It Sucks cleanup

Per discussion in ATT and in the NRLEP cleanup thread, it is a good idea to create a cleanup thread for all tropes in the It Sucks index.

Much of the tropes within the index have examples that primarily contain complaining for the sake of complaining.

I'll start with this from It's the Same, Now It Sucks!:

• Many modern-day cartoons, most notably those that air on Cartoon Network, have been widely criticized for featuring nearly the exact same Thin-Line Animation art style for each show, including Adventure Time, Regular Show, Steven Universe, Clarence, The Powerpuff Girls (2016), Ben 10 (2016), and Craig of the Creek. The fact that a lot of the people who went to create some of these shows also worked on Adventure Time may have something to do with this.

Examples Are Not General, complaining about the style, stealth complaining about Adventure Time. Cut?

This too from The Problem with Licensed Games:

• The Transformers for the Commodore 64 and Sinclair Spectrum back in the mid-1980s, published by Ocean Software. Memorable incidents include Autobots dying from a fall of any distance, Autobots dying from landing on a slope after flying, Autobots dying from not being pixel-perfectly positioned when switching characters, Autobots dying from the bizarre collision detection, Autobots dying for no apparent reason, Autobots dying... perhaps the game was designed by Decepticons? Except for the fact that the Decepticons are even MORE fragile, as the game inverts the typical 'touch me and you die' game mechanics — any Autobot who is flying or in vehicle mode would instantly kill any Decepticon by ramming them. This means that Bumblebee, who has ridiculous amounts of shields, is a death machine in car form.
  
  According to this interview, even the development team thought this particular Transformers game was awful.

Tons of complaining, bloated with natter and Bold Inflation. Cut? Rewrite?

Edited by themayorofsimpleton on Jun 5th 2021 at 8:41:36 AM

It's the Same, Now It Sucks! example: That example needs to have its last sentence and the phrase "Many modern-day cartoons" removed at the least.

YMMV.Digimon Adventure 2020

• It's the Same, Now It Sucks!:
  • The initial use of Omegamon at Episode 3 was seen as both a homage to Our War Game to kick off the new series and A Taste of Power for the main lead characters and thus wasn't seen with much ire, especially thanks to the excellent animation. Then Episode 18 chooses to simply recycle the exact same plot beats again, but far more rushed, far less satisfying, and with far less impressive animation. Due to this poor usage of the character, Omegamon is seen as a reoccurring Deus ex Machina and a vehicle for nostalgia rather than the ultimate fan-favorite he once was. This is made worse by how Last Evolution Kizuna similarly paid homage to Our War Game around the same time in similar ways.
  • While Taichi and Agumon are beloved and cherished characters, their repeated showboating and inflated focus has drawn ire to the fandom. Often they will be the sole constant characters in episodes not even about them, which eventually got to a boiling point where, after 49 episodes of this, Taichi and WarGreymon suddenly leap into action and are the headcharging force that defeats ZeedMillenniumon, completely snatching the battle focus from the Holy Digimon and their ancient destined war. While this is clearly an attempt by Toei to make Taichi and Agumon a more model main character comparable to the likes of Goku or Luffy, the Digimon fandom takes pride in how Digimon typically would avoid doing this, even with larger casts.

The first examples is not criticized for being the same, but inferior for reasons that would make it suck even if it wasn't the same. The second example is complaint of Spotlight-Stealing Squad or Strictly Formula and noted as dissimilar to prior Digimon works. Thoughts?

About It's the Same, Now It Sucks! and They Changed It, Now It Sucks!. Both lack restrictions or limits as to what this trope is to keep out misuse. Thoughts about these for them?

• Only applies to adaptations: That gives a solid basis for comparison that isn't covered by other tropes. (It looks like they were originally about that but became broader used over time.)
• Only applies to complaints that seem nitpicks/unfair: Both tropes seem mostly to treat the complaints as unfair but note some legitimate complaints can occur.
• Waiting Period: Both entries note they cause Broken Base so it sounds like a excuse to sneak in complaints before the BB waiting period.

Edited by Ferot_Dreadnaught on Jun 7th 2021 at 5:02:41 AM

YMMV.Nick Spencers Spider Man

• They Changed It, Now It Sucks!: Peter losing his doctorate and his job as science editor at the Daily Bugle has been criticized as regressing Peter and losing the progress he developed under the tenure of Dan Slott. It's mitigated by the fact that the first issue addresses a major problem with Peter's doctorate, in that he didn't legitimately earn the degree, which was a point of contention amongst many fans, and likewise more than a few predicted this reversal of status-quo and disliked Slott's run for setting up Peter's eventual failure and comedown to start with by giving him unearned success.

The second paragraph just seems like a justifying edit and an excuse to bash Dan Slott's run.

Bumpity bump. The following example was found on It's Easy, So It Sucks!:

• After several games which gradually raised the difficulty and complexity, culminating with the Nintendo Hard SimCity 4, SimCity Societies toned down the difficulty, removed the zoning system, and instead replaced it with a social influence system that would determine whether your city will be made of slums or crystal spires. Here's a hint: SimCity 4 was the highest ranked game of the entire series. Now figure out the rest.

I'm sure the bolded part needs a rewrite for being natter and complaining. What does everyone else think?

