Note: This article lists examples which take place within fandoms; not TV Tropes's opinion as to whether a change is for the worse. TV Tropes doesn't have opinions. The focus is on overreaction about minor changes.
Gaming in general...you get fans who whine about formulaic games, not finding anything different, and crying for new things. So now games try and do something different, you know, to spice it up a bit or set it apart from other games...But guess what? Now everyone cries, They Changed It, Now It Sucks and that it's a worthless gimmick and refuse to give experiments a chance saying "But we never WANTED That kind of stuff!". Shame, because video games are very keen to asking a council of cabalists what a "game" is, and if it's not pressing buttons or killing people, it's not a game. Ironically if you ask people about the mouse, which uses similar but smaller scale technology, they won't tell you about anything "gimmicky" about that...despite that the key difference was that they actually gave the mouse a chance.
When the Roblox development team updates something or something happens to persuade people to buy Builder's Club (keep in mind it's only $6 for one month,) all hell breaks loose on the forums.
Jagged Alliance: Back in Action gets the FULL treatment before even being released! At the time of this writing there is only the demo, yet but people whine all about it being to hard, that the turn based style is gone, that there is real time action, that you are not bound by fields anymore and so on and so on. Apparently they did something new and now the whole franchise is tainted.
Kid Icarus Uprising seems to be getting this for being a "Star Fox copy" rather than the 2D platformer/shooter that the original was. People claiming this probably only watch the on-rails sky portions and comment before even seeing the ground portions (which make the game more akin to Sin And Punishment).
Even then, there are people who bash on the game for deviating too much from the original, calling it a generic third-person shooter. (Never mind that not only are there melee atacks too, 1. some enemies are best taken out with them, such as one type of enemy that swarms the hero, Pit, when shots are used and 2. some weapons have poor or no ranged attacks.) Not only does the 3DS actually have, you know, the power to make something heck of a lot better than a 2D Metroid clone, it's brought the series up to today's standards and will probably let it live on as another one of Nintendo's flagship series.
Counter-Strike suffers from this in loads with fans going to obscene lengths to remain pure. Version 1.6? They ruined it compared to 1.3! Version 1.3? They ruined it compared to 1.0! Version 1.0? They ruined it compared to the beta! Not to mention Condition Zero or Source. Some extreme fans even argue that Counter-Strike can only be played in a superior fashion (yes, they do mean performance-wise) with genuine pre-millenium hardware.
Not to mention that a Counter-Strike: Source update caused over 30,000 people to sign a petition (that was full of false and outdated information) to revert the update. Some also claimed that it was becoming "cartoonypre-school much likeTF2."
And now with Counter-Strike: Global Offensive's release, the fandom hate and love is divided severely, just like with Source - to the point that even some Source players vehemently refuse to touch GO.
Elite Beat Agents got a lot of this before it came out with fans complaining "It's not a Japanese setting!" (despite that it was supposed to not be this) and "Ashlee Simpson? Cher?!" Some even went as far as to call it a rip-off despite being made by the same company. When people actually got to play (and with the gameplay upgrades and still-goofy setting) this has abated significantly (and it helps that Japanese fans of the original game liked it as well).
This trope perfectly describes the Need for Speed series' fanbase reaction to NFS ProStreet doing away with the cop chases in NFS Most Wanted and NFS Carbon in favor of something more realistic and organized. EA responds by going back to the well with NFS Undercover. NFS Undercover also happens to be the worst-reviewed game in the series.Take That, fanbase!
While almost universally regarded as an improvement on at least the last couple of games before it, Tomb Raider: Legend saw a lot of contention among both the fanbase and others, for very linear level design, easy puzzles, too much action and spoon-feeding sidekicks. Along with some considering Lara's changed personality too much in the direction of Lighter and Softer... and accusations of her getting too much character development.
Tomb Raider: Anniversary went a long way to satisfying those irritated by most of the above things, but causes some division over certain character design and storyline changes from the game it is based off. Plus there are certain room cuts that are near-impossible to defend as anything other than being due to time constraints; especially when they contrast with brilliantly remade sections.
Neo Contra. Konami decided to try something new, changing the game to an Ikari Warriors style overhead run-n-gun. While not completely unredeemable like the PS1 Contra games, it was criticized for its short length and lack of difficulty compared to its Nintendo Hard predecessors. Konami saw the error of their ways, and changed back to the classic style for Contra 4 on the DS.
When Square Enix games are ported, they frequently get new translations. If the old translations were completely incompetent (like Final Fantasy IV), no one really cares much. But heaven forbid the original was halfway competent, particularly if it was written by Ted Woolsey (who had to work within time constraints and the limitations imposed by the need to fit the game into a 24 megabit cartridge and Nintendo of America's censorship policies.) The script may be an outright improvement, but fans will whine left and right.
Similarly, Final Fantasy Tactics got a new translation with the PSP port, with the original script having been notorious for Engrish and riddled with translation errors and widely criticised at the time of release for how utterly inept it was in light of the serious subject matter. Fast-forward to 2007 and the new script was immediately derided for not being as "campy", and the corrections to the numerous mistranslations and language errors completely ignored. Changing the names of characters didn't go well with fans either
Final Fantasy Tactics Advance was scorned by many Tactics fans for the art style and the story becoming "too kiddy" compared to the first Tactics that was dark and gritty. This opinion has not changed for A2.
And the same thing has repeated itself for the new translation of Chrono Trigger. The script is a lot closer to the Japanese script now, which has led to some amusing diversions (namely that the "Good Morning, Crono!" advertising campaign is quoting a line that was changed for the new script), but also a few like Frog no longer speaking with Ye Olde Butcherede Englishe, which is a mortal sin according to some people.
