Games series ruined by new owners.

ThatZenoGuy

ThatZenoGuy

Residential Zealous Evolved Nano Organism
List all the game series ruined by the series being bought out/changed by its 'new' owners.

I will start.

Command and Conquer.

Once the epitome of RTS, with lovely sound effects, balance, and storyline, it was bought out by EA.

Being EA, they buried the series, ending it with C&C 4: Tiberium Twilight.

What could have been an awesome ending to a world slowly becoming more and more corrupted by the 'crystal' called Tiberium, was an utter excuse of an ending, with absolutely no focus on anything other than Kane.
 
0wing said:
Bethesda.
/thread

Though, Doom and Wolfenstein were good enough.
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Har har. ;P

Well, I honestly didn't like the direction the new doom went.

If they wanted to go Brutal Doom, they should have done Brutal fucking Doom.

Instead, we got a semi-brutal doom shooter which overall isn't anywhere near as frantic as the original doom...

Oh.

And obligatory bullet sponge enemies...I remember when the shotgun 1 hit killed imps and zombies.
 
Ediros said:
Breath of fire
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At first, I thought you meant Dragon Quarter, but looked it up and didn't even know a new one came out this year. Looks awful.
Still, it's been owned by Capcom all the way through, so I don't know that this counts.


I'm gonna say Legacy of Kain, even though I heard Nosgoth wasn't that bad. Never tried it. Though one wonders who thought a multi-player only title was appropriate for a single-player only story-heavy series.
 
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ThatZenoGuy said:
No fair! One at a time! ;P
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You didn't specify ;)

Okay, I will start off with Breath of Fire.

A very solid jrpg franchise that went dormant after DQ. I haven't played it myself, but it sounds like a good spin off.

You could turn into dragon, the characters and story were very good and there is nothing like this nowadays.

Then BoF 6 comes out and royally screwed up all the fans. Pay to win piece of shit on android, which has nothing to do with the franchise and butchers everything, especially lore. Fuck Capcom
 
Darn, several I know are already mentioned.

Well Wing Commander, a really forgotten franchise now but twenty years ago it was one of the top titles on the PC.

After Wing Commander Prophecy and the expansion Secret Ops the franchise disappeared from public view, only kept alive by its fans who continued to make mods and even complete conversions for other space flight sims such as Freespace. (Wing Commander Saga)

I don't recall when but years ago EA temporary brought Wing Commander back as a multi player more arcade focused (okay, the original was not a serious flight sim either but this plays more like an old time console shooter) game called Wing Commander Arena that lacked any of the story driven and world building original games.

Before that there were two attempts at multiplayer games that got cancelled.
 
Anything EA buys out.

I say this because they pretty much burry any good IP.

I'm gonna mention Mass Effect again as I'm doing another playthrough of it, but the newest one looks more of the same, which isn't something I would have expected from the IP. I'm putting this in the maybe pile as it could still come out and surprise me. (And all the people I cared about are gone from the Company too).

But Command and Conquer, any Star Wars game, Sims are just going to be buried.

On a side note, the long forgotten Conflict series had a pretty good run, then they turned the last into a generic FPS buddy game which only follows on the main story in a way that doesn't make sense (I've only played the demo for it years ago, but still).
 
Halo and 343....sort of.

I have a love-hate relationship with what 343 did with Halo. On one hand Halo 4 did a great job humanizing Master Chief and Cortana, and her death was legitimately saddening and you genuinely feel sorry for Chief and can relate to him a bit better. Then they proceed to shit all over this with Halo 5 by bringing Cortana back as an evil AI hellbent on enslaving humanity, and completely destroying any character development for Master Chief that Halo 4 created. Being able to play as Chief for only like 4 missions in the campaign contributed heavily to this. While Agent Locke is a cool character in his own right, this is Master Chief's story first and foremost. I believe some people had this issue with Halo 2 as well with the Arbiter missions, though I'm pretty sure Chief had more missions than the Arbiter.

The art style is another thing alot of people have gripes with. 343 redesigned damn near everything to the point where they're almost unrecognizable, or just plain ugly. I understand that it's a new time period after the war and the UNSC has advanced quite a bit, but there is no reason for things like the Foreward Unto Dawn and all the weapons onboard it to look different. A good way to transition from the old art-style into the new one would have the Foreward Unto Dawn look the same as it did in Halo 3 as well as having all of the Halo 3 era weapons onboard the ship. Only once you reach the UNSC Infinity would you start seeing all the newly redesigned weapons.


The Spartan IV's armor is also a mixed bag. Some of the new armors look pretty damn cool, and are huge improvements over the older designs from the past games (I.e, the Rouge helmet looks badass in 4 and 5), however for every cool armor there's some ugly, overdesigned and generic looking armor that aside from looking incredibly impractical is also just plain stupid. Like this:

http://i.imgur.com/5w7lr2O.jpg

Seriously, look at that fucking thing.

