]

I don't know if you would consider it to ever have been a "great game", but C&C4 suffered immensely, as they sort of reverse-ported what was originally a mobile/tablet game back to the PC, and the resulting game was of very poor quality...

[ThaOGDreamWeaver]

On 6/1/2023 at 1:02 PM, TheOtherTed said:

Chapter 2:  The Streamlining

 

Reminds me of all the old, battle-scarred Star Wars Galaxies players.

"...for over a thousand logins, we became the guardians of peace and justice...

...before the Dark Times... 

...before the NGE."

 

I'm never quite sure why a dev, seeing the way their existing userbase played, would turn round and say "nope, NOPE, you are supposed to play THIS WAY and ONLY THIS WAY."

 

SWG was maybe too rich and complex for a newbie to get into. But you can add simple tracks for someone to pick up, play, compete and branch out from without trashing all that.  And maybe the Jedi unlock path was a touch weird and arbitrary (it should have been difficult and mysterious: but perhaps a bit more logical than mastering four randomly-chosen Skills.)

Edited June 7, 2023 by ThaOGDreamWeaver

[Techwright]

16 hours ago, ThaOGDreamWeaver said:

 

Reminds me of all the old, battle-scarred Star Wars Galaxies players.

 

I've heard that SWG received a similar treatment to Homecoming.  I presume it is from a version before the perversion of the game?

 

[ThaOGDreamWeaver]

SWG: Restoration is one of them, and seems to be a big server with an active community. The site blurb says that one has all the playstyle / controls / features before NGE, but access to all the extra content from after NGE. Seems like a good plan. The roadmap says they've also addressed one of my complaints above with an improved tutorial area. There even seems to be some new Mando-inspired content.

 

Unfortunately, it runs on native Windows only, and they claim there's no way to Wine it for Macs/Linux. Boo. Though that might be from before the SDCC announcement of the Game Porting Kit and native DX12 support on new Mac metal.

 

Project:SWG does have a Mac client, but is an NGE server. I'll keep looking.

Edited June 8, 2023 by ThaOGDreamWeaver

[Techwright]

2 hours ago, ThaOGDreamWeaver said:

SWG: Restoration is one of them, and seems to be a big server with an active community.

 

 

From the description given, that does sound like the ticket.

 

[TheOtherTed]

23 hours ago, ThaOGDreamWeaver said:

I'm never quite sure why a dev, seeing the way their existing userbase played, would turn round and say "nope, NOPE, you are supposed to play THIS WAY and ONLY THIS WAY."

Design by data analysis.  If all the data suggests that the majority of players had settled on one "meta" (though I hate the term), decision-makers (not necessarily the devs) may see nothing wrong with to supporting that "meta" to the exclusion of other playstyles, and build from there.  It sounds "clean" and "rational," but it completely ignores all the little voices saying that there's much more to the game than the "meta."

 

That said, DCUO's leveling content was short to begin with.  A filthy casual like myself could get to max level within two weeks without trying.  The first time I quit, it was because the transition from open-world leveling to gear leveling felt like I was suddenly thrown into a pool of sticky molasses that had gone a bit "off."

[ThaOGDreamWeaver]

7 minutes ago, TheOtherTed said:

It sounds "clean" and "rational," but it completely ignores all the little voices saying that there's much more to the game than the "meta."

Kind of the point of an MMO - from my PoV - is that I can PL if I want to, or take my time, or do something else entirely. I mean, WoW allows you to do a lot of different stuff, but then the forum nerds scream at you for not doing it the right/perfect/minmaxed way. DCUO had some flexibility which got stripped. ST:O allows for some customisation, within the limits of Federation / Klingon dress codes, though the ship builder wound up being more satisfying.

 

CoH has quite a lot of linear elements, but the sheer flexibility in being who you want to be has - I think - never been equalled. I've been on teams with sentient walls, affable demons, assassins, sorority girls, and the Nuclear Pudding King.

