Have you ever witnessed the downfall of a fanbase you belong to firsthand?

I wonder if its better or worse than trolling or trolling by proxy of teir lsits thrown about like a bible on how to play the game that thou must not refute, even the bits that make no sense
like character you'll never use (or have rerason to) is better than character with poor starting stats, massive growths and utility to enable 100% critical rate (that characters placement is mainly trolling purpose which became running joke though might be to rebel agianst the other extreme of "OMG best in game"). The two characters I'm talking about are some archer whose name I've forgotten and Est.

In any case lengthy debates are nothing new for the Fire Emblem fanbase. I wonder if nowerdays it is infested with the "older games were better" vibe that most other Nintendo fanbases have. I know I saw a few Gamefaqs posts (LOL) with people saying you have to go back to the SNES for a hard FE game which is the same sort of thing really and I know back in the day FE6 got slammed pretty badly for dropping a lot of mechanics in FE5.
Well the Fe series has always had those guys always talking up the older games. I at least found that stuff interesting which got me to play older titles.

The tier stuff Ive always found really funny in fanbases, I really enjoy reading those topics in Fe, smash, street Fighter, etc. Though I can see why people would get tired of it once a consensus is made or if certain people push their lists too hard, but that always still sparked interesting debates. The wife stuff just goes into creeper territory that I dislike about other fanbases that have relationships as a mechanic. And while relationships do affect gameplay in fe, it still really rubs me the wrong way how discussion eventually devolves.
 
Probably kingdom hearts. If it wasn't for that I wouldn't be on forums or even have this name. It went through some very awkward phases...they started announcing all these handheld games...the story....things just used to be so simple. Remember spending all my time on KHInsider back in like '03 or '04...there were better times.

I've only ever played the main PS2 games KH1 and KH2. And it's getting to the point where I'm not sure I should even be excited for a possible KH3 anymore. With all the shit I've heard about the story & characters in the portables... and technically it started in KH2. With all these nobodies on top of the already heartless stuff... supposedly there are now like 10 versions of every character. It's just insane and WAY too convoluted.
 
Yep, a small FPS called Tactical Ops. It started as a UT mod and became standalone. Kind of the equivalent of Counter Strike but without Steam which back in 2003/2004 was a huge plus.

I was part of the T.O. Chilean league. They used to hang at a forum called zoomby.cl. The community was fucking hilarious, and even though we didn't have a proper anti-aimbot/hack system, nobody cheated.

I think TacOps turned bad long before it went standalone. Personally I liked 1.6 the best with all the mp5 madness, 2.0 was alright but in my opinion it was downhill from there.
 
Halo. Me and my friends went from that to COD after H3. Halo 2 was so awesome and Halo 3 was soo....:| Gave the series one last shot with Reach, traded it after 3 weeks. 2 of which were spent just playing firefight or whatever it is called. I think Destiny is probably gonna finish off Halo once it comes out.


Sega is probably the worst downfall I have witnessed in my two decades of gaming. Just everything gawddamn...
 
Oh no, don't get me wrong I love BF, and BC2 is one of my most played games. It's just that the super hardcore has drifted away from the franchise. Visit MordorHQ for a few seconds and you'll see what I mean.

Oh gotcha.
So where have most of them gone? What game are they mostly playing now?
 
Can't really say if overall they fell or not, but ever since Diamond/Pearl I can't identify myself with the Pokémon fanbase. It was the point where I became annoyed by the lack of innovation outside the competitive scene It feels like it become a exclusive competitive culture that does not give a shit if the games still follow the same three elemental starter; 8 gyms; evil team; elite four and champion formula. Every time I try to argue about lack of innovation, is the same: "metagame has changed; physical/special split, Gen I mechanics are unplayable today" but I don't give a shit about competitive scenario, it's the actual SP content that I feel stagnant.
 
MegaMan.jpg


Perhaps the greatest 8 bit video game icon next to Mario, and yet, the last few years, the fan base has become either conspiracy theorists or people who basically given up at another shot at redemption...(despite this isn't the first time Megaman died...)

