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Decline Biggest waste of potential in video games

Ash

Arcane
Joined
Oct 16, 2015
Messages
6,226
The entire Fable series

Well, I saluted but the entire Fable series is trash and never really had any potential to begin with. You prob. just fell for the Molyneux brand of bullshit.
 

Big Wrangle

Guest
Well, he isn't wrong. It had potentional... in a million quotation marks.
 

Okagron

Prophet
Joined
Mar 22, 2018
Messages
753
Final Fantasy 4: The After Years. They had an opportunity to come up with a brand new story, instead they decide to rehash most of the story of Final Fantasy 4, with only a couple of differences.

This and the fact the game was episodic. The game should have released all at once in one single package.
 
Joined
Nov 23, 2017
Messages
4,010
Arcanum: Of Steamworks and Magick Obscura. I love the game. It's one of my favorite game. And it is a great game. But the real-time/turn-based combat system was not good, it left the games combat in this weird inbetween place where the real-time aspect was far behind contemporaries like Nox and Diablo 2, and the turn-based combat was behind what they'd done in Fallout four years before. Luckily the stuff outside of combat is so fantastic it helps offset this weakness, but it's still a pretty large glaring weakness, and one that probably hurt the game (and the studio) quite a bit on release.

The lack of other things Fallout had like the 3D talking heads (whose expressions would change depending on if they were happy or mad with you and a line of questioning) and flavor text on things like combat also felt like a step back from things they'd done in Fallout. I could get the lack of talking heads, I mean that's some time and money there, but I never understood the lack of a log screen on the hub to give you more details about combat, the world around you, and little things that may be happening to you.

The backgrounds feel like somewhat of a missed opportunity too. They wouldn't all need it given their nature, but stuff like Son Of A Hero, being a runaway slave, Troll Offspring, and being a Frankenstein Monster alway felt like they could have used extra touches
 

pakoito

Arcane
Patron
Joined
Jun 7, 2012
Messages
3,086
Magicka 2. Magicka 1 was a fun self-contained beat'm'up in disguise. Instead of taking time to flesh out the world and add some depth, Paradox went with I'm not sure what, but it wasn't good.
 

a cut of domestic sheep prime

Guest
Yeah, Sims fails pretty hard at actually being worthwhile. Especially as the series went on and it became more cutesy and abstract.

Bloodlines really disappointed me in a lot of ways. There's a lot of FPS stuff that's either broken or just keeps me from enjoying the RPG aspects.

Icewindale series probably takes the cake though - has the infinity engine stuff I love, but the encounters are so bland and the story so weak that I don't care. The sequel is even worse. I couldn't get past the starting area it's so boring. It feels perhaps even more boring than POE and that's really saying something.

Speaking of POE, add that to the list for the same reason as Icewindale.

And then the X series of space sims is another massive fail in the long line of boring space sims. When devs will understand that people want to play something that's closer to Mass Effect with space combat and further from Merchant Number Cruncher 3d, I don't know.
 

sser

Arcane
Developer
Joined
Mar 10, 2011
Messages
1,866,661
Diablo 3 is probably my most "disappointing" game of all time. I wasn't even a big Diablo 2 player, but I really liked Diablo 1 and the third game looked incredibly good in its early development phase.

Bureau XCOM was without a doubt the most disappointing "game announcement" I've ever seen.

Temple of Elemental Evil was initially very, very disappointing until I got the Co8 mod.

Civilization 6 is disappointing in that it feels like the deathknell of a great series.
 

Cael

Arcane
Joined
Nov 1, 2017
Messages
20,287
A lot of games were disappointing because of bad bugs. Bloodlines, Diablo 3, ToEE and others were practically unplayable due to serious bugs on release.
 

a cut of domestic sheep prime

Guest
Bethesda attempts at Fallout. They had the best cRPG IP ever made, and they ruined it twice with franken-shooters.
It could never have been anything other than Oblivion with guns. We told you that it would be. It's less of a waste of potential and more of a delivery of exactly what little potential they had.
 

PorkBarrellGuy

Guest
A lot of games were disappointing because of bad bugs. Bloodlines, Diablo 3, ToEE and others were practically unplayable due to serious bugs on release.

Diablo 3 is just a turd sundae in general. Sad end for a good series with plenty of potential.
 

Cael

Arcane
Joined
Nov 1, 2017
Messages
20,287
A lot of games were disappointing because of bad bugs. Bloodlines, Diablo 3, ToEE and others were practically unplayable due to serious bugs on release.

Diablo 3 is just a turd sundae in general. Sad end for a good series with plenty of potential.
I didn't buy it, but I read about the massive furore about server issues, connectivity issues, lag, and all sorts of other indicators of a badly planned and executed central server architecture.
 

a cut of domestic sheep prime

Guest
Diablo 3 is just a turd sundae in general. Sad end for a good series with plenty of potential.
They lost me most of the way at MMO and the rest of the way with the dopey cartoon graphics and boring lore.
 

markec

Twitterbot
Patron
Joined
Jan 15, 2010
Messages
45,665
Location
Croatia
Codex 2012 Strap Yourselves In Codex Year of the Donut Codex+ Now Streaming! Dead State Project: Eternity Codex USB, 2014 Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2 Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag. Pathfinder: Wrath
PoE, finally you had Obsidian with free rein to do what they want without interference of those pesky publishers that are always at fault for all the lacks of polish and they had MCA on their writing team.
Yet they produced a mediocre at best game with probably the best writer in gaming only do bare minimum of writing.


