Game franchises that betrayed their original fanbase

Reading this thread just makes me shake my head. Most of the games mentioned are changed for the drastic better, and prove it with sales and review scores. But hating something popular has become the "cool" thing to do this gen.

immortality20

Usually when something becomes popular it means it appeals to the lowest common denominator... There is less in a popular game that you can like specific to yourself because it's trying to please too many people. I do love a lot of popular games, but this makes sense for why a lot of people don't

Crash Bandicoot used to be my favorite game :(

Did you ever play ME 1?smerlus

Final Fantasy Mass Effect- Self explanatory. It went from a Space Opera that was kinda cool to Hamburger's Gay Buttsex Space Simulator Dragon Age- Could have improved upon the last one so we actually had an RPG to play since Skyrim ditched RPG for Action Adventure but noooo. Have to get at the casuals. Anything EA gets it's filthy hands on Total War- Complexity got lower and lower. Which is surprising since it was a fairly easy game as far as strategy went. Now it's just archers spam of doom. Civilization- Removed a lot of the complexity X COM- Well, I guess there is that proper one but still. The new X game- ONE MOTHER ******* SHIP?! ONE MOTHER ******* SHIP? I DON'T CARE ABOUT YOUR STUPID DRONES. What made X3 great was having a fleet of capital ships crammed with smaller ships to impose your will. Call of Duty-Went from a quality series that made you feel like you weren't a one man army, but part of a team. CoD4 was okay but felt lacking and easy, especially the MP. Command and Conquer- Now bioware is going to ruin that too. EA needs to **** off and let it rest in peace. Crysis- The open-end feel of the previous was gone along with a lot of the strategy, especially with custom missions. Battlefield- Went downhill with Bad Company. Now there's BF3 EXTREME CASUAL EDITION: LOADSA BLOOM AND LENS FLARE! REGENERATING EVERYTHING! BLOODY SCREEN! SO REAL! WUBWUBWUBWUBWUB! Ghost Recon- Went from a highly tactical shooter where stupidity would result in you getting you're **** slapped. Now it's turned into a third person Call of Duty. Far Cry- The gameplay previews say it all. Rainbow Six- Turned into Call of Duty just like Ghost Recon. No pre-mission planning where your choices could result in things going very very wrong and you lose the lives of valuable team-members Stronghold-All the 3d iterations were horrendous and buggy. 3 was just shameful. Empire Earth- The reviews say it all. Age of Empires-The FTP game. Ace Combat Turned into a movie. Sword of the Stars- The fact that they released it is just...There is no word to describe how disgusting that is. IL2-Cliffs of Dover is still a broken mess and is far more arcadey than 1946. I really wish someone would make a proper modern ww2 plane simulator. Splinter Cell- Ditched stealth for an action game with stealth tacked on. Hitman- Probably going to be just like Conviction because casuals don't have any patience. I'll add more if I think of them.Vangaurdius

And that's why I will never take threads like this seriously. The "fans" are just gonna keep whining no matter what the devs do.

RESIDENT EVIL. Like Final Fantasy, with #7, RE4 became so popular it changed the direction of the series.

[QUOTE="Vangaurdius"]Final Fantasy Mass Effect- Self explanatory. It went from a Space Opera that was kinda cool to Hamburger's Gay Buttsex Space Simulator Dragon Age- Could have improved upon the last one so we actually had an RPG to play since Skyrim ditched RPG for Action Adventure but noooo. Have to get at the casuals. Anything EA gets it's filthy hands on Total War- Complexity got lower and lower. Which is surprising since it was a fairly easy game as far as strategy went. Now it's just archers spam of doom. Civilization- Removed a lot of the complexity X COM- Well, I guess there is that proper one but still. The new X game- ONE MOTHER ******* SHIP?! ONE MOTHER ******* SHIP? I DON'T CARE ABOUT YOUR STUPID DRONES. What made X3 great was having a fleet of capital ships crammed with smaller ships to impose your will. Call of Duty-Went from a quality series that made you feel like you weren't a one man army, but part of a team. CoD4 was okay but felt lacking and easy, especially the MP. Command and Conquer- Now bioware is going to ruin that too. EA needs to **** off and let it rest in peace. Crysis- The open-end feel of the previous was gone along with a lot of the strategy, especially with custom missions. Battlefield- Went downhill with Bad Company. Now there's BF3 EXTREME CASUAL EDITION: LOADSA BLOOM AND LENS FLARE! REGENERATING EVERYTHING! BLOODY SCREEN! SO REAL! WUBWUBWUBWUBWUB! Ghost Recon- Went from a highly tactical shooter where stupidity would result in you getting you're **** slapped. Now it's turned into a third person Call of Duty. Far Cry- The gameplay previews say it all. Rainbow Six- Turned into Call of Duty just like Ghost Recon. No pre-mission planning where your choices could result in things going very very wrong and you lose the lives of valuable team-members Stronghold-All the 3d iterations were horrendous and buggy. 3 was just shameful. Empire Earth- The reviews say it all. Age of Empires-The FTP game. Ace Combat Turned into a movie. Sword of the Stars- The fact that they released it is just...There is no word to describe how disgusting that is. IL2-Cliffs of Dover is still a broken mess and is far more arcadey than 1946. I really wish someone would make a proper modern ww2 plane simulator. Splinter Cell- Ditched stealth for an action game with stealth tacked on. Hitman- Probably going to be just like Conviction because casuals don't have any patience. I'll add more if I think of them.nameless12345

