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Authors Saving Throw / Video Games

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  • ANNO: Mutationem
    • Following a largely negative reception to the initial ending with some stating that it was rather bleak, inconclusive, and overall unsatisfying, the game was later given an update to significantly extend the ending to deal with lingering threads and give it a more proper closure.
    • In response to criticisms about the combat being too difficult, the developers added a more forgiving Easy mode.
  • Artifact:
    • Before launch, the game was massively criticized for its greedy business model. Two commonly mentioned points in particular were Draft mode being only accessible by paying real money, and card packs containing starter heroes (which are useless and worthless since you and everyone else already have them). In response, Valve announced that a free casual Phantom Draft mode would be made available, and that duplicate cards could be turned into tickets, giving them a use.
    • In order to avoid devaluing cards, it was announced that balance patches would be kept to a minimum. When the game was released, this decision proved unpopular as several Game Breakers such as Axe, Drow Ranger, and Cheating Death were found, leading to concerns that Valve were prioritizing the health of the Player-Generated Economy over the actual game itself. With the "Build Your Legend" update, Valve changed their view and decided to be more involved in the game's balance, buffing and nerfing the High Tier Scrappies (while also offering the option for those who bought affected cards to refund their purchase).
  • While Assassin's Creed II was well received, its direct story sequel, Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood corrected a number of issues it had. At the end of II, Ezio grabbed an Idiot Ball by making a huge mistake; Ezio is given What the Hell, Hero? lectures over this, and suffers direct consequences of his mistake at the beginning of Brotherhood, losing everything. Additionally, in II, Ezio’s sister and mother essentially ceased to exist in the story after the beginning, while they are more active in Brotherhood. As well, II's basic and unsatisfying An Entrepreneur Is You mechanics got replaced with a more in depth real estate management simulation.
  • Batman: Arkham Knight:
    • Originally, it didn't allow players to alternate characters in challenge maps like in the previous games. This caused a ton of negative feedback, and was addressed by the developers on Twitter, where they announced that there would be two patches for the game; first would add combat character selection, and the second would add Predator character selection. The patches were released on October and November of that year, respectively.
    • Originally (even after the previous patch), there are no leaderboards for alternate characters, causing fan complaints. The response is the amount of maps with the amount of characters (40 x 8) would require a lot of work to merely compare points.
    • Due to players complaining about the issues with the PC port, the devs offered all of the previous Arkham Games for free for those who bought Knight, and PC got the Community challenge pack (Community chosen challenge maps remastered from Asylum and City) before consoles got it.
  • After BlazBlue: Cross Tag Battle received massive backlash for an unclear and controversial DLC plan which most notably left half of the Unexpected Characters Team RWBY as separate paid downloads, ArcSys soon released a very strong apology and announced that not only would the first DLC character pack be free for digital download preorders and for the first week of release but also that Blake and Yang would be free to download indefinitely. Wrong of them to try and break up a good team.
  • Civilization VI is set to feature two DLC packs introducing civilizations from Africa, Asia and the Americas amid criticisms that the base roster is Eurocentric - ten European civs (England, France, Germany, Spain, Rome, Norway, Greece, Russia, Scythia and Poland) to two African civs (Egypt and Kongo), four Asian ones (China, Japan, Arabia and India), three American ones (America, Aztecs and Brazil) and Australia. Sure enough, the first pack "Rise and Fall" has a more balanced representation: it adds the Cree, Georgia, Holland, a new Indian leader, Korea, Mapuche, Mongolia, Scotland and Zulu.
  • Cyberpunk 2077:
    • The nature of Cyberpsychosis and Humanity ratings. When the game came out in the 1980s, it was pretty much a way to increase Body Horror and limit players from just having everything, by threatening your character with removal by GM Fiat. Thirty years later, with more real-world knowledge about limb replacement, it may sound ableist and offensive to people with real-world psychological issues and disabilities. The shift in the video game from the tabletop — that Cyberpsychosis isn't real but instead a bunch of factors like defective tech, drug use, and psychological trauma caused by the oppressive state of terminal-stage capitalism in the Cyberpunk world — updates it to modern times while tying it into the setting's statements about corporate greed and recklessness.
    • A common criticism for CDProjekt's previous hit, The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt was the fact that all characters, from major ones to background NPCs, were white (until the Heart Of Stone DLC). Night City features people of all races and ethnicities, with Japanese, Latin American, Filipino, Native American, black and mixed-race characters playing major roles in the story and being in more important sidequests. They're also voiced by actors who correspond to their character's ethnic backgrounds. The player can also make their V any race/ethnicity they'd want, while in The Witcher they could only play as the white Geralt.
    • Another criticism was the lack of LGBT characters, or if they were present, their identity was either sidelined (Ciri's bisexuality being mentioned only in a single optional dialogue tree), used for titillation (Philippa and Saskia in The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings), or an excuse for Gayngst (minor character named Myslaw in the third game). Cyberpunk 2077 mitigates this somewhat by offering a few well-written, openly LGBT characters (Judy, Kerry, Claire, Johnny) whose arcs and identities are treated with respect, a Gay Option for both masculine and feminine V (unlike Wild Hunt's two female romance options for Geralt) and the possibility of making V Transgender (though opinions on how it was implemented vary). Additionally, in the English dub, Claire is voiced by Maddie Taylor, who's a transgender actress.
  • Cytus:
    • The developers of Cytus attempted to address the issue of lenient timing windows by introducing TP, an alternate scoring system that's less forgiving on mistakes and adds a harder-to-obtain variant of the Perfect judgement. The TP is explained in official social media and forum posts, but not in-game and the game does not show the breakdown between "color" Perfects (the harder variant) and "black" Perfects.
    • Some players complained that in Cytus II, Neko#ΦωΦ got way more songs compared to the other main characters. At its worst, she had 72 compared to PAFF's 28 and ROBO_Head's 32. A big part of this problem was due to Neko's occupation as a video game streamer making her the logical choice to receive all of the Crossover songs from other rhythm games, despite the fact that some of them would sound more fitting for other characters. Noticing this, Rayark introduced Graff. J, a new character who could receive the collaboration songs in order to balance the main characters' song numbers again. The announcement even included a humorous drawing of Neko tearfully handing some CDs to Graff◊!
  • Dawn of War:
    • One of the reasons that the entry Soulstorm was so disliked was the legendarily bad performance by the Space Marines commander Indrick Boreale, being one of the most incompetent commanders in the whole series. To the studio's credit, Relic Entertainment didn't retcon this and actually explored the results of Boreale's decisions based on those complaints. Come Dawn of War 2, Cyrus confirms that Boreale died in the previous game and cost the Chapter a large chunk of their manpower, and the Chapter's recruiting worlds are being threatened from all sides because of this. In Chaos Rising, Cyrus cites Boreale if he's the traitor, believing that the Chapter is no longer worth obeying if it promotes complete idiots to important ranks.
