Upgrades in gaming are often intended to improve the existing items, increasing their stats and making them more powerful or useful, or providing players with a much better alternative, hence being an ‘upgrade’.
However, sometimes these changes can backfire, leading to more frustration than fun. From overly complicated versions of normal weapons to poorly balanced mechanics that just make these items worse, some upgrades just don’t hit the mark. Here’s a look at five such gaming upgrades that have left players confused.
5. The Fat Man MIRV Launcher
The Fat Man in Fallout 4 is a well-known weapon that fires mini-nukes, providing massive explosions with a single shot, and being extremely powerful. The MIRV Launcher upgrade turns this already powerful weapon into a multi-warhead launcher. While it sounds impressive, this upgrade often causes more issues than it solves.
Instead of a single focused explosion, the MIRV Launcher scatters mini-nukes across a wide area. This makes the weapon harder to control, and players frequently find themselves caught in their own explosions, and dying.
The upgrade ends up being a chaotic and dangerous tool rather than a tactical advantage, with the normal Fat Man being infinitely better and powerful enough to kill almost everything in the game.
4. The Rebalanced Mako
In Mass Effect: Legendary Edition, the Mako vehicle received a rebalancing to fix its weird controls and frustrating handling from the original Mass Effect 1. However, many players felt that the updated Mako became too slow and less responsive.
While the intention was to make the vehicle’s handling smoother, the result was a more cumbersome experience, and this was no real upgrade over the original. The rebalanced Mako lost much of the chaotic fun that players enjoyed in the original by making it too heavy and harder to freely control, making planetary exploration less enjoyable and more of a chore.
3. Carian Retaliation Post-Nerf
Elden Ring initially featured Carian Retaliation as a powerful defensive tool against magic and projectiles. This Ash of War allowed players to effectively counter enemy spells and attacks. But after several nerfs, the upgraded version of Carian Retaliation became far less effective.
The changes included tighter timing requirements and reduced damage output, which made it harder to use successfully. This downgrade impacted both PvP and PvE situations, reducing its utility and leaving players with fewer defensive options, overall being a worse upgrade.
2. The LeMat Revolver
The LeMat Revolver in Red Dead Redemption 2 offers a unique feature: the ability to fire both bullets and shotgun shells. On paper, this dual functionality seems like a great upgrade over the normal revolvers.
In reality, though, the LeMat suffers from very slow reload times and awkward handling. These issues make it less effective compared to other weapons in the game. The slow reload and bulky nature of the revolver overshadow its versatile design, making it a less appealing choice for players who would just be better off using a normal shotgun instead.
1. The Ring of Burden
In The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, the Ring of Burden is a quest item that needs to be retrieved, increasing your carrying weight limit by 150 points when you wear it. However, this ‘upgrade’ proves to be more of a curse than a benefit.
The item provides no benefits and is pretty much worse than every other ring in the game. The weight increase is so substantial that it immediately reduces your movement speed and makes you unable to fast travel.
Players often find themselves immobilized unless they drop a significant amount of their inventory. The Ring of Burden is more of a developer joke, but it’s terrible all the same.
Which of these so-called upgrades is your least favorite? Let us know in the comments.
