Updates You Felt "Broke" Continuous/Ongoing Games

[Neurotic Void Melody]

Yes it is true that Last Light and Redux are still good games on their own. They just sacrificed what made the original so unique and foreboding to grab some of the COD market. Business as usual.

Yep, I have to agree on this. 2033 is one of the few reasons why I haven't sold my 360 actually. It's is buggy, has weirdly psychic A.I. and yet I consider it one of the best games I've played.

I shall note your STALKER recommendation for future purchasing, thankyou

No problem.
Stalker SoC is insanely buggy even after patch 1.6, and Reclamation Project is the only mod I think is recommendable when playing it for the first time. Well worth atleast a few playthrough since there has yet to be a game that gives a similar experience.

Hehe. 2033 is on my 360 HDD too. I bought the redux disc combo for the ps4 and really tried to like it for what it was. But just sold it soon after. The 360 copy shall be preserved in it's faulted brilliance.
The thing is that when a game is great enough to keep you invested no matter what, the bugs don't seem to matter so much that you often don't notice or care for them. It is the same for State of Decay. The amount of bugs in there are numerous, yet they matter not to me, often becoming just quirks. Though, if reviewing a game, it's necessary to remain as objective as possible. So the bugs would have to be mentioned and contributed to the final score. Dems da rules and all that progressive jazz.

 

[Atmos Duality]

Now that the gallery has arrived...I have a few comments.

-Terraria
Updates didn't break the game at all. Inconvenience players by forcing them to generate a new world with the new content? Yes. Yet nothing was actually lost or rendered inoperable as a result of those updates, ergo, it could not be broken.

-HAWKEN
Oh HAWKEN. It had some major (transformative) changes in its design and metagame over the years but the core, underlying problem with HAWKEN wasn't so much its innate mechanical balancing as its low player population and resulting crap matchmaking. (and yes, I realize the two may have some overlap)

Back when I played in 2012, Tuning levels were still a thing and tied to mech levels. Which in turn, were LOOSELY tied to player levels and should have influenced matchmaking but DIDN'T. So in brief, it was inevitable that players with level 25+ mechs would be matched with level 1 CRTs (starting mechs) fresh out of training, resulting in an extraordinary high turnover rate for new players.

Now, I stuck with the game for a while, and I'll NEVER claim to be that good, but even pushing past the ragequit mentality that seemed to grip so many prospective newbies, I was treated to matchmaking so borked that I almost pined for the days of random pub DOTA Allstars.

Every night, I frequently see-sawed between matches which were way, WAY too easy, and way too hard. The reason? My rating surged up and down thanks to me either crushing my opponents to dust, or being crushed like a grape in turn. I was a member of an incredibly TINY moderately skilled population, while the rest were diehard elites and legions of new faces I'd never see again.

I remember once placing in the top 15% AND bottom quartet (25%) of all player rankings IN THE SAME WEEK.

Eventually, it really didn't matter how the developers adjusted the mechanics and meta; with an ever-dwindling population the matches for newb players to get hooked just weren't there.

 

[Pseudonym]

Crusader kings II. I had a save file of a shia mandé dynasty (originally west african but converting to Islam was easier than reforming my faith) who had conquered most of north africa and parts of spain and the middle east. As an emperor I had what I believe was over a hundred counts directly below me. No dukes, certainly no kings and as little counts with multiple holdings as possible. Anyone who gained any kind of serious power in my realm who wasn't me had this habit of dying. Then, a vassal limit was introduced through an update forcing me to start introducing all manner of dukes, kings and other people on the fly. This would have been a lot of work and would have likely destabilised my empire for an entire generation providing that I'd be able to pull it off at all. Because being over the vassal limit by over 300% had some very bad effects, leading to immediate noble revolts and no support from my other vassals at all.

edit: oh and minecraft. I had the game in a very early stage and I had built dozens of towers to the height limit. (which was only 128 at the time) You would climb these towers with ladders. Than an update made it so that you now needed a ladder on every block you wanted to climb over rather than every two blocks. I believe I actually did add all the ladders I needed too, cutting an entire fortress in the process.

 

[Skin]

Smite

The Blink Patch.

