:uhrr:, the article: what are the stupidest things that happened in gaming?

[Samprimary]

This is quickly diverging into multiple topics, ultimately (and I like that).

1. Recent notable moments of Uhrr (PGI's Ghost Heat, SimCity 2013, Colonial Marines, etc)
2. All-Time most memorable moments of Uhrr (Romero's Daikatana ad, SWO's NGE, SimCity 2013, etc
3. Legendary Top-Down Company Consuming Systemic Uhrr (EA, Ion Storm, EA, Sigil, EA)
4. KickstartUhrr

[Lantyssa]

Tabula Rasa.

[Soulflame]

Ultima 9 deserves a spot somewhere, for the sheer idiocy of Garriott throwing away the script and tossing together the fetch quest nonsense that eventually was released.

[Velorath]

Another old one, but the Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within movie. Pretty much the end of the Sakaguchi era of Square.

[rk47]

Citizen Kane Moment

[schild]

/pizza is always fun to talk about.

[schild]

Guys, what the fuck is PGI's Ghost Heat? I seriously have no clue what that is.

[Lantyssa]

A convoluted system in MWO to prevent massive alpha strikes with similar weapons.  It ranks on the Stupid Ideas to Fix Basic Design Problems By Implementing Stupid Systems, but not really worth mentioning in comparison to some of the stuff here.

[schild]

So it's something that pisses off people that don't have to look up what MWO is (I had to), but nobody else?

Yea, that's a thing no one should care about at all.

[SurfD]

You guys already mentioned all the ones that come to mind. Only one I can think of now is AC2: both launching without an ingame currency (design decision) and being will to go live and for a year without a functioning chat system (development shackles to Microsoft's back end iirc).

I think AC2 also deserves honorable mention for being the only MMO I have ever encountered that had actual buildings that were completely useless.  Like, seriously, how do you go from AC 1 with fully explorable buildings to AC 2 with fucking hollywood backdrop style archetecture. Oh yeah, and also having their world laid out in a cubic grid where physically crossing a line in the dirt essentially triggered an invisible loading screen where you lagged out for 10 to 20 seconds as the game loaded the section of the map you had just crossed into.....

[Soulflame]

You're forgetting the best part of AC2, which had to be that the chat system didn't even work on release.

[Samprimary]

 ghost heat is inconsequential in scale but difficult to top in terms of how amazingly and completely baffling and surreal it was for the people playing the game.

i have never seen such a complete spurting arterial wound to a game's community support of the gamemakers as what happened in the ghost heat era to Paul and pgi.

big and small, i want stories like that: moments that just .. they're just bizarrely bad.

[schild]

Why, precisely is ghost heat so bad? Like, what is it?

I need to see what it is to put it in scope with this other shit so I can find out what you're talking about. Brad handing out pamphlets on Christianity seems a lot more bizarre than a shitty design decision. David Bowman getting his literal panties in a bunch over the rights to call himself the lead designer on one of the worst MMOGs in the history of the genre is bizarre.

But a poor design decision? Yea, I need details.

[Soulflame]

Can I say Serek Dmart?  I mean, I thought at one point, you couldn't say Serek Dmart here.

(Serek Dmart)

 

Curse you and your stupid filters!

[Father mike]

Lots of folks have mentioned the decline of Bioware, but no one has mentioned the ending of Mass Effect 3 specifically. 

Going really old school, there was Ascendancy -- the really cool 4x space game that turned out not to have anything resembling an AI for the computer opponents!

[Velorath]

Lots of folks have mentioned the decline of Bioware, but no one has mentioned the ending of Mass Effect 3 specifically. 

Because overall good game has kinda crappy ending isn't one of the stupidest things to happen in gaming, in the same way that Diablo 3 was a huge disappointment but not one of the stupidest things (Jay Wilson's "fuck that loser" comment though may qualify). Dislike ME3 or SWTOR all you like but at least those were actual working games. People who bought SimCity and Battlefield 4 weren't so lucky.

Stupid to me is a lot of the shit Stardock CEO Brad Wardell said trying to defend himself when that sexual harassment lawsuit became news, or Zynga making almost identical copies of other peoples' games like the Tiny Tower/Dream Heights thing. Duke Nukem Forever's development was one of the longest running stupid things in gaming. Personally I think in some ways E3 is one of the stupidest things to happen in gaming.

[satael]

I think 38 Studios is the stupid thing that irks me the most for some reason. I mean there was no failed product (KoA was only a failure due to the expectations they had) to explain how they could estimate their finances so badly when it came to completing the mmo (and still go so far in to red at full speed before giving up).

It's just seems so stupid in any financial sense without any of the insane that Sigil and Brad had going on (and even Vanguard managed to make it to launch).

[Sir T]

So it's something that pisses off people that don't have to look up what MWO is (I had to), but nobody else?

Yea, that's a thing no one should care about at all.

Since no-one has actually answered you on what ghost heat is, basically its where you fire more than 2  of the same type of weapon at once it generates extra heat over and above the heat of the number of weapons combined. It was an attempt to stop the stupid numbers of 6 PPC Stalker mechs wandering around, and it was also an attempt to stop a fundamental flaw of MWO - when you the same weapons together, they all hit the same point of the mech at the same time, something that the Tabletop game which MWO is based on had systems to prevent but which don't work on a FPS. I don't hate it as I understand the rationale behind it, but there probably could be a better system. And anyway it encourages a varied loadout on your Mech.

