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[Steel]

You know, I'm trying to think of a fanbase that hasn't been abused in some way. Call of duty fans I guess? I mean they don't change much from game to game...

Hell, even fans of the sims get abused by constant expansion packs. I think we can draw from this thread that the general hobby of gaming is abusive?

 

[Jucksalbe]

Xenosaga. Budget cuts led to an incredibly crappy Part 2, and a rushed garbage Part 3.

Now imagine, you're in Europe and all you ever got was part 2.

 

[noobasuar]

Kingdom Hearts. Let's release one of the best A-RPGS ever made and follow it up with hot garbage for as many years as we can.

Gears of War. Let's make one of the best multiplayer games ever made and follow it up with one of the worst multiplayer games.

 

[The Real Napsta]

Halo

 

[Forsaken82]

Too Human...

I say i like the game and someone comes around and says something along the lines of "What are you doing? You can't enjoy that crap! Dyack is a fucking asshole, you can't support his endeavors!"

 

[Valnen]

Kingdom Hearts. Let's release one of the best A-RPGS ever made and follow it up with hot garbage for as many years as we can.

What? No. Most Kingdom Hearts games are excellent or at the very least good.

 

[legacyzero]

What a HORRIBLE generation it has been for both.

 

[Atomski]

Battlefield
-fuck mod support because we think the community is too stupid to use our engine (I'm paraphrasing but that is what they said), the real reason of course was that the mods were competing with their sequels

-hired trauma studios (bf1942: desert combat mod makers) then fired them one by one to make sure to put a stop to the development of the DC mod that was competing with battlefield 2 (more features, better physics, more maps, more vehicles)

-turned it into cod by adding a campaign, bars to fill, map packs, season passes etc

-withold features from their older games just so they can sell them again in next year's game (commander, comm rose etc, maybe battlefield 5 will reintroduce wing riding or bombs in planes preorder today!)

-split the community with dlc instantly at release

-release broken as shit game, release more DLC before fixing it

-threaten to ban players if they turned off the awful color grading or lens flares, reason :'artistic integrity of the developer'

-break the russian version of their game with every single patch to spite those who bought the game with a vpn or through a russian friend to get it discounted

-don't allow the community to run their own servers, force them to rent from their 'partner' hosts and only through battlelog so they could get a cut from their deal with the hosting company (again to ensure there would be no mods or community content of any kind)

Dice were nobodies back in 2002, the mods made their game take off after a weak launch and the community supported their game for years, and now they shit on them chasing after that cod money

Yep its such a shame. Loved the BF series.. BF3 was the beginning of the end. :/

 

[jackissocool]

I was thinking individual games, not franchises. But in terms of franchises the most obvious are Mega Man and Sonic. The difference is that Mega Man is getting worse after a long period of good and Sonic is slowly getting better after a long period of bad.

How could I forget:

I just had to look at it again

 

[BibiMaghoo]

Final Fantasy.

It makes me furious.

 

[Espada]

Megaman. It was like a relationship that had been abusive and behind closed doors for years spilling out into the open and ending horribly. Capcom doesn't give half a shit about that fanbase, and I really felt bad for them.

 

[TheOGB]

Crash Bandicoot. CotT and MoM were decent, but the awesome looking reboot Crash Landed was canceled, the DS prototype by Renegade Kid was rejected, the Crash Team Racing to coincide with it was canceled, the last game to be released was a mediocre iOS racing game, every rumor about a revival since then has been false, and the franchise is in the hands of friggin Activision. They say they won't turn him into a Skylander but you never fucking know...

At least Sony loves us.

 

[WickedLaharl]

http://youtu.be/NktKNd2Fhpo?t=58s

 

[noobasuar]

What? No. Most Kingdom Hearts games are excellent or at the very least good.

I disagree. KH2 felt like a slap in the face. They changed the combat system which I thought was awesome in the first one into a more action focus. They made the story awful as fuck and they decided that putting any thought into the level design was too much work for them so we ended up getting flat open fields for every single fucking world. Fuck that shit.

 

[legacyzero]

http://youtu.be/NktKNd2Fhpo?t=58s

 

[FYC]

.

 

[Yawnier]

Crash Bandicoot, Spyro, and Sonic.

