When Skyrim said they would have no DLC there was a very vocal group of people who wanted to boycott the game. So now we get Skyrim DLC and people want to boycott it for having DLC.
lol, when that actually happened? Beth never said Skyrim wouln't have DLC. They said that they were going for medium sized DLCs with less frequent releases (and that's what they did), and everyone was okay with it since they hoped for Shivering Isles kind of expansions rather than "Horse armor".
Hell, if you even read the official forums, most ppl wasn't contempt with "medium sized DLCs", they wanted expansions.
What you described didn't happened. And i'm guessing the rest of your post has the same problem...
"I AM ZE EMPRAH OPENGL 3.3 THE CORE, I DEMAND FROM THEE ZE SHADERZ AND MATRIXEZ"
Just one more thing to make me not buy certain titles.
I hate DLC because the idea of having compelling DLC goes directly against the concept of making the best game you can possibly make. The stuff in DLC is what you call in retail an UPSELL. It means you leave something out, and then you charge more to add it back in to get more money and increase the average revenue per sale.
GTA 4 did it by leaving out a lot of the funner elements from past games and then selling it back to us in 2 big DLC packs. I love the GTA games, but it sucks to go back and play the base GTA4 and lose out on everything that was added in the expansions. The motorcycles in GTA4 had no weight and controlled horribly, so enter DLC 1, which introduced heavy, proper handling bikes... They had proper bikes in 4 titles prior to GTA4 (VC, VCS, LCS, SA), and suddenly they go bad so you have something to sell us? (The storyline content of the 2 expansions was really, really, good and worth the money, but why sabotage gameplay mechanics and features in the basic game?)
Red Dead Redemption killed the great online atmosphere they add by adding needless Zombie DLC. Now everyone online is running around in a zombie skin on a flaming undead horse.
BioWare really pissed me off in Dragon Age Origins by having an NPC at the save camp that asked you for money constantly. It was completely tasteless and broke immersion. You end up at your camp between every major area of the game, and you end up having to deal with this idiot every time. What next? Is Trent Oster going to follow me around and ask me to buy him a pack of smokes?
Dragon Age 2 is not any better. I almost purchased it, but took a quick look at what the DLC was before buying it. And as I suspected, all the best stuff and gear is locked away behind an expensive DLC paywall. Really, 5$ equipment packs for each class? As much as I want to play the game, I'm not going to support this bs.
*I'm cool with the add-on campaigns. There is a difference between paying to unlock stuff and having NPCs nag you about it, and adding actual new side content.
But Bioware has a history of letting me down with their add-on content. I remember when they would put out their expansion packs, and all the promised new content turned out to be mostly hastily re-skinned old content. Which would have been fine, had they not charged me the price of a full game for it.
Capcom disables stuff and has you pay to unlock it right off your own disc. Really insulting in games like Dead Rising where ALL the interesting gear you could build with the game's weapon construction system, and ALL the good costumes to be worn were paywalled. So how can I buy any Capcom games now?
I can list more and more examples. I think this type of DLC is a conflict of interest, and illogical. You can't market DLC for game that is complete. You can't market extra fun items in a game filled with fun items. So you have to purposely dial back the game and make it feel incomplete in order to make people want to buy this stuff. You must sabotage your project and only aim for 90% to support an aftermarket later.
Even worse is when the new physical copy comes out that includes everything for cheaper than you paid for your original copy 6 months ago.
But some people do it right.
Skyrim's new Dragonborn DLC is on the right track. It's a massive chunk of extra content. It's an honest piece of work, and not something that is filling in blanks. The community response to it has been very positive too (for once).
Their other DLC to build houses out in the wild is a bit iffy, but it's something I was actually wishing I could do after I'd had the game for awhile. I think it's a good idea, but I think they could have lumped it in with this, or the last DLC, or at least threw a few more things into it.
Skyrim held nothing back, and I'm still finding new things in it after a year of playing it. So anything they add is fine with with me. I'll be buying Dragonborn as soon as it hits PS3 in a few months. And to their credit, they have patched new features (like mounted combat) into the game for free since release.
Zen Pinball is all DLC. You get the base platform for free (on mobile) with a fully functioning table, and they work to release new tables which they sell cheaply. It's all unique content with new graphics, sounds, gameplay mechanics, etc... Every month or two they have a new table for around 1.99-2.99. These guys are leading by example.
What I don't like about DLC is when I decide to take a 5 month hiatus from a game, and then when I have a spare hour or two to go back to it, there's this huge 4Gb update waiting for me to download BEFORE I can run the game.
Given that Australians don't have great internet providers, many of us have download caps (I myself have a 20Gb cap per month) and speeds low enough to make that 4Gb update take 3 hours to complete. Why would I want to use up a fifth of my quota to update a game I only want to play for two hours here and there?
DLC are fine when they are really good unfortunately that's rarely the case because they often are goodies which split the community. With add-ons, the community has only one more thing to buy.
DLC are like small expensive add-ons. For example an add-on costs half the price of the game ( 30 euros ) and you have new multiplayer maps, new weapons, new classes, new solo campaign and sometimes new modes.
In the DLC format, for roughly the same price you only have some multiplayer maps and some weapons, and rarely some modes or classes.
When DLC are really "cheap" it's just to sell virtual goodies which were not long to make.
And please note that multiplayers map and weapons are really cheap to make, so no that's not fair for the customer.
I also found the new "season pass" business method really abused : a game now costs ( Black ops 2 ) 59,99 + 49,99 = 109.98 euros ! For the game + some maps.
Yes, you can only buy the game but you will be with the minority of the community, and it has still costed you 59,99 euros for a PC game !
So I don't like DLC at the moment but if someone makes a real DLC ( = size of a real add-on ) with a fair price ( less than 30 euros ) that will be good.
[quote name='Rakilonn' timestamp='1354733702' post='5007479']
And please note that multiplayers map and weapons are really cheap to make, so no that's not fair for the customer.
I'm curious as to how much you think it would cost to make a new, balanced, multiplayer map?
[/quote]
For my last game, just over $2M per map. That includes costs of things like first-party certifications.
Most customers (and sadly too many developers) have no idea just how much content costs.
The simple act of getting a piece of content posted as DLC --- first-party certifidcations and such --- is a six digit figure by itself.
Honestly, I don't know how much a multiplayer map costs for a company. Yes, I have exaggerated for the maps, I talked more about the weapons because when I see a weapon which costs 4,00$, there is a problem.
That means if I don't buy 12 objects like this one, I will be able to buy a game. Surely a game is not equivalent to 12 small models.
And the problem is the same with the Map packs ( but significantly less important ).