And that's why I will never take threads like this seriously. The "fans" are just gonna keep whining no matter what the devs do.

final fantasy, after 12 the series just went down hill, in 13 and 13-2 its just boring combat and almost no exploration.

Soul Calibur has become terrible.

DBZ after Tenkaichi 3 and Budokai 3 have gone downhill

Are there some games that disappointed me? Sure, but that doesn't mean they betrayed me. Until I start working on games myself, which will be never, I don't think I can be legitimately angry that a franchise didn't turn out the way I wanted. Besides, there is so much information about games before release that I always know whether I'm interested.

any video game franchise that became popular has done this.

I wrote a review you can read in our review thread. Of course I played it and it was a poor RPG if that is what it was going for. It was a poor shooter as well. Yeah you had a ton of tiny boxes to raise your stats an insignificant amount like 1%, OHHH what an improvement. ME2 handled it much better making each increase be significant. I understand it removed the raising stats for weapons and choices which I feel was fine, weapons should be based on the players skill not a random dice roll. Then there was the million useless items found everywhere, a complete waste of time. If you enjoy menus ME1 is for you, sorry but I like playing a game instead. Bioware created the first true shoots RPG hybrid, the RPG aspects are still there just streamlined so that the focus remains on the action. What you want is the same bioware RPG over again. How dare them try a new genre!!!! Oh no cause we don't have enough of the same wrpgs. ME is one if a kind, there is no shooter with the options and story of ME, a true original. dvader654

2 definite disappointements that come to mind are GTA4 and the lackluster, interactive movie called Uncharted 3.

They made a game that was lost between two genres, it did not do either very well. They found what they should focus on in ME2. What makes you think ME1 was a better RPG than it was a shooter? It had more choices but those choices were implemented into a poor combat system which to me makes those choices irrelevant. If the entire goal of moving around stats is to better your combat, then why do you want the combat to remain crappy. Basically you are saying you are in favor of more menus, less action, its crazy. They fixed the problem in ME2. All the RPG elements that mattered like the story, choices, classes, leveling all remain. They filtered out what was not needed.

And what is this instant gratification bullcrap I keep hearing from you guys. What sitting in a menu distributing points instantly makes the game more "hardcore". You feel better cause you put 1% more into weapon power than armor. Its all smoke and mirrors in a game like this. In a true RPG where your skills as a player doesn't matter sure your stat choices matter. In a game where you are in control, where your skill is the most important aspect all that matters is that your health increases, you have the powers distributed the way you want them and your weapon selection fits the situation. Thankfully Bioware focused on those things. ME1 is no different from ME2, its just a cluttered mess with too many options where they didnt need to be.

Bioware wanted to make an action RPG from the start, to make an action RPG you need quality action. It is as simply as that. They failed in some ways with ME1 and I guess that gave RPG fans hope that they wouldn't make it an action RPG.

