Games that ruined gaming

[eggrock]

Fortunately the backlash from the community was so great that they haven't tried anything similar since.

Everyone else is pushing out minimalistic DLC now, though it was going to come sooner or later regardless of what Bethesda did.

Not a major deal however, and IMO gaming isn't ruined by any stretch of the imagination. There are crap games, yes, but we can always avoid buying them (and stop pirating them, if people know what's good for them.)

 

[Monkey34]

Gaming became too popular which ruined gaming. When it became big business and the only goal was MORE MONEY.

Of course its a business and has always been a business AFAIK.

No, I can agree with Monkey God. Of course like any business they are in it to gain a profit, but it seems they crossed a line where they really dumped quality content in favor of just churning out a quick buck.

 

[Gabriel]

I disagree with everyone that says COD: WaW was more of the same thing. It was the first COD that allowed you to play most campaign missions in co-op, and it introduced a GREAT gametype of zombies. It was also the last COD with mods and free DLC. Shit started with Modern Warfare 2.

 

[Ehren8879]

Everything 3D. I don't mean 3D glasses and all that bullshit, but polygons and shit.

 

[Oomps]

Everything 3D. I don't mean 3D glasses and all that bullshit, but polygons and shit.

The amount of time and resources required for development has skyrocketed since then, but I'm not sure if that qualifies as 'ruining' things.

 

[Tudz]

Goldeneye and good do not belong in the same sentence.

I don't understand how people thought it was ever good, but I had already been spoiled by GLQuake(world) by that time.

It was a pretty different game to Quake. I wasn't much of a PC gamer in those days (those days being when I was about 12 and the only PC in the house was my Dad's and often used by my 3 elder sisters, while I bought my "own" N64 through pocketmoney, chores and selling some Warhammer miniatures, so I could play the N64 at my own leisure). Played a bit of Quake back in the day with my sister's boyfriend and a few mates, as he had several computers we could play on, but never got into it all that much.

But Goldeneye was the first FPS game I could play sitting on the couch with my friends around. Spent ages playing it with mates. There were some single player levels that I really enjoyed as well and played over and over, like sniping my way through the dam and run and gunning through the train. Good memories. It definitely popularised the FPS on console and paved the way for newer console FPS games.

I went back to play it again recently and thought it was absolute shit, but back in the day I loved it

 

[CEpeep]

But Goldeneye was the first FPS game I could play sitting on the couch with my friends around. Spent ages playing it with mates. There were some single player levels that I really enjoyed as well and played over and over, like sniping my way through the dam and run and gunning through the train. Good memories. It definitely popularised the FPS on console and paved the way for newer console FPS games.

I went back to play it again recently and thought it was absolute shit, but back in the day I loved it

This. Goldeneye didn't have better design than any other game at the time (in fact, it was vastly inferior in terms of textures, AI and difficulty curve) but it had decent multiplayer level design and it was extremely accessible. (Controls were simple and it had lots of "gimmicky" game modes to help balance out the advantage from being an experienced player.) It's basically the Mario Kart of FPS games. Not an amazing racing game (which had been present in arcades for years) but a good time on the couch with your friends. If making games more accessible is what ruins them, you need more friends.

 

[ikarinokami]

I would definately rather hunt health packs, or maybe have built in expendable health packs, than ducking for cover and recovering health. makes every fight trivial.

I enjoyed Skyrim, but that game has me worried. it was huge, however it is even more streamlines than oblivion. I fear now that ever sandbox RPG is going to devolved into what amounts to nothing more than GTAIV. Oblivion was pretty close to that, and skyrim even more. when you go back and look at morrowind, and see how much of the game they aboslutely ripped out. I dont hold out much hope of gettting another morrowind level detail game made again.

 

[chockomonkey]

What was the first game that added grinding for unlocks? That'd be the game that most ruined gaming IMO.

In an effort to get people to play their games longer, they added unlocks so that you no longer play to have fun, you're just playing to unlock the next thing. I watched my unemployed roommate over the course of 2 years prestige his CoD MW2 character 10 times... when he finally could prestige no more, he never touched the game again lol So was he actually having fun?

 

[Tudz]

I watched my unemployed roommate over the course of 2 years prestige his CoD MW2 character 10 times... when he finally could prestige no more, he never touched the game again lol So was he actually having fun?