Fans have been known to say that that the retranslation in the Game Boy Advance version Final Fantasy VI is "drier" and that Kefka has been made into a more serious character. This is an outright lie!! Exactly two of Kefka's one-liners were modified at all; one turned "HATE HATE HATE HATE (etc.)" into a long list of seemingly random insults, and the other is that after seeing Figaro Castle dig under the sand, he declares Edgar a "son of a submariner/sandworm" (depending on the version). What's more, Kefka gets new one liners.
Seriously, the advanced version changes a rather ordinary line about him ordering his soldiers to eradicate those who stand in their way to "There's a reason 'oppose' rhymes with 'dispose'!"
The apparent source of confusion over this is actually a fan-sub that was produced for the game's SNES version, which was more faithful to the original Japanese version and did remove most of Kefka's more humorous moments due to a combination of the Japanese script's jokes not translating well to English, and the translator just thinking that villains should always mean Serious Business in any event. Which really translates into the translator Completely Missing the Point about localizing the games to different audiences.
The official forums for Starcraft 2 are constantly flooded with complaints about changes being made to the graphics, army unit rosters, and interface. Most of the released changes are improvements to make the game simpler and more efficient to play, but a very vocal segment of the player base thinks of compensating for the slow, clunky interface as part of the challenge of the game, and that the changes will remove physical skill from multiplayer. Another segment thinks that strategy games should be about strategic decisions, not about who can click faster. These complaints have been around almost since the moment the game was announced to the public, and persist to this day.
One of the most popular complaints among self-styled pro-gamers (opposed to actual pro-gamers, who have remained relatively quiet) is that units gather minerals and gas much more intelligently, and move in formation, which dramatically reduces the overall amount of necessary clicking. How to mine and how to move units are the very first two things players learn when making the transition from complete newbie to even the lowest tiers of casual play. Adding to the irony is that Blizzard added a multitude of activated abilities to each faction which do require skill and planning to use properly, which compensates for the loss of action in micro and macro.
The game has gained a lot of post-release backlash and hate. People say that the changes Blizzard made are bad like making country music for the Terran, splitting the campaign in one third, changing the way the missions are played... And don't even start about the new Battle.net, especially with the custom games.
Diablo III is already getting this with people complaining that it's now too colorful. They've even started a petition wanting to replace the entirety of Diablo III with act 3 of Diablo II. Numerous counter-petitions have already been launched, and Blizzard has pointed out why Darker and Edgier graphics would be implausible or unplayable.
Here's a fun experiment - go into a games forum and loudly claim that the remake, Metal Gear Solid: The Twin Snakes, has superior voice acting because Mei Ling was never supposed to have a Chinese accent anyway. Actually, maybe you're better off not doing that.
The Silent Hill series has suffered from this ever since the second game came out (it was dramatically different in theme and tone from the first game) and every new game in the series inspires rage in a certain segment of the fanbase. There's even a 'documentary' series called The Real Silent Hill Experience half of which talks about the first four games, the other half a non-stop bitch fest about every game in the series after the fourth. Basically, the fanbase has two camps: Those who appreciate the series as a whole, and those who hate any game in the series Team Silent did not create.
Silent Hill 4: The Room, although a good game in its own right, had gameplay way too different from the rest of the series, partly because it wasn't originally supposed to be a SH game, and lacked much of the horror atmosphere of its predecessors (e.g. no darkness requiring a flashlight).
The funny thing about this is that Word of God stated that the game was always supposed to be a Silent Hill title.
Silent Hill 5: Homecoming is viewed this way by fans of the first three games. It changed the combat system to be less clumsy, and didn't stick precisely to the original trilogy's "mythology". Though it's still a good game and is viewed by about half the fanbase as a worthy addition to the series, the other half (rather loudly) says that the American developers just don't get the series — which is a bit odd, as Silent Hill is and always was, according to the developers, intended as an homage to American horror and was inspired by such American films as Jacob's Ladder and Eraserhead.
This seems to be the fate of the newly-announced "re-imagining" of the first game on the Wii, which has changed the formula far more than either of the previous two games. Oddly, many fan complaints focus on the inclusion of a touch-screen phone rather than any of the more drastic alterations.
There's already complaining from fans of the series that since Akira Yamaoka is not composing the music for Silent Hill 8, it's "not really a Silent Hill game."
People are already screaming it's ruined with the announced ninth game Book of Memories, which is just an action-packed multiplayer game that has nothing to do with the original storyline.
Command And Conquer Tiberium Wars was critized by original Westwood fans for changing stylization for more realistic Twenty Minutes into the Future atmosphere. This was justified in-game and exotic technologies even reappeared in the datadisc. That however changed nothing, as the hate comes from that is not made by Westwood. Same with Command And Conquer Red Alert 3, mainly for adding third faction: Animesque Imperialist Japanes.
Command And Conquer Tiberian Twilight is another instance, but this time fully justified. They realy changed it. CHANGED IT A LOT. Basically, they changed every single game mechanic including Command And Conquer Economy and other franchise signature features.
Games becoming easier to appeal more to newer fans and to dispel complaints of games having tedious elements (such as requiring the player to grind due to a lack of Leaked Experience or removing Guide Dang It moments) improved or removed entirely, or having the balance worked out has emerged. Especially with the spike of casual gaming.
Fans of point and click adventure games had whined about the emergence of adventure games where the player could not make the game unwinnable through Guide Dang It moments or even get a game over by the character being killed. This meant that a player could brute-force their way through the game via Trial and Error.
