It’s a common issue at this point: a game releases, gets years’ worth of updates and DLCs, and then eventually the developers move on to developing a sequel. The sequel comes out and… the depth and amount of content is nowhere close to what players have just been experiencing in its predecessor. The sequel may have many of the quality-of-life features that didn’t arrive in the predecessor until later updates, but it simply can’t launch with a full game’s worth of content plus years of DLC’s worth of content. It only gets worse for games that support modded content, too, because they’ll have years’ worth of mods on top of the developer-created content.
We’ve seen this a lot already: the Civilization series is infamous for the sequels not living up to their predecessors until they’ve had years of support themselves; Crusader Kings 3 was seen as lacking in long-term replayability for passionate fans of the series; Destiny 2, upon release, was seen as shallow and sparse compared to the first game; and, recently, Cities: Skylines 2 developers spent the lead-up to the game’s release trying to reel in expectations because they didn’t want fans to expect the game to have comparable amounts of content to everything that’s available for the first game after eight years of post-release updates and DLC.
To compound this, many of the games that benefit from extensive post-release support are less story-focused games. They often offer a mechanical foundation and a sandbox wherein players can create their own experiences, stories and lore - Civilization has no plot, nor does Cities: Skylines or Crusader Kings. They’re similar, in fact, to tabletop RPGs - like Dungeons & Dragons - in that sense. And they share another issue with tabletop RPGs: sequels sometimes just aren’t necessary. When there’s a new story to tell in an existing world, or for an existing character, it obviously makes sense to make a sequel and tell that story. But if the game is more of a mechanical foundation that’s already sound? Well, major overhauls to that foundation are a reason to make a sequel, but sometimes it can just feel like “reinventing the wheel” for the sake of releasing a sequel, not because it’s necessary or because it improves anything.
It feels to me like a problem that will only become more and more pronounced as more games opt for live-service models or extended post-release support, too. Can anyone think of any examples of games that had extensive post-release support through updates and DLCs where a sequel was then released that wasn’t seen as disappointing or a step backwards?
I can agree with that, for the most part. I think having a new story to tell can definitely justify “recycling” mechanics, and a series having a feel and identity that’s shared between different entries can be a positive thing. But yeah, if a sequel needs to launch with fewer features/less content then taking a different approach from the previous entry - like Fallout 4 and Dying Light 2 did - can sometimes be a good way to go.
Of course, it can lead to fans of a previous entry feeling alienated by a new release. That isn’t always a bad thing if it can find a new audience instead (particularly if you’re looking at it from a “number of copies sold” perspective) but it can certainly lead to resentment from (former) fans, as well as people who would potentially like it being put off from buying it because it’s a sequel to a game they’ve not played. Personally, I think it’s best if mainline entries in a series (numbered entries, for instance) tend to keep to a somewhat similar style, and experimenting with radically different mechanics in the same world/with the same characters should perhaps be done in spin-offs. But that’s more down to managing expectations and marketing than anything else - just slapping a slightly different title on a game can work there.
This is very true. I think the big issue Payday 3 has here is that the series’ appeal is almost entirely for its gameplay. The “stories” of the heists don’t matter too much - they’re just “set dressing” for the gameplay - and Payday 3’s gameplay isn’t radically different enough that it makes up for the drastically reduced amount of content. If you want to play a heisting game, Payday 2 is still the best option (right now) for most people. Maybe Payday 3 will become the better game in time, but right now it doesn’t feel like that’s the case.
A narrative-driven game doesn’t have the same issue - it doesn’t feel like those games are fighting for your attention - because, while the mechanics might be the same from game to game, having different stories is enough to set them apart. If the stories in later entries start to feel like they’re just retreading the same story beats over and over then it becomes a different matter, of course.