Poll of the Day > When a game series dramatically changes its battle system...

(+) Yeah! (+)

That's kinda like them saying "we don't want you playing our games anymore".

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Not really, mass effect changed dramatically from 1 to 2 and from 3 to andromeda and all were great changes.

honestly if andromedas story and cast were a bit more engaging, it might be the best game in the franchise cos combat was fantastic

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...no

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or, now hear me out, or maybe they just assume that not everyone who plays their series is you and needs a strict adherence to whatever dumb bullshit you think needs to be there

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I can think of multiple series that drastically changed their battle systems and remained successful though. Like Final Fantasy.

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I kind of feel this way. Whenever a sequel is so far off from the previous entry it just feels like they could have made a new IP. Sometimes it works out great though.

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FatalAccident posted...

Not really, mass effect changed dramatically from 1 to 2 and from 3 to andromeda and all were great changes.

honestly if andromedas story and cast were a bit more engaging, it might be the best game in the franchise cos combat was fantastic

This. If I wanted to play the same game over and over, I'd play the same game over and over. I expect a sequel to make tweaks and improvements. Sometimes the changes work, sometimes they don't. But keeping the same formula will just make the sequels feel dated and stale.

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Ever played Evoland?
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DeltaBladeX posted...

Ever played Evoland?

Looks interesting, never heard of it before.

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Pretty much agree.

DQ = good still
FF = garbage

Judgmenl posted...

Looks interesting, never heard of it before.

Battle systems change during the game because of how it works :P
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Not one mention of Yakuza: Dead Souls or Yakuza: Like a Dragon yet?

Or FF Zodiac Age vs War of the Lions or Vagrant Story?

Interface screw is a thing.

It sucks, but sometimes the story is worth adapting.

Hell, there's plenty of beloved 2d side scroll titles that tried 3d with mixed results too.

Didn't want to have to pull the obvious Mario/Zelda/Samus choices though.

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FatalAccident posted...

Not really, mass effect changed dramatically from 1 to 2 and from 3 to andromeda and all were great changes.

honestly if andromedas story and cast were a bit more engaging, it might be the best game in the franchise cos combat was fantastic

Bleh, adding ammo to all of the guns in the form of heat sinks was stupid as hell.

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dragon504 posted...

Bleh, adding ammo to all of the guns in the form of heat sinks was stupid as hell.

..yeah, there were quite a few changes between each game that weren't so great, even though i liked all of the original 3. not sure mass effect is the best example for this.

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Sometimes you do want more of the same game mechanics with different envs and story.

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I mean, my biggest gripe with "Like a Dragon" was the stupid "getting hit by cars crossing the street" thing. 100hp wasn't a game changer, it was just an irritation. Like poison tiles in a top-down dungeon. There was no reason for it aside from annoyance.

It's like devs giving their players a middle finger for no reason really.

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Judgmenl posted...

That's kinda like them saying "we don't want you playing our games anymore".

Or they want to try something new or whatever. Like how FF changed over the years...

Or maybe the old system was bad, but the overall game was good, so they changed it to make it better. or improve on it...
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dragon504 posted...

Bleh, adding ammo to all of the guns in the form of heat sinks was stupid as hell.

that was like the only stupid decision though

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FatalAccident posted...

Not really, mass effect changed dramatically from 1 to 2 and from 3 to andromeda and all were great changes.

The shifts from 2 to 3, and from 3 to Andromeda, were much less pronounced than the shift from 1 to 2.

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I don't mind playing more of the same within a series as long as the quality stays consistent or improves. Dramatic changes can be alright (Like A Dragon) but if I wanted a different gameplay experience, I would just play another series entirely.

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Morrowind -> Oblivion

Nice fucking console casual game.

I still love it though.

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changing the battle sytem after persona 2 was the best thing persona ever did
you think p3s gameplay is rough?
you have no idea

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SilentSeph posted...

I don't mind playing more of the same within a series as long as the quality stays consistent or improves. Dramatic changes can be alright (Like A Dragon) but if I wanted a different gameplay experience, I would just play another series entirely.