 

[CheDominik]

I just had to look at it again

 

[WickedLaharl]

It hurts so much

 

[Syf]

I'd say Command & Conquer is up there. EA has all but destroyed that franchise.

 

[theSlacker]

There have been bad games in series, games that changed too much from what made them loved, and just abandoned franchises. Don't think there have been many cases of the publisher actually blaming lack of community interaction on canceling a series that had finally had a new game announced for it after a decade of waiting.

 

[John Kowalski]

lol @ the concept of fanbases being betrayed

 

[eXistor]

I hate not having a Shenmue 3 and being teased left with an incomplete story, but at least it's understandable why we're not getting it. These games cost way too much money and are played by way too few people. It's a miracle we even got 2 of them.

Mega Man fans are constantly being backstabbed by Capcom. There were games being announced left and right, only to be cancelled after a while. At least we got MM9 and 10 out of it, but that really was the last hurrah the blue Bomber ever got. I hope Mighty No. 9 is a big hit, so MM lives on at least in spirit. Or just let Nintendo make a new one, they seem to have a better grasp on what MM is about than Capcom.

lol @ the concept of fanbases being betrayed

Care to elaborate on this so called "lol"-worthy concept at all?

 

[C.Olimar788]

It's probably Mega Man, but at least they finally have something to look forward to in Mega Man's delightful appearance in Smash 4. And, of course, Might No. 9.

 

[Admiral Bone to Pick]

Paper Mario.

We went from a quirky, unique JRPG series to watered down BS. If I wanted to play a Mario platformer, I'd play one of the dozens of others that exist. Super Paper Mario was the moment where I knew the Wii would be a disappointing system. Shame it was so early on in its lifespan.

 

[legacyzero]

lol @ the concept of fanbases being betrayed

I'd say Final Fantasy XIII was a pretty damn big betrayal.

 

[Mass Effect]

Star Fox fans to an extent. Two good games, then a Zelda clone, a mediocre outsourced game, and a shitty DS game. Oh but hey at least we got a decent port of 64. And now the franchise is probably completely dead at this point.

 

[Arsenic]

Came here to post this.


First two games amazing. Third game a step backwards. Expansion sold as another game was slightly better but still not close to socom 2. Then on the PS3 they give the franchise to Slant Six who makes a completely broken mess of a game that took over a year of patches to become playable.... and it sucked, but once Zipper made Socom 4 we actually appreciated the pile of shit that Slant Six made because it was closer to Socom than S4 ever even tried to be.

We begged for Socom 2 HD. We posted daily, detailing exactly what we wanted in a socom game... and they never listened. And then Zipper makes Unit 13, which was pretty damn good, and Sony shuts them down.


Being a socom fan has been nothing but pain since about 2005.

You said it perfectly.

We even accepted the flaws of Socom 1 and 2, well aware they were mostly hardware issues rather than design issues. An HD remake would suffice for years to come, but, no. They shit on the audience that stuck by for years and tried to get the ones that jump on every game with a gun. Pathetic.

 

[SmartBase]

"Insert Rare franchise here"

 

[Taker34]

Mass Effect?

Casey Hudson: "It’s not even in any way
like the traditional game endings, where you can say how many endings
there are or whether you got ending A, B, or C.....The endings have a
lot more sophistication and variety in them."

 

[AuthenticM]

It's got to be a tie between Sonic's and Megaman's.

 

[Zuhzuhzombie!!]

Earthbound.

 

[KHlover]

I disagree. KH2 felt like a slap in the face. They changed the combat system which I thought was awesome in the first one into a more action focus. They made the story awful as fuck and they decided that putting any thought into the level design was too much work for them so we ended up getting flat open fields for every single fucking world. Fuck that shit.

I disagree. The combat in Kingdom Hearts I was slow and awkward, Kingdom Hearts II nudged it into the right direction and Birth By Sleep/ Dream Drop Distance's Command System was a further improvement which I'd like to see return in Kingdom Hearts III. Level Design is pretty subjective, but "flat open field" isn't really the case in Kingdom Hearts II yet (BBS is the offender here). Dream Drop Distance with the Flowmotion System ensured a good use of verticality in the levels from the start of the game, which is great. Story in KH2 imo was a step up from Sora chasing Riku like a dog would chase his owner and Riku predictably getting used as a tool by Malefiz and then Ansem.