Red Faction, a fps that featured destructible environment and marketed itself as a game where you could pave your own path trough missions.
In the end it was only a gimmick mostly used to find secrets and last mission was on a space station with no destructible environment.


Half Life 2. gravity gun was the best part of the game and you get it only for the ending.


Simon the Sorcerer 3, good script wasted by horrible engine.


Master of Orion 3, had potential to be the best game of series but ended up as a mess.


Heroes of Might and Magic 4, whenever I hear its beautiful soundtrack I imagine how great the game could have been if was in production for another 6 months.


Gothic 3, looked like it would be Gothic 2 but bigger but ended up as a Gothic 2 but bigger and completely broken.
 
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Self-Ejected

IncendiaryDevice

Self-Ejected
Village Idiot
Joined
Nov 3, 2014
Messages
7,407
Most recently?

Banished.

So much detail and atmosphere. but then it just stops dead. It pretends to be a micro-management game, but doesn't let you micro anything really useful. It pretends to be a survival game, but there's nothing much to survive. It pretends to be a builder game, but there's not much worth building. It gets old after a few hours in your first game.

But it could have been the best game of the year with just a little more work. It could have been the 'best city builder eveeeeeerrrrrr' with just an ounce or two more effort. As it is, it's just more front-loaded shit.
 

J_C

One Bit Studio
Patron
Developer
Joined
Dec 28, 2010
Messages
16,947
Location
Pannonia
Project: Eternity Wasteland 2 Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2 Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag. Pathfinder: Wrath
Half Life 2. gravity gun was the best part of the game and you get it only for the ending.
I don't know what version of HL2 you played, but you get the gravity gun fairly early in the game, in Chapter 5 (there are 13 chapters in total).
 

J_C

One Bit Studio
Patron
Developer
Joined
Dec 28, 2010
Messages
16,947
Location
Pannonia
Project: Eternity Wasteland 2 Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2 Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag. Pathfinder: Wrath
I will not stop complaining about The Secret World being an MMO instead of a regular single player RPG. It has maybe the best realised and most unique worlds in fantasy gaming, it is one of the best written and voice acted games ever, and they fucked it up with MMO gameplay. Fuck you Funcom!
 

markec

Twitterbot
Patron
Joined
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Messages
45,665
Location
Croatia
Codex 2012 Strap Yourselves In Codex Year of the Donut Codex+ Now Streaming! Dead State Project: Eternity Codex USB, 2014 Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2 Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag. Pathfinder: Wrath
Half Life 2. gravity gun was the best part of the game and you get it only for the ending.
I don't know what version of HL2 you played, but you get the gravity gun fairly early in the game, in Chapter 5 (there are 13 chapters in total).

I meant the supercharged version of gravity gun you get at the end of the game where you could use it kill people.
 

PorkBarrellGuy

Guest
Half Life 2. gravity gun was the best part of the game and you get it only for the ending.
I don't know what version of HL2 you played, but you get the gravity gun fairly early in the game, in Chapter 5 (there are 13 chapters in total).

I meant the supercharged version of gravity gun you get at the end of the game where you could use it kill people.

You mean the one that's actually logically consistent with how it grabs onto pieces of matter instead of just grabbing inanimate objects for some reason
 

Cyberarmy

Love fool
Patron
Joined
Feb 7, 2013
Messages
8,450
Location
Smyrna - Scalanouva
Divinity: Original Sin 2
I second Gothic 3, Secret World and Diablo 3.
But my main disappointment is Mass Effect series, especially with Andromeda they had a good chance to start over but they fucked it up harder than I imagined.


aa0.png
 

Egosphere

Arcane
Joined
Jan 25, 2018
Messages
1,909
Location
Hibernia
Temple of Elemental Evil for obvious reasons.

VtMB - needed another year in development to patch everything up. I would have scaled down the red-light districts and t&a as well to make it more serious. Gameplay was pretty bad. It seemed to straddle a bunch of genres, never excelling in any of them.

Silent Hill 4 - infuriating gameplay elements. Had some great enemies and settings, a fresh story that was a break from the 1-3 formula etc. but the 2nd half of the game is you backtracking across all of the levels you have already visited. They curtailed the puzzles and put more action ( which was actually shit ). At times it felt like the best game in the series, and then it'd fall flat on its face.

MGS2 - gameplay was solid, the setting was unique and pretty cool, but the anime-tier characters and situations just ruined it for me
 
Joined
Jan 28, 2015
Messages
891
Location
Canuckistan
My team has the sexiest and deadliest waifus you can recruit.
Star Wars: Rebellion. A Star Wars themed grand strategy game! Sounds awesome right? Well get ready for crap space battles, and a slow grindy campaign. Just making the epic space battle less of a chore would do so much to improve this game.
 
Self-Ejected

buru5

Very Grumpy Dragon
Patron
Joined
Apr 9, 2017
Messages
2,048
A lot of games were disappointing because of bad bugs. Bloodlines, Diablo 3, ToEE and others were practically unplayable due to serious bugs on release.

Diablo 3 is just a turd sundae in general. Sad end for a good series with plenty of potential.

End? It ain't over yet. Diablo 4 is coming, no doubt about it.
 

McPlusle

Savant
Joined
May 11, 2017
Messages
319
Civilization 6 is disappointing in that it feels like the deathknell of a great series.
And 5 wasn't? That was the one that turned into stackless children's shit, not 6.
 

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