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Fun Club Have you ever fallen off a franchise just because you felt you got everything you wanted from it? Not out of disappointment.

Mer.Saloon

Mer.Saloon

Chain Chomp
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Just anecdotally, when franchises continue on and people fall off the common thread seems to be how the franchise's current direction disappoints them. But that seems to be in threads dedicated to disliking the current direction started by folks who don't like how things are going but still want to participate in discussion.

So I'd like to just ask a different kind of question: There's a franchise going on that you felt complete with, at some point you got your fill of it, but it continues. You give the new games a try and maybe you think they're ok, even good, but you just don't feel like you're getting anything out of it while there are other games you want to play.

Basically: You dropped off from being a fanatic to casual enjoyer.

My go to answer has been: Ratchet and Clank.

I love the OG trilogy and have even dabbled in some of the future games, but as far as my investment in the franchise goes, I'm not super eager to just dive back in the whole fan experience. When I beat the first three games, I poured over them obsessively. Then Deadlocked came, and it was different. Then future came and it was also different especially in the tone of storytelling. It's not even that I think those games were bad, but it wasn't really what I wanted. I'll still play a Ratchet and Clank game if you put it in front of me, but I'm certainly no day 1 purchaser anymore. Rift Apart looks really cool and I'd like to try it, but well, there's just a lot of other games I'd like to play first.
 
R&C popped in my head when reading the title lol. Yeah by 2016 and Rift Apart I felt like Ratchet had totally undergone transformation from satire to what it was once satirizing. Other than a few big fans of the OG games, people seem pretty content w the series now so I doubt they’ll ever double back. Wish they would at least get some inspired music for the games but ultimately I’ve decided the series is just no longer for me.
 
Mario came to mind actually. I haven't been more than a casual enjoyer of the mainline titles for a while now. SMB Wonder and Odyssey were returns to form, but everything else I've not been very interested in. I just don't have a lot of time for mid RPGs and sports games these days.
 
I can't think of any examples of this with games, but this is what happened to me with the MCU. I kept up with literally 100% of it until the Disney Plus era. The mood/vibes just started to feel waaay too different from what I was originally invested in. I realized that I was pretty much good at that point and stopped following it entirely.


Actually, I can think of one example with games-- Castlevania. I adored Rondo of Blood, thought Symphony of the Night was pretty great, was falling a bit out of love by the time I beat Bloodlines, and then I finished III and thought "I think I've played enough of this series". Though saying this, I'm not closed off to the rest. I know there are great ones I still haven't played, so I'll never say never!
 
Probably Far Cry. I loved 1, 2 and 3 for what their offered differently than the other, and felt rather content with those three. Never really felt much desire to check 4, Primal, 5, New Dawn or 6, and judging by the increasingly mixed reception, maybe it's for the best.

Also aside from Pokemon Legends I feel this with the core games nowadays. Havent gotten BD/SP or S/V yet, and not because I hated or was disappointed with Sw/Sh (I actually quite enjoyed them), but I felt what Sw/Sh offered was quite enough for me.
 
I guess sort of Mario? I still play them, but even with the recent upswing in creativity, there is still a sense that "it's Mario". You almost always know what to expect, with an exception once every ten years or so, after Mario 64. I feel like it's hard to get excited about it anymore in comparison to other platformers, which may be better or worse but can definitely offer more than yet another Mario game does. Even the influence of modern Mario games feels surprisingly lacking despite his pretty undisputed status as the most visible and acclaimed thing in the genre. You can't go one Steam Next Fest without at least one new Celeste clone popping up, and it seems practically obligatory for every platformer made today to have a Donkey Kong Country Returns silhouette section, but nothing Mario's done since the 90's has reached that level of saturation.
 
You perfectly summed up what I was trying to say in the Final Fantasy thread but couldn't!

I used to be a gigantic fan up until XIII. Final Fantasy IX is my personal favorite and I just feel like the franchise gave me everything I dreamed of with Final Fantasy XII. After that, it sorta felt like I wasn't part of the audience Square-Enix wanted for the franchise anymore.