    • When the trailer for Chaos Rising came out, it was widely speculated that one of the Chaos Space Marines in the trailer was Eliphas the Inheritor, the charismatic Chaos Lord from Dark Crusade. Only problem was that Eliphas' ending cutscene in that game has him ripped apart by a daemon, specifically citing that he had no chance of redemption. So the creators transferred Eliphas to a new Legion with a mission from Abaddon the Despoiler (the Warmaster of Chaos) himself just to include the character for fans.
  • The original release of Death Stranding drew some criticism due to an interview log titled "An Asexual World", which gives an inaccurate, stereotype-filled description of asexuality that many asexuals found offensive. The Director's Cut adds a paragraph which points out that even In-Universe, the article's claims are dubious and discriminatory, separating the offensive content of the log from the real-life writer's own views.
  • Deltarune addresses criticism of the game it is following, Undertale:
    • A common complaint was how the Pacifist Run adhered to the Crime of Self-Defense trope, requiring players to not attack creatures intent on murdering you. By comparison, Deltarune takes a more realistic approach, featuring enemies that can only be placated by tiring them out and casting a spell on them. Additionally, while winning fights through violence prevents enemies from being recruited, doing so will not cause the story to diverge from the Pacifist route like in Undertale, unless the player actively seeks out the Weird Route, which requires a much more active and intentional form of villainy.
    • The game is also less condemning of violence against foes with zero redeeming qualities to them. The King outright exploits the characters in a Pacifist Run by claiming to have a Freudian Excuse and being willing to talk it out after his battle, only to sneak attack the characters after he tricks Ralsei into healing him. Ultimately, he doesn't pull a Heel–Face Turn; either he's overthrown by Lancer and his subjects and thrown into the dungeon, or Ralsei realizes the King had tired himself out and uses the Pacify spell to tranquilize him, depending on whether you made a "kill" on regular encounters.
    • One of the complaints in Undertale that Toby Fox agreed with was the player character's movement speed was far too slow. This game allows you to either hold down a key/button to run, or choose the option to auto-run. The slow movement speed is even referred to in-game, as, during the beginning portion, Susie repeatedly complains about Kris walking too slowly.
  • The reveal of DmC: Devil May Cry was accompanied by the creators promoting it as a prequel to the existing Devil May Cry series. Backlash over changes to the character and backstory that were incompatible with pre-existing canon caused the creators to retcon the game into being a parallel world. This didn't stop the 2013 reboot from garnering a mixed-to-negative reception, so the real Author's Saving Throw came with the release of Devil May Cry 5 in 2019, which is an Un-Reboot that brings back the original Dante and Nero from DMC4 as well as Vergil.
  • The first two classic Doom games were ported in 2019 to PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Switch, and on Android and iOS devices, however, many players quickly discovered it was marred with various issues (e.g. the game screen being stretched, the music played at a slower speed, broken lighting effects) along with an always-online Bethesda.net DRM on a game that was originally DRM-free since its original MS-DOS version, which Bethesda claimed it was for the then-upcoming Doom Eternal's Slayer's Club bonuses, quickly garnering widespread ridicule. And to add insult to injury, the previous generation ports on Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3, which were considered some of the better ports of Doom and Doom II, were delisted from their respective digital distribution services and couldn't be redownloaded if someone had own them on their account prior to the 2019 re-releases.

    Bethesda however listened to the response and took the criticism of the new ports to heart, not only putting the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 versions back on their respective storefronts and eventually fixing the 2019 port's major issues, but would go on to improve 2019 ports even further to give console players an experience comparable to playing these games on a modern source port with 60 FPS gameplay, increased rendering resolution, and support curated mods that can be (optionally) downloaded through Bethesda.net, among them being the two halves of Final Doom for both games, No Rest for the Living episode for Doom II, and SIGIL for Doom. The mobile version and PC re-release of the 2019 port also supports using custom vanilla-compatible WADs.
  • Leliana appears in all Dragon Age games even if she was killed in Dragon Age: Origins, with no explanation for her survival except a suggestion from Leliana herself that the Maker had more plans for her. This inevitably led to jokes about how the Sacred Ashes can cure beheadings even when they've been desecrated. One DLC for Dragon Age: Inquisition offers an explanation that fits much better into the established lore. Leliana wasn't brought back. A spirit, empowered by the lyrium surrounding the Ashes, broke through the Veil and took Leliana's form, picking up where she left off. For all intents and purposes, this spirit became Leliana. In world states where Leliana was killed, this neatly places her in the same category of characters as Cole, a Spirit of Compassion impersonating a young mage he was unable to save, the Guardian of the Ashes, a spirit of unidentified virtue impersonating one of Andraste's most loyal followers, and the Spirit (likely of Faith) impersonating Divine Justinia.
  • Dragon Quest: Dragon Quest IV on the DS suffered from a very limited run. Nintendo made sure that Dragon Quest V, Dragon Quest VI, and Dragon Quest IX were fortunately made more available. Also in contrast to DQIV, DQV's characters have less regionalism which, while it still is present, is much less distracting and far more comprehensible to someone whose first language may not be English.
  • After release, Hamir was immediately declared the worst character in Dungeons of Aether, due to his gimmick (gaining Stamina when blocking attacks and gaining a die equal to half his Stamina rounded down each turn, but losing Stamina when hitting enemies and being unable to spend Stamina normally), being hard to use and turning into a disadvantage if it isn't used enough. Of note was his need to raise three stats to be able to block attacks reliably, when you only get to pick three dice per turn. The next day, he was buffed so he no longer needs Accuracy dice to use his normal Defend Command, and enemies are easier to trick into attacking even when they'll be blocked, which was explicitly due to player feedback.
  • In addition to all its new content, the Updated Re-release for Fairy Fencer F, Advent Dark Force, also makes many adjustments to its existing story routes, considerably smoothing several characters arcs and making the plot flow better. Where it truly falls into this trope is with Sherman. Intended as a Well-Intentioned Extremist, most fans found him to be a self-aggrandizing Tautological Templar and the party's sympathy for his motives (if not actions) to be thoroughly misplaced. ADF embraces this, re-casting the character as a Knight Templar blinded by his ideals. Not only does this give Fang some credibility for not trusting him from the startnote , it also allows Sherman to take over a plot-critical action that was originally a tremendously Out-of-Character Moment for an otherwise sympathetic character. It's almost universally agreed this one character rewrite makes the main route much stronger all on its own.
  • Fire Emblem:
    • Fire Emblem Fates attracted controversy for the character of Soleil, who appears to be a bisexual woman who prefers women but only has heterosexual romance options. In particular, the Male Avatar's support with her features him drugging her with a potion that causes her to perceive men as women and vice versa, then pursuing a relationship with her, an action many fans found worryingly close to corrective rape. Similarly, her support with Wholesome Crossdresser Forrest was her refusing to accept that he was actually a boy, all while stalking him and making creepy come-ons that only fly due to her being the girl in the scenario. Before the game even came out in the U.S., Nintendo of America issued a statement that these supports would be extensively rewritten.