[QUOTE="nameless12345"]

[QUOTE="Vangaurdius"]Final Fantasy Mass Effect- Self explanatory. It went from a Space Opera that was kinda cool to Hamburger's Gay Buttsex Space Simulator Dragon Age- Could have improved upon the last one so we actually had an RPG to play since Skyrim ditched RPG for Action Adventure but noooo. Have to get at the casuals. Anything EA gets it's filthy hands on Total War- Complexity got lower and lower. Which is surprising since it was a fairly easy game as far as strategy went. Now it's just archers spam of doom. Civilization- Removed a lot of the complexity X COM- Well, I guess there is that proper one but still. The new X game- ONE MOTHER ******* SHIP?! ONE MOTHER ******* SHIP? I DON'T CARE ABOUT YOUR STUPID DRONES. What made X3 great was having a fleet of capital ships crammed with smaller ships to impose your will. Call of Duty-Went from a quality series that made you feel like you weren't a one man army, but part of a team. CoD4 was okay but felt lacking and easy, especially the MP. Command and Conquer- Now bioware is going to ruin that too. EA needs to **** off and let it rest in peace. Crysis- The open-end feel of the previous was gone along with a lot of the strategy, especially with custom missions. Battlefield- Went downhill with Bad Company. Now there's BF3 EXTREME CASUAL EDITION: LOADSA BLOOM AND LENS FLARE! REGENERATING EVERYTHING! BLOODY SCREEN! SO REAL! WUBWUBWUBWUBWUB! Ghost Recon- Went from a highly tactical shooter where stupidity would result in you getting you're **** slapped. Now it's turned into a third person Call of Duty. Far Cry- The gameplay previews say it all. Rainbow Six- Turned into Call of Duty just like Ghost Recon. No pre-mission planning where your choices could result in things going very very wrong and you lose the lives of valuable team-members Stronghold-All the 3d iterations were horrendous and buggy. 3 was just shameful. Empire Earth- The reviews say it all. Age of Empires-The FTP game. Ace Combat Turned into a movie. Sword of the Stars- The fact that they released it is just...There is no word to describe how disgusting that is. IL2-Cliffs of Dover is still a broken mess and is far more arcadey than 1946. I really wish someone would make a proper modern ww2 plane simulator. Splinter Cell- Ditched stealth for an action game with stealth tacked on. Hitman- Probably going to be just like Conviction because casuals don't have any patience. I'll add more if I think of them.Vangaurdius

And that's why I will never take threads like this seriously. The "fans" are just gonna keep whining no matter what the devs do.

in opening post about:

Mass Effect 1 to Mass Effect 2 (No Item loot/alot of RPG aspect taken out)

and

Final Fantasy 12 to Final Fantasy 13 (Linear Story/alot of holding hand/unneeded long normal monster fights/straight path)

I felt like these were my two biggest dispointments in gaming in last 5-8 years.

Nobody has mentioned Command & Conquer yet? :P

Postmortem123

improving concepts and fix bugs is what they tried to do...most people just call them "dumbing down" or "noob friendly" its hard to please people is all im saying. jsmoke3

[QUOTE="jsmoke3"]improving concepts and fix bugs is what they tried to do...most people just call them "dumbing down" or "noob friendly" its hard to please people is all im saying. Vangaurdius

Resident Axis of Evil

[QUOTE="Vangaurdius"][QUOTE="jsmoke3"]improving concepts and fix bugs is what they tried to do...most people just call them "dumbing down" or "noob friendly" its hard to please people is all im saying. garrett_duffman

Grand Theft Auto 3-moved the series from a top-down perspective into a 3rd person view.
Metroid Prime-turned the series into an awful first-person open world title when the originals were sidescrollers.
Red Dead Redemption-took the great shooter focused linear game that was Revolver and made it into a repulsive open world game.
Uncharted 2-introduced a new love interest for Drake but had the nerve to feature the prior bimbo as well and have Drake hook up with her at the end.
Ocarina of Time-introduced horses as a travel method when retro Zelda gamers were completely fine with walking everywhere.
Fallout 3-turned the series into Oblivion with Guns
Mass Effect 2-released for PS3 when the first game was an Xbox exclusive
Resistance 2-removed weapons wheel and introduced regenerative health
SoulCalibur IV-Star Wars. 'nuff said.
Assassin's Creed 2-gave the players more things to do, and switched protagonists and setting.
Batman Arkham City-gave Batman a blue cape when he clearly had a black one in the first game.
Street Fighter 2-a selectable choice of 8 characters where in the first game you just had Kyu and Ben.
Devil May Cry 3-prequel story with faster and more stylish combat
Sonic Adventure-gave Sonic green eyes and other playable characters
Donkey Kong Country Returns-health bar when in the ol games, you died in one hit
Rayman Origins-step back into 2D instead of 3D innovation like the previous two games.
Dead Space 2-turned Clarke into a speaking protagonist
Resident Evil 2-moved the series from a mansion to a city and replaced Chris and Jill with Leon and Claire.
Silent Hill Shattered Memories-lazy remake of the first game with no actual horror
Skyrim-added dragons and turned the entire game into just one prolonged fetch quest

That's why I play CoD. At least Activison understands what a fanbase wants and gives us what we want with every new installment.