I still play the games, I'm curious to see how it evolves with each episode and I'm glad they have fans who enjoy them the way I enjoyed the first 11 main ones (not counting Final Fantasy XI since I never had the money or internet to play it). But yeah, I'm just not getting what made me love the franchise in the first place and it's fine! I discovered new series along the way that are closer to my tastes, and the old episodes aren't lost in time and space at all ^^
 
I kinda feel that way about Stardew Valley updates

I played it once for like 80 hours and it was fun but that was enough for me regardless of what new stuff keeps getting put out for it
 
I think it is why I haven’t bothered with the Crash and Spyro remakes. Love the games, want to replay them, but I don’t care that much for them. Like, I have then in my backlog, but I don’t mind postponing them for the sake of other games
 
Felt this way about most Mario spinoffs since the Gamecube. I think Tennis, Golf, Paper Mario, and Strikers peaked on that gen
 
chase beck said:
R&C popped in my head when reading the title lol. Yeah by 2016 and Rift Apart I felt like Ratchet had totally undergone transformation from satire to what it was once satirizing. Other than a few big fans of the OG games, people seem pretty content w the series now so I doubt they’ll ever double back. Wish they would at least get some inspired music for the games but ultimately I’ve decided the series is just no longer for me.
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It's not even that I want Ratchet to go back to being like that. They made 3 good games out of it and a 4th ok one. They pushed the satire hard and hey it worked. If they went back to that I don't suddenly think that'd magically respark my interest. If anything I might feel that was retreading old ground out of desperation.
 
Fire Emblem for me.

I loved three houses, but I binged all the routes in the summer of 2019 and it's not a genre I want to play hundreds of hours of every year. I had my fill, I've eaten enough, I'm not hungry for more yet.
 
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While I enjoyed Castlevania: Order of Ecclesia and would have bought more Castlevania games produced by Koji Igarashi on Nintendo DS, I was also fine with the break after.

I also thought it would be like two years, maybe three. Then, we got the reboot. And then we had to wait another nine years for Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night so overall, not ideal. Ultimately, I got everything I wanted from the Castlevania franchise for a time but also didn’t want the original series to end so unceremoniously.
 
Mega Man. I made it through 7 of the 11 games and hit a wall with them being so similar. I haven't made it back to the series in a few years now.
 
Not for a series, but I do this all the time for singular games. There are tons of games in my back log I'll put 5-10 hours into, be content with what I've played, and put it down for something else considering it no longer in my backlog.
 
Catsylvania said:
While I enjoyed Castlevania: Order of Ecclesia and would have bought more Castlevania games produced by Koji Igarashi on Nintendo DS, I was also fine with the break after.

I also thought it would be like two years, maybe three. Then, we got the reboot. And then we had to wait another nine years for Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night so overall, not ideal. Ultimately, I got everything I wanted from the Castlevania franchise for a time but also didn’t want the original series to end so unceremoniously.
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Speaking of endings, I adored the ending to Sly 3. The Sly Cooper trilogy was fantastic and I did not need that fourth one. Even if it wasn't so mediocre, sometimes there's just good ending points for a series before going off in a different direction.

Sometimes I'd say it's good to practice picking and choosing your endings too. I do that with the Archie Sonic comics where there's at least three good jumping off points where you can find satisfaction in an end IMO.
 
I don't really follow franchises in the sense that I try to play every single entry, so I can't really say I've fallen off any of them.

BassForever said:
Not for a series, but I do this all the time for singular games. There are tons of games in my back log I'll put 5-10 hours into, be content with what I've played, and put it down for something else considering it no longer in my backlog.
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But I'm copying this for my answer. Plenty of games I've tried for an afternoon or two, then getting my fill and crossing them off the backlog.
 
I'm completely disinterested in Smash nowadays since Melee basically chiseled out my childhood. Brawl and Sm4sh didn't do much to shift that, and while I'm for sure certain that Ultimate is better than Melee in every way, I feel like Melee is just enough.
 
Maybe Zelda? We'll see. I never played Twilight Princess, and didn't get far in Wind Waker. WW is a well loved game, and I can see why, but I felt like the game didn't offer me anything that I didn't get out of the previous two 3D Zeldas. I mean, it offered plenty, but I was sorta done?

I loved Tears of the Kingdom... for a while. It's a big giant game, so enjoying it for a while is still much longer than I play other games, but I really felt like open-air Zelda was done for me. Maybe it's the reused Hyrule? But I began to see how the pieces worked together, and for some games, once I start to look at it that way, I stop being able to enjoy it.

We'll see if the next game is able to bring me back, but it's not a quality question, it's whether or not I've sucked all the flavor out of it.
 