      The rewrites were, on the whole, well-received. Soleil still very obviously likes the ladies, and most of her S-rank supports were changed from a romantic Relationship Upgrade to her politely knocking back any offers of marriage for being Platonic Life-Partners instead. The above mentioned supports are only two chains that end in marriage: Soleil knows that Forrest is male from the get-go, and their conversations are about her not believing that his hair is real. Meanwhile, the Male Avatar no longer drugs her — instead, he consensually blindfolds her for a visualization exercise, letting her imagine people as the opposite sex to help her work out her confused feelings for him (and even then, she hints she's making an exception for him).
    • Also from Fates, all of the Hoshidan and Nohrian princes and princesses could support with their siblings, as well as their counterpartsnote  and the foreign royals of the opposite sex, but not the other royal of the same sex. Fire Emblem Warriors fixes this by adding supports between Xander and Takumi, Camilla and Sakura, Leo and Ryoma, and Elise and Hinoka.
    • Fire Emblem: Three Houses appears to have used complaints about Fates as a checklist:
      • One Game for the Price of Two is avoided, price of admission allows you to access all three houses and their story routes. Plus the fourth Flame Emperor route.
      • Black-and-White Morality is gone. Every faction in the game is very, very grey and even the villains have detailed motivations. Further, Fates' Giant Space Flea from Nowhere problem is averted, so no sudden Outside-Context Problem invalidating the political plot.
      • Bisexual and gay characters are handled with even more tact. There are multiple characters a Byleth of either gender can romance, and several more have romantic paired endings with the same sex despite not being interested in a Byleth of their gender. Originally though, M/M pairings were lacking as all of them besides Linhardt ended up being But Not Too Gay note  while later additions added Jeritza and Yuri as gay options for male Byleth.

    G-N 
  • Genshin Impact: After many players complained about Sumeru being difficult to navigate due to the underground areas of the map being obscured from the region map, Hoyoverse's developers implemented an underground map of the region into the game proper, allowing players to see which layer of the underground (or underwater) they're in.
  • Guild Wars 2: Many fans of the game expressed their hate of Traherne for taking the spotlight from the player and having the entirety of the Orr arc about him. In Heart of Thorns, Traherne disappears completely until the very end where the player kills him.
  • ArcSys is well-known for overcharging with their Updated Re-release titles, releasing the same game multiple times at full price with small amounts of additional content. So, when it was announced that Guilty Gear Xrd -REVELATOR- would be getting an update (REV 2) as digital download and a lowered-price retail release, many saw it as a relief.
  • After the release of Half-Life 2, the fanbase was extremely displeased by what, to Gordon, amounts to a Shoot the Shaggy Dog even worse than the first game. Episode One blows the rage away through a Moment of Awesome for the Vortigaunts that both retcons Alyx's implied death, and changes the whole storyline, showing the G-Man isn't as all-powerful as thought before.
  • Hay Day: After peanuts and peanut products were added to the game, the main complaint regarding the former was that only 3 products could be made with peanuts, which led to players having piles of peanuts in their silos they couldn't do much with. In December 2020, an update added 4 more peanut products.
  • Inscryption: The reveal that the first act of the game, which was the only part publicized and seen in the demo, was relatively short and wildly different from the rest of the game led to some players accusing the creator of false advertising or even scamming. Two months after launch, the creator released Kaycee's Mod, a free expansion which expands the first act into a full rogue-lite.
  • KanColle, being a game from Japan and thus featuring largely IJN warships, has had a lot of backlash from nations that were Allied Powers and saw the 'Abyssal' fleet as a stand-in for the Allied Fleetsnote . The devs eventually clarified that this wasn't the case (at least, not anymore) by introducing Allied shipgirls (beginning with USS Iowa) and Abyssals based on IJN ships.
  • Kingdom Hearts:
    • After three infamously No Export for You "Final Mix" versions that were Japan-only, the 1.5 and 2.5 PS3 ports of the series included the Final Mix versions of I, II, and Birth By Sleep. International fans that had been left out of all their extra content over the years can now enjoy it looking better than ever.
    • The series has long been criticized for its entries being spread over multiple consoles from both Nintendo and Sony, making it a bit tricky to keep up. The 1.5+2.5 release for the PS4, in tandem with the 2.8 release that remasters 3D, means the entire series sans Days and Re:coded and χ are playable on a single console.note 
    • The Days adaption in 1.5 Remix was criticized for its awkward cuts between fight scenes and for not including scenes from the Disney worlds. The adaption of coded in 2.5 Remix does include scenes for fights and the Disney worlds making the cuts much less jarring and telling the story more coherently. When 1.5 Remix was put on PS4, a scene for Roxas fighting Xion was added.
    • The Disney elements have been The Artifact since Days, but there has been some effort to avoid this starting from coded. Donald and Goofy are given a bigger role in coded after getting Demoted to Extra and return to being party members for Kingdom Hearts III and a scene added to the storyline of coded during 2.5 Remix has Maleficent making a connection between the Datascape and the Book of Prophecies from chi, adding context to her appearance in 3D and reversing the Villain Decay she has gone through. Additionally, the Disney worlds are back to having a story reason for getting visited, with Disney characters having more interactions with the KH-original characters.
    • Kairi has been Demoted to Extra as of Days. She gets called in to help in the secret ending of 3D. However, considering how she ultimately fared in III, some can't help but wonder if it was worth it. Thankfully, the ReMIND DLC rectified this issue after a massive fan backdraft ensued.
    • Going beyond just the Kingdom Hearts series, the portrayal of the main trio of Disney characters—Donald Duck, Goofy and Mickey Mouse—could be considered a response to some of the most common complaints about those characters over the last few decades. For many animated fans, the trio were basically glorified corporate mascots with little personality, which wasn't helped by the fact that they never really had definitive backstories or occupations. The original Kingdom Hearts made sure to rectify that, portraying Mickey as a monarch, Donald as his Court Mage, and Goofy as his Captain of the Guard. And while their backstories still aren't terribly detailed, Kingdom Hearts II still makes an effort to give Mickey an actual character arc by showing the beginnings of his feud with Pete and introducing us to his childhood mentor, Yen Sid.
    • Birth by Sleep and Dream Drop Distance were notorious for having poorly designed secret bosses that had A.I. Roulette and forced players to spam invincibility frames and cheap tactics to win. 0.2's secret boss hinted at a return to reactive boss design that Kingdom Hearts I and II had. Thankfully, the Osaka team, who were the developers of said games, likewise redeemed themselves BIG TIME with the additional fourteen secret bosses of Re:Mind DLC for III, which were much lauded for their sharp increase in difficulty from the base game, but in a VERY fun and properly challenging way.
  • The King of Fighters:
    • The creators changed the gameplay in '99; four characters are selectable for the fight, with one (or more, in 2001) being a Striker, a supportive character that would be called to perform a move in order to stop an opponent or open his guard for your attacks. Fans disliked the bugs and infinite combos that came with it. In 2002, the game went back to 3-on-3 fights with no strikers, like '98 and the titles before it.
    • Most fans were unhappy (euphemism) about Ash Crimson taking the role of protagonist previously covered by Kyo and K', just as much as they were unhappy about him stealing both Chizuru and Iori's Sacred Treasures powers. Come XIII, Ash enacts a Heroic Sacrifice to stop the Big Bad of that Story Arc. Mind you, he doesn't die... he is erased from existence. Retroactively! So he never really existed in the first place. And then he was brought Back from the Dead for XV...