Some such fans complained that the games required less thinking since it was possible to use every single item on a plot barrier without getting a game over for getting it wrong or even saying a wrong conversational option. Despite that these were actually features of adventure games that were criticized by gaming magazines and non-fans alike.
Other fans complained about games like Torin's Passage including an in-game hint system that was entirely optional.
Some fans even complained about games like Kings Quest V removing the requirement to type in commands on the keyboard, meaning that players would not have to type "Look" on every screen or know that a 2x2 pixel square on the ground was a tile that would be important for a puzzle, or even that something that looks to be part of the landscape is in fact an item you should pick up.
A similar reaction was seen with the release of Dungeons & Dragons 4th edition "oversimplifying" the game, despite that 3rd edition started off the same way compared to Dungeons & Dragons 2nd edition.
The announcement of Nintendo's "Super Guide" feature that would enable people to get a hint for puzzles or even watch the game play itself has caused an absolute bawfest amongst self-proclaimed hardcore gamers who cannot have fun experiencing the story or enjoying the gameplay unless it gives them a challenge. The feature naturally turned out to be optional, meaning players could easily just ignore the assistance, though some games indulge in Easy Mode Mockery by taking away a Bragging Rights Reward if you are ever even given the option to get help.
DMC 2's version of Dante is especially polarizing. Looks? Best in the series? Personality? Too quiet and serious. Greater exaggerated by the DMC 3 crowd.
Vergil - The hate is still strong since some fans ren't receptive of the idea of Vergil actually being a good guy
Despite being a reboot and being in its own continuity, Dm C is getting the greatest amount of flak. Dante no longer has long white hair and instead has shorter black hair with a few graying areas in there, and because of his darker coat, has been mis-labeled as emo. Criticism is also directed towards his personality, with older fans being displeased at the completely different tone set by the previous games and the cursing at every opportunity the character gets.
Now that the game's out, it's had the typical They Changed It, Now It Sucks release. It has an overwhelmingly positive critical reception, a 4/10 user score on Metacritic due to zero bombing with most concerns from before release turning out to be true (especially when it came to the new Dante), and even the obligatory petition, although in this case it was a petition to the White House arguing that the game's mere existence infringed the author's rights. In other words, just another Monday in the modern gaming industry.
The Wii in general has been complained about that there were not enough hardcore games, despite that puzzle games and "casual games" with a staff of maybe 30-100 people can be produced for a fraction of the time and money of a "Hardcore" game with a much larger staff and budget...or that the PC actually is covered in "Casual games" like Diner Dash and Bejeweled and has been since it emerged as a gaming platform.
Most MMORPG gamers who enjoyed games like EverQuest and Ragnarok Online have been up in arms against World Of Warcraft and Guild Wars's attempts to appeal to people who did not like games that required the player to grind a lot, and how many new MMORPGs were trying to reduce the amount of grinding required and to offer descriptions for spells and abilities. But despite this, Game magazines, gaming websites, and other such forms of media actually praise an MMORPG for not putting such emphasis on grinding or punishing the player for dying by removing experience or even causing a delevel. (Which would be hours upon hours of work)
Star Wars Galaxies was once a thriving MMORPG with lots of devoted players. Right up until the Combat Upgrade which essentially revamped the entire core mechanic and almost everyone quit in disgust.
Which, though, sounds like a very reasonable stance if it changed the entire core mechanic.
The worst part being that the NGE came only a few months later, rendered most of the previous upgrade useless or replaced, and basically boiled the entire leveling system into World of Warcraft with Jedi. It didn't help that the new interface and mouse were simply dumped into the patch, without support being added for many items. They effectively changed the entire game's UI without bothering to change the game world.
Worst, it was changed literally overnight, and negated the third expansion (Trials of Obi Wan) a week after it was launched!
A prime example of Nostalgia Filter as well since Star Wars Galaxies was considered one of the most poorly balanced, poorly implemented systems out of any MMO by the active player base prior to the combat upgrade. Both the CU and NGE systems were far better balanced and more functional, even if both had additional flaws.
The Halo series. The bitter rage and hatred the most hardcore Halo fans showed at the relatively minute changes between Halo and Halo 2 is nothing short of embarrassing. For some fans, making the Elites speak English or adjusting the graphics on the plasma pistol overcharge are unpardonable sins.
Fear not: Almighty Bungie hath heard the pleas. The Halo pistol is coming back, though only in Halo: ODST.
They got it again in Halo:Reach, but with reticule bloom, many were unhappy.
And now with Halo:Combat Evolved Anniversary coming out with everything exactly the same as the original Halo:CE, the response has been mixed to positive.
Super Smash Bros Melee is known for its fast-paced duels, very technical combos, lag-canceling (a mechanic carried over from Smash 64 that's commonly mistaken to be a glitch or an unintentional exploit) and wavedashing, a very useful physics exploit. All of that was changed in Brawl, which was designed to be less reflex-demanding; the gameplay is slow (even with Sonic), the physics don't allow many "true" combos, and wavedashing from Melee and lag-canceling from Melee and Smash 64 were removed. As a result, CaptainFalcon became one of the worst fighters in the game. While Brawl succeeded as a game that new players can enjoy, many of Melee's fans were extremely disappointed.
Some were disappointed at the removal of certain features or characters, like Race to the Finish and Mewtwo, although most of these had some kind of replacement (Subspace Emissary, Lucario). Granted, not everyone's happy with the replacement.