He probably was. I played COD4 mostly until I had unlocked all the golden guns, after that I barely touched it because I had no incentive, but it was enjoyable up until then.

I don't really understand all the hate toward unlocks in games, sure, they CAN be bad, but that can be said about anything that's poorly designed. I like grinding as long as it's well laid out and not putting un-grinded players at a disadvantage. Its not the unlock itself that is the fun, it's trying to get it and having objectives beyond "win this next 10 minute match". Its not the destination, it's the journey, but the journey would be kinda dull without a destination

 

[chockomonkey]

But if your fun ends when the unlocks are over, doesn't that say anything to you about the gameplay actually being fun?

Don't get me wrong here--i enjoy a certain level of grinding too (i can't figure out why), but if grinding is the only thing keeping you playing a game...

 

[Tudz]

But if your fun ends when the unlocks are over, doesn't that say anything to you about the gameplay actually being fun?

Don't get me wrong here--i enjoy a certain level of grinding too (i can't figure out why), but if grinding is the only thing keeping you playing a game...

The gameplay can be fun but the grinding is keeping you playing. I'm not a psychologist or even a fake psychologist but it just seems like human nature to me.

I enjoy my job, but I wouldn't do it for 12 hours a day if I wasn't getting paid and wasn't getting an outcome... doesn't mean I don't enjoy it, but the money and outcomes are what keep me at it. I enjoyed studying Engineering for 4 years, but I would not have enjoyed it nearly as much if I weren't getting a degree at the end of it. I enjoy driving, sometimes for the holidays I'll go camping and pack up my stuff and go for a 10 hour drive to get to some random camp site, the drive is enjoyable, but there's no fucking way I'd do it if I weren't doing it with the objective of going camping, and there's no way I'll drive another hour beyond the camp site and then back again just for the hell of it. I paint miniatures for Warhammer 40k, painting is fun, but there's no way I'd paint for more than a few hours/few models if I weren't "grinding" my way to actually playing some games.

There are plenty of grindy games out there, I only grind the ones I enjoy and often when I finish grinding, I stop because it's no longer motivating to play despite the fact the gameplay was fun.

It's just one of those natural things, like how playing a game or going out and having a beer with friends is so much more fun after you've just done a hard day's work, or how doing a hard day's work in itself can be enjoyable if it's both something you enjoy and you get something at the end of it.

 

[Stone Cold]

1. halo : regenerating health, truly the worse idea for a shooter, talk about just taking all the tension out of game, and becuase if it's sucess ever damn shooter has to have regnerating health, no matter how illogical it is
2. COD. there was a time when you played a game to get to the next level or boss, now instead its like you are on a rail taken to your next cinematic, where you are now reminded constantly that nothing you do matters in the least

Two excellent examples. I remember the fun of having to play extra-cautiously when I ran low on health. Now, just duck out of the fight for a few seconds... Related to this is practically unlimited ammo, rather than having to shoot extra-carefully when I ran low on ammo (or, having to use a weaker weapon that didn't use ammo).

I just finished mass effect 3, which is a huge example of nothing you did through the game matters in the end, even though the game constantly pretended that it would make a difference. And, the ending victory couldn't be any more pyrrhic (i.e. you feel like you lost). This may be another thing, rewarding doing everything right with having you lose, anyway.

 

[chockomonkey]

The gameplay can be fun but the grinding is keeping you playing. I'm not a psychologist or even a fake psychologist but it just seems like human nature to me.

I enjoy my job, but I wouldn't do it for 12 hours a day if I wasn't getting paid and wasn't getting an outcome... doesn't mean I don't enjoy it, but the money and outcomes are what keep me at it. I enjoyed studying Engineering for 4 years, but I would not have enjoyed it nearly as much if I weren't getting a degree at the end of it. I enjoy driving, sometimes for the holidays I'll go camping and pack up my stuff and go for a 10 hour drive to get to some random camp site, the drive is enjoyable, but there's no fucking way I'd do it if I weren't doing it with the objective of going camping, and there's no way I'll drive another hour beyond the camp site and then back again just for the hell of it. I paint miniatures for Warhammer 40k, painting is fun, but there's no way I'd paint for more than a few hours/few models if I weren't "grinding" my way to actually playing some games.