  • The Legend of Zelda:
    • The entire existence of The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess was this, as the more cartoony nature of The Wind Waker saw heavy backlash from Western fans, who formed the majority of the series' fanbase and had been vocally desiring a more realistic and mature-looking installment. This, combined with the game also seeing sluggish sales, resulted in plans for a The Wind Waker 2 being scrapped in favor of a title which would take more inspiration and influence from Ocarina of Time. Twilight Princess would quickly become one of the best-selling games in the series, selling twice as much as The Wind Waker.
    • The HD Remake of The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker addressed two of the biggest complaints lobbed at the original game, with these changes being explicitly highlighted pre-release: the Triforce quest and sailing. For the former, the fetch quest was reduced to finding three shards in the ocean instead of the original eight, while with the latter, a new sail was created that increased the speed of Link's boat without having to constantly change the wind direction. They also revamped how boat items work, permanently dedicating them to the D-Pad buttons rather than requiring you to equip them.
    • The HD version of The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess also had its own fixes, with one that was pointed out by series producer Eiji Aonuma being the addition of a Colossal Wallet that allows Link to hold 9,999 rupees. The item was added after his son played the original and told him that the Magic Armor felt too Awesome, but Impractical rather than the rupee mechanic being a balanced drawback, due to how few rupees you were even able to hold (a merger 1,000).
    • Though The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword originally saw critical praise, it would end up being one of the worst-selling home console installments in the series, selling less than even the GameCube version of The Wind Waker. Fans would expressed annoyance with the heavily linear nature of the title, which prompted the team to experiment with more non-linear formats: first with A Link Between Worlds, and then with the Wide-Open Sandbox Breath of the Wild, the latter of which garnered immense critical and commercial success and is now the best-selling game in the series by a wide margin.
  • Mass Effect:
    • The ending of Mass Effect 3 caused backlash of epic proportions. Official polls from BioWare showed that nearly 90% of fans hated the ending for various reasons. The outrage culminated in several campaigns aimed at getting BioWare to notice, including donating tens of thousands of dollars to Child's Play. Two weeks after the game's release, BioWare announced they'd be releasing an extended version of the endings to (hopefully) clear up everything that happened. Most fan complaints about the original ending were addressed, a couple Retcons went a long way to mollifying the fanbase upset over the Inferred Holocaust of the original ending (things aren't nearly as bad as Fridge Horror believed). The EMS requirements for the good endings was also lowered so that it was no longer required to also do the multiplayer missions. And the best part was that the entire Extended Cut DLC was released free of charge.
    • The Citadel DLC to ME3 addressed the biggest non-ending related complaint about the game, which was the absence of information for the surviving Mass Effect 2 squad, particularly the love interests. While none of them figure into the main plot of the DLC, a slew of additional scenes were added with all of them.
    • The series was heavily criticized for the first two games including Gay Options only for women, then trying to justify the obvious Double Standard by claiming that "asari don't count" which only succeeded in angering their lesbian fans along with their gay male fans. The saving throw for this was done in two stages. The first was when Mass Effect 3 included Gay Option love interests for both genders, including a human option for lesbians and a Relationship Upgrade with a returning squadmate for gay men. The second stage is when Mass Effect: Andromeda confirmed via in-game conversation with Cora, a heterosexual woman, that a person will only be attracted to asari if they are attracted to females of their own species to begin with.
  • Capcom had received flack from fans for neglecting the Mega Man video game franchise following the cancellation of several games (including the highly-demanded Mega Man Legends 3), as well as the character's exclusion from Marvel vs. Capcom 3, and the decision to include Bad Box Art Mega Man as a Joke Character in Street Fighter X Tekken. Keiji Inafune's departure from the company further fueled the flames. So when Marvel vs. Capcom: Infinite was announced, Mega Man X is the very first character to be featured in the debut teaser trailer, even before Capcom's resident poster-boy Ryu shows up. Of course, Infinite ended being rather divisive upon release, but even so, for the 30th Anniversary of the Mega Man franchise, Capcom announced a Compilation Re-release of the X series of games and the brand-new Mega Man 11.
  • After many players called out Metal Gear Solid for its extremely loose understanding of basic genetics (as relayed by the main antagonist, Liquid Snake), Hideo Kojima stepped up and established that Liquid himself has an extremely flimsy grasp on the subject and didn't actually know a word of what he was saying. It doesn't explain how a man with a supposed I.Q. of 180 and a fluency in seven languages could get such simple scientific facts wrong, or why Ocelot refers to Solid as the "inferior one".
  • Metal Wolf Chaos' XD remaster was first released with many of the original game's visuals missing, resulting in a drab looking remaster, along with various bugs and crushes that didn't happen in the original Xbox version. General Arcade however eventually fixed some of the game's issues and restored most of the missing shaders and visual effects since the v1.03 update.
  • Minecraft:
    • Enchanting used to cost all the experience points the enchantment required. A level 30 enchantment actually drained 30 levels to do, making it a very time-consuming and costly affair. Snapshot 15w47c changed it so you only needed to be at that level to do the enchantment, and it would only cost a few levels, albeit now at the cost of lapis. The trade-off is now you have to do an enchantment to reroll it, rather than just being able to close and open the enchanting table, and using an anvil still costs the full level cost to do.
    • TNT in the earlier versions of the game had a good chance of destroying most of the blocks it blew up. This made it fun, but largely useless since you stood a really good chance of blowing up valuable resources while mining with it. This changed in version 1.14 where TNT is guaranteed to drop all destroyed blocks as items, making it now an invaluable tool for strip-mining resources.
  • Minecraft: Story Mode:
    • Telltale Games got some heat for featuring only male Jesse in the marketing for the game, which implies the male character is the true mc/pc and causes female gamers to feel left out and underrepresented... so they fixed it in later advertisements that started to pop up around the release of episode 2, which featured individual commercials for both versions of Jesse, or showing both versions in the same commercials.
    • The game was facing accusations that the game was too soft compared to other Telltale games, so several character deaths were planned for episodes 3 & 4.
  • Neptunia: By the original release of Victory, the characters were all comically exaggerated to the point that half the fandom found them annoying, with everyone's opinion clashing with everyone else's. Idea Factory began rolling saving throws by going back to basics: the Updated Re-release Re;Birth series. Hyperdimension Neptunia Re;Birth1 uses a new plot and introduces characters with much more relatable personalities, Hyperdimension Neptunia Re Birth 2 tweaks the script considerably while maintaining the much-lauded new characters, and the third remake changed several plot events to not require the leads to be Jerkasses. Where unpleasant things had to happen, the characters agreed to get them over quickly with obvious disdain for the recycled script they'd been given. Come Megadimension Neptunia VII, the likable cast of characters is now hailed as one of its high points.