It's worth noting that Lucario isn't a direct replacement. Evidence in the game's code shows that both Mewtwo and Lucario were considered for the game at some point.
The world's best Ikaruga player complained that the Xbox Live Arcade port of the game was "horrible" because it slightly altered a few of the bullet patterns and enemy placements that he had probably spent months meticulously memorising. Of course, he regained his high score and then complained.
Inverted if unbeknowst to the fanbase with the official translation of the GBA re-release of Tales Of Phantasia, which is hated by the fans of the DeJap translation of the SNES version for being more accurate, and not containing a bunch of adult humor that was never in the original. Also played straight with the reaction to not use the romanization in the Japanese version There's also the whole "Ragnarok/Kangaroo" thing, but other then a couple errors it's a largely faithful translation (almost boringly so).
To accomodate gamers who typically play with the Wiimote in their right hand, the Wii version of The Legend Of Zelda Twilight Princess not only featured a right-handed Link (who, in nearly all other games, had been obviously left-handed), but flipped the entire game horizontally, geography and dungeon puzzles included. Lefties and righties alike were up in arms over this change.
Wind Waker received many a fanboy's outrage for Link's cel-shaded look, with rants spewing up about how "Celda" had destroyed the series forever and made it a "baby easy kiddy game" (actual quote). Of course, these complaints came about a year and a half before the game was released. When the game came out, it got a lot of flak for changing everything, from making the game take place on an ocean, to using a boat instead of a horse, etc. Basically, it wasn't like Ocarina of Time, so now it sucks, according to the fans. Twilight Princess brought back the horse and the realistic adult-looking Link, but it was complained about some other things.
And among those complaints was the fact that the game was a clone of Ocarina of Time...
Also in Wind Waker, Link almost lost the ability to swim, having an "air meter" that slowly ran down until he would drown and return to wherever he entered water. People complained. Then, in the sequel, The Legend Of Zelda Phantom Hourglass, Link lost his already-limited ability to swim, instead gaining Super Drowning Skills. People complained again.
Nevermind that in other Zelda games, Link couldn't swim at all unless you got a certain item.
Phantom Hourglass used stylus controls without the option of button or D-pad control. Immediately, there were cries of how the touch screen on the DS was useless and stupid, and that Nintendo should have made a D-pad mode available. In the game itself, there's a subtle Take That against complaining fans in the form of a ghost who laments he wouldn't have died if he could have used the D-pad.
Now that Spirit Tracks is out, fans found another (but at least slightly justified) reason to complain: The dungeon length was significantly cut down in comparison to other games, even to Phantom Hourglass. Part of the people who complain about this, claim that It's Easy, so It Sucks. Never mind that only the first dungeon is actually easy and that the rest of them in reality only differ from other game's dungeon through their shorter length. Even the bosses are surprisingly tricky for a handheld Zelda.
People had also whined about Link's starting health being at 6 hearts instead of the traditional 3 hearts. Complainers assumed the game was dumbed down for the casual crowd because of it, but people quickly saw that the damage output from enemies took a significant leap and a player new to the game wouldn't survive on 3 hearts alone.
When Miyamoto revealed that he had felt guilty for years that he had made the Water Temple in Ocarina of Time too difficult and so had taken measures to make the Water Temple easier to navigate in the Nintendo 3DS remake, some Zelda fans were angry that the Water Temple had been made slightly easier and a few claimed that it ruined the entire remake.
Those "changes" were a fancy decorative border, each a different bright vibrant color, over the doorways leading to the areas that change the water level. That's it.
Falcom did something similar to Zelda II with Ys III: Wanderers from Ys, and mercifully changed it back afterwards. It did, much later, receive an overhead remake in the form of Ys: The Oath In Felghana for Japanese PCs, which was later ported to the PlayStation Portable, with the latter version getting an official localization by XSEED Games as part of a partnership with Falcom.
Mass Effect 2 was generally praised by fans and new players alike, but a decent contingent of Mass Effect 1 players decried the shift from weapons that had infinite ammunition (and used a cooldown to control rate of fire) to disposable heat sinks that act, in the view of many players, as little more than an excuse to introduce clips and ammo to the series. The shift from outfitting each member of the team fully with weapons, armor, and the like to a system of researching Shepherd-specific and squad-wide upgrades was also flamed by some as being too simple and depriving characters of similar class of uniqueness.
There was also the matter of exploration. In Mass Effect, gaining resources for improvements came in the form of driving the Mako around small planet maps. Many fans disliked these segments as both boring and hard to control. Mass Effect 2 replaced them with a planet-scanning mini-game that directly reaped resources to spend on upgrades. While possibly an improvement (at least in terms of time), general consensus still disliked it. This ended up being a case of They Changed It Now It Sucks even though the replaced element wasn't well received anyway.
The unwieldy inventory system from the first game. Fans wanted it improved, instead Bioware ripped it out completely and you only rarely stumble across new weapons (and when missed are Lost Forever). The weapons weren't clear upgrades either, while better in certain areas they were worse in others, with a common example being more powerful weapons having a much lower maximum ammo count.
The whole powers only work on enemies without protection. An obvious attempt to reign in the Linear Warriors, Quadratic Wizards Adepts from the first game, Bioware went a little too overboard and dropped the class from the most powerful to arguably the weakest.
It even happens to the characters. While fans rejoiced at the return of some of the Mass Effect cast for the sequel, forum wars on par with a Reaper attack can start if you express like for some of the new cast members, especially if they fill roles resembling past teammates. Grunt gets this the worst, having replaced Wrex, a fan-favorite, in the role of team krogan. To a lesser extent, fans of Kaiden's unflappable niceness sometimes don't take well to Jacob filling in the role. (Samara took over the role of team asari, but is sufficiently different from Liara that few people compared the two.)