There are plenty of grindy games out there, I only grind the ones I enjoy and often when I finish grinding, I stop because it's no longer motivating to play despite the fact the gameplay was fun.

It's just one of those natural things, like how playing a game or going out and having a beer with friends is so much more fun after you've just done a hard day's work, or how doing a hard day's work in itself can be enjoyable if it's both something you enjoy and you get something at the end of it.

I like this explanation.

 

[MorgothPl]

The regenerating health pack just saved me a lot of quicksave/quickload features. There is no fun of repeating the whole level, just because you were 0,2 seconds slower then mob, and took first shot... and you have no healthpacks around, and there is boss behind corner, so it's back to last save, or use a code. For me, that is the thing, that saved the fun of FPS.

 

[LeninGHOLA]

The regenerating health pack just saved me a lot of quicksave/quickload features. There is no fun of repeating the whole level, just because you were 0,2 seconds slower then mob, and took first shot... and you have no healthpacks around, and there is boss behind corner, so it's back to last save, or use a code. For me, that is the thing, that saved the fun of FPS.

Wait, really?

 

[Oomps]

This. Goldeneye didn't have better design than any other game at the time (in fact, it was vastly inferior in terms of textures, AI and difficulty curve) but it had decent multiplayer level design and it was extremely accessible. (Controls were simple and it had lots of "gimmicky" game modes to help balance out the advantage from being an experienced player.) It's basically the Mario Kart of FPS games. Not an amazing racing game (which had been present in arcades for years) but a good time on the couch with your friends. If making games more accessible is what ruins them, you need more friends.

If making games accessible makes them good then you should love Call of Modern Battle Gears 6: War Ops Collector's Edition

 

[KarsusTG]

WoW truely. Almost no MMO since then has got popular because your required to think and have skill. Truely they have made it so easy that everyone now expects it to be easy as hell.

 

[H-street]

Unfortunately i would have to say

Crysis 1

But not in the way everyone is thinking..

Crysis 1 was such a revolution in graphic quality and good gameplay that the incessant complaining by the gaming community because the "Max Settings" couldn't really be attained on the days hardware really sent a strong message to developers.

1. Don't give us too much of a good thing. Give us a super simple graphic slider where the predetermined "Max Settings" runs butter smooth on mid grade hardware.

2. We are perfectly happy with lower grade Consolized graphics as long as it runs great on my midgrade hardware

3. PC Gamers aren't hardcore anymore, long gone are the days where a game can be "Ahead" of the graphic curve and PC gamers look forward to running that great old game on new hardware just to see how it looks now! (I remember i loved doing this, running my older games on my new hardware at even higher settings just to see how it i now looked)

 

[alienate]

Consoles and pirates ruined innovative gaming.

 

[DJ Big T]

Console ports ruined gaming, IMO.

 

[TwistedAegis]

Gaming isn't ruined at all. There are all kinds of great games out there that may not get as much attention, but they're out there.

If anything "ruined" gaming it's Moore's Law. The rapid increase in the power of computing means that we've passed the plateau of what is "enough" for the average consumer for several years now. The cost advantage, for most people, just isn't there. So you have a huge market segmentation - those of us here on the [H] for whom cutting edge technology is well worth the cost to get cutting edge gaming, and the vast majority of people who just need enough to web browse, run Office and maybe play a few games as well. The consoles are part of this as well, but if PCs hadn't progressed so much more quickly there would be no reason for us to complain, we'd both be at the same level.

The fact that new consoles aren't being developed shows that the demand just isn't there. In fact, each new console generation generally loses money on the hardware (the Wii I believe being the exception, but I don't know if they can replicate that). The problem isn't so much the developers but the market; we expect to have games that take advantage of our hardware, but the larger market just isn't there. Blame consoles, but I believe them to be more a symptom than a cause. If people were generally willing to drop $1k-$2k on gaming PCs, it wouldn't be an issue, but they're not.