Edited June 8, 2023 by ThaOGDreamWeaver

[Skyhawke]

Fallout 3 before the dlc fixed it. You had this amazing journey, made all these decisions aaaaand it doesn't matter because you're railroaded into dying...with a supermutant companion that could just walk into the radiation no problem and fix everything, but nooooo you sacrifice yourself because: reasons. 

[Techwright]

10 hours ago, Skyhawke said:

...you're railroaded into dying...with a supermutant companion that could just walk into the radiation no problem and fix everything, but nooooo you sacrifice yourself because: reasons. 

 

Sounds like the climactic moment in Captain America: The First Avenger. which How It Should Have Ended picked up on and mercilessly skewered. 

[Skyhawke]

1 hour ago, Techwright said:

 

Sounds like the climactic moment in Captain America: The First Avenger. which How It Should Have Ended picked up on and mercilessly skewered. 

 

This guy could solve so many of the worlds problems.

 

[Shotagonist]

20 hours ago, TheOtherTed said:

Design by data analysis.  If all the data suggests that the majority of players had settled on one "meta" (though I hate the term), decision-makers (not necessarily the devs) may see nothing wrong with to supporting that "meta" to the exclusion of other playstyles, and build from there.  It sounds "clean" and "rational," but it completely ignores all the little voices saying that there's much more to the game than the "meta."

 

That said, DCUO's leveling content was short to begin with.  A filthy casual like myself could get to max level within two weeks without trying.  The first time I quit, it was because the transition from open-world leveling to gear leveling felt like I was suddenly thrown into a pool of sticky molasses that had gone a bit "off."

There is also the fact that a mediocre mass appeal is simply more profitable than something made for genre enjoyers. Something that 10000 people like is better for the bottom line than something only 1000 people love. Most MMOs realize that "all my friends are there" is enough to keep players so stripping down game systems to essentially turn the game into a chatroom is something a lot of MMOs are angling for.

[ThaOGDreamWeaver]

Following on from TheOtherTed on the other thread: Warhammer: Age of Reckoning (aka WAR, pronounced WAAAAARRRGGHHH. Obviously.)

Games Workshop has never been a thing for me, other than the single most consistently successful share in my very small portfolio.

 

But the WAR beta looked so much fun I signed up and stuck around for a while. And happily, you didn't have to be a Henry Cavill-level 'Hammernerd to get on with it. It looked great and ran smoothly, was easy to pick up and play, had interesting mechanics once you got into it, and plenty to do even pre-launch. I very much enjoyed running around blasting people with Chaos magick and working out what to do with all the Dhar I was racking up.

 

I also enjoyed hunting the odd chicken for lunch. WAR was very, very PvP-centric, including a central Realm Vs Realm mechanic that encouraged you to join mass battles.

But. That also came with a very strict anti-ganking policy. Stray into lower-level RvR areas, or attack players who were much weaker than you, and you'd be thoroughly "clucked" - at least until you returned to your right zone: sometimes for the rest of the day, and occasionally permanently. 

 

Unfortunately for Mythic, like a lot of people in 2008-2009, I suddenly had to tighten my belts. And MMOs were a luxury, even moreso when the trusty Vaio that work let me take home after being fired finally died in flames. A game of that quality was expensive to develop and run - and even with 300,000 subs per month, wasn't anywhere near breakeven. According to rumour they lost over a billion bucks on it - then again, these were EA's numbers, so... hmm. 

 

AFAIK the game was maintained well while it lasted. But further development tailed off, as did the number of servers, until finally sunsetting late 2013 when the GW licence expired. As with many other MMOs, there are legacy servers still out there.

Edited June 9, 2023 by ThaOGDreamWeaver

[Spaghetti Betty]

On 6/1/2023 at 3:51 AM, ThaOGDreamWeaver said:

I think the one that I got most into - but got most disappointed by - was Secret World.

 

Nice power system. Great mythos. Fun (if occasionally confusing) storytelling. And a properly open-world first act in...

...a seaside town in Maine. Really? Really. (It's even called Kingsmouth, FFS.)