Mass Effect 3 has already been criticized by fans for being more shooty and less RPGy, especially in light of the widespread complaints about Dragon Age II's streamlining, from the same studio. However, this is Misblamed on EA trying to attract "the Call of Duty crowd"note which many RPG fans sneer at, despite the fact that the game has moreweapon customization than its predecessor, and it's entirely reasonable for Bioware to want to improve the "Action" part of their Action RPG even though it started out as classic RPG with the "Action" part only really being introduced in the second installment.
Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning has already begun to receive vast amounts of flak from various elements of the fandom for making alterations to the plot of Warhammer Fantasy, ostensibly to facilitate gameplay. In all fairness, Warhammer Fantasy/40K players are possibly the whiniest anywhere, complaining when any change is or isn't made (the Rhino Rush was a huge example of this. Players didn't like the fact that it was possible in 3rd Edition, and then when 4th Edition came around and removed it, the very God Damned same players complained at its removal.)
Never mind that all but one of these male-only classes are for the Greenskins, who have never been shown to have females outside of the gag Spin-OffBlood Bowl. However, if they had made female Greenskin classes, they would probably have gotten complaints from the same people who complain that the Dwarf classes aren't male-only because of some lore issue.
Most complains are aimed at the Choas male-only (the Choosen and Murader) because they were planned to have female versions but cut due too time reasons and were paised for being not very fan servicey.
Resident Evil fans were outraged when Resident Evil 4 didn't have ink cartridges, obscure camera angles, Umbrella, or difficult controls. Resident Evil 5 kept the same game engine and kept some old wounds open, but changed back to the earlier games' inventory style, which has opened a whole new can of worms.
Don't even get started with the 6th game, which is deemed by majority of the fans as the worst RE in the series.
Dino Crisis 2 was far more action-oriented than the original, a Genre Shift which some fans did not like.
To keep with the whole Magic to Steam Punk shift in the game's background, Thief 2: the Metal Age replaced the scary zombies of Thief: Dark Project with extremely creepy automatons. Gameplay-wise, they fit the exact same niche: both made a lot of creepy noise, both were very hard to kill, and both were very slow (to be fair, the automatons managed to be a real danger since some were fitted with cannons, while zombies only had creepiness to their name and could be outwalked). Then the game was released. Then the forums started spewing toxic ash and lava. Also, they completely removed the Burricks (cute little acid-spitting dinos), but that's a goddamn crime.
If you are to believe the forums, there are only three groups of Total War players: those who played the first two games and don't like the new engine because they're anal-retentive wrinkled tossers who can't deal with change; those who discovered the series with Rome and are therefore brain-dead console jocks and SEGA fanboys who wouldn't know bad design if it shat in their eyes from a great height and should therefore go back to Counter-Strike; and those who are adamant that only Shogunexists and anyone who disagrees with them most probably walks on their knuckles.
NS13 in Kingdom of Loathing was disliked by many players because, despite adding content, it basically nerfed every efficient (perhaps too efficient) strategy people were using as well as one or two that weren't actually that efficient. Most people have gotten over it, however. Some of the success of the "Hobopolis" content dump was in fact attributed to it not "pissing in anyone's bowl of Cheerios", to quote Jick.
It's almost a given that any time a new update is made to Urban Dead, any of three groups (the pro-survivor faction, the pro-zombie faction, and the P Ker faction) will complain about game balance. Of course, given the high regard most players hold the game's creator in, they'll instead tear into one another for having made "bad suggestions."
Burnout Paradise. Circuit racing was replaced with an "open world" city layout, races were point-to-point affairs that required an in-depth knowledge of the city layout just to give you an idea of which road to take, and the fan-favorite Crash Mode was replaced with the compromise "Showtime" Mode that didn't feature the exact same kind of fun puzzle mechanics as the previous games. Oh, and you can't restart a race you just lost; instead you have to drive all the way back to the starting point, which is miles away. Sure, the car selection may be the best the series has ever had, Stunt Runs are enjoyable, the open world lends itself to lots of wicked jumps and fun secrets, and there's the promise of (rumored to be free) updates, including new sections of the city, a day-night cycle, motorcycles and even airplanes — but enough longtime fans of the series were angered by this shift in gameplay focus to swear off the series entirely.
As well as the dropping of local multiplayer, which to a lot of gamers was probably the series best feature, as the game was perfect for a group of friends getting together wanting to see fast cars shoulder check each other off the road. Tropes Are Not Bad, after all.
Team Fortress 2 is in an interesting position: Valve constantly adds content to the game, which ships automatically with regular updates and cannot be opted out of. The addition of unlockable weapons that sometimes function very differently from the defaults and gave experienced players more gameplay options was the big one. Every new set of unlockables deviates further from the defaults ("items" in place of weapons, multiple options for the same slot, etc.), giving players a new reason to complain every time. They also tweak the game's mechanics from time to time, presumably to fix balance issues; players who favored a suddenly-nerfed or otherwise altered weapon will inevitably be upset.
Let's not forget all of the hat drama with the halo. Heck, some players wouldn't even help out teammates because they had the halo and vice versa!
Also, fans of the original Team Fortress mod and Team Fortress Classic HATE Team Fortress 2, ever since its final graphic style and game design decisions were unveiled — namely the new cartoony graphical look (to draw attention away from the game's less realistic aspects) and removal of grenades (to emphasize individual class abilities and make it easier for new players to get into the game). Luckily, the Half-Life 2 mod Fortress Forever exists for people who want to play the original, or something very close to it, with more modern graphics.