 

[ToraShiro]

lol @ the concept of fanbases being betrayed

Indeed. The concept itself is laughable.

People do know they make video games for the fanbases? Like, that's why we make them, right? So people will purchase and enjoy them? This implies some sort of collaborative effort among creators to purposefully torpedo their own creations for the sake of spiting the fans.

There have been terrible decisions that have either ruined a series or ended a series prematurely by a handful of powerful higher-ups. But no one I know in development has ever looked at their project and gone, "How can I ruin this for all the fans?"

 

[Jagsrock]

Sonic is typically shit on by most gamers while Banjo Kazooie fans have been abused by MS.

 

[Sturm]

The entirety of Nintendo games really. Nintendo really spit in the eyes of of the fans with the Wii.. and with the WiiU it's gone abit better but not by much. They lost so much hardcore fans. They really need to do 1000% better to win them back.

 

[Mupod]

Mechwarrior. Took well over a decade for us to get a new entry in the series, only for it to end up being a shameless cash grab focused at exploiting a small but dedicated fanbase.

If you're wondering where the 'betrayal' came in, a lot of us bought into the founder's program early in its development expecting it to have MMO-like features at launch rather than being a simple (and very broken) deathmatch game. Almost two years later they've done essentially nothing but add more overpriced things to sell.

 

[Adaren]

I'd say Final Fantasy XIII was a pretty damn big betrayal.

Off the charts presentation and a unique and engaging battle system count as a betrayal? I'm of the opinion that Final Fantasy and DMC fans are treating their franchises badly, not the other way around. The recent entries have been different, and they're not perfect, but they're not without their merits and still probably better than most entries in their respective genres.

On topic: Metroid.

 

[Kadayi]

Half life.

Seriously the entire episodic concept was sold in 2006 to a largely skeptical player base in on the idea of being all wrapped up by Christmas 2007. Yet here we are almost six years gone and nothing but the occasional vague troll from Valve about it ever happening or even being a thing. I don't know one other business where when you blow a delivery date complete radio silence is somehow deemed the acceptable course of action.

'Oh Mr Newell you're still waiting for your dessert to arrive? Well I can neither deny or confirm that there may be desert coming, I acknowledge that you had your starter and main course on the basis that you would get dessert as well, and in fact you even paid us the money for those two courses already (for which we are extremely grateful), but you see we here in the restaurant just don't feel we're in any way obligated to tell you if that third course is ever coming, or if it is when you may expect it to arrive.'

 

[rvy]

Shenmue.

Yes. Ridiculous.

 

[Ushiwaka]

Shenmue.

Sonic

Sakura Wars.

Valkyria Chronicles.

Hands. Down.

Yakuza fans?

Bayonetta as well. From releasing a broken ass port of 1 to refusing to fund Bayonetta 2. Both are Sega's fault. They're a terrible company.

Sega, ladies and gentlemen. The way they treated their fans in recent years is just horrible. No other company doesn't even come close. They have one of the most passionate fanbases (look at Yakuza fans wanting localizing, Shenmue fans waiting for a new game after all these years and all those Bayonetta fans wanting ports of the second game) but unfortunately they seem to don't care about any of them.
Why did Sega become like this? It started after going third party, I guess?

 

[ec0ec0]

rareware games :,( (banjo, for example)

 

[Sanjuro]

A photoshop isn't going to break the cycle. I haven't had a Sonic game I enjoyed since, what, 1997?

EDIT: 1994* yikes! Twenty years.

 

[Wes]

Age of Empires.

 

[Vortex566]

Metroid!

 

[Oblivion]

First thing I thought of was Sonic, but he's allegedly had some non-completely-horrible games out over the past couple of years.

 

[brandonh83]

We ought to be giving reasons really.

What are you talking about?

It was a joke based on the fact that with most game franchises there are people who have problems with everything.

 

[rezn0r]

Bad Rats!

Phantasy Star

Shenmue

 

[Robot Pants]

Condemned 2 Online

 

[MaximoffZero]

I say Sonic. It's true that Mega Man is basically a memory now, but at least Capcom let him die with a shred of dignity. Sega, however, keeps Sonic alive just to abuse him some more.