  • Nintendo Wars: In the Advance Wars series, both Missiles and Battleships are often seen as Awesome, but Impractical at best, and outright worthless at worse owing to being vastly overpriced and the very poor range and movement of the Missile unit. In Days of Ruin, both of these were given massive buffs to make them far more useful: the Missile was given one extra attack and movement range which, when coupled with the additional aerial units, makes them a far more versatile (if still expensive) unit, while the Battleship was given a discount and the overpowered ability to move and attack in the same turn which, along with other nerfs to balance this out (reduced ammo and movement range) still made it far more useful overall.
  • No Man's Sky: Every single patch could be seen as an attempt at this due to the controversy surrounding many of the promised features that were missing during the game's initial release.
    • The day one patch notes, which many suspect were released just to combat the leaks and prove that the leaked copies were, in fact, incomplete builds. Judging from the reviews from critics, however, it didn't seem to help much, being just a posturing Take That! to the pirated versions.
    • Patch 1.04, released August 18th, fixed some of the bugs each version suffered.
    • The entirety of the Foundations Update, which added numerous features that were previously promised, including base building and board-able freighters, in addition to fixing a number of bugs.
    • The NEXT update in late July 2018 added multiplayer, which was promised during the game's prerelease.
    • The work of the developers under Sean Murray cannot be understated here. After the disastrous initial release, they essentially worked around the clock to get each update and patch working in the game, facing immense backlash and even death threats all the while. This video by the Internet Historian explains it best.

    O-R 
  • Octopath Traveler: While the initial demo was very well-received, there was much discussion among fans about where the game could use improvement. The development team was very receptive to this input, sending surveys to those who had downloaded the demo and going to great lengths to address the issues brought up while refining the final product.
  • Paper Mario:
    • In Paper Mario: Sticker Star, the normally talkative Bowser has no dialogue and is treated as little more than a mindless monster. This wasn't a well-received change by fans; they feel his dialogue is a huge amount of what makes Bowser appealing in other Mario RPG games, so Mario & Luigi: Paper Jam, Paper Mario: Color Splash, and Paper Mario: The Origami King gave him back his voice.
    • Paper Mario: Color Splash makes several saving throws after the criticism Paper Mario: Sticker Star received:
      • Sticker Star is jeered relentlessly for most of its cast being more or less indistinct Toads with all the personality of... well, a sheet of paper. For Color Splash, while the issue isn't 100% fixed, the writing is much sharper and sincerely funny, managing to give even the near-identical Toads distinctive personalities. There are also more non-Toad NPCs like Friendly Enemy Bowser forces.
      • Sticker Star has many generic environments, especially when compared to the areas of previous Mario RPGs, that feel rather disjointed and episodic when taken as a whole. Color Splash brings back the more detailed, imaginative levels of earlier games and has them connect better than Sticker Star did.
      • The battle system in Sticker Star is considered to be a waste of time and unrewarding due to Star Points being removed, so battles offer no reward other than coins (many of which are only gained if the battle was won without taking damage, something that is hard to pull off with most attacks without spending coins to let you use more stickers) and more stickers, which are common enough on the overworld anyway. Color Splash adds ways to permanently increase the number of attacks used per turn without spending coinsm and has some cards that let you use multiple attacks with a single card, making it much easier to win battles quickly. Hammer Points have also been added as a kind of experience system.
      • The Thing system was overhauled. In Sticker Star, being able to use a Thing requires you to backtrack to the Sling a Thing stand in Decalburg and turn it into a sticker; additionally the system is a total Guide Dang It!, especially for bosses. Color Splash overhauls the system so that Things are automatically turned into cards when you got them, and adds a hint system to tell you what Thing is needed next (though it will not tell you if multiple Things are needed on two separate things in the same level, though it's still an improvement over Sticker Star).
      • Bosses are considered anticlimactic in Sticker Star due to their battles being reduced to "use the right Thing at the right time, cutting their HP so low that one attack will finish them off." In Color Splash, some bosses don't need a Thing to defeat at all; in battles where a Thing is needed, it's used to stop a powerful attack or make the boss vulnerable, meaning bosses are actually fun to fight.
      • Kersti from the previous game is considered incredibly overemotional and mean to Mario, while also not receiving any character development. In Color Splash, Huey is nicer, jokier and comparatively more relaxed, and while he does get somewhat aggro at times, it's for much more understandable reasons (Huey usually only gets genuinely upset when he is physically abused somehow, whereas one of Kersti's most notorious moments is yelling at Mario because she took too long to save her from a Scuttlebug nest). This also makes his Heroic Sacrifice at the end hold more weight, since he has more character than being an Ungrateful Bastard so the player is more likely to care about him.
    • Paper Mario: The Origami King makes even more of an effort to clean up the criticisms of the previous modern Paper Mario games.
      • Unlike Sticker Star and Color Splash, there are more original characters with both actual names and unique designs beyond the helper (Olivia). This point is especially impressive, as an interview released before the game revealed the restrictions were even worse than previously thought.
      • Partners make a return after their absence in Sticker Star and a heavily-limited version of them in Color Splash. Even though they're temporary and their attacks are automated, their unique interactions with Olivia and other characters and their assistance in battle help to liven up each area. Bobby, Kamek, and Bowser Jr. in particular are very well-received.
      • The basic Jump and Hammer attacks are now infinite use like the classic games. While the stronger variants are limited, a single piece of such can now be used multiple times before consumption.
      • The battle UI has been greatly improved from Color Splash's clunky version. Instead of flicking through a long menu to choose attacks, painting them, and then flicking them again, you instead simply choose your targets and your weapons, and attack. This makes battles much snappier and more satisfying.
      • Players can now see the damage Mario deals on enemies again numerically to allow for more accurate attack choices, after Color Splash bizarrely removed this basic feature for an unreliable and vague mechanic where the color of each enemy slowly drains as they lose health.
      • The nature of the circle ring system gives Mario more control on which targets to attack during his turn in battle, as the previous two games took the feature away for ultimately misguided reasons.
      • While battles still provide only Coins and Confetti, Money for Nothing is finally averted after the last two entries failed to do so — with long-term coin investments like the expensive Accessories or the Royalty Pass, stronger weapons having durability instead of being one-time use, and coins having a use in battle to extend the timer on battle rings or solve them outright if you're having trouble, battling to earn coins for better weapons and accessories is encouraged, and it never feels like a waste.
      • Bosses no longer require Things, especially as most of them technically are Things themselves. This time, all boss weaknesses are in the fight itself, with no easy-to-miss items required beforehand. It also doubles as a Catharsis Factor, allowing players frustrated with the Things system to finally get revenge.
      • After two Paper Mario games in a row of Bowser being the main villain in a spin-off series celebrated for introducing original characters and villains, Origami King addresses this with the eponymous character, King Olly. Meanwhile, Bowser himself is mostly incapacitated from the start of the game, giving a refreshing change of pace from his Big Bad role. Bowser also never manages to overthrow Olly, unlike Mario & Luigi Dream Team’s shocking yet still divisive use of it on Antasma.
      • Unlike the game shows of the previous two games, the bonus round of Shy Guys Finish Last is optional, merely rewarding a Collectible Treasure and trophy rather than a mandatory item for a boss.
  • Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous: In July 2023, Owlcat Games added a customer data-gathering package to the game via patch, only to reverse the change less than 24 hours later after backlash. Comments from the developers on the game's subreddit boil down to "Point taken, sorry about that."