High-level TFC play relied on exploiting physics and mechanics. In the early days, TFC was fairly close to the game's intended design. However, as time went on, more and more exploits were found. For example, the "Medic" class was more likely to be found flying around the map running the flag than actually healing people. Valve's Team Fortress 2 is essentially an attempt to recreate Team Fortress Classic as it was originally designed, not as the game became after exploiters ran rampant. Having played TFC in the days before bunny hopping and the like took over, TF2 is more like TFC than Fortress Forever or any other attempt by the old guard to recreate Team Fortress.
There's a mod being worked on for TF2 that re-adds grenades into the game.
Basically, TF2 was only good when you started playing. Every update since then has ruined the game entirely by introducing horrible things into the game like varietyandunfamiliarity. Someone might do the unspeakable and catch you off guard with a weapon you're not familiar countering and ruin your K/D ratio FOREVER!
When the Mac update went through they changed the layout of the front page, I'm sure you can guess what everyone said about it.
The June 2011 'Uber Update' added a pile of new weapons and gear and made the game Free-to-Play with any financial investment being purely optional. While the game had been inexpensive (retailing on Steam for around 10 USD) for a long time, the free-line brought in a deluge of new players. Many veterans complained about the sudden influx of incompetent, novice players undermining the teamwork aspects of the game or crowding up the max headcount on beloved servers. Others felt the opposite way, reveling in the herds of inept novices running around ripe for the slaughter.
Interestingly, the update also revived many of the long-since-forgotten They Changed it Now it Sucks! comments from when TF2 first came out, as hardened TFC players come see what the game is all about now that it's free and feel out of place.
Some people were simply mad that the game they had paid for was now free, denouncing this as a dirty and underhanded tactic by Valve to steal their money. They demanded refunds, and claimed they never would have paid for the game in the first place if they had known it would be free eventually. This includes people who had been playing since the game released four years earlier. Makes you wonder if anyone has ever bitched out a movie theatre because they paid to see a movie there and then a few years later it was aired on TV.
The Mv M Update brought about a whole slew of new complaints despite it not affecting any part of the existing game. Most notably, several people complained that Valve finally made a game mode where you had to pay to play; Mann Up. What makes this one particularly head-bashing-in-y is the fact that Valve released a FAQ along with the update to specifically state that the Boot Camp version was every way identical, gameplay wise, to Mann Up. The only difference was that in Mann Up you got a item drop at the end of it for having paid, as well as having a tick mark next to a special badge you got. It didn't help matters that two achievements were mislabeled as needing Mann Up to achieve (they have since been changed).
Gears of War 2 has had some changes from the original which made the Shotgun a less desirable weapon, notably the general gameplay addition 'stopping power', which slows you down from being continuously shot from the direction you're running at, making flat-out charging at your opponent a disastrous idea. This was on account of how people were often quite content to practically only use it for an entire match, completely ignoring their other standard weapons. Some people weren't happy. Even when it turned out the shotgun was made to be better and more consistent within the close ranges it was supposed to specialize in.
The Gears 2 shotgun was initially bugged (eventually fixed), and blindfired shots would usually go straight into the ground. Although thought to be a purposeful and welcome change by some, most of the community went into an outrage because they actually had to aim the weapon to fire it accurately (OH NOES!!).
Initial D (Arcade Stage) 4 is a matter of debate among fans. Some welcome it as a fresh reboot of the series, but many others find it a pain in the exhaust pipe to get used to the weird physics. Worse yet, the game punishes high-speed cornering by "locking" the player's steering and making his or her car crash into the wall and suffer an acceleration penalty, and to fix this one must perform a "Penalty Cancel", which consists of releasing the gas, tapping the brake, and pressing the gas. Many players think of Penalty Cancel as a stupid technique—who the heck brakes on a straightaway?
As if that isn't enough, the "Version 1.5" patch of the game almost makes a new game out of an existing one by removing said exploit and steering lock, and replacing it with oversteer.
Purists of Puzzle League/Panel de Pon/Tetris Attack should stay very far away from Planet Puzzle League, which, in addition to providing the tried-and-true directional-pad-and-buttons gameplay, also offers the much easier stylus control.
Though, when there's an online mode and no mode that restricts gameplay to the D-pad and buttons...
Then you can use your stylus, too.
Planet Puzzle League also received this reaction for its choice to axe the use of its original cute fairy characters (Dr. Mario & Puzzle League for the Game Boy Advance was first in this regard, but PPL has a higher profile). Kawaisa being what it is, this led to no small amount of negative fan backlash over in Japan. Lip's stage is unlockable with enough time (but only if you live in Japan) as a sort of consolation prize, but that didn't help much.
Some of the series' Western fans have this reaction to Nintendo's continuedrefusal to showcase any of the original Panel de Pon characters outside of Super Smash Bros. despite the growing popularity of moe in the western world.
The citybuilder series that started with Caesar has about 10 titles, all similar in theme. Ever since the release of Pharaoh in 1999, each and every new release has elicited cries of They Changed It, Now It Sucks from the community.
While admittedly some complaints are legit, the sheer amount of Fan Dumb in Sonic the Hedgehog is downright embarrassing. Some people hate everyone but Sonic, ignoring the fact that there were plenty of characters before the game went 3D and are certainly a heck of a lot more characters in something like Mario at that point. Some people even hate everything but the first game, whining about all the characters. Mario started out with more characters in its first few games! From this logic, idiocy like Sonic Underground would be a faithful adaptation.
