Worst Decisions game makers have made

[avitush]

Just a few things I dislike in general:

I don't like it when newly released games have day one DLC. I just paid full price (usually $60+) for a new release title, but this character or that weapon or that costume will be $6 extra. Or you can unlock it all in game, but of course, that requires a 1,000 hour grind that nobody wants to do. I guess it's good for the publishers/other companies involved because it makes them money, but it still feels shitty to me.

Rushing and crunch times where people are working crazy hours a week for months at a time to rush a game out the door. That's a shitty way to treat employees in general (at game companies or otherwise), and it also usually means the game will be riddled with bugs and possibly unplayable on launch day because it wasn't properly tested. I miss the old "it'll get done when it gets done" thing that Blizzard and a few others used to do.

Pushing political agendas in games. Keep that shit out of my fantasy worlds.

Online only games. It's acceptable in MMOs and certain other games, but if your game has a single-player mode, that single-player mode should be playable offline.

The "everything must be realistic" idea. "Women can't fight in bikinis and heels! Unrealistic battle attire!" "Guns don't work like that! Reloading should take way longer!" "That guy should've been dead after the first bullet he took! Why is he getting back up??" I don't give a shit about things like that, because I play video games to escape reality.

Also any kind of decision that's geared towards esports but makes the game less fun for regular players.

[Okacz]

Ubisoft ruining HoMM 6 & 7

This. Damn, this franchise could still glue a ton of people to their chairs playing, why didn't they spend more than $15 on HoMM VII?

For me, the biggest "worst decision" in video game franchise is Assassin's Creeds choice of needing to, for some reason, ferquently break the game where you are an awesome ancient killer to have you wait in those present day cutscene-like levels. Black Flag had it the worst, not even any gameplay was going on, just a game forcefully dragging you away from being a pirate, saying "here, be a guy at a computer for half an hour now". Like, who the actual fuck keeps adding those sections in.

That crunch periods are normal and a good thing.

With all the news coming out about dev teams doing 70-100 hour work weeks for MONTHS at a time, I'm not sure I even want to play games anymore..

Fortunately, many companies are really moving away from that. It's proven that it doesn't increase efficiency, but it's rather a relic of the past when games were made by 1 guy sitting 24/7 at the same chair. Some companies are dumb enough to enforce it, others are even dumber by bragging about it, but "necessary crunch" seems to be slowly going away. Smaller crunches still are present before demos/milestones, but that can be said about almost any industry.

[Rogalicus]

For me, the biggest "worst decision" in video game franchise is Assassin's Creeds choice of needing to, for some reason, ferquently break the game where you are an awesome ancient killer to have you wait in those present day cutscene-like levels. Black Flag had it the worst, not even any gameplay was going on, just a game forcefully dragging you away from being a pirate, saying "here, be a guy at a computer for half an hour now". Like, who the actual fuck keeps adding those sections in.

Well, this is pretty much the only thing that connects narrative of all games, so there's not much choice.

[Jimmy Thick]

The biggest blunder that comes to mind for me is every expansion after Wraith of the Litch King in WoW. That was the series best expansion and to me it seemed the whole game was leading to the LK right after Warcraft 3 and after they really didn't seem to have a good plan in place to keep the game going as just about every expansion has sucked since. They always kept saying how they read all their forums posts even if they don't respond yet they don't seem to listen. Personally I think they need to flush everyone currently involved in development and start over with new blood, its at the point where something new needs to be tried out.

Next would be micro transactions. I'm not talking about season passes as long as the season passes provide worthwhile content, Dragon Age Inquisition comes to mind with a great season pass worth of content, I'm talking about the nickle and dime effect. Who buys card packs for sports titles? What the flaming fuck does it do? I've never bought one I don't see the point yet every sports title has these card packs.

[Tiwack]

Require a beast CPU and only a puny graphics card while minimum- and recommended-settings-margin is nonexistent.

Collectibles, wait-to-play, pay-to-win casino-games especially for phones/browsers.

[Okacz]

Well, this is pretty much the only thing that connects narrative of all games, so there's not much choice.

With "Assassin's Creed" franchise name I don't think it would be a stretch to just make each game about assassin from a different era, perhaps all connected by a symbol or something. I don't think anyone would be bothered to care how each game connects to one another besides the fact that you play as assassin in them. Far Cry games simply throw you into different worlds with different outposts to capture without giving a shit about connecting them in any way. Damn, Final Fantasy is a series where you need to be REALLY into the lore to even notice that the games are connected in any way, and it has like 50 games in it.

[McNeil]

If I would look at the whole company and not just a few people:

- Rushing games because the holidays are near, despite that the game is clearly not finished
- Trying to appeal to everyone as much as possible, which will just make the game feel shallow
- Always going for the multiplayer aspects, even in games that were supposed to be singleplayer
- Ruining your game's economy by some cash shop
- Spending the vast majority of their budget on advertising instead of using it on the actual game
- Making promises that they can not keep
- Merging with a major publishing company like EA and Activision who will clearly affect their games quality negatively

[Greyvax]

Wildstar catering to the "hardcore raider" crowd. By 2014, most MMO players were casuals, and as a subscription-based game, they alienated like 95% of the playerbase that would play Wildstar. It's a shame because the game was a lot of fun, but sadly they couldn't bring back the initial subscribers with their Reloaded F2P release and by that point the developer crew had been slashed to a minimum.

[The Stormbringer]

Requiring Day 1 patches and updates rather than having the game ready to go out of box. Requiring you to be online to play the game even if it's a solo game. Not allowing LAN play anymore. Overloading a game with DLC and microtransactions. Recreating the same game over and over with minor changes, year after year.

[Easo]

1. Always online.
2. Rushing the game and fixing it after the release. A bit niche, but Imperator: Rome is just another case.
3. Lootboxes. Though great from business perspective, of course. Can't blame for that.

[breadisfunny]

the ending of mass effect 3.

[Uselessrouge]

making games casual/ console friendly .

Division2 could be a nice game but dev's had to fuck it up , where ever they could.. but yeah at least they sold the game guess that is all that counts now a days