The horror, we've become like Mother fans!
J/k

Well, my day is ruined. :(
 
I can honestly say the biggest downfall of a fanbase I've seen is probably Final Fantasy. What was once a fanbase full of people eagerly anticipating the next incredible release slowly turned into a fanbase that attacked itself over and over with lists of which one was their favorite, and which ones were worthless (a recent thread on "why FF7 sucks" comes to mind), and then rather quickly over this last generation FF has tarnished its own name, taking longer and longer to come out with a mainline entry, and those that finally release are instantly shit on as just not delivering on the promise of the FF name.
 
Man, I LOVE HALO, I LOVE IT TO MY BONES!!! But I can't play it anymore, think about getting older, all the Halo fan base got older, we don't have the time anymore to play like we did, to stay up all night on lan parties and online with friends, not just the game changed but we do changed as well. Now I do watch more gameplays than actually play it.

Halo is not dead.

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Metal Gear Solid 4 completely killed any attactchment I ever possesed for the series.

I was a hardcore MGS fan for a long time and a long time member on MGSF and TUS. One site imploded and the other plumeted in activity as a result of the lack of intrest among long time fans posts-MGS4.
 
I witnessed the death of EQ as leader of the MMORPG. Declining expansions and what was on the horizon (WoW). Gates of Discord pissed a lot of people off, but Omens of War was the straw that broke the camels back IMO.
 
IDK man, Resistance 2 boasted some questionable decisions that kind of killed some of the uniqueness of Fall of Man but the community was still very much there. Some of my favorite gaming memories of this last generation stem from R2's 8 player co-op and organizing large-scale MP matches on various websites.

I loved the 8 player co-op in R2. I really wish that the game hadn't turned so many sour on the series. I could only imagine if they had the opportunity to further build on the co-op concept in future iterations. But now I doubt there will be future iterations.

:(
 
Oh gotcha.
So where have most of them gone? What game are they mostly playing now?

Many play Planetside 2 or Arma 3, hoping to find a spiritual successor to Battlefield.

I can't speak for anybody else, but I'm still interested in BF4, if only to see how further EA DICE will go to chase the CoD crowd. Who knows, perhaps the series will return to its roots, but I don't have much hope.
 
Devil May Cry. I think a lot of us moved on to other things. The ones that didn't are either accepting of DmC or very bitter about it.
Ninja GAIDEN too, that was a shame.
 
I posted on the Bioware forums quite regularly but grew tired of all the fights over homosexuality, trolls and mods stiffing any reasonable debate.
 
Man, I LOVE HALO, I LOVE IT TO MY BONES!!! But I can't play it anymore, think about getting older, all the Halo fan base got older, we don't have the time anymore to play like we did, to stay up all night on lan parties and online with friends, not just the game changed but we do changed as well. Now I do watch more gameplays than actually play it.

This is true for every fan base. It has been happening since Galaga and Donkey Kong.
 
Bioware's was pretty abrupt. They pretty much lost every bit of goodwill they had between March 2011 to March 2012. It was like watching Icarus touch the Sun. Taken seperately, the stumbled behind Dragon Age 2, SWTOR, and Mass Effect 3 would have probably been acceptable. Hell, I actually like SWTOR. But, all three happening at once was devastating. It reminded me of the debacle that Origin went through right after they were purchased by EA (go figure) and released U8 and U9.

Id's was much more drawn out, as was Square/Square-Enix's, but the end result is the same. They also have lost the goodwill of their fans.
 
I watched the Dreamcast fanbase basically meltdown once Sega announced they were pulling out of the hardware business. Those were interesting times. I loved and grew up with Sega, but I knew that was they needed to do in order to survive. I didn't care about the hardware as long as I knew they were still making games and I always owned multiple consoles anyways.

UT and Quake are two other games where I witnessed the fanbase dwindle and die out. Had so much fun with UT and Q3 on both the PC and Dreamcast, but this gen seemed to be the death period for these two franchises.

Ghost Recon, could say the same for all Tom Clancy games really.

