Was their ever a trend or trends in genres you like that hurt the genre for you?

[TheEchosOfTheCyborg]

Well not necessarily kill the genre for you, but diminish your enjoyment of said genre or made you sick of it because of it's overuse and complacency?

I remember seeing this quite a bit when action games decided they ALL needed tons and tons of QTEs and people get sick of it and people stopped playing them because of the sheer number of games that were doing it and the sheer number in the games (not helping was that many of them were button mashing QTEs which for some made the game extra difficult due to physical health issues devs just didn't care about).

I saw similar issues when AAA companies were trying to turn every horror franchise into a more action pack ride after RE4 succeeded in doing that (forgetting RE4 also had horror and also stayed true to its routes in many ways) like Dead Space, RE5 and 6, FEAR 3 etc, plus the inclusion of co-op seemed to kill the genre for many horror fans until Amnesia bucked the trend.

With that being, said, was their ever a trend or trends in genres you like that hurt the genre for you?

For me, it was the standardisation in gameplay in open world games that happened last gen where all of them felt the need to copy GTA and Assassin's Creed style of gameplay and especially GTA's driving and Creed's fight mechanics, it was and still is everywhere and I just got bored and fed up of constantly playing with the same type of mechanics over and over again. Not helped that I don't like the driving in many of these game anyway, the vehicles always feels way too floaty and fragile, more so then actual vehicles, especially motorbikes which just feel more wonky and never fun to play (so of course they always add races to these games).

Since 2014, the only real new Open World games I've really play were Horizon Zero Dawn and Spider-Man, the former felt good and the latter, while still using the same old fight mechanics, had enough for me to overlook it. Plus there was Yakuza 0 which sans the really bad Disco gameplay, felt like it did something no other recent Open World game did, been convenient for the player. All the others feel like they want to waste your time with constant pointless collectfest and time wasting getting area to area while Yakuza 0 genuinely felt it wanted you to enjoy the story and quest first and foremost and made sure it wasn't wasting your time.

 

[Yuntu]

The "linearity is bad" trend hurt JRPGs in my opinion.

 

[Theswweet]

Loadouts in multiplayer shooters are bunk and I hate them. Have weapon pickups.

 

[EarthPainting]

I've never liked corpse run mechanics. Didn't care for them in western RPGs and MMOs, but at least they were pretty much contained within genres I didn't care too much about. After the Souls boom, I've been seeing them in more and more things, including 2D platformers. They're mechanics that make me want to explore less, and if I die again before reaching my corpse, it just makes me less invested in the game all-together.

 

[Aurc]

Automated climbing in action adventure titles. In my opinion, this reached its peak with last gen's Enslaved: Odyssey to the West. Despite being a good game, it was hampered by boring, no-fail climbing sections where you essentially held up and spammed the X button to ascend to the top of any given platform section.

 

[nbnt]

When first person shooters went from being fast and frantic with crazy enemies to being slow and boring military shooters.

 

[Ramsay]

Otaku pandering in JRPGs. Fire Emblem, Xenoblade and Persona have all fallen victim to it, to the detriment of the writing and characterisation in some of the games, and the latter two franchises have yet to recover from it.

 

[Strings]

Otaku pandering in JRPGs. Fire Emblem, Xenoblade and Persona have all fallen victim to it, to the detriment of the writing and characterisation in some of the games, and the latter two franchises have yet to recover from it.

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The sales success of a bunch of pander-y mainstream-ish stuff recently has me bummed out (Atelier Ryza, Xenoblade 2, FE, etc) re: the future of those properties.

 

[Khasim]

Shoehorning RPG elements into action games. I'd rather unlock new stuff through impactful story moments, exploration or defeating a boss before I'm supposed to than just wait until I slaughter enough sheep so I can buy some skill that should have been available from the start.

 

[Yuntu]

Otaku pandering in JRPGs. Fire Emblem, Xenoblade and Persona have all fallen victim to it, to the detriment of the writing and characterisation in some of the games, and the latter two franchises have yet to recover from it.

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I do agree with character designs, but I don't think XC2s writing has really suffered from that. Persona though I fully agree on. Havn't played FE yet so can't judge that.