 

[Oomps]

Actually, now that I think about it...I'm gonna blame getting old

 

[i2abid]

Actually, now that I think about it...I'm gonna blame getting old

i'd say a combination of us getting old and games being too easy nowadays. Old school Metal Gear and Ninja Gaiden.... I simply can't beat those damn games anymore

 

[cocopup96]

I actually LIKE the idea of regenerating health far more than health packs which I think are equally moronic in concept. The problem is the implementation of regenerating health. You're in a massive firefight, get shot dead on in the chest, so you hide behind a wall for 10 seconds and you're good to go again, erm, no thanks.

A slowly regenerating and deteriorating health system would be a great idea. Something along the lines of you get shot, lose X amount of health and then start losing Y health per second as you bleed out, then you throw a bandage on and slowly regain Z health per second as your character recovers. Or something even simpler, where you only regain health when not under fire, then regain health when things die down ready for the next battle.

I've always been a fan of the bossfight, when done well and not overused.

Not quite what you were looking for, but this is why I liked Resistance so much. You had set health "bars" that once lost required healing packs to regain, but if you took chip damage for a partial bar it would heal only for the portion back when in cover/ out of a fight.

It made the game more challenging while still being doable and rewarding. Others may disagree, but the entire resistance franchise is a masterpiece to me.

 

[Sly]

Not quite what you were looking for, but this is why I liked Resistance so much. You had set health "bars" that once lost required healing packs to regain, but if you took chip damage for a partial bar it would heal only for the portion back when in cover/ out of a fight.

It made the game more challenging while still being doable and rewarding. Others may disagree, but the entire resistance franchise is a masterpiece to me.

That's actually a good compromise. It doesn't let you go rambo, but is still forgiving when you make small mistakes.

did you really just use the word realistic and tactical to describe counter strike?? it is anything but those. Always has.

Actually, it is called that at the time. Prior games had no cover, no reload, and really fast game pace. FPS became tactical when you can no longer unload all you ammo in one go, and cover became significant when you had to find cover to reload.

The definition today is different, but back then, FPS was still evolving and the next step in FPS evolution was when games started introducing the 'reload' button.

 

[hardc0re]

Games didn't ruin gaming... there's a few real life factors behind what's going on.

- consoles and the mainstream entertainment companies siphoned the creative talent from the talent pool.

- The recession decreased the likelihood of start-up game studios

- fear of the unknown (All AAA titles are sequels to popular franchises - GTA V, Max Payne 3, Diablo 3, Battlefield 3, Call of Duty XVIII, World of Warcraft Expansions) I don't recall any new popular moneymaking titles in 2011 and 2012 that beat out a sequel title.

- the growth of mainstream piracy

 

[WBurchnall]

World of Warcraft. Not only has it completely destroyed the MMO genre but it's effects are felt even in all other genres even if only subtle (like using text color schemes on items to represent their rarity. Dead Island as an example) There are only 2 games in the MMO industry no matter how new they are: WoW and Games trying to be like WoW.

Ahem. Diablo called and told me to slap you in the face for implying that colored naming schemes on weapons was developed by Blizzard in Wow when Blizzard actually developed it years prior in Diablo.

Granted, I agree about every game trying to be the Wow clone has effectively stagnated the MMO genre considerably. However, I am a bit tied with that concept and regenerating health... I prefer the concept of heal-packs/potions/whatever than duck-for-3-seconds, now I can take 12 more bullets to my unprotected chest, duck-for-3-seconds, now I can take 12 more bullets to my unprotected chest, etc.

At least Halo had it 'kind of right' with regenerating shields + health that didn't auto recharge. Thus, you could be easily killed once you let your shields drop + took a bit too much dmg a few times. Had the potential to make boss fights/gauntlets hard. Games like Gears of War, Call of Duty: BO, etc are awful for regenerating health and feels like the realism is gone. I suppose this promotes the invincible, war gives second chances falsehood that encourages gullible youth to sign up for military duty though?

I would give two votes for Halo though for making Consoles more popular and for a while Consoles perhaps seeming like good-quality gaming machines compared to the comparatively more expensive PCs back in the day. I was a PC gamer in the late 90s when Halo came out and bought an xbox pretty much for Halo, Dead or Alive and a few other select handful of titles. I wouldn't have ever owned a console (up to that point) and thus might have skipped the 360? who knows if it weren't for Halo.