Yup, this too. I loved GRAW 1 & 2, but GR:FS was such garbage, I couldn't even force myself to finish the campaign.
 
Final Fantasy. I like XIII but...yeah I can see why nearly everyone hates it and the fact they are milking it AND there are stronger RPG's coming from competitors puts them on notice.

At least it ended on a highnote. The last game was the best in the series. I hope it will return in some way in the future.
 
I was a huge fan of the first UFC Undisputed. I was active on their community boards, organized and ran a UFC league on the UFC ign boards, had a great ranked w/l record, all in all was living & breathing the brand. Things were great, friends were made and cheaters were avoided. Little did we know this would not last.

The beginning of the end was near, and it had a name: UFC 2010. When 2010 came out it was riddled with major problems from gameplay balance issues, exploitable moves, features THQ admitted to simply forgetting lol, and massive server issues making the online play unplayable for months. THQ at first refused to comment on anything for months, wouldn't even give us updates if we were going to see a patch and even deleted every post mentioning server issues. After three months of nothing we got a patch that broke the single player game and failed to fix even half of the issues. It was then we were told the game, while selling millions, didn't sell enough to warrant a second patch.

I watched as THQ in many ways spat upon the diehard fans of the game and killed a loyal community before the series ever grew out of its infancy because of some very obvious and avoidable poor decisions they made.
 
Halo fans are weird now? I never got that impression. The only time I met a weird Halo fan was at a local GameStop launch party for Halo 3 when some dude rolled up in a piece of shit car with a $10,000 sound system blasting the Halo theme with his doors open.

I think Halo fans are just... content? I guess. That's how I'd describe myself anyway. After Reach I didn't feel the need for more Halo. Still haven't played 4.

Anyway, I'm going to go with Sonic. The quality of the games aside, I remember when it used to be cool to be a Sonic fan. Nowadays it's kind of embarrassing thanks to the hugely socially awkward fan base. Chris-chan, all those weird ass YouTube videos, gotta go fast, DeviantArt (go there and search "[any name] Sonic" and you will understand) and man children everywhere.

It's a fan base you just don't want to be a part of if you're over the age of 16.
 
Metal Gear Solid 4 completely killed any attactchment I ever possesed for the series.

I was a hardcore MGS fan for a long time and a long time member on MGSF and TUS. One site imploded and the other plumeted in activity as a result of the lack of intrest among long time fans posts-MGS4.

Was never part of any community(outside GAF), but the sheer adoration that fans give MGS4 really is a headscratcher. Do they really not expect better from the games? I turned in my card after MGS4 and I can no longer trust the fanbase. Shame as we were in sync with MGS3.

Funny to hear that so many dedicated sites walked away after the trainwreck that was MGS4.
 
Was never part of any community(outside GAF), but the sheer adoration that fans give MGS4 really is a headscratcher. Do they really not expect better from the games? I turned in my card after MGS4 and I can no longer trust the fanbase. Shame as we were in sync with MGS3.

Funny to hear that so many dedicated sites walked away after the trainwreck that was MGS4.

Maybe the problem is you.
 
It's sad to say but the Tekken scene. A good majority of the legends from back in Tekken's heyday are all done with gaming and very few people have stepped up to take their status. Tekken once was the premier fighting game in the US back when arcades were alive and now it's just a fraction of its former glory. Tekken Zaibatsu is pretty much a graveyard now... and that's a real pity considering how many unforgettable things went down in that forum. I still adore the game and continue travelling for it, but it's always obvious to see how much Tekken has dropped in popularity.

Also, Devil May Cry community., I think it all started DMC4 went multiplatform. I guess a good majority of the fanbase then were Sony fans. And from whoever was left, they were either interested in the lore/characters or the gameplay or both. When DmC was announced I guess that segmented the fanbase even further. I too pretty much stopped caring since I wasn't a fan of the direction the series was going.
 
To the people complaining about the tf2 hats. Play on a decent server, there are a ton, usually clan or community servers with regulars on it. They will kick anyone that spams about trading or hats or are afk due to trading. I can't remember the last time I heard about hats, it's very very easy to just play the game whilst not knowing they even exist.
 