Tabula Rasa is actually an interesting case on how a bad launch can fuck up a good game, and how gamers say they want a science fiction MMO and then don't bother playing one when one arrives. Lesson; Gamers talk a lot of shit they don't actually want. It also shows bot to bother with a sci fi game that does not have the words star wars or star trek on it if you want to have some kind of long term success.

Speaking of which the STG NGE patch should be mentioned as a place gun barrel in mouth and pull the trigger moment.

People now forget the Command and Conquer 4 launch, which actually was the dry run for the Sim City fiasco. The servers completely melted down for a week after that launch, which meant that I (yes I was one of the dumnasses that bought that game on launch day)  could not actually play that game for a week as it needed an always online internet connection and your saves were stored online. It was a total disaster, and it didn't help that the game when I did get to play it was utter garbage. And of course they totally learned all the lessens from that debacle when Sim City came along. Ooops, they didn't.

[Ironwood]

I don't hate it as I understand the rationale behind it,

No seriously, this is just wrong.

[eldaec]

Attempting to build UO2 with a star wars skin.

Attempting to beat WoW at being WoW, and expecting success with a fraction of the design budget because you have a star wars skin, or a warhammer skin.

Not copying sidekicking or character design from CoX.

Buying a lifetime subscription to Hellgate London.

An XCom cover based shooter.

Games for Windows Live.

Edit:
MtGO leaving such an obscene amount of money on the table.

[01101010]

I am surprised that Funcom and Age of Conan has not been mentioned yet. Or is that a drop in the bucket by comparison?

[Xuri]

I'm surprised that Anarchy Online wasn't mentioned first.

[Sir T]

I don't hate it as I understand the rationale behind it,

No seriously, this is just wrong.

Oh, I'm not necessarily disagreeing that its a bad idea, and like I said I could think of better solutions to the underlying design problem. But at least you can see the reason behind adding it. And its certainly nothing compared to a change of game mechanics like the NGE of Star Wars Galaxies, and it certainly has not "completely wrecked the game" like other competitors so I would query why it would be in their company. Others might disagree and have it in their list and that's fine.

Speaking of lists I would say the whole "Lockboxes" think in Star Treck Online is right up there in my list, along with introdicing 5 different "reputations" you have to grind up, and Starbases requiring massive amounts of grinding to get to the good stuff.

World of tanks -> Gold/premium Ammo. Fucking up the game for short term profit hoooooo!

[jakonovski]

What was wrong with Age of Conan? I remember playing it, but the only distintive memory is some unkillable Ranger dude harrassing melee characters trying to level.

[Sir T]

I played Conan when it started and I it didn't hold my interest, but I didn't find anything particularly wrong with it at all, apart from a lack of voice overs after the first Island, and they fixed that quickly.

Unless "not being as successful as WOW" deserves a huge gaming disaster badge. I mean its still running so it must be turning enough of a profit to keep the doors open.

[Venkman]

I'm surprised that Anarchy Online wasn't mentioned first.

It was a bad launch for sure, for like 30-45 days iirc. But while the players were annoyed as all hell about it, it wasn't like EQ1, AC1 nor UO were crowning achievements in stability either. I still remember all the conversations about how hard MMO launches were and shit

This ultimately did screw Funcom's credibility all the way through AoC, and that game didn't redeem it (wasn't it, like, not even using weapon and armor stats in comabt for the first month or so?) But it wasn't the colossal high profile heavily-marketed but-complete-disaster/developer-hissyfit that others have been.

STG NGE...

... SWO's NGE...

SWG NGE.

I'd like to think I'm not the only one that saw that 

[Sir T]

STO is creeping into our consciousness whether we want it to or not!!! WE ARE MARKED IN THE GREAT INTERNET TREK/WARS DiVIDE!! 

[IainC]

Internet dick-slapping between Serek Dmart and David Allen over Alganon. Also the way that Alganon stole stuff directly from WoW even to the point of copying UI frames completely that included buttons that Alganon didn't use.

Everything to do with Duke Nukem Forever.

[Chimpy]

Noooooo you spelled out the name! 

[Soulflame]

What was wrong with Age of Conan? I remember playing it, but the only distintive memory is some unkillable Ranger dude harrassing melee characters trying to level.

Wasn't there a point at release when male animations attacked faster than female animations?  Or do I have that backwards.

[Jeff Kelly]

Gamers talk a lot of shit they don't actually want.

News at 11

[Falconeer]

Question: what are the stupidest things that happened in gaming?

Answer: Idris Corvettes sold (and purchased) at 1250$ each for a game that doesn't exist yet.

About MechWarrior Online, "ghost heat" is not as bad as people claim it to be and saved the game at a time when balance was going out of hand and the only really unacceptable aspect of it is that it is not docuemented in the game at all even though it is super important and you have to look for how it works outside of the game, which is the stupid part. But MechWarrior keeps it stupid in many ways, and consistent with the Star Citizen idiocy, here are your 500$ gold 'mechs, which are nothing but standard versions (purchasable with money you get in game in about a week) that come with a UNIQUE gold skin. Five hundred US dollars.

EDIT: Also, pay 500$ now, get your gold 'mech Tuesday June 17th, 2014. true story.

[schild]

Yea, really, the entire article should be about Roberts Space Industries.

[Hutch]

I bet I could get David Allen to finally talk about Horizons.

I bet he tries to hit you up for capital, so he can try to get it right one more time. 

[Sir T]

People are buying Spaceships for a game that wont be complete for a year at least??? For over a thousand dollars???

I think I need to read that thread. Fuck me, I thought I was an idiot for buying the overlord pack of mechs for £80 to be delivered the following Tuesday. If Robers heads for Rio with a big bag full of Cash I will be laughing my head off.