I think PC gaming is being somewhat ruined by Moore's Law as someone else pointed out. Doubling the polygon count won't make a huge difference if games already look 'pretty lifelike' or 'lifelike'. You almost have to ---- innnovate to seperate your game from the competition now more so than make more shiny graphics. If your a graphics whor...fan, then PC gaming was ruined by graphics becoming too good. We almost need to update the 'scale' of games somehow: like adding more enemies on to the screen, making larger worlds, larger more destructible environments or some new innovative features than just making a more detailed face and more detailed gun.

Wow, Deus EX: HR and the original Deus Ex might be good examples of innovation in a somewhat stagnant genres resulting in good sales even if the graphics weren't cutting edge. Especially wow when it comes to the graphics not being cutting edge

 

[rudy]

Counter Strike, the game that started it all, utter slow garbage, the noobs flocked to it. You can't blame COD, they were just trying to cash in on the CS success model.

 

[rudy]

- The recession decreased the likelihood of start-up game studios

I might agree with all your other ones, but theres nothing like a bunch of guys who cannot find jobs to create the free time and neccessity to innovate.

 

[cgrant26]

1) You never played on anything harder and "normal" did you? Beside that, it was a shield, not a health that regenerated.

2) Be more specific, the original CoD was good. Everything that followed was crap and just some how got even worse.

Flashback!

COD when it *didn't* suck:

 

[Manaknight]

Dance dance revolution. The Father of the biggest stain in video game history. Everything from rockband to the Kinect came from this mindless piece of pop garbage.

Im gonna have to call you out on this one. For its time DDR was a great advancement for arcade gaming. I mean DDR itself and maybe the Pump series, not the countless home clones you see. For every drunk bitch or soccer mom that played a 1 star dealie, there were ridiculous competitions being held over the game. Also unlike the Kinect games it took a lot of skill to actually be good.

the home rhythm games stemmed almost entirely from the original guitar hero and if you want to trace that back that took its inspiration from guitar freaks in the arcade, which came around about the same times as ddr.


my contributions

FFX ruined jrpgs, it basically set the bar for cliche and press button to watch cutscene gameplay, also took out the world map. i used to include ff7 in here but it has since been spared my wrath, as the only thing it did was move away from sprite games, which personally i prefer sprites, but its a personal thing.

WoW didn't ruin mmo's per se. What ruined it was the community that grew out of wow becoming the norm across games. The overly gaming by numbers crowd taking over raiding (some of you eq guys probably remember raiding in the old days of eq1, for the most part a lot more chaotic and less organized, at least in my experience), and my huge peeve, the faction system causing such grief between players of the same game, and causing a huge attitude change in the player off mmo's. The worst part is the faction copout has been copied to other games over and over.
at it's core WoW had a lot of good things going for it, and it did advance alot of the stuff that games like EQ started. I think (and you pvp guys will give me shit for this to some degree) when they started trying to build the game around pvp as a mechanic and not as a perk of the universe, you started to see it go downhill.

 

[Tudz]

Unfortunately i would have to say

Crysis 1

But not in the way everyone is thinking..

Crysis 1 was such a revolution in graphic quality and good gameplay that the incessant complaining by the gaming community because the "Max Settings" couldn't really be attained on the days hardware really sent a strong message to developers.

1. Don't give us too much of a good thing. Give us a super simple graphic slider where the predetermined "Max Settings" runs butter smooth on mid grade hardware.

2. We are perfectly happy with lower grade Consolized graphics as long as it runs great on my midgrade hardware

3. PC Gamers aren't hardcore anymore, long gone are the days where a game can be "Ahead" of the graphic curve and PC gamers look forward to running that great old game on new hardware just to see how it looks now! (I remember i loved doing this, running my older games on my new hardware at even higher settings just to see how it i now looked)

The main problem with Crysis is it quickly started to look shit on anything but the best hardware. Crytek didn't have to do much tweaking to reduce a lot of the complaints by adjusting the default low/medium/high settings and rejigging the menus to make it more clear that very high was designed to be beyond the reach of current hardware.

 

[AbsintheGuy]

My vote is for World of Warcraft, it cartoonized MMO gaming.

 

[SnowBeast]

Console ports ruined gaming, IMO.

Ever played Tribes Ascend? Micro Transactions will kill pc gaming, not consoles. It you don't have the money to buy the newest kit, you ain't shit. New motto for PC games.