MegaMan.jpg


Perhaps the greatest 8 bit video game icon next to Mario, and yet, the last few years, the fan base has become either conspiracy theorists or people who basically given up at another shot at redemption...(despite this isn't the first time Megaman died...)

The horror, we've become like Mother fans!
J/k

FUCK.

:(
 
Dance Dance Revolution. I used to be an actively participating member of the community, but hardly anyone plays it any more. Most of the community sites are gone or no longer looked after.

However, coincidentally I broke out my Cobalt Flux pads last night for the first time in years. Still as fun to play as ever.
 
In 2006 Sonic fans started from the bottom now they here. It was a dark time.

Also SEGA fanbase after Dreamcast.

Definitely Megaman fans too.
 
Shenmue fanbase is alive and well

You can tell that SEGA

You don't stand alone.

That's easy- Final Fantasy.

My first FF was FFIV in 1992. I first went online in 1994 when my employer connected their network to the internet, and one of the first places I started hanging out was a BBS for video game discussion. FFVI was coming out soon and there was a lot of talk about it. The FF fanbase was teeny-tiny back then, or at least the English speaking segment of it. I just remember how nice and civil everyone was back then. And there were hardly any arguments. It seemed like virtually everyone was in agreement- FF got better with every game in the series. I honestly don't recall any fights about how FFIV was better the VI, how FFVI fucked everything up and was "a betrayal of everything FF stands for!" and other such horseshit.

But then in 1997 FFVII was released, and that's exactly the sort of thing that started happening. I remember when FFVII was being previewed, everyone seemed really excited and positive about it. It came out in Japan, and the people who imported it reported back that it was awesome, every bit as wonderful as they hoped. But then it got released in the US, and about a month later the fanbase had suddenly increased in size by about 100x, and it was like a bloody civil war broke out. A lot of old school fans became bitter that suddenly their beloved private jacuzzi was being invade by newbies, so they acted like dicks, which made the newbies act like dicks, and it just got worse and worse. And it seemed to me that the situation kinda spread out from there and infected video game discussion in general. All of a sudden it seemed like every forum I went to, everyone was flaming each other about everything. It's been like that ever since.

I stood away from earlier FF related stuff until 7, and didn't hear too many opinions about it. I was seriously expecting this thread to be filled with post XIII stories, but this was a very interesting one. Thanks for sharing.

Half of the Bayonetta fan-base turned against itself because they don't want to buy a new console.

To be on-hand for this announcement was PURE gold if you love fanboy tears. It's not that I don't understand people annoyed and pissed that they require the buying of another system that they didn't expect, but it's extremely baffling to me how many did and still prefer when the alternative = non-existence or limbo.

All fanbases are from the outset "downfalled", i.e. they are all mindless sycophants.

You grew up, that's what happened.

You might be right, yet I'm still offended.

Metal Gear Solid 4 completely killed any attactchment I ever possesed for the series.

I was a hardcore MGS fan for a long time and a long time member on MGSF and TUS. One site imploded and the other plumeted in activity as a result of the lack of intrest among long time fans posts-MGS4.

If segeregated counts as downfall for a fanbase, then MG can be here, sure.

MGS4 is definitely one of those "I understand this, yet I don't understand this" things for me. Never has a game I loved made other players feel like they've been bitched-slapped. MGS2 complaints I understood, and even was a small part of early in playing the game. I never ever thought the wishes of the fanbase would be so specific afterall, but I truly started to learn about fanbases in general once I bothered to look at online opinions. to state, I overall loved how 4 turned out for the most part, and never expected to find myself entrenched in a love/hate battle over the game. Still don't know exactly where I stand for loving every MG game. For the people who cried "not enough gameplay," I still wonder to this day why the expansion version of 4 never came. I also would've loved that too. I can definitely see how MGS3 story-telling is much easier to comprehend for people, but considering Kojima and MGS2, I didn't expect less than what I got out of MGS4. Maybe that was the game's biggest flaw - it was designed to be a fanboy's game; the answer to nearly every unresolved question of the series, with heavy shots of nostalgia from previous games.

