Bad Trends Spawned From Good Games?

[Jolly Co-operator]

There are many trends that have basically been done to death in the gaming world, and most people have at least one of these trends that really irks them. Can you think of any of these trends that were popularized by a game that was actually pretty good?

Personally, I think Halo holds quite a bit of responsibility for the trend of faceless space marines in power armor, used only as a means of moving you from one shooting location to another. One thing that the knock-offs lack, however, is Halo's interesting world, lore, and mythology. I didn't mind so much in Halo that Master Chief didn't show much personality or any of his face, because the world was actually interesting, and I wanted to find out more about it.

 

[hazabaza1]

I imagine a lot of people will have a go at CoD4 and regenerating health.

 

[Dragoon]

I'm going to go with Gears of War for making 3rd person cover based shooting popular, I hate 3rd person shooters.

 

[felbot]

I imagine a lot of people will have a go at CoD4 and regenerating health.

you know I would have been really surprised if no one mentioned cod in this thread.

anyway, world of warcraft i guess, and yes i know everquest came before though wow made it as popular as it is now, and with that spawned millions of clones.

 

[Pink Gregory]

I imagine a lot of people will have a go at CoD4 and regenerating health.

I thought it was Halo which had the regenerating health before CoD ?

There was regenerating health in CoD before CoD4 as well...

Didn't Medal of Honor (which predates both Halo and CoD) have regenerating health? I seem to remember MoH Rising Sun did.

 

[triggrhappy94]

Making CoD 2 was a great idea. (CoD 3, not so much). Making CoD4 was a good idea.
Now, way too many people are trying to make CoD.

 

[hazabaza1]

I imagine a lot of people will have a go at CoD4 and regenerating health.

I thought it was Halo which had the regenerating health before CoD ?

I think the first had Regenerating shields, and you could get health back at health stations. The only one to not do that was Halo 3, which had full regen, if I remember correctly.

 

[Chester Rabbit]

I imagine a lot of people will have a go at CoD4 and regenerating health.

I thought it was Halo which had the regenerating health before CoD ?

I think the first had Regenerating shields, and you could get health back at health stations. The only one to not do that was Halo 3, which had full regen, if I remember correctly.

Sorry to say, but you are incorrect. Looks like you will not be leaving today with the car.
Halo 2 was the one that introduced regenerating health to the series and I am pretty sure to gaming as well.
EDID: Hmmm hopefully I don't come off like a jerk up there...

 

[hazabaza1]

I imagine a lot of people will have a go at CoD4 and regenerating health.

I thought it was Halo which had the regenerating health before CoD ?

I think the first had Regenerating shields, and you could get health back at health stations. The only one to not do that was Halo 3, which had full regen, if I remember correctly.

Sorry to say, but you are incorrect. Looks like you will not be leaving today with the car.
Halo 2 was the one that introduced regenerating health to the series and I am pretty sure to gaming as well.
EDID: Hmmm hopefully I don't come off like a jerk up there...

Huh.
Well, I only played 3 and got my news about others elsewhere, so nyeh.

And nah, you didn't seem like a jerk. Though I am from England so I've got fairly low standards about someone not being a jerk.

 

[Woodsey]

Surely Half-Life and scripting is the defining answer? It used to be used to enhance games, now it's used to avoid bothering to make them.

 

[shrimpcel]

I imagine a lot of people will have a go at CoD4 and regenerating health.

Not the regenerating health, that was Halo, but the whole "modern FPS" genre that spawned out of it, yes. I guess we can't have everything: such a good game comes at the price of a completely lame trend for the next few years.

 

[WoW Killer]

Populous spawned a trend of people taking Peter Molyneux seriously.

 

[PsychicTaco115]

Every shooter having a multiplayer component from CoD 4 is pretty annoying, I must admit

Some games just SHOULD NOT have other people being wankers to each other...

 

[Joseph Harrison]

I'm sure the RPG which spawned grinding was good at the time... so I'll go with that.

i hope skinner is in his own private hell grinding

May sound stupid for this but who's Skinner? :s

Do you know what the terms positive reinforcement and negative reinforcement mean? Cuz Skinner invented 'em.

