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[Aurongel]

Uncharted 2: ND basically shaved off 3/5 of player health and reduced the game to a CoD-lite experience a few months after launch.

MGSV: Don't even get me started, I'll write a dissertation on this game alone.

TF2: Very early TF2 was the most busted that game's ever been but the vomit of new effects and weapons has really robbed that game of its' appeal to me.

 

[Tecnniqe]

Post Burning Crusade it was never the same (

Spoiler

WoWcraft

 

[Patrick S.]

MGSV: Don't even get me started, I'll write a dissertation on this game alone.

Please do

 

[Jangowuzhere]

Exactly how much impact the post-game updates had to the experience can be debated, but this is simply not factually true.

Okay, whatever, if you wanna get technical about it, then yeah, they did change some things when it comes to the FOB stuff (the online mode is completely different these days.)

However, the actual core of this game is still exactly the same. They didn't change any of the missions, game structure, or the mechanical feel of the campaign. A person playing this game today isn't going to have a completely different experience with the post-release patches.

 

[Lomax]

Rogue Legacy added a few bosses that completely went against the entire design principle of the rest of the game, and added achievements to match, so if you had 100% achievements you lost that and to get it back required playing something completely different than the rest of the game. It actually retroactively made me like the rest of the game less.

 

[Fantastapotamus]

Rogue Legacy added a few bosses that completely went against the entire design principle of the rest of the game, and added achievements to match, so if you had 100% achievements you lost that and to get it back required playing something completely different than the rest of the game. It actually retroactively made me like the rest of the game less.

This is so damn stupid. But I 100% agree.

 

[Ryouji Gunblade]

Bloodborne's day-one patch added chromatic aberration, which in my opinion, made the game visually worse.

Wait, why didn't they make this an option?

 

[Bluecondor]

They made it so you can't access your FOB resources offline. If you're knocked off the internet for whatever reason, you'll lose all your online advantages.

This is quite shitty, but the people saying that MGSV is ruined by post-release patches are just being hyperbolic and have no idea what they're talking about. This is still the exact same game released almost a year ago. It's not like they made getting resources more difficult or whatever. Infact, getting resources is even easier now. They've patched in challenges that reward resources and GMP when they are completed. They definitely cut down on some of the grind for the higher end equipment.

Also, the game can still be played completely offline. So the pure experience that has no online aid has always been avaliable.

I agree with you. The updates to MGSV with respect to online resources mostly impacted FOB building and building advanced weapons/gear. As such, these changes had little impact on the core game.

 

[NastyBook]

UC2 MP only time I legit thought this.

THIS. "Hurr durr, let's fuck shit up and not address the actual problems that hurt the game!"

 

[TheRedSnifit]

"Balanced" was a regular refrain that I remember at the time from both people I played with and the reviews I read. A decade of pouring over every minute detail (damage values, awesome) would probably make it difficult for any game to remain standing proud.

It felt like a Frankenstein's monster of a project as it developed, or the ongoing horror of someone addicted to plastic surgery. Probably had a lot to do with how much I loved the game that launched: of course I wouldn't want the existing brush strokes painted over, but I can't deny its enduring popularity and the part its incessant updates played in that.


Yeah, and the way you guys frame it makes it unfeasible to believe that a player base existed at all. Why did that unquestionable trash review so well anyway?

Reviews didn't call out the poor balance because the only alternatives at the time were TFC and Fortress Forever, which were both even worse in that regard.

There is no "pouring over statistics" here. Demoman could instantly kill seven out of nine classes with the splash damage of one sticky from any range. Soldier had pretty much infinite ammo (and was one of the only two classes that could survive a sticky). None of the other classes came even close to being useful except maybe Medic. It was horrible.

 

[CountAntonius]

Reviews didn't call out the poor balance because the only alternatives at the time were TFC and Fortress Forever, which were both even worse in that regard.

There is no "pouring over statistics" here. Demoman could instantly kill seven out of nine classes with the splash damage of one sticky from any range. Soldier had pretty much infinite ammo. Nobody ran anything but those two classes in a serious context. It was ridiculous.

They could have fixed that with a few updates and tweaks. What has become of the game now is just too far gone from what we all wanted when we first played the game. I played both at launch the years in between on and recently to try out the comp beta. It's not nostalgia as much as the game had a great identity then that is has been completely devoid of for a very long time.

Overwatch is huge right now and all they did was streamline TF2 is a neat package. Everything I have done in Overwatch I have done with some class or weapon combination in TF2 before but they kept is clean and simple and it works.

 

[deadscreensky]

MGS5 today has more content and less grinding than in the release game. There might have been minor missteps here and there, but it's absolutely been a game improved by post-launch updates.