 

[rude]

That linearity is outdated and open world is the way to go

there is nothing wrong with linearity if you hire good level designers

 

[Melchiah]

I remember seeing this quite a bit when action games decided they ALL needed tons and tons of QTEs and people get sick of it and people stopped playing them because of the sheer number of games that were doing it and the sheer number in the games (not helping was that many of them were button mashing QTEs which for some made the game extra difficult due to physical health issues devs just didn't care about).

I saw similar issues when AAA companies were trying to turn every horror franchise into a more action pack ride after RE4 succeeded in doing that (forgetting RE4 also had horror and also stayed true to its routes in many ways) like Dead Space, RE5 and 6, FEAR 3 etc, plus the inclusion of co-op seemed to kill the genre for many horror fans until Amnesia bucked the trend.

With that being, said, was their ever a trend or trends in genres you like that hurt the genre for you?

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Yes, aside from action-oriented horror, I dislike the current trend of turning horror games (like RE7 and RE2 remake) into run & hide chases in Amnesia's fashion, and most AAA action-adventures being open world these days. The latter is the main reason why I haven't bought many games during the past two years.

As for QTEs, funnily enough RE4 had them in abundance, and none of them was actually fun to go through.

 

[Jakisthe]

MOBAs taking over for RTSs sucks.

Platformers moving to semi-open-ended and/or tossing in a lot of moves in lieu of linearity is *always* a bad choice.

Also, this might be too broad (and seem trolly, but I promise it's not) but man the past 2 decades of gaming have really pushed hard on having "good stories", inevitably to the detriment (on a monetary resource basis) to other aspects and hoo boy do game stories not do it for me.

 

[NekoNeko]

waifu stuff in jrpg.

 

[Ramsay]

I do agree with character designs, but I don't think XC2s writing has really suffered from that. Persona though I fully agree on. Havn't played FE yet so can't judge that.

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The fanservice in Three Houses is there, but it's nowhere near as blatant as it was in Awakening and Fates (it's probably less so than Echoes as well) - and it also comes with a drastic improvement in the quality of the writing. It's far from perfect, but it's far better than the latter two examples.

Xenoblade 2 and Persona 5, on the other hand, both suffer immensely from trying to simultaneously be both a serious, philosophical story and a wacky harem anime, which are fundamentally opposed to each other - and they fail at both as a result. I think that Xenoblade 2 has the worst scenes from a writing standpoint (the ending is Game of Thrones' Season 8-level bad, and the Chapter 6 ending is equally bad), but Persona's handling of sensitive subjects is incredibly insulting (it would otherwise be a serviceable anime story).

Edit: I think a good example of this would be the quality of the "fanservice" characters in the modern Fire Emblem games. Three Houses doesn't have that much fanservice in it, and Dorothea is one the best characters in the series (partially because the fanservice is integrated well with her characterization, and partially because the writers actually took the time to develop her character in ways that don't relate to fanservice). Awakening had quite a bit more fanservice, and Tharja's a middle-of-the-road character, whereas Fates had a ton of fanservice, and Camilla's one of the worst characters in the series.

 

[Annabel]

Racing games for the most part have strayed away from arcade style racing and have gone towards realism or open world which is a bummer either way for me.

 

[TheEchosOfTheCyborg]

The fanservice in Three Houses is there, but it's nowhere near as blatant as it was in Awakening and Fates - and it also comes with a drastic improvement in the quality of the writing. It's far from perfect, but it's far better than the latter two examples.

Xenoblade 2 and Persona 5, on the other hand, both suffer from trying to simultaneously be both a serious, philosophical story and a wacky harem anime - and they fail at both. I think that Xenoblade 2 has the worst scenes from a writing standpoint (the ending is Game of Thrones' Season 8-level bad, and the Chapter 6 ending is equally bad), but Persona's handling of sensitive subjects is incredibly insulting (it would otherwise be a serviceable anime story).

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While I can't speak to those series, an issue that could arise from it is the possibility that the women character get way less exposure and limit their appearances because of it. Fighting games in another genre very guilty to pandering to fan service (except oddly Netherrealm of studios improving greatly while also selling way more) and we saw with Mai being unable to appear in Smash how over sexualization can't hurt a character.

 

[Andri]

Quite a few things, and sadly most of them in the same genre.