In the early days on the Beta the game was still being balanced. Items tried out and active abilities added and removed on a patch by patch basis almost. The game was becoming balanced mostly and then it happened. One of the designers decided to add blink to the game, unlike any other update there was no consultation with the community beforehand, it was just added in. An active blink ability on a 30 second cooldown with no way to cancel or stop it short of a stun. A game that was finely balanced around Gods movement speeds, a game about positioning, flanking and observation was turned into an unbalanced mess in a single patch. Ymir, one of the games Tanks, suddenly went from being finely balanced to an insane monster. The forums filled with calls to nerf him into the ground. The problem people claimed was his 3.5 second stun. The reality was the Stun was only a problem because now Ymir could move faster than before and initiate easier with Blink.

Such is life when playing MOBA games. I have been playing Dota for many years, and there is still no direction when it comes to balance. Things were getting alot better before Dota 2 was announced (apart from a few certain heroes), but the game became more and more broken and nowadays it is pretty much accepted that every patch will have broken overpowered things that will be nerfed and then taken over by new broken overpowered things in the next patch.

 

[Xeros]

Mu Online

Someone remembers Mu Online? My word.

OT: I can't really think of one that outright broke a game for me.

Kept playing WoW and enjoying it well into Cataclysm, though I will concede that everything past Burning Crusade is vastly inferior.

I still playing Yu-Gi-Oh! from time to time, and while the learning curve is now the size of a mountain with how much they've added, I still do okay, and it's actually a hectically fun experience.

I never really bothered with any of the new items for Team Fortress 2 when they came out; just kinda preferred the way the vanilla stuff played.

The only game I played I think updates affected my decision to leave was APB: Reloaded, when they introduced the pay-to-win weapon, Whisper; a highly accurate, high rate-of-fire, silenced sub-machine gun. However, my team still mopped the floor with those people on most occasions. The team falling apart is the only reason I left, and, in fact, the only reason I left all of these games.

 

[Nazulu]

Mu Online

Someone remembers Mu Online? My word.

There was only ever 2 MMO's that I actually wanted to come back to and it's that and Lineage 2. It's still going though like I said, but they've corrupted it's soul and shat on it's corpse with an obnoxious pay to win setup, including it's new designs are average.

Thanks for letting me know I'm not the only person who knows of it here.

 

[MeatMachine]

PAYDAY 2.

It's hard to say exactly where I draw the line. The game isn't ruined at all, but the DLC went from being high quality and low priced to pitiful quality at a 50% markup.

Courier Mods, Shotgun pack, etc. added totally new elements, great weapons, and new tactics for 5 bucks. Now, we get a hilariously ass-kissing crossover with DJ Allesso for a Bronco reskin, 4 utterly inferior melee weapons, and 1 mission for 7 bucks... and it only seems to be getting worse.

 

[baddude1337]

PAYDAY 2.

It's hard to say exactly where I draw the line. The game isn't ruined at all, but the DLC went from being high quality and low priced to pitiful quality at a 50% markup.

Courier Mods, Shotgun pack, etc. added totally new elements, great weapons, and new tactics for 5 bucks. Now, we get a hilariously ass-kissing crossover with DJ Allesso for a Bronco reskin, 4 utterly inferior melee weapons, and 1 mission for 7 bucks... and it only seems to be getting worse.

I'm more pissed they keep adding all this shitty quality DLC instead of more robust bot support. As someone who was able to solo most of Payday 1, Payday 2 is unplayable with it's awful bots.

 

[Johnny Impact]

Team Fortress 2. I played it waaaaaaaaaay back when Orange Box came out and it was great for a long time. Then it became Hat Fortress and I had to stop. There's still a great game in there, it's just too hard to find servers with people who want to play Team Fortress.

I was going to say World of Warcraft but I had basically quit already. Cataclysm was merely the final nail in the coffin. Another level cap to reach, another bunch of fetch quests, another round of not getting to do instances because of not being hardcore enough........nope. Stuck with it for two expansions. Three was game over.

 

[CritialGaming]

How has no one mentioned the Warlords of Dreanor expansion for WoW? The removal of flying, literally nothing to do but play a facebook game at max level unless you raid in medicore raiding content. The latest expansion royally bum-f**ked WoW so hard Caitlyn Jenner is less sexually confused.