I still believe MGS2 caused the biggest rift in MG history still, and made the gutsiest moves of the series for doing so. To witness that historic change-up and the fan-reaction was incredible when I was younger.

Rising, being the victim of tumultuous development, had a LONG ways to go in pleasing MG fans and non-fans, and turned out better than most expected (thanks Platinum). But there's such a hardcore section of people who refuse to play this just because 1) Raiden sucks/isn't a Snake (though he briefly was)/had his story resolved in 4 2)it's not TEA (Tactical Espionage Action) anymore, for a character that never really needed it (wish they would've kept Lightning Bolt Action in there) 3) the story sucks because it isn't as grand as the MGS titles 4)new reasons I haven't heard yet.

PW and PO get a bit of shit for being...I'm not sure anymore. PO still has the problem of people wondering if it's actually canon, which people still actively argue about (it is imo).

I seriously hope TTP/GZ doesn't create another sub-set of fans, but I can at least say the fanbase is alive.


Being a Sonic fanboy has been harsh, but I'm glad hope has resurfaced.

I have to feel sorry for Megaman fans more than anything. Even Earthbound/Mother fans got some genuine recognition recently. Even as a Shenmue fan, all I need is one more game to wrap things up. It's not that MM hasn't been present this gen at all, but the future looks as bleak as I don't what.
 
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I was there and in the forums when the messiah of FPS was announced, Quake 4. After years of shooters getting easier, the true king was to arrive. Then it happened. One of the largest fanbases in history was silenced. October 18, 2005. Never forget.

Quake Live then came to us but we all know that it isn't enough to fill the hole Quake 4 made. We Halo fans think we have it bad but you have no idea how bad it can get.

ID must bring Quake back, something like Quake III Arena and not the abomination Quake 4 multiplayer was.
I played Quake 2 and III every weekday almost back then, I was hooked.
The Edge was my favorit duel map :)
I miss those days.
CoD ruined the fps genre for me though.
 
The wife stuff just goes into creeper territory that I dislike about other fanbases that have relationships as a mechanic. And while relationships do affect gameplay in fe, it still really rubs me the wrong way how discussion eventually devolves.
I'm on your wavelength now...never been much of a fan of shipping (but usually found it easy to toss aside*). Self inserted one (even if it is a game feature) is just awkward. Speaking of self insert... I guess thats one degree away.

*-I guess its like how the Zelda timeline went from something easy to ignore then morphed into massive debates, then waned down and eventually got officially laid out. It was something that people always wondered about.
 
Final Fantasy. I like XIII but...yeah I can see why nearly everyone hates it and the fact they are milking it AND there are stronger RPG's coming from competitors puts them on notice.

The funny thing about FF13 is that while it's divisive, the SAME THING was said about every FF before it. People on gamefaqs screamed that FFX was The Worst FF Ever and Square Enix Is Dead To Me.

FF13 sold fine. FF14 was a disaster. S-E dumped Wada. They know they have to get back into shape now.
 
The funny thing about FF13 is that while it's divisive, the SAME THING was said about every FF before it. People on gamefaqs screamed that FFX was The Worst FF Ever and Square Enix Is Dead To Me.

FF13 sold fine. FF14 was a disaster. S-E dumped Wada. They know they have to get back into shape now.

The difference, though, is that XIII is a technical disaster on top of a story disaster. It's one thing to say the fans were offbase about X and XII because those are perfectly fine games, but XIII is a perfectly fine piece of a game. Ish.

Like I said, I wasn't on the net prior to X or XIII, save the era of hype around XIII's announcement, so I feel I can say I went into both fresh, and the disappointment I felt with XIII is a lot more notable than my reaction to X.

This started with FFX.

People complained about Auron having no pit hair and this somehow ruined everything.

Thank you sweet Ramza that I was not on GameFAQs when FFX came out, then.
 
SMT / Persona and it's happening now. The issues with these titles releasing in EU territories only adds fuel to the fire.
 
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