Dawn of War 2 is one of my all-time favorite games, but the Retribution expansion moved the matchmaking from GFWL to Steam and this caused numerous issues. In particular pre-Retribution the game had been programmed with the idea the servers would always be up (because they essentially were), but Steam goes down all the time. (It's a little better lately, probably, but this wasn't the case 2+ years ago.) So for example you basically shouldn't bother playing the game on Tuesdays, because Steam is constantly going down for updates on Tuesday and that would kick players out of a match. All the disconnects eventually drove me away from the game entirely.

 

[Heebie Jeebies]

How dare you speak ill of jarate!

 

[NullPointer]

MGS5 today has more content and less grinding than in the release game.

How's that?

 

[Sesuadra]

Final fantasy XIV and the update for 3.0-3.2. Destroyed my favourite mmorpg that I had played for 5 years.

 

[deadscreensky]

How's that?

Metal Gear Solid 5 has continued to add way more methods of getting resources and high level crew, like skill challenges (most of them earned via just playing the game normally, though there's also regularly changing special timed ones), revolving AI FOBs to invade (no risk of retaliation, and they're fun too), regular special event rewards, and most recently dramatically increased Virtual League rewards.

They also hand out so many free MB coins that it's easy to have multiple FOBs working for you earning resources. I've had a full set of FOBs for months now and have even started throwing away my MB coins on things like special cosmetic outfits for multiplayer. I've never purchased any with real money, but I just have too many MB coins with nothing worthwhile to spend them on. They also give occasional construction discounts and other rewards to help newer players catch up to us veterans.

And if you're super hardcore (I'm not!) you can do stuff like Security Challenges for even greater rewards.

Probably the only real counter-argument you could offer regarding grinding in MGS5 is that they also added a lot more post-game content to research. That new (free) stuff definitely takes a long time to get. But all the game's release content has only been getting easier to earn for ages now. I don't think it's fair to damn a game for adding a bunch of free content for the truly hardcore players to slowly work for. I definitely prefer that to the Battlefield, the Last of Us, Call of Duty, etc. approach of charging players real life money for new guns and other new content. For example MGS5 recently added Ocelot's guns, and every player has access to them with a little research, no extra charge.

 

[Azure Dream]

Sonic Runners was a fun enough mobile game, especially for F2P. But they put out a 2.0 patch which screwed with a lot of things, performance most notably, and took away the generosity the game had before with currency. The game was off to a great start, but then took a sharp turn. (Cue Sonic game jokes.)

 

[Anustart]

Diablo 3. I made some bank with that rmah I tell ya.

 

[TheSpoiler]

On one hand, I can see how people don't like the artistic move and how overwhelming things can get in the newest versions of TF2.

But vanilla was far, far worse. You could literally camp in front of spawn points with sentries and there wasn't shit any teams could do about it.

 

[facelike]

X:Com Enemy Within,PS3.

When on the base defense mission halfway through the campaign, if the post-release patch is installed, the game will freeze. You have to uninstall the game, download and reinstall the game, load that save file and prevent it from auto-updating just to get past that part.

Still like that last I checked.

 

[saturnine]

Rogue Legacy added a few bosses that completely went against the entire design principle of the rest of the game, and added achievements to match, so if you had 100% achievements you lost that and to get it back required playing something completely different than the rest of the game. It actually retroactively made me like the rest of the game less.

Are you talking about the remixed bosses? How are they completely different from the rest of the game? Because you couldn't grind to overpower them?

If we're talking stupid achievements that go against the spirit of the game, Thanatophobia takes the cake. You're basically rolling the dice praying for good characters/map seeds.

 

[tedrotheredro]

Team Fortress Classic, can't remember the version of the patch (I think 1.5), but it was when Valve updated the Half Life netcode and made a bunch of other engine updates. There was some good things in the patch, but the major changes pissed off the community pretty bad and made a lot of people quit, entire clans ended up dying off. They neutered bunny hopping, conc jumping, and a few other things that massively changed the way competitive games were played. The skill gap between top players and average players was basically patched out. The competitive community continued for years, but that patch did some major damage and it was never able to fully recover.

Some people argued the patch made the game more accessible and allowed it to stay alive for longer, but that is debatable.

This is a great example. I was a hardcore TFC player and this patch changed the entire structure of the competitive game. The bunny hop and conc limiters were jarring and basically made scouts worthless. Medics and soldiers ruled thereafter. The new models didn't fit the hitboxes, but at least they allowed to use the old models.

There were a lot of positives, though. The net code was generally better, along with the expanded steam feaures, new scoreboard, better spectating/demos. It probably did help it last a bit longer, but the game was forever changed, generally for the worst.

 

[Mayor_McCheeze]

Yep.

I am interested about the Ps4 edition, but I am going to wait a year or two to pick it up.

Same. I owned the ps3 version so I felt like I flushed $60 down the toilet.

If I pick up the ps4 version, I have no problem waiting until it drops to the $5 range

Fuck those guys.