Yakuza's square square square triangle has always been secondary to the maudlin swings between the main story and the fetching shrubberies and posting missing cat flyers sidequests.

The battle system itself is really ancillary to the stories being told. I love OG yakuza, I love idiot Ichiban.

If anything, Like a Dragon reset yakuza's continuity in disbanding the main families. There's now a huge power vacuum and 2 dozen factions that have popped up over the course of the series with new stories to tell.

I'm pretty ok with that.

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Judgmenl posted...

That's kinda like them saying "we don't want you playing our games anymore".

...what?

Oftentimes those big changes are the result of fans asking for them.


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SilentSeph posted...

I don't mind playing more of the same within a series as long as the quality stays consistent or improves. Dramatic changes can be alright (Like A Dragon) but if I wanted a different gameplay experience, I would just play another series entirely.

I feel like the standard should be to identify games as spin-offs if they change the gameplay significantly. There's nothing wrong with creating a new style of game that uses the same setting and characters (Mario RPG, Hyrule Warriors), but calling that the continuation of the series is a little questionable.

That said, it's not like there's much potential to mislead people into buying a game whose gameplay they don't like by changing it up, given how incredibly easy it is to be informed about game purchases these days, so there's rarely any actual harm in changing things up within a series. It sucks for people that liked the older gameplay better, but at the end of the day, it's not reasonable to demand that studios make the games you want them to make instead of the games they want to make, so you just kind of have to deal with that.

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TheSlinja posted...

changing the battle sytem after persona 2 was the best thing persona ever did
you think p3s gameplay is rough?
you have no idea

not even that, but pretty much changing the entire structure of the game

pretty sure that decision, to turn it into mostly a VN with dungeons that aren't in shitty first person, is what actually saved that series

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adjl posted...

I feel like the standard should be to identify games as spin-offs if they change the gameplay significantly. There's nothing wrong with creating a new style of game that uses the same setting and characters (Mario RPG, Hyrule Warriors), but calling that the continuation of the series is a little questionable.

That said, it's not like there's much potential to mislead people into buying a game whose gameplay they don't like by changing it up, given how incredibly easy it is to be informed about game purchases these days, so there's rarely any actual harm in changing things up within a series. It sucks for people that liked the older gameplay better, but at the end of the day, it's not reasonable to demand that studios make the games you want them to make instead of the games they want to make, so you just kind of have to deal with that.

What if they change the battle system because they think that's what people want and not what they actually want?
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yakuza says u funny, ok?

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helIy posted...

not even that, but pretty much changing the entire structure of the game

pretty sure that decision, to turn it into mostly a VN with dungeons that aren't in shitty first person, is what actually saved that series

Hell, try playing Nocturne on hard sometime on a second playthru with the old first-person view you can do on a second run. You'll give up just trying to get on the roof of the Hospital, and screw the 5th Kalpa entirely.

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Unbridled9 posted...

I can think of multiple series that drastically changed their battle systems and remained successful though. Like Final Fantasy.

They remained successful, yes. But their core audience has changed. People who like classic FF and traditional jRPGs don't care much for the newer games.

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DrCidd posted...

They remained successful, yes. But their core audience has changed. People who like classic FF and traditional jRPGs don't care much for the newer games.

Kemco makes a dozen generic mobile RPGs a year and they obviously turn a profit doing so. They even port some to the Nintendo consoles/handhelds because some people just want to "press X" to fight and open chests.

If their Asdivine games were made in the SNES era, we'd all have nostalgia about them. Now they're just generic noise given the options available.

Kemco doesn't make bad games. But they aren't exactly trying to reinvent the wheel either.

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Revelation34 posted...

What if they change the battle system because they think that's what people want and not what they actually want?

That usually means their executives need to spend less time masturbating to focus test results and more time letting the talent they hired make the games they know how to make, but unfortunately, executives love their meddling.

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FatalAccident posted...

honestly if andromedas story and cast were a bit more engaging, it might be the best game in the franchise cos combat was fantastic

Story and cast weren't even the biggest problems with the game. Tons of bugs on release and piss-poor art design is a large part of what hurt it. Fix those two and get a better VO director to slap around some of the lazier dialogue issues and it would have done wonders.