Ace Combat. Been with the series right from the original Air Combat released in 1995. I can't even look at the latest instalments of the series.

I feel like streamling the aspects of the combat that work and removing the clutter, the excess useless items and aspects that bog down the game is beneficial to a shooter. It takes you out of the game if you are spending to much time in menus. I am saying spending time in menus in a game like this is pointless, you are not playing a better game if you get to distribute every single percentage point when in the end it is your skills as a shooter that ultimately makes the gameplay work. It is not instant gratification, its solid gameplay. And what makes the RPG fan the original fanbase. Say they went the other way, they went all RPG and removed the shooter aspects, wouldn't the shooter fans be just as betrayed? Whether you want to admit it or not they accomplished the hybrid, it is an RPG and it is a shooter. ME1 did not do it well, it was clunky, the combat had issues and it lacked a serious direction. ME3 got the balance the best so it did take three games to master it but they did it. It still has a ton of RPG elements and it is a fantastic shooter.dvader654

Grand Theft Auto 3-moved the series from a top-down perspective into a 3rd person view.
Metroid Prime-turned the series into an awful first-person open world title when the originals were sidescrollers.
Red Dead Redemption-took the great shooter focused linear game that was Revolver and made it into a repulsive open world game.
Uncharted 2-introduced a new love interest for Drake but had the nerve to feature the prior bimbo as well and have Drake hook up with her at the end.
Ocarina of Time-introduced horses as a travel method when retro Zelda gamers were completely fine with walking everywhere.
Fallout 3-turned the series into Oblivion with Guns
Mass Effect 2-released for PS3 when the first game was an Xbox exclusive
Resistance 2-removed weapons wheel and introduced regenerative health
SoulCalibur IV-Star Wars. 'nuff said.
Assassin's Creed 2-gave the players more things to do, and switched protagonists and setting.
Batman Arkham City-gave Batman a blue cape when he clearly had a black one in the first game.
Street Fighter 2-a selectable choice of 8 characters where in the first game you just had Kyu and Ben.
Devil May Cry 3-prequel story with faster and more stylish combat
Sonic Adventure-gave Sonic green eyes and other playable characters
Donkey Kong Country Returns-health bar when in the ol games, you died in one hit
Rayman Origins-step back into 2D instead of 3D innovation like the previous two games.
Dead Space 2-turned Clarke into a speaking protagonist
Resident Evil 2-moved the series from a mansion to a city and replaced Chris and Jill with Leon and Claire.
Silent Hill Shattered Memories-lazy remake of the first game with no actual horror
Skyrim-added dragons and turned the entire game into just one prolonged fetch quest

That's why I play CoD. At least Activison understands what a fanbase wants and gives us what we want with every new installment.

TheFallenDemon

Mass effect is the best series ive ever played, it got better with every game. The majority of the fanbase also thinks so.

Therefore ME haters are clearly MORRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRONS!

But nothing about ME1 screamed it was a good RPG. The combat was still very much action oriented, very unlike RPGs but it was crappy cause it wasn't a good shooter, it wasnt a good strategy based RPG. EVerything else about the game, the story, leveling up, class bases all returns in ME2 plus the gameplay is fixed. The only thing missing from ME2 is having an excess amount of level up choices and a bunch of items, both of which all take place in menus. Essentially all you are saying is I want more menus even if it means having crappy shooting, give me my menus!

If you can elabroate what made ME1 this amazing RPG you claim it is, I would like to hear. But I am pretty sure everything you are going to say has to do with menu surfing. Having a bunch of more choices when leveling up even though it is basically in such small increments that you have to put a bunch of points into one category for a skill to actually advance, which is what ME2 does, it just removes all the little steps you have to do to get there. And the item system which was just horrendous, I dont know how finding a million different versions of the same guns or upgrades is in any way productive.

ME1 was their first attempt at this hybrid, hybrid being the key word. It was never ment to be an RPG first, its just that is what Bioware is good at so naturally their first game would still have relics of their RPG systems. The later two games really changed the formula Bioware is used to in order to create this amazing joining of two genres.