 

[Someone Depressing]

CoD4. Multiplayer, particuarly online. Yep.

Whatever RPG had untraditional leveling up. For example, not the "Level up, distribute 3 skill points between stats that you are told about and know the purpose of", instead of the, "Oh, look - a treadmill. You run on that for 10 hours and we MIGHT decide to increase your Agility. What does Agility do? I don't know. Scrolling over it on the text in the stat-screen? Nothing? WELL FUCK YOU!", is what I liek to call Up-As-You-Go. I only know of 2 games that have done this well - Runescape, and Quest for Glory - because, in both, there are lots of stats and alot of different ways to play.

 

[Icehearted]

Everything needs multiplayer now. So rather than simply having a fun single player experience we get half-assed games expected to survive on a strong online community, which is generally made up of obnoxious teenagers that apparently need to express themselves in memes and epithets.

Can't say when this became a thing, but there you go. Halo 3 will be my example. That game was more multiplayer than single player, and the single player was weak so it clearly wanted to depend more on multiplayer, which took even less effort to slap together by the developers. Borderlands is another good example, but I can't say which good game helped really popularize this crap.

 

[direkiller]

I'm sure the RPG which spawned grinding was good at the time... so I'll go with that.

i hope skinner is in his own private hell grinding

May sound stupid for this but who's Skinner? :s

B. F. Skinner is the person most famous for doing work on the operant conditioning chamber,also known as a Skinner box.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operant_conditioning_chamber

basically positive reinforcement at random intervals for doing a repetitive task is like crack to people.

 

[crazyrabbits]

I imagine a lot of people will have a go at CoD4 and regenerating health.

I thought it was Halo which had the regenerating health before CoD ?

I think the first had Regenerating shields, and you could get health back at health stations. The only one to not do that was Halo 3, which had full regen, if I remember correctly.

Sorry to say, but you are incorrect. Looks like you will not be leaving today with the car.
Halo 2 was the one that introduced regenerating health to the series and I am pretty sure to gaming as well.

Hazabazal was correct. The original Halo had regenerating shields, which represented a departure from most other FPS games of the era. While Halo 2 introduced the health equivalent, the popularity of regenerating anything can be tied back to the original game.

My hated trend is the highly scripted FPS campaigns of recent years. Like TotalBiscuit's video points out, you get smacked on the hand for daring to do anything outside the norm. Take a left instead of a right? You get told to go back into the game. Try to run forward without doing a plot-sensitive event? Instadeath. Find a great gun or item? You lose it at the end of the level.

Just lazy all around - I know it sells, but it shows a lack of thought in the design process.

 

[OldDirtyCrusty]

Weapon limits like having only 2-3 guns available. It`s ok for some games but sometimes i get the feeling that almost every shooter "must" have it this way. Was it Halo starting this? I´m not sure. On the other side i like this in third person shooters when i can see the character carrying the guns i`ve chosen.

Having a 5-6 hour main campaign leading me through tight corridors is also a bad trend. I blame it on CoD. Sure it`s nice to see as much action as possible squeezed into it but the effect wears off pretty fast. For example there isn`t much i could point out and remember in CoD:MW3. Without some building up it`s all just forgettable noise and it`s all over to soon.

Heavy scripting is also a bad trend if there`s no player involvement or if it`s repeating to often.
Hoooray another building collapses and everything else around my tight corridor goes BOOOOM - CoD.
MOH:warfighter - It`s sure nice that i can tell my buddies how they have to blow the doors and that i`m the one deciding where/who i start shooting after the slo-mo starts but not after the tenth time in a row and if there`s nothing else to do it`s not much worth (CoD features this to). I`m normaly ok with stuff like this but not with the heavy repeating and no real variations (the options don`t matter when it`s always a kick and a flashbang).

 

[Prime_Hunter_H01]

This one is hard to pinpoint a specific game but the, "A piece of what makes a game great and popular is it's graphical quality." The business men translate that into, "Focus everything on the shiny graphics."