Then we arrive at the lore. While they haven't really ruined the current day lore that bad, the Forerunner novels annoy me to no end. Ancient Humanity. That is all. Also they completely ruin any mystery the Flood had by revealing their origins as, drum roll please; infectious dust in a jar. I'm not kidding. Also apparently the Prophets and Humans where apparently BFFs in ancient times and had a prosperous empire. Also apparently the Humans and Forerunners where at war before the Flood came. That irks me because it takes away from the threat the Flood pose. Before all this the Flood literally appear out of nowhere and bring a super-powerful alien empire to it's knees, which makes this seem like a huge threat to the galaxy if they could pull that off. Now however they start out as animals that ate the aforementioned dust in a jar and finish off the already weakened Forerunners who where busy fighting Humanity.
 
The Thief series. Thief 3 suffered from being made for consoles. It lost the sprawling opened ended levels and replaced them with small linear maps broken up into sections.

They got rid of the mission briefing cut scenes. Compare the mission briefing of 1st Thief with Thief 3.



 
Yeah, Bethie and Fallout is the obvious answer.

Then there's post New World Computing Heroes of Might and Magick. 5 was still passable but after that...
 
CaptJ said:
Health and Ammo regen from melee kills sounds regenerating health 2.0.
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If anything it's the opposite, since regenerating health encourages ducking out and hiding when you get wounded in combat, whereas health from melee kills encourages getting into the fray and keep fighting when you're wounded.
 
PlanHex said:
If anything it's the opposite, since regenerating health encourages ducking out and hiding when you get wounded in combat, whereas health from melee kills encourages getting into the fray and keep fighting when you're wounded.
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It sounds like a different side to the same coin, a reason not think about ammo or health packs placements. It is like level scaling. Level scaling makes levels more or less pointless and reduces levels to numbers going up.

What I hate about games like Bioshock is its control freak design. It is clear that Ken Levine wanted to give a survival feel to the game but he wasn't willing to punish bad players too harshly. Thus, Bioshock 1 has a tons of ammo lying around but put a really heavy restriction on the amount that be carried around even the money. It feels like my character is unwilling to pickup more ammo simply because it would make his pockets bulge. The game absolutely hate how different people the game differently. These games bank on being in an absurd Goldilocks region. Someone told me that FO4 doesn't feel like it has level scaling but I know it has level scaling. I'm expected to believe that FO4 made a perfect balance for everyone.
 
APB: Reloaded. I have no idea what the game's quality used to be but it's trash now. It's filled to the brim with micros transactions, literally the first thing you see when opening up the district server is the Armas marketplace which forcibly opens up wasting your time.

There's no balance whatsoever, I've joined missions where it was me against a team of four several times. Only the group host can call for backup which means you're fucked if he chooses not to. They always seem to have high level weaponry too which you can't get because they're level locked. Literally the only way to rank up is missions, which you can't complete because you're always fighting the exact same players who kicked your ass for five missions straight.

Not to mention it only has one lobby per district. In games like GTAO, if you're getting griefed you can switch to a new lobby and get a fresh set of players. APB will not allow it, you are completely stuck getting killed by the same people over and over again because there's no other lobby for the district. While players can't grief you in freeroam, it derails missions since you can't do anything about it.

The tutorial sucks, it's just a list of objectives. Tutorials are supposed to teach the player the ins and outs of the game so they can get better. APB literally just gives you a box with objectives with no details at all. I had to look up how to arrest criminals (in a cops and robbers game no less) because all the game said was "hold X". I held X near an arrestable criminal (which the tutorial did not mention) and nothing happened. Apparently stun guns allow you to arrest criminals but once again the game said nothing (and they're level locked).

The game is laggy as shit and bugged to high hell. Trying to purchase something from a contact is a frame rate disaster, it will go down to roughly 7 fps regularly or so. This is why I dread switching weapons because it takes way too long for something that should take seconds. On several separate occasions I obtained a bug that caused slight freezing every time I fired my weapon, in a game where there's no melee and using guns is your only option. If you're in a passenger in a car, you can look under the map guaranteed. It's barely even a bug because it's guaranteed to happen whereas bugs may not always happen. The game crashes a lot, sometimes because you entered a menu. It usually crashes once a session for me, it once crashed so hard my character couldn't join any districts and I had to wait a day.

I have no idea what state the condition of the game was originally but it's worthless now. The only thing it has going for it is customization which has it's own set of problems (you can't do more than a few layers on something without micro transactions) and that's it. The game is trash now and it's funny how people on the GamersFirst forum act as if the game is hot shit.
 
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Big No said:
APB: Reloaded. I have no idea what the game's quality used to be but it's trash now. It's filled to the brim with micros transactions, literally the first thing you see when opening up the district server is the Armas marketplace which forcibly opens up wasting your time.

This one is true.. They care more about money than they care about the game/players

There's no balance whatsoever, I've joined missions where it was me against a team of four several times. Only the group host can call for backup which means you're fucked if he chooses not to. They always seem to have high level weaponry too which you can't get because they're level locked. Literally the only way to rank up is missions, which you can't complete because you're always fighting the exact same players who kicked your ass for five missions straight.

The first guns are good enough to handle pretty much every other gun and the pistol you start with is the best/second best in most opinions. So i dissagree here even if one of the snipers can be hard to counter early on. But you unlock that quite fast aswell.