Proposed rewrite of that section:

• After several games which gradually raised the difficulty and complexity, culminating with the Nintendo Hard SimCity 4, SimCity Societies toned down the difficulty, removed the zoning system, and instead replaced it with a social influence system that would determine whether your city will be made of slums or crystal spires. Due mainly to these changes, Societies was poorly-received.

Edited by themayorofsimpleton on Aug 30th 2021 at 1:15:28 PM

I hate to do this, but I'm giving this another bump to get a response on because I just need someone to OK my rewrite.

Seems good.

Thanks, swapped it in.

Taking this from the Complaining thread:

He Panned It Now He Sucks has lots of entries that needlessly harp on the reviewers they document and examples that just state the reviewer's dislike for something popular without saying anything about the audience reaction to such, with a dash of ROCEJ sketchiness. Take this for example:

• Guardian columnist Glenn Greenwald was a popular figure on the left, criticizing The War on Terror. Then a new guy took the role as leader of the military-industrial complex. Greenwald's criticism of Obama's foreign policy has caused some Obama supporters to loudly denounce Greenwald for writing criticisms of the President they would be lauding him for if George W. Bush was still in power.

And this:

• Hbomberguy got flack for his pannings of Dark Souls and RWBY. In the "In Defense of Dark Souls II" video, he spends the video attacking the original game instead of offering new perspectives on it's controversal sequel. The RWBY video was similarly criticized for him being perceived to be jumping on the "gotta hate RWBY for clicks" bandwagon, further exemplified as he spends the video castrating writers Miles Luna and Kerry Shawcross, holding the late Monty Oum up on a pedestal and treating Shane Newville's divisive manifesto as gospel.

What should we do about this?

The first needs to go. Being a political pundit instead of a reviewer puts it on thin ice, but it also misses the point of this criticism of Greenwald, which is that he is making a false equivalence and being very misleading in his attacks on Democrats.

It's already been deleted—it was brought up on the complaining thread as well and I advised Baritone to remove it based on the logic that Greenwald is not a media critic, he is a journalist, and he isn't criticizing media, thus making the entry misuse and shoehorning to begin with.

Indeed. Other thread seems a bit split on whether the second example is valid. If you ask me, the entire page (and its three subpages) could use cleaning because there's a lot of complaining.

This is on YMMV.Splatoon 3:

Quite a bit of word cruft to pack here (going as far as to include a "check" list) and feels complain-y.

Edited by ChillyBeanBAM on Sep 11th 2022 at 8:21:05 AM

One from Multi Versus, for "Changed it"

• Shortly after the game's launch, an update changed Velma's attack where she called the police on her opponent to summoning the Mystery Machine to capture them in an attempt to separate the game from current political debates. This didn't go over well with other circles of the fandom, who pointed out that there was nothing political about the move at all and the police showing up to arrest the culprit has been a part of the franchise's formula for decades. The change to the Mystery Machine was also criticized, as Velma having presumably Fred abduct her opponent can instead be interpreted as promoting vigilantism.

This, combined with the removal of an Author's Saving Throw about the change based on the same reasons ("promoting vigilantism") and that it was "not a widespread request" makes me think this is a sort of thinly-veiled culture war "SJ Ws ruining gaming" thing, especially when you consider that there are multiple playable vigilantes in the game, among outright villains, brutal antiheroes, and Comedic Sociopath. Delete?

Edited by NAFEDUDE on Sep 29th 2022 at 7:02:15 AM

I'd say so. That's controversy best discussed elsewhere.

Seconded. Plus, it sounds ROCEJ-worthy to me.

I take it keep the AST gone too? It's also mentioned on the trivia page but that's a more reasonable example (Distanced from Current Events, and explains the context surrounding a very obvious change)

This is on YMMV.Super Mario Bros Wonder:

• They Changed It, Now It Sucks!: A more mild example, but the recasting of Daisy has been met with some of this. The issue isn't with Giselle Fernandez (who has been praised for being near-indistinguishable from Daisy's previous voice) replacing Deanna Mustard, but rather the timing of the recast and Nintendo's handling of it. For the former, the recast happening the same time Daisy finally gets to be playable in a mainline console game can feel rather disappointing to some fans. For the latter, while it's not known whether Mustard chose to retire, Nintendo gave no such advance notice about the recast, unlike the announcement of Charles Martinet's retirement from the series in advance of Wonder's release. While this isn't the first time Nintendo has recast certain characters between installments, fans felt the silently sudden recast was unfair to Mustard, as she had voiced Daisy since 2003^note which is far longer than the timeframes of Peach and Toad's voice actresses before their current ones and essentially shaped Daisy's personality the same way Martinet did for his roles. This has left some fans feeling conflicted, saying that at the very least, Mustard should have been given some kind of send-off (assuming the recast was Nintendo's decision and not hers).

I... don't remember seeing complaints about Daisy being recast before. Plus, the "more mild example" part makes me think that this example is being downplayed.

YMMV can't be played with, at any rate. So the implicit downplaying invalidates the example to me.

Edited by Riolugirl on Jan 2nd 2024 at 8:57:59 PM

Yeah, I removed it and the troper who originally added it sent me a "deleting YMMV" notifier.

Found some instances over in the TheyChangedItNowItSucks.Web Original subpage that play with TCINIS, when one can't play with a YMMV example. There's even an inversion!

Edit: Inversion removed; I'll deal with the rest later.

Edited by Berrenta on Feb 23rd 2024 at 8:11:11 AM