Some may think the transition into 3D note Complete with cutscenes, lackluster controls, outta-control cameras, bad voiceover work, etc.was a terrible idea.
The pinnacle of these complaints is Sonic the Hedgehog 4. Complaints range from legit criticism such as the department of the pinball-based classic gameplay to outright complaints of secondary and/or minor details, like the usage of the modern designs instead of classic in a game that was supposed be a return to the classics, among others.
Game & Wario Many people have complained about this game no longer relying on microgames like the WarioWare titles used to, and instead using full-fledged minigames.
However, 9-Volt and 18-Volt's stage, Gamer, is focused on playing microgames. Watch out when you're playing at 9-Volt, however...
Heroes of Might and Magic IV made several changes to the format of the series. You could now have armies without heroes, you could have multiple heroes in one army, heroes were actually vulnerable to damage within a battle and could directly enter combat, towns now had multiple choices between different soldiers to hire, soldiers appeared in their dwellings daily instead of once-a-week and the highly useful caravan structure was introduced, allowing you to hire minions from across the map without running a hero there and back. This was not uncontroversial in the fanbase, and HOMMV reversed many of the changes. In turn, the sixth game made a large number of changes which, again, have been... contested (except for the removal of town screens, which was nigh-universally regarded as a bad change. They returned in a later patch).
Metroid Prime: Hunters focused on Multiplayer. Even now, go onto an average forum and say anything remotely positive and prepare to get numerous rants about how this violates the soul and heart of Metroid and never can be erased from its history.
Metroid: Other M fell into this weeks before it was even released due to trailers and gameplay footage. People, once again, denouced that the game ruined the series forever with "bad voice acting" and "long cut scenes", or how the game is now all about flashy action rather than exploration. Some even go further to say that Retro handled Metroid better, even though some of those same said people proclaimed Metroid to have been ruined forever by being in first person.
Mario Kart has this trope for nearly everything the series did after Mario Kart 64. Double Dash!! was blasted for having a gimmicky two player per kart system, Super Circuit was blasted for not fully retaining the features of the retro tracks. and Mario Kart Wii was blasted for including bikes in a go kart game plus having 12 racers instead of the usual 8.
Mario Kart 7 was met with general positive reception, but many people trashed the game for removing Waluigi.
When Golden Eye 1997 was revealed to have a remake for the Wii, everyone started to cheer, but then the cheers changed to boos and hisses, saying the game was ruined because Daniel Craig was used as the model for James Bond instead of Pierce Brosnan.
A lot of the boos and hisses came from the fact that the remake was nothing like the original, at all. The only real similarity was that both games were called GoldenEye and both games were First-Person Shooters.
Come to a Pokémon forum just after the release of a new generation, and you'll see this yelled a lot. New mon designs are the biggest cause, but a lot of things seem to dredge it up, like gameplay changes, changes in how moves and natures work and how various mechanics affect Pokémon performance, etc. Expect the handheld main series' jump to 3Dnote Partial 3D jump beginning with Pokemon Diamond And Pearl (mainly concerning the overworld); total 3D jump beginning with Pokémon X and Y (now including the battle screen as well) to intensify things.
Some people complained the minor UI changes in version 3.0 of the PlayStation 3 firmware were bad enough that they would never update. What were those UI changes? Updating the PS3 logo to match the new style (as opposed to the "Spider Man" font) and removing the "PlayStation 3" and jingle when a PS3 game is started.
The X fanbase isn't sure it likes the changes made in the latest installment, X Rebirth. The major complaints are:
The game restricts you to flying one roughly corvette-size ship, the Albion Skunk, as opposed to any manned, non-Khaak ship in all its predecessors except the original X: Beyond the Frontier. Some players prefer full-size capital ships, while others like to fly fighters.
The Skunk carries attack drones in lieu of space fighters. You can control them remotely, but if the drone you're controlling is destroyed you return to control of the Skunk instead of dying. This takes the danger out of being a fighter jock, for those who enjoy it.
The game is only going to be available on Steam, a platform that's a Base Breaker to the point where the moderators have basically banned talking about it anywhere but the tech support board.
An honorable mention goes to the minor Flame War that ensued over a rumor that Rebirth would be an MMORPG. ("It'll be an EVE clone!" "No it won't! It'll expand the player base!" "No it won't! It'll wreck the modding community!") By far the biggest worry was that it would open the noob-friendlyX community to griefers and other such trolls who pwn noobs For the Evulz and then brag about it over public channels. Thankfully the flames promptly dissipated when Egosoft stopped laughing long enough to confirm the rumor was false.
League of Legends: The community's reaction to Riot Games changing the name of Lux's ultimate from Finales Funkeln to Infinite Light. Not only were people upset about the removal of a reference to Touhou games that Lux's creator Shurelia intended, but people believed Infinite Light was a very uncreative name.
And now the Touhou reference is back with its name having changed to Final Spark. Fans complained again.
The new X Com had this originally when the first leaked trailers showed it to be a first person shooter based in The Fifties. This has since changed.
Some of the information revealed regarding the upcoming SimCity game has been, to say the least, disconcerting to the fanbase. Some of the complaints include: always online and multiplayer-focused gameplay, pre-built regional transportation networks that predetermine neighbour connections for each city, "dead zones" around each city that make each one look and feel isolated, terraforming limited on a civil scale (i.e. no God Mode terraforming) and small map sizes compared to SimCity 4. And now that the game has been released, it turns out that yeah, they did change it and yeah, it does suck. The game's release has been nothing short of disastrous.