OH. I forgot about the REAL worst one of all; Shadowrungarrett_duffman

[QUOTE="dvader654"]

[QUOTE="WhiteKnight77"]

Who said ti was a deep RPG? They just decided to try and get everybody they can to buy it so to accomplish that they removed a ton of *** from the original to ruin the series for people like me that love RPGs.

That be like Borderlands 2 taking everything from the original that worked AND all the RPG elements to make it more of a shooter. (If that really happens I will give up on games entirely)

smerlus

Umm, how did this quote chain get so messed up? I never said that as I do not play any RPG whatsoever.

[QUOTE="DarkCatalyst"]

[QUOTE="garrett_duffman"]

any good game is noob friendly. you need to not be so superior in thinking that only you can play sweet games.garrett_duffman

Uh, there are some fantastic games out there that are the furthest thing from noob-friendly.

name one.

As you have seen, there have been plenty of games that were not noob or even newbie friendly to start with. Even though as a new PC owner, I enjoyed and learned the ropes of the planning stage of Rainbow Six. Such a feature, as well as other missing and as of now unused features, even by other developers, is non-existant in current iterations.

Games should challenge one's mind, as they have been for hundreds of years (games go back long before video games were ever first dreamed of). What are sold today as video games more often than not, do not require much thought to what needs to be done. A lot of the games listed in this thread, at least the FPS variety have all become CoD clones and that is not a good thing.

There is at least one game currently in development that harkens back to the days of Rainbow Six and Ghost Recon as they were, not as they are now. I can wait as long as needed for it to hit the streets. Gamers who like lowest common denominator games need not apply. It will not appeal to you.

This gen more than any other (IMO) has shown an unfortunate turn for simplicity rather than growth. The advancements in technology are being used more for cinematic flourish instead of creating new and different gameplay options that were not possible last gen. This generally has lead to some franchises betraying their original fanbase.

-Final Fantasy: People once loved this series for it's vast worlds to explore and stat building. Final Fantasy XIII did away with all exploration and item and stat management means very little when your characters are healed to full after every single battle. There's none of that trying to survive through a dungeon feeling that most RPGs give. Basically this was a new IP that was decided to be called the next installment in a beloved series.

-Mass Effect: There's no denying that there was a massive transformation from Mass Effect 1 to Mass Effect 2. Fans of Bioware were fans of great RPG experiences. Mass Effect mostly appeased these fans and they hotly anticipate the sequel. Unfortunately for the oiginal fans, Mass Effect 2 was simplified to a startling degree and its RPG elements thinned out. The fans of the original Mass Effect, fans of stat building and exploring, were ignored in favour of the large Call of Duty market.

Can you think of any other franchises that transformed and betrayed their original fanbases?

Pikminmaniac

Firstly, Final Fantasy XIII wasn't the first FF to limit 'exploration' - FFX was. Have you forgotten about that? Besides, the Final Fantasy games never really had 'exploration', only an illusion of it. In order for the game to progress you needed to go from point A to point B in a specific order - you could have ran around the world map for as long as you wished but you always either cut off from certain parts of the world because they weren't made accessible yet or you ended up in places where your death was inevitable. Yes, every now and then there were a few amusing side quests or something of that nature but on the whole Final Fantasy was never really an *exploration* game.

Second, the first Mass Effect was just a glitchy, uneventful mess. The game didn't even have checkpoints. Honestly? It was a huge design flaw. What BioWare did (I'm assuming because I only played the first) was fix the problems that were glaringly obvious to make a better product. Mass Effect was also already an action RPG, so how exactly was putting more emphasis on action a bad thing?

[QUOTE="garrett_duffman"]

[QUOTE="DarkCatalyst"]

Uh, there are some fantastic games out there that are the furthest thing from noob-friendly.WhiteKnight77

name one.

As you have seen, there have been plenty of games that were not noob or even newbie friendly to start with. Even though as a new PC owner, I enjoyed and learned the ropes of the planning stage of Rainbow Six. Such a feature, as well as other missing and as of now unused features, even by other developers, is non-existant in current iterations.

Games should challenge one's mind, as they have been for hundreds of years (games go back long before video games were ever first dreamed of). What are sold today as video games more often than not, do not require much thought to what needs to be done. A lot of the games listed in this thread, at least the FPS variety have all become CoD clones and that is not a good thing.

There is at least one game currently in development that harkens back to the days of Rainbow Six and Ghost Recon as they were, not as they are now. I can wait as long as needed for it to hit the streets. Gamers who like lowest common denominator games need not apply. It will not appeal to you.