It would never have been the best game in the franchise, though. But it could have been an acceptable new direction for the franchise that fans embraced rather than something that gets clowned on so hard that it essentially becomes a poisoned well/dead end.



dragon504 posted...

Bleh, adding ammo to all of the guns in the form of heat sinks was stupid as hell.

Adding it as a mechanic was fine. The narrative implementation of it was the issue.

Every race in the entire galaxy switching from self-cooling guns to ammo-based heat sinks in the span of two years, and basing their tech around a universe heat sink template, is quite possibly the most unrealistic thing in the entire franchise (which is saying a lot). Even BioWare was aware of this, which is why they had Conrad basically point out how stupid it was in ME3, and all Shepard could really do is tell Conrad to shut up rather than justify it in any real way.

It made sense to shift to it if you're trying to shift gameplay from RPG with TPS elements to cover-based shooter with RPG elements (because you keep resource management as a gameplay factor but don't have combat slowed down by forced cooling pauses or have people like me mod all their guns with heat-dampening mods that render heat management effectively nonexistent), but it was something they couldn't retcon away the same way they did other things (like regenerating health, loss of all prior skill levels, and different ability load-outs) by just pointing out that Shepard's a cyborg now.
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Sounds like Paper Mario
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ParanoidObsessive posted...

Story and cast weren't even the biggest problems with the game. Tons of bugs on release and piss-poor art design is a large part of what hurt it. Fix those two and get a better VO director to slap around some of the lazier dialogue issues and it would have done wonders.

It would never have been the best game in the franchise, though. But it could have been an acceptable new direction for the franchise that fans embraced rather than something that gets clowned on so hard that it essentially becomes a poisoned well/dead end.

Adding it as a mechanic was fine. The narrative implementation of it was the issue.

Every race in the entire galaxy switching from self-cooling guns to ammo-based heat sinks in the span of two years, and basing their tech around a universe heat sink template, is quite possibly the most unrealistic thing in the entire franchise (which is saying a lot). Even BioWare was aware of this, which is why they had Conrad basically point out how stupid it was in ME3, and all Shepard could really do is tell Conrad to shut up rather than justify it in any real way.

It made sense to shift to it if you're trying to shift gameplay from RPG with TPS elements to cover-based shooter with RPG elements (because you keep resource management as a gameplay factor but don't have combat slowed down by forced cooling pauses or have people like me mod all their guns with heat-dampening mods that render heat management effectively nonexistent), but it was something they couldn't retcon away the same way they did other things (like regenerating health, loss of all prior skill levels, and different ability load-outs) by just pointing out that Shepard's a cyborg now.

I'm probably in the minority, but I liked a lot of Andromeda. There was a sense of exploration to it that I feel had been missing since the first game, and a lot of the voice work (Fryda Wolff as Sara in particular) was wonderful. She really sold Sara as out of her depth but determined not to fail regardless.

I also hated the change to thermal clips (as you point out, the in-universe reason is flimsy to the point of being held together with homemade glue), and since they removed the weapon modding in 2, all they would had to have done was tweak the heat rate a little. Sure, there were people who super-modded their weapons to have nearly infinite firing with almost no heat generation (holla if ya hear me, Frictionless Materials x2 and Snowblind Rounds), but I feel like their explaination that it 'slowed down combat' didn't fly, because obviously Adepts had less weapons (literally).

One the happiest days I had playing Andromeda was when I realized I could buy the Vintage Heat Sink and craft guns with it. ^_^

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MechaKirby posted...

Sounds like Paper Mario

Weirdly enough, I liked the new system... Haha.
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Resident evil

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FatalAccident posted...

Not really, mass effect changed dramatically from 1 to 2 and from 3 to andromeda and all were great changes.

honestly if andromedas story and cast were a bit more engaging, it might be the best game in the franchise cos combat was fantastic

Andromeda was not a good change combat wise. The story and characters were ass too.

What game were you playing?

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I disagree with TC.

Thanks for your input Sunny.

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Nobody has even mentioned Yakuza: Like a Dragon yet? Or even Yakuza: Dead Souls yet?

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