Games that had it, but lost it!

Sonic is the poster child for this thread. 1,2,3+K, all brilliant. Everything after - an unredeemable mess.

The Settlers - S1 is the best of the lot. Steadily downhill after. S2 was "OK"
Another BlueByte game - Battle Isle. BI2 is the best of the lot, afterwards it got weird (and crap).

Diablo. Again, the first is the best. D2 was more about loot and lost some of the atmosphere, but still a very good game. D3 just awful when I played it.

Final Fantasy - I played 7, 8, 9, 10. Weakest of the bunch by far was FF10, and everything after I basically refuse to play :p

EverQuest. 1999 to 2001 EQ was the worst drug I've ever taken (or the best!). Ridiculously addictive and brutal on top of that. Then they tried to make it play like WoW, and failed. Now it's on so much life support I'd feel bad for laying into it, but it's basically dead and buried years ago. The current incarnation is a shallow mockery of its former greatness.
 
One Vision said:
Battlefield 2 after this game EA lost the plot.
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4 was actually pretty good just marred by half-arsed programming, some of it later fixed by Dice LA but there was only so much papering over the cracks of things that had been got to 80% working and then "that will do". If the programmers had put in half as much effort as those working on the other disciplines such as graphics and sound design and so on it would have been a blinder of a game.

Anything after that was just a woeful disappointment IMO that watered down the things the BF series did well and was sub-par for the other aspects.

FoxEye said:
EverQuest. 1999 to 2001 EQ was the worst drug I've ever taken (or the best!). Ridiculously addictive and brutal on top of that. Then they tried to make it play like WoW, and failed. Now it's on so much life support I'd feel bad for laying into it, but it's basically dead and buried years ago. The current incarnation is a shallow mockery of its former greatness.
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I think the original incarnation of EQ benefited from the time of its release - the tech was just about good enough to give you a level of experience beyond anything you'd had to that time and it was much easier to fill in a lot of the blanks with your imagination back then. In the time between that and now the level of tech available just can't take it to the same level again so for many people it isn't worth the effort for the pay off and they'd rather play something more streamlined.
 
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Frontier seem to be trying their best to do it all in 1 game.
When it launches elite Dangerous was janky in places, MVP in others and with features.which were just missing but promised to come later.
What was there was amazing however and for me the saving grace which has meant I lost 2500 of my life to it was (still is) beautiful VR.
Since then subsequent patches and updates have added a few new features and fixes BUT with every patch the economy gets more and more unbalanced . It's a hot mess now , a few hrs mining in practically a starting ship can earn you 100s of millions of credits an HR, you can get to elite in 2 out of 3 of the elite rankings in a few hrs. This credit mess has meant all bar the best ships of each type are pointless as are generally all modules except those that are A rated or D rated.
FD bought in crazy new enchantments by way of engineers moving the game away from sci-fi to pure fantasy and a new currency in the way of materials. These make no sense with things such as iron which has no mass and you store in your pockets and cant be purchased with credits.
The power creep is also nuts. The game allows you to build to be so strong you are essentially invincible against AI, and PvP is a 20 min battle of attrician that you can walk away from if you get bored HOWEVER if you don't do the engineering meta so ai fights remain a challenge other players will melt your ship easily.

Which brings me to dropped features. Galnet, community goals and interstellar initiatives all gone and not on roadmap to come back. The one thing however allowing me to ignore all of this is the games jewel in its crown. VR.... Which is being dropped from the next dlc onwards with no commitment to put it back after launch.
If you can't tell..... I am gutted. :(
 
Fallout. For me it got better with each game and peaked with Fallout : New Vegas.

Fallout 4 got uninstalled about 8 hours in for the horribly generic story, uninteresting characters and the settlements bum gravy. Yes, I know you can ignore them, but they just rubbed me up the wrong way.
 
bigmike20vt said:
Frontier seem to be trying their best to do it all in 1 game.
When it launches elite Dangerous was janky in places, MVP in others and with features.which were just missing but promised to come later.
What was there was amazing however and for me the saving grace which has meant I lost 2500 of my life to it was (still is) beautiful VR.
Since then subsequent patches and updates have added a few new features and fixes BUT with every patch the economy gets more and more unbalanced . It's a hot mess now , a few hrs mining in practically a starting ship can earn you 100s of millions of credits an HR, you can get to elite in 2 out of 3 of the elite rankings in a few hrs. This credit mess has meant all bar the best ships of each type are pointless as are generally all modules except those that are A rated or D rated.
FD bought in crazy new enchantments by way of engineers moving the game away from sci-fi to pure fantasy and a new currency in the way of materials. These make no sense with things such as iron which has no mass and you store in your pockets and cant be purchased with credits.
The power creep is also nuts. The game allows you to build to be so strong you are essentially invincible against AI, and PvP is a 20 min battle of attrician that you can walk away from if you get bored HOWEVER if you don't do the engineering meta so ai fights remain a challenge other players will melt your ship easily.