I think it's going to be hard longterm for Smash to maintain my interest after Ultimate. I genuinely can't think of any characters that could match the excitement of K. Rool and Banjo-Kazooie being added personally, and gameplay-wise I feel it is mostly going to be tweaking stuff on the margins.
 
Mario, maybe. I wasn't a big fan of new super Mario bros, but bought them. I didn't get too far into New Super Mario Bros, but it was a good game.

I haven't bought Wonder.
 
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FiniteInfinities said:
Mario came to mind actually. I haven't been more than a casual enjoyer of the mainline titles for a while now. SMB Wonder and Odyssey were returns to form, but everything else I've not been very interested in. I just don't have a lot of time for mid RPGs and sports games these days.
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Those are just spin offs though, no?
 
Splatoon. Really loved the first two games, and while 3 was fine, it definitely felt like more of the same and I wasn’t that interested in continuing it in the same way.
 
Ab said:
Those are just spin offs though, no?
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Yes, but I guess my point is that I used to play and enjoy those games, where I haven't been recently. I'm one of the few people who don't own MK8DX.

Even for the mainline stuff, Sunshine/Galaxy didn't hit the same heights as 64 for me. So I guess I would say I was "content" with 64, until Odyssey.
 
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I'm actually having a tough time trying to think of a game series; Paper Mario is the only one that comes close, but that was dropped because of disappointment with TOK so doesn't fit the premise of this thread.

I guess Splatoon, but I'm also not sure if that's just because I couldn't keep up with the game meta and the last time I fired up Splatoon 2 I was just getting dominated and it wasn't very fun for me; I got my fill of Splatoon 3 during the Testfire and knew I had no need to jump back in. I liked it enough on Wii U, but I'm also not sure if that's just Stockholm Syndrome and the library was absolutely dire at the time with nothing else to play lol
 
I felt this most with GaaS.
Basically Minecraft, I've been a huge fan since 2012 and continued to play assiduously until 2017, after which I still returned to the game with each update to play in a new world with my friends. Today the interest has passed and I don't even know what's new.
Fortnite, I was already a casual player in chapter 1, but chapter 2 + the pandemic really made me addicted to this game, my friends and I played it practically every day, and I even finished the battle pass for practically all seasons of this chapter.
With the end of the pandemic and the turn to chapter 3, I lost all interest, and even things that I would simply love to have happened when I was a fan, like the no-construction mode or the return of the map from the first season, were not enough to turn me into a regular consumer again.
 
Mario is the first one that springs to mind. The series is great but after playing so many over the last 35 years I tend to skip a lot of them. I loved Wonder, but I think that’s mostly as I hadn’t played one since 3D Land.

Assassins Creed is another. It’s not even the direction or the shift into open world action RPGs, I don’t think any of them are bad games, I just had my fill of them 15 years ago.
 
I think this describes Call Of Duty for me. I bought every release from Call Of Duty 2 to Modern Warfare 2019, and sunk tons and tons of time in the multiplayer, and enjoyed just about all of that time, but I was tired of paying $70 for a game and then also $60 for XBOX Live, so, that was the end of the line for me. I still think about grabbing the latest release from time to time, but nah, I got my fill, and look back on that fill with good memories.
 
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Mario is really the only series I can think of that fits. I enjoy them, but I've also largely had my fill of them and don't rush out to get every new entry.
 
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A lot of this comes down to gaming having tons of IP they want to go on for ever. It’s hard to maintain interest for decades.
 
Monster Hunter for me. Loved the 3DS and Wii U versions, played each for about 30-50 hours, and then felt like I could just set them down and be satisfied. Tried the demo for Rise but it didn't stick to me.
 
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Splatoon, I played hundreds of hours on the Wii U but could not be compelled to buy the new entrys. I am not interested in playing online games anymore but I still want to play the single player expansions. I wish Nintendo would have sold them on their own like the Torna dlc.
 
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PixelKnight said:
A lot of this comes down to gaming having tons of IP they want to go on for ever. It’s hard to maintain interest for decades.
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Thats how I feel about a lot of franchises. Staff have visions, and then they tell those stories, but corporate wants to keep things going. The actual staff move on and the stories change as new people come in.

Regardless of the quality, something is just kinda lost or else they kinda stagnate. Anecdotally I see a lot of people bitter about this. And I felt like that doesnt need to be the prevailing dialogue.

