Which game has removed the most features in it's later titles? - Because less is more, according to game developers and producers.

[Thiletonomics]

Games have had the ongoing trend of either changing features that were in previous games to be either simplified or watered down, or even removed those features completely. Reasons include features being "obsolete", being not "modern time" friendly, incompetent developers/troubled development cycles, and intentionally withholding the features to sell them as DLC later on. In regards to games, which series had the most features removed from it's past iterations?

The Sims comes to mind as a big example of that, as The Sims 4 had MANY features removed from past Sims games on launch. Here's a list of features (I think, and there's probably more) that were in the previous base Sims games at one point, but were not in TS4 on launch:

• Swimming Pools
• Toddlers
• Open World*
• Terrain Editing
• Family Trees
• Ownable cars*
• Home telephones*
• Newspapers*
• Pool tables*
• Custom neighborhoods/worlds*
• Social Worker* (Neglected babies and children simply go poof in a bright light, to be "whisked away to safety")
• Police*
• Burglars*
• Repairman
• Carpools for work* (when your Sim goes to work in TS4, they just walk to the sidewalk and disappear.)
• Basketball hoop
• Train set*
• Pinball machine*
• Ghosts
• Diaper changing station
• Military, Business, and Athlete career tracks
• Firefighters
• Create-a-Style* (Create-a-Style in TS4 is only available for pets.)
• Toaster ovens
• Laptops
• Repo-men
• Memories
• Bicycles
• Buffet tables
• Dishwashers
• Food processors*
• Hot tubs
• Lounge chairs
• Swing sets
• Trash compactors
• Zodiac signs*
• Basements
• Carriable babies (Babies were changed to objects in TS4, as how they were in TS1. The infant stage was added recently, which has gameplay of both TS2/3 babies and toddlers, sort of)
• Carriable teddy bear* (the stuffed animals in TS4 are giant, and cannot be carried)
• Cutscenes*
• Rabbit holes (a term used for buildings in TS3, where Sims go to for Work/School/certain places)
• Toilet stalls

Features in * still have not been added back into The Sims 4, as of this writing. Note also that the list would be longer, if EP items were also included.

Are there any other game series that removed this many features from their older games?

 

[frozen_runner]

Obligatory Elder Scrolls post. Just look at Morrowind and compare it to Skyrim. The latter might arguably be the better game, a great compromise on complexity versus playability, but Morrowind has a ton of features Skyrim (and Oblivion for that matter) does not.

Note: I have not played enough of Daggerfall to compare it to the latter games.

 

[Chin of Campbell]

Pokemon in particular is incredibly notorious for getting increasingly more shit over time introducing new features and removing them in the next game. The bright side is most of them suck anyway so you're not missing much.

The new Animal Crossing had an enormous amount of content removed from the previous entry in "exchange" for the most unintuitive and shitty island builder ever. The villagers also keep getting dumber in each installment.

 

[HyperboreanRightsActivist]

Victoria 3.

Some games remove features, others compromise on design philosophy. This game performed a lobotomy on one of the most violent periods in history (European Late Colonialism and WW1) by removing war... IN A WAR GAME.

 

[The Last Stand]

Madden NFL. At least 89 features removed from Madden since the PS2 era in favor of Ultimate Team.

DIA=youtube]Nxt6XeOlOSA[/MEDIA]

 

[IDanceonTrannyGraves]

Final Fantasy took away its glorious turn based combat and replaced it with shitty, press one button to win action combat.

 

[Buoyant Armiger]

The Elder Scrolls, the difference between Daggerfall and Skyrim is as sad as it is jarring. When a levitating horse was not a bug but a feature...

 

[sadbird]

Maybe this is unfair, but technically true- Fable, because the very last game they ever made was some on the rails wagon shooter? (not even I remember that much) And hardly a soul even remembers it existed.

 

[The Backwards Man]

Grand theft auto online removed a lot of shit (like smuggler aircraft, truck heists, simeon special vehicles etc) since the Heists update mostly because people were making too much money off those features.

Technically GTA V has a shitton of "removed" content too, since they stopped porting update vehicles, weapons and other shit to offline after heists.

 

[xXx: State of the Union]

It's GOT to be The Sims I feel like

But yeah, I'll always curse Grand Theft Auto IV for how it completely stripped the fun out of GTA in favor of a drawn out overly dramatic story.

 

[Glowie Hunter Art Bell]

GT7 is definitely up there for this one. Battlefield as well. Iirc it was estimated that roughly 90% of previous battlefield game features were missing from 2042

 

[A-Stump]

The Resident Evil 3 remake stripped out like 2/3s of the game and replaced it with Nemesis chasing you around. It's pretty damn obnoxious just how much was missing. It didn't even have Mercenaries mode.

Civilization becomes increasingly dumbed down and stupid with each new release. Oh cool global warming. I don't fucking care faggots I'm trying to have fun.

Elder Scrolls, oh boy this entire thread could be about that. Spears? Who is going to take time to make the animations? Creating your own magic? Sounds a little too fun. Enchantments that are crazy and wild? Again, sounds fun...them getting rid of levitation and having the absolute gall to have it banned in-universe is the most retarded thing of all. There's a bunch of nigger necromancers running around raising Uncle Bob's skeleton and that shit is illegal but nobody in the whole world knows how to levitate anymore.