 

[SnowBeast]

Pc gaming to me already peaked. Some of you kiddies missed the glory days of Unreal Tournament vs. Quake 3. Both games were masterpieces. Really it could go back a little before with Quake 2 and Unreal. Unreal just completely blew my mind. (first online game for me) I honestly have not had the "fun" level as I did in Unreal.

 

[castun]

How about achievements in general?

Just look up 'Skinner box' to see the psychology behind it and see why it makes us want to keep playing. Many games use it.

 

[TwistedAegis]

WoW didn't ruin mmo's per se. What ruined it was the community that grew out of wow becoming the norm across games. The overly gaming by numbers crowd taking over raiding (some of you eq guys probably remember raiding in the old days of eq1, for the most part a lot more chaotic and less organized, at least in my experience), and my huge peeve, the faction system causing such grief between players of the same game, and causing a huge attitude change in the player off mmo's. The worst part is the faction copout has been copied to other games over and over.
at it's core WoW had a lot of good things going for it, and it did advance alot of the stuff that games like EQ started. I think (and you pvp guys will give me shit for this to some degree) when they started trying to build the game around pvp as a mechanic and not as a perk of the universe, you started to see it go downhill.

Well WOW didn't start that way; with the original 40 man raids you could have a pretty large amount of dead weight and people just running around doing there thing. When they moved down to 25 man raids, it made it easier to fill up a raid, but it also greatly reduced the margin of error. The most fun I had was actually in 10 man heroics; there was NO margin for error, and so long as you were with a fun group of people who weren't douches, it could be a lot of fun. ALMOST took down Anub'Arak in heroic when it was the hardest fight in the game...10% left before a wipe. Stopped playing in Cataclysm though, just wasn't feeling it anymore.

 

[Manaknight]

Well WOW didn't start that way; with the original 40 man raids you could have a pretty large amount of dead weight and people just running around doing there thing. When they moved down to 25 man raids, it made it easier to fill up a raid, but it also greatly reduced the margin of error. The most fun I had was actually in 10 man heroics; there was NO margin for error, and so long as you were with a fun group of people who weren't douches, it could be a lot of fun. ALMOST took down Anub'Arak in heroic when it was the hardest fight in the game...10% left before a wipe. Stopped playing in Cataclysm though, just wasn't feeling it anymore.

i know WoW didn't start that way, i left eq1 for it. That's what made watching it slide into the abyss it finds itself in now kinda hurts. It went from a fun community to a cesspool not unlike random xbox live deathmatches.

 

[PrincessFrosty]

Console ports ruined gaming, IMO.

This. What this essentially boils down to is console ports lowering the quality of gaming because the casual market for console games is much bigger than something like the hobbyist PC gamers.

Gaming used to have a more niche crowd, you basically had to be a nerd to like games and know how to boot DOS and browse to the right Dir and execute the game, and now it's seen as "cool" to be playing CoD on the Xbox, everyone has to go out and get it.

There's more money to be made by making a lame product and conning millions of idiots into buying it, than to make a good product focused at people who actually have some taste. I always make the comparisons to McDonalds and 5 star restaurants, it's pretty hard to deny which has higher quality food/experience but one serves billions and the other serves a tiny fraction of that.

I find it strange that a meal at a 5 star restaurant costs a lot more than a meal at McDonalds, yet there exists no real tier like that for games. I would really love to see some way for gamers such as myself who want better quality some way to pay for it, currently there is no way to do that.

For example if valve announced HL3 right now, and said OK there's going to be 2 versions

1) HL3 Blue Box $50 - Using basic source engine it's built multi-platform and works on Xbox/PS3/PC, it comes with graphics approximately equal to HL2 and no real improvements in any technology, has match making as standard, P2P multiplayer system, and ALL the nasty shit that console ports come with as standard.

2) HL3 Green box $60 - PC exclusive, comes with new advanced source engine DX11 graphics, new technology like physics, AI, animation blended with ragdolls, 3D vision support, native multi monitor support, proper mouse control, proper FOV, tweaked difficulty settings, smarter and more demanding AI, in game benchmarking tool, proper server browser, advanced graphics options such shaders, larger draw distance, more physics objects, better shadow system, a plethora of AA/AF controls, modding tools etc etc.

Which would you buy?