Zuma Blitz: The Facebook game relaunched with a new version called Kroakatoa Island in September 2012. A lot of players on both the official forum and their Facebook page are complaining that they want to go back to the old version, largely because the ability to earn mojo (currency) during games to buy power ups has been removed. Mojo, coconuts and idols have all been combined into one currency, coins, which are only earned on level up. Cue cries of They Changed It, Now It Sucks.
Any game that transitions from 2D to 3D will generate tons of complaints, usually due to the Uncanny Valley.
Super Mario 64 split the fan base between people who liked the game and people who hated how Mario was no longer a 2D platforming game and hated the Camera Screw. Ironically, Super Mario Sunshine was trashed for trying to have a story and for being too different from Mario 64. Super Mario Galaxy generated similar complaints.
Mario Party 9 was met with mixed responses but was also trashed by the hardcore Mario Party fans for changing the basic gameplay after the series had played out the same way for the past 8 games.
Second Life was heavily criticized when Linden Labs released Viewer 2. Complaints ranged from a clunky interface, forced side tabs that took up the right side of the screen, the pie menu being replaced by a more standard menu, and the program itself being more resource intensive than Viewer 1. Viewer 3 did address the interface issue by allowing people to rearrange the toolbar as they pleased, but everything else remained the same.
Viewer 3 also generated hate from people who created their own viewers because Linden Labs forced them to adapt to the company's coding of Viewer 3, which also means that 3rd party viewers can't have any feature that would give someone an advantage over people who don't have the feature and the 3rd party viewers would have the same shoddy coding as Viewer 3.
Paper Mario Sticker Star received flack for having the battles focused on stickers that disappeared once used. Also, it did away with the partners and leveling up, among other things.
Punch-Out!! on the Wii became this trope and It's the Same, so It Sucks at the same time. What was the change that gotten many fans upset? The exclusion of Mike Tyson, who was the Final Boss in the original NES version and that version was the one everyone grew up with while a few others had to deal with Tyson's fictional replacement, Mr. Dream, after his contract with Nintendo wasn't renewed.
Ancient Domains Of Mystery was stuck in version 1.1.1 for a solid ten years, during which players have figured out just about all the quirks and tricks and strategies that were even remotely possible to find. Due to the game's rather extravagant difficulty, they became a staple of many a player's attempts to actually reach the ending. The upcoming 1.2.0 has changed a lot of things around in its prereleases, invalidating many of the old tricks, causing much wailing and gnashing of teeth in the official forums as players are faced with the prospect of having to change the way they've played the game for up to a decade.
Any video game shown during its alpha and beta stages will generate this trope once the final version is released because people want the alpha/beta elements to be kept in since they looked cool in the previews.
Minecraft goes through this every time something in the game changes. The bone meal item, which makes plants instantly grow, was nerfed so that you had to use several bone meal to get the plant to fully grow. People complained it was too much work and made farming tedious. Mobs were also reprogrammed to (mostly) stay off mine cart tracks so that players that are riding in a mine cart would not suddenly stop because of a sheep blocking the way. People then complained about how the rails were now overpowered because it acted as monster repellent while ignoring the fact that crafting rails is more expensive than just using blocks of dirt for barricades.
The fan base also complained loudly when the sun and the moon were changed from squares to circles. Mojang switched them back to squares shortly after.
The additions of potions and enchantments caused complaints from people who felt Minecraft was becoming too much like an RPG.
Donkey Kong Country Returns was very well received by fans of the original SNES trilogy, but many complaints about it ensued:
Replacing the Kremlings with the Tikis.
No more underwater levels
Absence of supporting characters like Funky Kong, Candy Kong, Dixie Kong and others.
Absence of animal buddies like Enguarde, Expresso, the only ones are Rambi and Squawks (Which acts like an item).
3D graphics, yeah, even though the SNES games had 3D graphics.
The Super Guide, which is totally optional.
Not being able to play with Diddy Kong outside of the multiplayer, he just acts like a power-up in single player.
Having to shake the controller(s) to perform actions like ground pound.
Saints Row fans have been expressing their seething hatred for the direction the series has taken since Saints Row The Third. Many are upset that the games left their 'gangsta' style behind, while others are so upset about the death of Johnny Gat they want him to return despite being canonically killed off, and many others complain that things like super powers are childish and don't belong in the series.
The sequel to PAYDAY The Heist generated complaints for so many small changes based on just the previews alone. Some claim the new aesthetics that use brighter and more vivid colors make the game look "cartoony". Other people hated the new heads up display for looking too large compared to the old one and how the screen tilts slightly when the player carries a body or a heavy bag. The biggest complaint was the use of a hit marker when aiming at an enemy.
Left 4 Dead 2 was met with a ton of complaints, ranging from having the levels being set in the daytime (some people think zombies should only exist at night), the survivors having melee weapons, and the new special infected looking cartoony and unrealistic. The game still sold way more than the first game and many people still play the sequel years later.
Certain die-hard fans of the first two System Shock games were displeased with how Bioshock turned out, complaining that it was "dumbed down" for more mainstream audiences via streamlining certain aspects of the game (such as making the player a jack of all trades rather than leading it down a more specialized path).
Bioshock 2 and Infinite also received flak for being dumb-downed versions of their predecessors.
Since the unveiling of GunZ 2, the primary complaining among the fanbase has been about the removal of the glitch-based combat styles (K-Style and D-Style) that had risen to prominence in the first game.
A common complaint about Fable III is that the game felt downgraded and streamlined the last games features. Specifically, the combat system which wasn't that complex to begin with.