Moving on doesnt need to be always because you hate the current direction, but maybe its just different or not different enough and you got your satisfaction with it. And I just kinda wanted to see a lot of those.

--

I've been feeling this way about Zelda post TotK. I recognize the quality of the open air gameplay and the new direction to worldbuilding. But well, its not quite grabbing me like the old games did.

And well, as long as a new generation are enjoying it. I dont begrudge my own falling of interest. I was one of those people who felt the series was in a bit of a rut following Skyward Sword. I dont think Ill abandon Zelda, but I dont know if Ill pick each new game day one like I used to.
 
It's probably Luigi's Mansion for me. I prefer the atmosphere and art style of the first game compared to the more Pixar like feel of Dark Moon and 3.
 
I'm done with the FF7 franchise of games. I'm sure Rebirth is good but I've had enough of that world and characters
 
Mario Kart and Smash Bros, the thread.

I highly doubt Nintendo will ever improve 8 Deluxe and Ultimate after all the DLC.
 
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TheMindOfThomas said:
Splatoon. Really loved the first two games, and while 3 was fine, it definitely felt like more of the same and I wasn’t that interested in continuing it in the same way.
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Exactly the same here, enjoyed the first 2 and that was enough. Never bought 3 and likely won't buy sequels after that.
 
The Insomniac Spider-Man games. I really loved that first one on PS4. Looked and played great and was fairly unique due to the swinging traversal. As soon as I started Miles I got the sense I didn’t need any more of that gameplay. It was a fine game in the end but I didn’t need to play it. Can’t imagine playing 2 which looks so similar.
 
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Ab said:
Those are just spin offs though, no?
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And for the spinoffs, I think it's mostly disappointment from people, as the sports and rpg(if you can even call it that) games have been lackluster.

Mario Party has been pretty boring as well outside of the trip down nostalgia in Superstars.
 
It's gotta be Smash for me. I blame life circumstances more than anything, I don't have people coming over and playing Smash like I did as a kid.
But at the same time ... it's insane that they haven't focused on good singleplayer content since Brawl, and that the games still have terrible online despite how popular they are. I played Smash Ultimate a lot for like a month and then dropped it, even if it was a very good game.

I'll also say that while I'm trying to keep it from happening, Souls games have definitely been getting there for me for years at this point. I still really want to check out Demon's Souls and Elden Ring, and I absolutely loved what I played of Sekiro (which was over half the game), which was the last Souls game I really got into about two years ago, but even with that game once I hit a wall with the midgame boss I had a hard time getting motivation to comeback to it after taking a break (probably because of the lack of true progresion), and years before that I had already stopped playing Souls games much at all. It's just a series that I hold dear to my heart but is very formulaic and I find it harder and harder to get surprised by.
 
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I think I might be there with the Trails series? Like, Trails in the Sky is beautifully done and I enjoyed Zero/Azure too. But now I have to go back to Cold Steel and Rean's harem and I just don't think I care.
 
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I'm ok with just replaying the past Pokemon games over and over with various ROM hacks. I'm not super hyped about new 'traditional' mainline entries as I was in the past. The Legends subseries is effectively a whole new type of Pokemon and that's what interests me.
 
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Mer.Saloon said:
It's not even that I want Ratchet to go back to being like that. They made 3 good games out of it and a 4th ok one. They pushed the satire hard and hey it worked. If they went back to that I don't suddenly think that'd magically respark my interest. If anything I might feel that was retreading old ground out of desperation.
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Yeah they’re not my cup of tea anymore but insomniac trying to “do right” by people like me would never work, Insomniac now are an entirely different studio than they were in 2002. Like I said, I’ve reached acceptance. Just that I also happen to think the new ones suck lol, but those first 3 are everything I’d ever need.
 
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Lucifer said:
And for the spinoffs, I think it's mostly disappointment from people, as the sports and rpg(if you can even call it that) games have been lackluster.

Mario Party has been pretty boring as well outside of the trip down nostalgia in Superstars.
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That's true for sure. but I'd say mainline Mario has been pretty good on switch at least.
And hopefully with the remakes RPGs they make better new ones
 
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Yeah all the time. In fact I can count on one hand the game series that I haven't fallen off. Kirby, Mario, uhhh, the rest have been a bit more on and off. I'm a novelty junky, so I'm not naturally inclined to the kind of loyalty that I see from a lot of other fans.
 
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