  • Pokémon Sleep:
    • The September 26, 2023 update added the ability for all boxed Pokémon to recover 5% of your Sleep Score as Energy, letting them recharge bit by bit each day they're not on your team. This was done after several players complained about it being hard for them to recover Energy.
    • The Linking Cord quickly became infamous among the fan base due to how easy it is collect them (given as a reward for reaching level 3 friendship with a friend) and the game having very few Pokémon that use them for evolving. An update on November 16, 2023 lets you trade a Linking Cord for five Candies of a random Pokémon that evolves with it.
    • Free to play players complained how difficult it was to collect diamonds, biscuits, and other items, which made the game more difficult. An update in December 2023 added a daily free gift feature that gives players a free item or diamonds everyday.
    • At the end of March 2024, two different bugs occurred; there was a particularly nasty bug where attempting to collect berries or ingredients would display an error and boot the player back to the title screen. This happened on a Sunday where the pot size to cook ingredients is doubled so it was a pretty rough blow for everyone trying to power up their Snorlax. To compensate, the developers gave everyone three Helper Whistles, an item that gives out three hours worth of collected berries and ingredients. Another bug occurred shortly after where, upon using a Raikou Incense, only its one star sleep style would appear regardless of whether or not you qualified to see its other sleep styles. To make up for it, the developers gave everyone one Raikou Incense and one Raikou Biscuit as well as boosting Drowsy Power by 1.5 for the weekend.
  • Prince of Persia: Warrior Within was written with a mandate from marketing to turn the series away from the Arabian Nights feel and make it Darker and Edgier, complete with emo antihero Prince and heavy metal music. The fans bashed the change mercilessly, and the writers answered rather innovatively by working the Audience-Alienating Era into the plot of Prince of Persia: The Two Thrones. The Prince had become so dark and angry due to the stress of being pursued by the Dhaka for years; freed from it his original snarky attitude returns. The Dark Prince is a manifestation of all the character flaws the Prince demonstrated in Warrior Within who also points out the inherent selfishness and irresponsibility in the Prince changing history to fix his mistakes. Taunted with this near the end, the Prince realizes how childish he has been and chooses to face the consequences of his actions, silencing the Dark Prince.
  • Quilts & Cats of Calico: In response to complaints about the Story Mode puzzles, the April 22, 2023 patch update added some quality of life features to make them easier to solve:
    • When you select a Patch Tile, the invalid spots on the board are now marked with X's.
    • The limited rules such as only being allowed to place adjacent colors or patterns are in a separate window which can be viewed anytime.
  • Raiden III was panned by many players for not including the iconic Bend Plasma (aka "Toothpaste Laser") that originated in Raiden II, replacing it with the Photon Laser. It was put back in Raiden IV, though with somewhat different behavior.
  • Resident Evil 3 (Remake) got decent reviews, but suffered heavy criticism for being a Compressed Adaptation and Mission-Pack Sequel of Resident Evil 2 (Remake) that reused a lot of assets, removed a number of locales like the entire Clock Tower, Raccoon Park, and Dead Factory, trimmed back how Nemesis functioned, and even removed the branching paths and Live Selection that gave the original a ton of replay value. Thus, when they made Resident Evil 4 (Remake), while they still changed a lot about the narrative and gameplay to make it far more serious and far less campy than the original, they were much more faithful in recreating iconic locations and events from the original. They even brought back Oven Man. Thus, the remake of 4 was released to near-universal acclaim, scored 10/10's almost across the board, and sold over 3 million copies in its first two days.
  • In Resident Evil 7: Biohazard, Chris Redfield had for years been depicted with a hulking physique, ever since Resident Evil 5. When he shows up at the end, he looked like this. So extreme was the change that a popular theory at the time was that the "Redfield" that showed up was an imposture, which Capcom had to deny. By Resident Evil Village, Chris was back to looking like he had previously.
  • Rimworld: The Biotech DLC got some notable criticism from the player base for the lack of synergy with the previous Ideology DLC despite the overlapping narrative possibilities, which was due to the developers not wanting to lock paid DLC content behind other paid DLC. Directly as a response to this feedback, they went back on their decision and added numerous integrations between the expansions in the following update.
  • River City Girls was criticized for its ending involving Kunio and Riki not recognizing Misako and Kyoko as their girlfriends as opposed to Hasebe and Mami as part of a joke on different localizations and different canons. The ending was not well recieved due to it being the same in the secret ending even with the boss fight against Hasebe and Mami added, for not making sense to new fans of the Kunio-Kun series and even pissing off veteran fans of the series who prefer Misako and Kyoko with the boys as opposed to Hasebe and Mami due to the latter two going under major Adaptational Jerkass. Not to mention there was some criticism applied to the notion that the ending took away from the idea of the girls rescuing the boys since the original ending played into the trope of them being psycho-exes or outright delusional yanderes. Therefore, many fans were relieved when the new secret ending in version 1.1 finally allowed for Earn Your Happy Ending with Kunio and Riki being on much friendlier terms with Misako and Kyoko and taking them out to eat for their troubles.

    S-Z 
  • In the Saints Row series, one of the reasons why Saints Row: The Third and Saints Row IV were such Contested Sequels is because they moved the action from the amazingly-designed town of Stilwater to the much less interesting Steelport, whose districts look very similar and don't have many interesting landmarks—a huge flaw in the Wide-Open Sandbox genre, where the quality of the setting is so important. The reboot, Saints Row (2022) is once again set in a new location, and this time, the town of Santo Ileso is much closer to Stilwater than Steelport in terms of quality, with several visually distinct districts, loads of memorable landmarks, and a much more colorful palette. While it's still debatable whether Santo Ileso is better than Stilwater, everyone agrees that it's a massive improvement over Steelport.
  • When Koei added Naotora Ii to Samurai Warriors Chronicle 2nd as a tall and shapely but shy and apologetic woman, fans were unimpressed that they chose one of the few women of the era who wielded genuine power to portray that way. 4 patched things up by showing that as shy as her manners were, she was still a competent politician, unflinching on the battlefield, and when she does set her mind on something, nothing stops her.
  • The developers of Smash TV originally did not anticipate that anyone would be persistent enough to actually meet the conditions for the Pleasure Dome area that did not exist in the original version of the game, and so they added a taunting message about missing that secret area in the game's sole ending that is always presented regardless of meeting the conditions, only to be surprised when players started brute-forcing everything in the game to see if there was perhaps some super secret method to unlocking the Pleasure Dome, and then started levelling complaints against Williams for informing them of a nonexistent secret area for an equally nonexistent "good" ending. In direct response, Revision 8.00 introduces the "Outer Pleasure Dome Area" that can be reached when the keys for it are collected. From a Polygon interview with John Tobias and Mark Turmell:
    "You know, it’s funny because when I remember back to that period of time, I remember us thinking a lot of the time, 'Players will never get there,'" says Tobias. "'They won't play the game enough ... They'll never get there anyway so it doesn’t matter.' And players got there, and so that surprised us. We thought the same thing on [Mortal Kombat] about the fatalities: 'They'll never find these things.'"