 

But even Molly, The Thing Of Evil would never deny it felt like walking into her master's work. It was gloriously creepy, genuinely disturbing without over-reliance on epic bosses, jump scares or setpieces. (Though it did have some FUN stuff. ESPECIALLY the obligatory Abandoned Theme Park Of OMGDoomzor. Yes, I know, but... it's GOOD.)

 

But after that point, once you get to Egypt, things got very much more on-rails, grindy, and shabby around the edges, and I rapidly lost interest.

Apparently, so did the dev team.

Huge agree on this. Personally the entire first map in TSW is some of my favorite content in MMOs. Loved everything mixed into it. Lovecraft, occult, modern hauntings, demonology, native american history. Also the whole haunted mansion bit where you travel backwards in time! So good.

 

I really wish I liked the Egypt section more. Navigating through the pyramids and talking to gods should've been way more fun than it was, but ended up being fedex after fedex (and no fun research missions). By the time I got to Transylvania I was exhausted. Which is a real shame. I didn't like the way that zone opened up either.

 

 

 

Ok, so for my hot take, this was totally WoW for me. I think WoW is incredible as a solo questing RPG, but I just do not enjoy group content there. So, once I'd lvl cap a character, I was pretty much done playing it. Not much new that would cause me to go back either, as I felt the game peaked during Lich King anyway.

 

[Techwright]

4 minutes ago, Spaghetti Betty said:

Ok, so for my hot take, this was totally WoW for me. I think WoW is incredible as a solo questing RPG, but I just do not enjoy group content there.

 

Is that because of the attitudes of other players? or something else?

[Spaghetti Betty]

28 minutes ago, Techwright said:

Is that because of the attitudes of other players? or something else?

Combination of the attitudes of other players and a lot of raid mechanics being exercises in frustration. By the time the latter got ironed out they started severely watering down the gameplay of my favorite class, which stunk a lot. I haven't tried playing again since Warlords of Draenor.

[OldManMercy]

I reeeeeeeally enjoyed the mechanics and art and game play of a game called "Worlds Adrift". Basically the planet had shattered, leaving scattered floating islands you could get to by building a skyship.

Resource collection, fairly free-form wire frame ship building, excellent character movement concept and application, such a peaceful and tranquil soundtrack, SO MANY things about that game were great. For instance:

The materials you gathered for ship building really mattered Several types of wood and metal with quality ratings from 1 to 10 actually had impact on your ship's performance. Oak= heavy and sturdy, Birch= light and flexible, Iron, Steel, Aluminum, Titanium all from quality ratings 1 to 10.

What killed it? Well, some people would say it was the addition of another server where PvP could not occur until the highest tier zone.....oh, which reminds me. All zones were separated by walls. Not physical walls, though. Lowest threat wall (from T1 to T2) was a wind wall. Then a storm wall from 2 to 3, and finally a sand wall from 3 to 4.

 

Back to what killed it, though. As far as I can recall, there was a dupe glitch that never got patched out, leading to those that knew how to do it ending up with tier 10 materials to build ships out of, and endless supplies of them. That was the main factor.

I personally believe that another huge factor of the game's demise was the seal clubbing that went on. I recall several more popular streamers getting seal clubbed by those with the top tier items at the best quality on live streams, which totally killed any kind of popularity the game could have had.

At any rate, Bossa (the developing studio) is at it again, making a spiritual successor to Worlds Adrift called Lost Skies. Animated trailer and one of the devs talking about it here:
 

 

[Techwright]

On 6/30/2023 at 4:31 PM, OldManMercy said:

I personally believe that another huge factor of the game's demise was the seal clubbing that went on. I recall several more popular streamers getting seal clubbed by those with the top tier items at the best quality on live streams, which totally killed any kind of popularity the game could have had.