1. Voiceacting in RPGs hurt the richness of their worlds, since having to VO everything means lower budget productions just have less lore, since they put more money into VO instead of writers.(it might be better commercially, but i prefer reading myself)
2. Action combatification of RPGs, most painfull example being FF15. I loved most of the older FF titles, but i never managed to get into the combat system of FF15. Hoping FF7R will have turnbased combat options for the eventual PC release, otherwise that will be ruined for me too.
3. High APM requirements for "normal" play in strategy games. I get that its good for the esport part of the community, but for example with the newer AOE campains it feels like they were made for esport people playing campain, instead of being made for normal people like me that arent that fast.
4. In general, pandering to the hardcore/esport/youtube/twitch crowd has diminished what i like about various games. Like balancing Weapons for PVP because the streamers whine, causing the weapon to become no longer fun for single player/pve.

 

[Mr_Zombie]

In case of action-adventure games:
- open world
- RPG-lite
- crafting

 

[Another]

Killstreak rewards in competitive shooters. Ridiculous.

 

[Melchiah]

That linearity is outdated and open world is the way to go

there is nothing wrong with linearity if you hire good level designers

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I couldn't agree more. That's why games like Bloodborne and Driveclub stand out even more for me this gen. The quality of the world/track design just makes me want to return to them again and again. It feels good when you eventually master them and the gameplay mechanics. Very few open world games have good combat mechanics to begin with, and roaming the needlessly large maps aimlessly does nothing for me.

 

[Hrodulf]

Japanese games in general attempting to chase western trends is part of what made last gen so bad to me. I guess some of the worst ideas never came to fruition (Mega Man X FPS reboot), but there were too many instances of well-loved series being turned into western games for little benefit.

Also, companies trying to make everything under the sun open world, even now.

 

[Deleted member 8593]

harem tropes have forever tainted the genre

 

[Ramsay]

harem tropes have forever tainted the genre

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Congrats, you just killed off most of my interest in the FF7 remake! (please tell me it's not an actual thing)

In all due seriousness, good god, the Xenoblade 2 ending. They had to take whatever remained of the tension in an already contrived scene, and with it, ruin both Rex's and Pyra/Mythra's character arcs, all for the sake of giving Rex his harem.

 

[Finale Fireworker]

Coop and horror. :/

First it took Resident Evil from me. Then it took Dead Space. Resident Evil has recovered. Dead Space probably never will.

Why were so many games implementing coop at this time? Was it Gears of War?

 

[oni-link]

Racing games moving away from arcade racing has made me overall a lot less interested in the genre

I'm also seriously disinterested in any game with GaaS elements to it. On paper it means free content updates, but in reality it often means massive grinds, samey content and begging the player for more and more money

Online games pushing service elements to the max is what has pretty much put me off all online multiplayer

 

[lazygecko]

The obsession with micromanagement and ultimately pandering to esports in RTS is probably the biggest one for me. It was a slow gradual process starting with the repetitive mantra in the press that base building and resource gathering are archaic elements, then Warcraft 3's focus on hero units, the new wave of base-less strategy games being hailed as "the future of the genre", and finally the proliferation of MOBAs being the nail in the coffin.

 

[shotopunx]

E-sports in fighting games.

 

[Bulebule]

Action adventures: Skill trees and leveling up/getting skill points. Most of the time they feel unnecessary bloat to the game and I rather have different techniques/weapons (that are actually useful) unlock automatically as you progress through the story.

RPGs: Huge worlds with lengthy distances between points of interests with basically nothing happening elsewhere. I rather have smaller areas with plenty of content/secrets.

Any genre in general: Huge number of collectable items that don't give any actual satisfaction after collecting them. I rather have smaller amount of them behind puzzles like Luigi's Mansion 3 does. I don't care about the overall reward but the journey to get them has to be fun as well.

 

[spineduke]

health regen for FPS games. it has a huge impact on encounter design, on the way you play and overall difficulty. going into a battle with low health and limited ammo is supposed to be challenging and game designers attempts to gloss that over really pushed me away from SP campaigns.

another - ubisofts approach to open world design turned me off from the majority of openworld games. dropping hundreds of icons on the map doesn't make a game more fun or interesting.

 

[Ventilaator]

JRPGs suddenly decided that turn based combat is the worst thing in the world, and I never understood what the problem was supposed to be. People looked at the different genres that exist, and how you can choose between action games, and games with slower, more methodical combat, and collectively decided that it would be much better if the choice instead was between action games, and action games that suck.

 

[Deleted member 23850]

Combat taking precedent over narrative.

 

[Baccus]

Crafting. Why? Why would you put that into games as a required system? It's specially egregious ok games when it's a single menu button press.