  • Sonic the Hedgehog created some confusion over whether the name of the series villain is Robotnik or Eggman, owing to dub discrepancies. "Eggman" was always this character's name in Japan, but America localized his name as Ivo Robotnik. Sega eventually settled the issue by saying both names are official — Ivo Robotnik is his real name, and Eggman is the nickname everyone uses for him. The Sonic Adventure series phased out the Robotnik name in favor of calling him Eggman, and the finale of Sonic Generations has Classic Eggman referred to by his real name, noting that "nobody calls me that anymore".
  • Soulcalibur V was controversial for getting rid of many of the Soul series' established characters in favor of divisive replacements. In response, Soulcalibur VI was announced to be a complete reboot that would bring back the original cast. The fact that the announcement trailer heavily featured Sophitia, a fan favorite who was killed off in V and replaced by Patroklos, her unpopular son, was likely a deliberate apology.
  • The debut trailer for the 2011 SSX game had an extremely Darker and Edgier feel, realistic and "gritty" graphics, some plot revolving around rival teams of boarders competing to race in the most inhospitable places on Earth and the title SSX: Deadly Descents. Cue derogatory nicknames like "Call of SSX: Winter Assault" and variants. Every single game related media since then has the developers insisting that the characters and the cartoony and over the top feel of the game are still there and that the "Deadly Descents" are just a small part of the game, the others being the classic racing and trick modes. The subtitle was eventually removed.
  • Soon after the gameplay demo of Starfield in 2022, Bethesda's Twitter account verified that the game would not have a voiced protagonist, a much-maligned feature in Fallout 4 that even Bethesda director Todd Howard admitted was a failure.
  • Star Fox Adventures had serious development drama from the shift between Dinosaur Planet to a Dolled-Up Installment of Star Fox and being rushed out of the door before the departure of Rare which made most of the game content featuring newcomer Krystal becoming lost in the shuffle. The resulting plot sidelined her as a prisoner for the game's majority annoying fans hoping for a genuine Action Girl. The follow-up game Star Fox: Assault not only makes Krystal fully playable in multiplayer, but in the single-player campaign she's capable of wiping out entire enemy squadrons both in the cockpit and on foot by herself, proving her worth to the Star Fox team and that her Action Girl status isn't just window dressing.
  • Star Ocean: Till the End of Time featured a rather infamous Ass Pull that revealed the entire universe of Star Ocean was actually an MMORPG, with every character in the universe being an NPC in this game meant for 4D beings. The fans bashed this plot twist mercilessly, to the point that the series became known for only this plot twist. The next game in the series, Star Ocean: The Last Hope, wrote around this by introducing the concept of The Multiverse and ways to leap from one dimension to another, thus providing a way around the plot twist without completely retconning it.
  • Star Trek Online:
    • Fans pointed out problems with the Hobus supernova (the one that destroyed Romulus in Star Trek (2009)), so several missions put you in contact with Non Player Characters who also said, "yeah, this doesn't make one damn bit of sense". An arc reveals the supernova and its FTL blast wave were the result of a weapon deployed by Romulan Admiral (then Praetor) Taris at the behest of alien "dark masters", a.k.a. the Iconiansnote . This is a take-off from the new movie's prequel-comic Countdown.
    • Cryptic did it again after they introduced the Voth. While shooting dinosaurs "with freaking laser beams attached to their heads" was fun, it was controversial at best from a story standpoint (actual armored vehicles would make a hell of a lot more sense). In Season 9, the Voth are defeated in the Dyson Sphere by the Undine, bringing back a popular but underused threat.
    • Among the reasons the season 9 Undine lockbox ships were hated was the fanon idea that Undine ships were themselves intelligent beings,note  which led to the theory that forcing them to now obey Feds, Klingons, and Romulans required Mind Rape. Delta Rising's first mission, "Mindscape", included a line from Tuvok that most Undine ships were in fact something like tools (Eric Cooper's command ship in the mission is an exception), no more sentient than a normal starship.
  • Street Fighter III was an infamous disappointment for Capcom, with one of the most frequently-cited reasons for its failure being that it ditched the majority of the fan favorite characters from Street Fighter II in favor of an almost entirely new cast. Capcom subsequently released a new game in the Street Fighter Alpha prequel series the following year, which featured most of the recognizable characters from Street Fighter II, and later brought back Chun-Li and Akuma in Third Strike, an Updated Re-release of III. While a few of the better received characters from III have since reappeared in the newer games and the Capcom vs. franchise (namely Ibuki, Dudley, Elena, Hugo, Makoto, Yun, Yang, Alex, Urien, Gill, and Oro), the series has still largely maintained a focus on the characters everyone remembers from II.
  • Super Mario Odyssey:
    • The Mario franchise faced several accusations of stagnation during the 3DS and Wii U eras with the primary criticisms being an overload of Toads at the expense of other races, the gameplay being based mostly on the 2D Mario games, controversial changes to much loved gameplay styles, generic video game settings and most bosses being the Koopalings or other recurring bosses. Odyssey has the new Capture mechanic, expansive and unique locations, new NPCs, unique bosses and the returning characters, aside from series staples, are so obscure their presence was an unexpected and welcome sight.
    • Bosses in Odyssey are much harder than the ones in past 3D Mario games and Recurring Bosses change up their attack patterns, arenas to make rematches different and harder. This is likely in reaction to the criticism bosses in past 3D games were too easy and bosses fought several times were just the same battle over and over again.
  • Super Robot Wars:
  • Among the complaints of The Evil Within was how the game locked letterboxing throughout in gameplay which was very distracting to play (one of the first mods was removing it), as well as how difficult and unfair the game is in general, even on Casual difficulty. These were all resolved with a June 2015 patch - letterboxing was removed entirely on all platforms during gameplay but not cutscenes, and Casual Difficulty was made more merciful; Haunted are much less likely to revive once dropped, the odds of scoring critical headshots are higher, bomb disarming never increases in speed, and bosses are just as lethal as always, but take a lot less firepower to kill.
  • The Talos Principle: Many changes in the Road to Gehenna DLC with regards to the main campaign.
    • The sigil-based puzzles, widely considered to be That One Puzzle. There are only two sigil puzzles in the whole DLC, and they're only required to access the secret ending, as opposed to the dozens of sigil puzzles in the main campaign, many of them required to complete the game.
    • Many players viewed the puzzles involving recorders as confusing or hated that many of them required a lot of waiting (the latter worsened by the fast-forward button not being available in early versions of the game), with some of them even fearing to see the "play" symbol on the puzzle description, and many fan-made puzzles labeling themselves as "No recorders". The DLC only has two puzzles involving recorders (and neither involves the platform).
    • There are also no puzzles involving moving carefully around active mines or turrets in the DLC.
    • Only 10 stars out of the available 16 are required to access the secret ending, which means you don't have to get all of them (which, considering the difficulty of some of them, is welcomed).
    • Finally, an Easter Egg unlocked by finding a floppy disk features a short story which is largely a Take That, Scrappy! to Milton's more annoying tendencies.