Not to mention it only has one lobby per district. In games like GTAO, if you're getting griefed you can switch to a new lobby and get a fresh set of players. APB will not allow it, you are completely stuck getting killed by the same people over and over again because there's no other lobby for the district. While players can't grief you in freeroam, it derails missions since you can't do anything about it.

This is false. You can get up a server list if you don't click on the quick join district things. I allways used that to enter the top 5 or so most populated "servers"

The tutorial sucks, it's just a list of objectives. Tutorials are supposed to teach the player the ins and outs of the game so they can get better. APB literally just gives you a box with objectives with no details at all. I had to look up how to arrest criminals (in a cops and robbers game no less) because all the game said was "hold X". I held X near an arrestable criminal (which the tutorial did not mention) and nothing happened. Apparently stun guns allow you to arrest criminals but once again the game said nothing (and they're level locked).

Been a while since i did the Tutorial but i think it covered most of what you needed to know? I could be wrong tho.. Been a few years.

The game is laggy as shit and bugged to high hell. Trying to purchase something from a contact is a frame rate disaster, it will go down to roughly 7 fps regularly or so. This is why I dread switching weapons because it takes way too long for something that should take seconds. On several separate occasions I obtained a bug that caused slight freezing every time I fired my weapon, in a game where there's no melee and using guns is your only option. If you're in a passenger in a car, you can look under the map guaranteed. It's barely even a bug because it's guaranteed to happen whereas bugs may not always happen. The game crashes a lot, sometimes because you entered a menu. It usually crashes once a session for me, it once crashed so hard my character couldn't join any districts and I had to wait a day.

The game is unoptimized as fuck but 7 fps for using contacts? I guess your computer is low end or there is something wrong with it. And i've never been able to see under the world from the car but i haven't been on for a year "ish" so it might be something new. Had 2 crashes in the 2.5 years or so i played the game so might be on your end again.

I have no idea what state the condition of the game was originally but it's worthless now. The only thing it has going for it is customization which has it's own set of problems (you can't do more than a few layers on something without micro transactions) and that's it. The game is trash now and it's funny how people on the GamersFirst forum act as if the game is hot shit.

Not sure how the game is now compared to when i quit but i've heard that it is about the same with less people. The game is still "good" but it would be far better off in the hands of a new company that didn't suck ass.

Also the new game engine will arrive... "soon" as they say AKA 2020..? Maybe :P
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Also the worst fate for a serie in new hands is without a doubt command & conquer.. From the/one of the BEST RTS games to crap that nobody cares about in a few years.. Such a shame. I guess Generals was ok but everything after that have been ignored by me.

Edit: Check bold text in quote for my thoughts on the previous post.
 
Makta said:
The first guns are good enough to handle pretty much every other gun and the pistol you start with is the best/second best in most opinions. So i dissagree here even if one of the snipers can be hard to counter early on. But you unlock that quite fast aswell.
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The problem stems from the fact that everyone I play against use high level weaponry and the only way to get that stuff yourself is to level up. In games like GTAO, there are other ways of leveling up. In APB, doing missions is the absolute only way within public lobbies which results in a Catch-22: You need the high level guns to defeat the enemy players using said guns. But you can't unlock the guns without beating said players so you can unlock them.

This is false. You can get up a server list if you don't click on the quick join district things. I allways used that to enter the top 5 or so most populated "servers"
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I'm sure there is, but I always get dumped into the exact same lobbies no matter the situation. If this problem is exclusive to me then so be it, but it happens every time I personally join a session. I was playing a couple days ago and the exact same group of players were kicking everyone's ass as they were a day before.

Been a while since i did the Tutorial but i think it covered most of what you needed to know? I could be wrong tho.. Been a few years.
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No, it's useless for a new player. It's literally a box with objectives with no details whatsoever how to do them. If you wanted to add a modification to your weapon, the box would literally say "Equip a modification". No mention of needing to be near a Joker Ammo machine to edit weapons. Or maybe you wanted to "Customize your vehicle. No mention of needing to be in the Social district to do so.

The game is unoptimized as fuck but 7 fps for using contacts? I guess your computer is low end or there is something wrong with it. And i've never been able to see under the world from the car but i haven't been on for a year "ish" so it might be something new. Had 2 crashes in the 2.5 years or so i played the game so might be on your end again.
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Let's suppose you'd like to buy some clothes for your character, so you go to Double-B, one of your contacts. You will open the menu and the game will freeze like crazy, presumably because of the amount of items it needs to load into the menu. Also, the Joker Ammo boxes start spamming their quotes like crazy which I presume makes it worse. Seeing the world from under the car requires you to be a passenger and only when you are a passenger. Being the driver won't cause it. I highly doubt it's on my end because besides the GamersFirst forum (who rag the game just as much as gush over it) there seems to be a lot of others getting pissed with the amount of lag and crashes. No other game I play crashes as much as APB.

This is mostly nonsense I experienced playing the game. I only started recently so I don't know if it was always like this or recent crap. It may be different for some people but this stuff is what experienced so far.
 
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