 

[Oinone]

I'm not a fan of the trend to reduce the gameplay in Point n Click Adventures, making it all about dialogues and decisions with a handful of endings instead of riddles and puzzles. (I tend to call them "telltale-esque".)

 

[Redcrayon]

Coop and horror. :/

First it took Resident Evil from me. Then it took Dead Space. Resident Evil has recovered. Dead Space probably never will.

Why were so many games implementing coop at this time? Was it Gears of War?

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I think so. Plus perhaps some aspects could also carry over to the mandatory online arena multiplayer too. Dead Space had it's own identity as a beautifully linear rollercoaster of an action horror game (it even had a light path you could use to guide you to the next objective), but the second one, while getting rave reviews as an action game, lost the elements I loved about the first. I even preferred Dead Space: Extraction to DS2 and 3.

'Social link' and 'base' stuff in rpgs is one for me. I always liked the conversations and web of relationships in Fire Emblem games, it feels like the force has something more than a campaign goal binding them to risk everything for each other. However, having to manage it through tea parties and choosing the right thing to say to them in TH just feels like a step too far in Persona's direction for me. Same goes for the sheer weight of stuff between battles, but at least in TH it's in an interesting setting that gels with the politics of the world, as opposed to in Fates where the shitty 'my castle' stuff was just a way of bloating out the runtime. I appreciate I've always been more into the strategy side of it and the chesslike battle maps than that stuff though.

 

[Jolkien]

Heavy fanservice and "shipping" in JRPG.

Game as a service in general, they're all design to be kept being played but I have a finite amount of time in a week.

 

[CannonFodder52]

Ubisoft open world design that feels like I'm clocked in at work clearing out a checklist.

 

[Foxnull]

Checklist gameplay in pretty much every open world game nowadays. There are some saving graces, but it's annoying.

 

[ara]

Another vote for harem garbage/otaku pandering in JRPGs from here.

 

[Deleted member 4262]

Fanservice.

 

[durrrklin]

That time where every FPS was chasing the CoD formula. I'm so glad studios are moving away from that and making some great FPS games again.

 

[Fatoy]

When all multiplayer FPSs rushed to incorporate heroes / classes.

 

[Deleted member 45414]

Lack of singleplayer content in fighting games was a bummer for me personally, I don't want to play with the killers online, but I still like fighting games...

Also local co-op more or less disappearing in all genres sucked.

 

[AmirMoosavi]

Automated climbing in action adventure titles. In my opinion, this reached its peak with last gen's Enslaved: Odyssey to the West. Despite being a good game, it was hampered by boring, no-fail climbing sections where you essentially held up and spammed the X button to ascend to the top of any given platform section.

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Yeah, I missed the platforming challenges of the old-school Tomb Raider games when playing the 2013 reboot or stuff like the Assassin's Creed games. Even Far Cry 3's automated climbing was a turn-off for me.

That time where every FPS was chasing the CoD formula. I'm so glad studios are moving away from that and making some great FPS games again.

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I tried playing Halo 3 recently on my cousin's 360 and was hankering for minutes at the start of the game just to shoot something. Loved DOOM 2016 and looking forward to Eternal in March.

 

[Sprat]

Action combat replacing turn based has all but killed my enthusiasm for jrpgs bar a few exceptions where they stuck to turn based.

 

[EdgeXL]

Emphasis on headshots in shooters

 

[mute]

"Everything needs to be in the same scale" in JRPGs

 

[Scarlet Spider]

Cinematic walking sections.

 

[KORNdog]

i don't know if this counts as a "trend", but the OTS camera in the action adventure genre. there was a weird obsession with it after RE4 came out, and it makes everything feel so rigid and clunky. it hasn't ruined the genre since there are still a lot out there who didn't jump on that bandwagon, but it hurt franchises i loved (RE) and made caring about new ones almost impossible (gears of war)

 

[Dreamboum]

Shameless pandering in JRPGs, especially Xenoblade 2 that walks on a very thin line that veers into pedophilia and is celebrated for it.

The move to action-RPG in general. Most JRPGs going action utterly fails at that.

Overall we have just come to celebrate JRPGs that are doing the worst things to the point that all the wrong ones are getting successes and all the best ones will remain in obscurity. It's a constant race to the bottom. I feel like the success of a JRPG in the West is entirely reliant on how much horny posting you can make about it on social media.