At any rate, Bossa (the developing studio) is at it again, making a spiritual successor to Worlds Adrift called Lost Skies. Animated trailer and one of the devs talking about it here:
 

 

 

You're "seal clubbing" comment reminded me of what killed instanced PvP for me back in my WoW days.  I was playing the lower level PvP stuff like Warsong Gulch (around maybe 2006-2007) and realized skill was secondary to gear.  Not really happy with that, but I figured if I could level the playing field, it would be skill again.  So I set about getting as much of the rare "twink" gear as possible.  Got it to about 85%-90% of maximum and was having good results as a lot of the twinks were gear only, no skill.  I'd built a rogue-killer shaman during the time that rogues dominated Warsong Gulch.  That all ended the day one rogue, completely twinked out, stopped in their tracks and literally let me attack them for over a minute.  Despite my fairly high twink status, I was unable to deal enough damage to drop his health more than 75% before he regenerated.  Winning no longer had anything to do with skill and all to do with how much extremely rare gear one possessed. I left PvP almost immediately and never returned.

 

As to Lost Skies, it reminded me a bit of the lengthy demo of the upcoming game Aloft, though Lost Skies looks more intricate and with greater visual detail.  Aloft has a less-realistic styling, and lets you craft floating ships of your own design from various materials found on sky islands.  You may also use crafted glider wings to get around.  I don't think the final result will be as detailed and visually beautiful as Lost Skies, but it might scratch the itch a little until the better game comes out.  (The vid I've linked to is a bit off in its clarity.  The game is much clearer, but it should give you a rough idea of the game.)

[PyroBeetle]

Most people won't remember it, but I loved Motor City Online when it launched. However, like many EA games it was a money grab and then sunset. When they patched in the Japanese 90s cars at the end the game was already done for, but it was an outrageous affront to the classic muscle cars to do that.

[Mr. Apocalypse]

On 6/7/2023 at 4:06 AM, ThaOGDreamWeaver said:

 

Reminds me of all the old, battle-scarred Star Wars Galaxies players.

"...for over a thousand logins, we became the guardians of peace and justice...

...before the Dark Times... 

...before the NGE."

 

I'm never quite sure why a dev, seeing the way their existing userbase played, would turn round and say "nope, NOPE, you are supposed to play THIS WAY and ONLY THIS WAY."

 

SWG was maybe too rich and complex for a newbie to get into. But you can add simple tracks for someone to pick up, play, compete and branch out from without trashing all that.  And maybe the Jedi unlock path was a touch weird and arbitrary (it should have been difficult and mysterious: but perhaps a bit more logical than mastering four randomly-chosen Skills.)

I came to COH after the Dark times, after the NGE

 

SWG could have been so much more than John Smedley and the dips over at SOE would allow it to be.  They were so fixated on stealing people from the WOW playerbase, rather that enhancing the core design elements.  It is the only MMO I have played where the playerbase sustained a true resource based economy. I agree the Jedi unlock path was a joke though. I wish they would have stuck to cannon and never had played jedi in the game.  instead they turned it into a sausage fest of jedi, all running around at the same time. The NGE made it worse, by allowing you to be jedi from level 1..

 

 

Edited July 2, 2023 by Mr. Apocalypse

[Greycat]

On 5/28/2023 at 4:54 PM, Techwright said:

List/describe games you perhaps absolutely loved at one time, but something completely wrecked them.

 

Most have to be series...

 

Command and Conquer - I still play I and III (I need II...) - IV was... not command and conquer. It probably would have been a good game on its own, in its own universe, but it's like getting great wine from a vintner, getting a second great bottle, getting a third, then getting a glass of motor oil.  Related, Red Alert was always a bit on the campy side, but I and II were great. III was ... uh... yeah. (But still better than C&C IV.)

 

Borderlands - I have I and II. Never finished II, it just didn't grab me, and the ending of I made me pretty much not trust that the time invested would be worth the payoff.  That was an awful ending.

 

Diablo  - loved I and II. III with its "always on" and such... not fond of it. (Having a season where attacks would suddenly have a boulder rolling or other effects firing off... is part of why I didn't want "always online," I was playing it single player, and it is part of what completely destroyed my trust in the franchise and the company. I pretty much am ignoring IV.)

 

Those are what immediately jump to mind.

[kelika2]

dying light final fight