Which brings me to dropped features. Galnet, community goals and interstellar initiatives all gone and not on roadmap to come back. The one thing however allowing me to ignore all of this is the games jewel in its crown. VR.... Which is being dropped from the next dlc onwards with no commitment to put it back after launch.
If you can't tell..... I am gutted. :(
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This. Having my rift die recently it became very obvious that the only reason I was still playing Elite was VR. Gutted is spot on.
 
sarutobi said:
hmmm, kind of resident evil, when it went onto fps genre was pretty bad. but its more than redeemed itself with resi 4.

so it had it, lost it for a bit, then got it back

agree with worms though
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What?

The only resident evil to be fps was resident evil 7 which was released about a decade after resi 4.
 
Far Cry

The first is one of the best games ever made, but then Ubisoft got their dirty little hands on it.

A few okay efforts in two and three and then a whole lot of crap afterwards. They've milked it dry.
 
Rroff said:
I think the original incarnation of EQ benefited from the time of its release - the tech was just about good enough to give you a level of experience beyond anything you'd had to that time and it was much easier to fill in a lot of the blanks with your imagination back then. In the time between that and now the level of tech available just can't take it to the same level again so for many people it isn't worth the effort for the pay off and they'd rather play something more streamlined.
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Timing was a part of it, in as much as the player base were not expecting a streamlined experience, coming from MUDs, D&D, etc.

The design didn't treat the player as a god-in-waiting, it reduced the player to the lowest of the low, and wasn't afraid to sit the player on his ass and take away the last two hours progress :p

Not that every decision was perfect - far from it - but the old cliche for me holds true: back then they designed worlds to be explored and experienced, WoW and the successors to WoW were designed as theme parks to give players instant gratification. There was mystery, there was (well) hidden depth, there was an expectation of the player that they would invest themselves.

WoW couldn't hope to match much of the depth of EQ, and instead went for easy solo, fast levelling, GPS quest markers, let the game play itself almost.

But yes, the timing was important. Back then the player base was eager for the evolution of the D&D and MUD experience, and EQ gave them that. Modern players want something totally different. PUBG with dragons, maybe :p
 
FoxEye said:
The design didn't treat the player as a god-in-waiting, it reduced the player to the lowest of the low, and wasn't afraid to sit the player on his ass and take away the last two hours progress :p
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That is one of the things - back then when it was presenting something new losing a load of progress was more acceptable - now it is just a drag that adds nothing to the experience for most people unless the game can reinvent something new to make it feel worthwhile.

EDIT: Though like many people who claim to have played the original - I never actually played beyond Qeynos (hills) and Blackburrow before getting a bit bored with it.
 
I've liked each subsequent Fallout less and less since 3 (heathen I know). I wasn't even able to finish 4. 3 is one of my GOAT's.
 
Rroff said:
4 was actually pretty good just marred by half-arsed programming, some of it later fixed by Dice LA but there was only so much papering over the cracks of things that had been got to 80% working and then "that will do". If the programmers had put in half as much effort as those working on the other disciplines such as graphics and sound design and so on it would have been a blinder of a game.

Anything after that was just a woeful disappointment IMO that watered down the things the BF series did well and was sub-par for the other aspects.



I think the original incarnation of EQ benefited from the time of its release - the tech was just about good enough to give you a level of experience beyond anything you'd had to that time and it was much easier to fill in a lot of the blanks with your imagination back then. In the time between that and now the level of tech available just can't take it to the same level again so for many people it isn't worth the effort for the pay off and they'd rather play something more streamlined.
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BC2 was alright tbf, yes i played BF3 and BF4 but couldnt get into them. None of them are a patch on BF2 imo although i still play BC2 from time to time and i do have BF2 installed with the new method to play in 2020 just incase i fancy a blast.
 
Dano said:
The continued decline in quality of updates from FD largely, burn out to a lesser degree I would think too.
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It may improve in the next big update at end of the year which is what im waiting for. I think they will get it right in the end however most people would have moved on by then.
 
One Vision said:
It may improve in the next big update at end of the year which is what im waiting for. I think they will get it right in the end however most people would have moved on by then.
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Can't see it myself, they're adding what has already been done in dozens if not hundreds of games already (and far far better than FD will manage if their current state is anything to go by) instead of fleshing out what is already there, Elite has always been about spaceships, adding a FPS element will do nothing for it in my opinion.
 
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