  • The 2024 remaster of the first three Tomb Raider games had an issue with items being difficult to see in the new lightning engine. The issue was very prevalent in the first game due to the lighting system making objects like keys blend in with the surroundings to the point of looking nearly invisible and the fact that the first game doesn't have flares like the later games did. The devs would release a patch that would make the keys look a lot brighter so that they're much easier to spot.
    • The remaster also made a change to the third game's No-Gear Level where the room that contained Lara's pistols would also have her ammo and health kits that were also taken from her, finally allowing players to recover their supplies after having to deal with the original version of the game where no such luxury existed.
  • Total War: Warhammer Trilogy:
    • When it was announced that the Warriors of Chaos, one of the most pivotal factions in the setting, would be available as the preorder DLC for the first game, the fandom went into an uproar over this business decision. Not only would they have to pay extra to play the faction, but the Warriors of Chaos were missing a lot of options for their army roster, especially regarding marked warriors. CA would take steps to rectify this decision. Initially, they made the DLC completely free for those who bought the game one week after it launched. However, the faction would eventually be salvaged following the release of the Champions of Chaos DLC for the third game which added marked warriors to their roster and heavily reworked and updated their playstyle.
    • The Shadows of Change DLC received massive controversy upon its announcement given how it had a major price hike in spite of offering less content when compared to earlier DLCs. The controversy became so prevalent that it led to CA delaying their intended DLC roadmap in order to address the complaints. They eventually settled on adding more content to the DLC to justify the price increase and standardizing the included content to make sure all featured factions were treated equally. It also led to subsequent DLCs such as Thrones of Decay receiving a rework to content pricing so that players could either purchase content for their favored factions individually or all at once in a bundle like in the past.
  • Valkyria Chronicles:
    • Valkyria Chronicles III: Fans criticized the Darcsen race from the first game; their background appeared to be based on how European Jews were persecuted during World War II, while the art style and cultural cues were more based on Japan. It appeared the game replaced the Jews with the Japanese. Shin Hyuga is introduced in III, his mother comes from "somewhere in the Far East" while he is modeled to be Feudal Japanese in a mid-20th-centurish fantasy pastiche world. Shin's inclusion is most likely meant to help dissolve the Jew-Japan image by showing an expy-Japan.
    • Valkyria Chronicles 4 also addressed a persistent problem many fans had with the nation of Gallia; specifically, how their military brass and even their rank-and-file could be such a hot mess of Glory Hound and Miles Gloriosus types less competently led than a conscripted militia, a borderline-dropout academy class, or the off-record suicide squad. 4's backstory explains that after the Gallian government let an act of war from the Empire slide, most of the people who wanted to actually fight for the cause emigrated to nearby Edinburgh to enlist and fight under an Alliance flag, leaving mostly armchair generals and less-motivated soldiers in Gallia's own (neutral) military.
  • One of the complaints about Wangan Midnight Maximum Tune 5 by international players was that by releasing the game across all of its regions (other than China and Indonesia) at the same time, the non-Japan versions ended up being inferior, running on the same hardware as Maximum Tune 4 and lacking a lot of elements from from the Japanese version, such as the Shibuya/Shinjuku and Ikebukuro courses and the Maxi G currency system. So for Maximum Tune 5DX, Namco flipped their approach, delaying the game for non-Japan versions but giving those versions almost all of the same content as the Japanese version.
  • World of Warcraft:
    • In World of Warcraft: Cataclysm, Forsaken have begun using Val'kyr necromancy against their human enemies in order to replenish their numbers. Unlike Scourge undead, however, Forsaken undead retain the free will they had in life after being raised. When this was revealed, Alliance players began complaining that a human being killed by the Forsaken, raised into undeath by them and then choosing to aid the Forsaken in slaughtering their former comrades of their own free will broke the Willing Suspension of Disbelief. Blizzard eventually addressed this in one of their Ask Creative Development sessions, saying that though new Forsaken are free-willed, many of them are raised in a frenzied and malleable state in which they can be easily manipulated into attacking their allies by the Forsaken. This effect is apparently only temporary and the new Forsaken do eventually get to make their own choice afterward.
    • World of Warcraft caused a lot of They Changed It, Now It Sucks! based on changes to their main characters. Heroes of the Storm (a MOBA game with a Crossover between Warcraft, StarCraft, and Diablo) was released featuring the more classic, iconic portrayal of the Warcraft main characters. And thus, Thrall is once again the Warchief with strong commitment for the Horde, Jaina is the idealistic mage that believes in peace on both Alliance and Horde, Sylvanas is disgusted by her undeath existence and focused on her revenge of the Lich King, while Malfurion is a Reasonable Authority Figure like in the RTS games, Tyrande is the practical, capable commander, Illidan is an antiheroic dangerous Wild Card, and Kael'thas returns to putting his people's safety into his top priority. Blizzard gave a Hand Wave that these heroes are taken from certain timelines of the game so that they could use the portrayal of the characters that their fans see as the best instead of being stuck with the current timeline. The inversion of this occasion is Varian Wrynn, who's instead taken in his most recent incarnation, but since his earlier self was the one that caused backlash and he gradually earned the fans' favor ever since until his death, the latter self is the more ideal self to pick.
    • The release of Legion was a response to Wow's numbers dropping to numbers not seen since mid to early vanilla due to the severe lack of endgame content in Warlords of Dreanor. In Legion, Blizzard revealed many, many features people have asked for. Demon Hunters, a class demanded for years? Check. Ashbringer, a weapon many players wanted to wield? It's yours. Emerald Dream, an area that has been anticipated in some form for quite some time? Not the theme of the expansion, but you'll be going in. Return of the fan favorite Illidan? Is his inclusion on the box art any hint? On top of that, many other additions are being added in direct response to Warlords of Dreanor's failures, including overwhelming endgame content and many improvements to dungeons to keep them relevant.
    • Lorewise, Shadowlands' premise of being an afterlife realm provides ample opportunity for the writers to expand on characters who had died before their full potential could be realized. One of the most prominent examples is Ysera, who was unceremoniously killed off in Legion, being a major plot point for Ardenweald and the Night Fae's story overall.
  • While most of the fandom's issues with Xenoblade Chronicles 2 were quality-of-life things that were fixed in patches, there was a single major element in the story (specifically the ending) that left a bad taste: even considering the open-ended nature of the story's conclusion, Nia got shafted hard by the story's resolution. In addition to losing out to a First Girl Wins scenario and having a potential Second Love Hope Spot torn away from her, her last action is essentially an I Want My Beloved to Be Happy moment which leaves her largely on her own, giving her an unhappy ending in what's otherwise a wave of mysterious but hopeful optimism. When New Game Plus was patched in, the developers added an undocumented change: after clearing the game a second time, lingering on the Evolving Title Screen will trigger Rex and Pyra to turn and wave offscreen, inviting Nia to hold hands and join them. After a moment, Nia turns and smiles straight at the fourth wall, a gesture clearly directed at the player, promising she got a happy ending too. And this was confirmed in Xenoblade Chronicles 3, which revealed Rex had children with all three of them.

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