 

[Buoyant Armiger]

Them getting rid of levitation and having the absolute gall to have it banned in-universe is the most retarded thing of all. There's a bunch of nigger necromancers running around raising Uncle Bob's skeleton and that shit is illegal but nobody in the whole world knows how to levitate anymore.

Neloth complaining about some place in Nchardak being too high to reach in Skyrim was so fucking stupid. Being able to levitate was a prerequisite to have the great honor of getting told to fuck off by him in Morrowind, he can levitate, who's going to stop a peak Telvanni wizard from doing what they want in the middle of bumfuck nowhere anyways?

 

[BrunoMattei]

The Resident Evil 3 remake stripped out like 2/3s of the game and replaced it with Nemesis chasing you around. It's pretty damn obnoxious just how much was missing. It didn't even have Mercenaries mode.

It was supposed to be DLC for RE2make but Capcom changed course and got greedy. To justify charging $40 they bundled it with RE: Resistance, their attempt at an asym horror game. The gameplay looked good but the population was never there for it.

 

[HeyYou]

The people talking about Elder Scrolls don't even know, even with all its dumbed down features it's not even close to the worst series when it comes to removed features. Take Total War. Imagine a war game that features mechanics that are absolutely integral to warfare like weather, night raids, population, naval battles, seasons, forts, city destruction, firing guns by rank, being able to split armies into two or CHANGING YOUR CAPITAL CITY. Then imagine a later game in that series removing all those features.

Each new Sims game being straight up barebones even compared to the base version of the last one probably takes the cake, though, there's really no comparison in the AAA sphere.

 

[Dom Cruise]

Bioshock, explore the labyrinthine environments of Rapture, find hidden nooks and crannies, piece together what happened by finding clues, it all came together to make Rapture feel shockingly like a real place and like the third or fourth time I played I was still discovering little nooks in the levels I hadn't before, collect many weapons and upgrade them as you see fit, same with Plasmids, try different approaches and see what you like best, enjoy a thought provoking story with a clear eyed message and well done characters.

Bioshock Infinite, walk from point A to point B, occasionally encountering an optional little side area but mostly you're going from point A to point B, choose between only two weapons at a time, no upgrades, no real approaches to do other than shooting bad guys and blasting superpowers at them, "enjoy" a muddled story that doesn't make a lot of sense and doesn't seem to know what it's really trying to say, "enjoy" far less interesting characters.

Infinite's art direction was still very impressive, but it's inability to ever open up and let you explore made it feel less like a real place and more like a theme park ride and the story was a mess, no characters as memorable as Andrew Ryan or Sander Cohen, probably never has a game had as much an interesting initial idea and wasted it so much.

 

[Judge Dredd]

Resident Evil 3 remake

Even RE2 remake removed stuff. Giant spiders, the zapping system, Extreme Battle, and proper A - B scenarios. Only the A - B scenarios felt like they were missing (and Extreme Battle but I seem to be the only person who cares).

The original Resident Evil 2 was strange in that it gained and lost features between ports. Race Driver GRID was similar. There are similar games with similar content but differences in features like the career.

Bioshock Infinite

The biggest crime wasn't the features cut from previous games, but from the trailer.

 

[Counterfeit Obol]

(sees mentions about Bioshock Infinite)
Now I feel like screaming at the younger me for pre-ordering it. It didn't help that my graphics card at the time was so-so, so the game kept crashing toward the finale.

If we replace "later titles" with "early access releases" then good god Starbound. So much shit was lost apparently due to disputes with the writers, on top of how CucklefishChucklefish screwed over freelance workers (up to and including Toby Fox, who at the time was just the Homestuck music guy and not the lead dev of Undertale). All the race-specific backstories were replaced with a generic setup, so many structures were given the boot (I liked the abandoned human prisons, if only because the decorations looked nice). Mods exist, but they shouldn't be the crutch to what is lacking.

 

[frozen_runner]

The new Animal Crossing had an enormous amount of content removed from the previous entry in "exchange" for the most unintuitive and shitty island builder ever. The villagers also keep getting dumber in each installment.

Hey, I'm truly enjoying an AC game for the first time since the original.

It was supposed to be DLC for RE2make but Capcom changed course and got greedy.

That is fucking shameful. The original RE3 might not be highly regarded like 2, but it had crazy amounts of replay value. You basically have to forget the new version is a "remake" of anything and just try to enjoy what it is.

 

[SaltyFanta]

Grand theft auto online removed a lot of shit (like smuggler aircraft, truck heists, simeon special vehicles etc) since the Heists update mostly because people were making too much money off those features.

Technically GTA V has a shitton of "removed" content too, since they stopped porting update vehicles, weapons and other shit to offline after heists.

GTA as an example of this bugs me most because it's all clearly in the name of making the player grind for as long as possible in online. I think the worst example of artificially extending the grind like this is when they changed payouts from flat rates per mission to time-based payouts, because players were too good at one single mission, that it threatened the bottom line to the point they removed it temporarily, and made it artificially more difficult before finally changing the pay structure across the entire game.

I miss when the call of duty games had emblem designers.