DLC is becoming as common as brown terrain textures nowadays, a lot of it that is unlocked and available right from the start, or if certain purchase options are used.
But most of them are sorta tacked on, almost like an afterthought. The original Dragon Age was a pretty big example of this. Starting items, new characters, all sorts of special things were available if you pre-ordered, delux ordered, or just forked over cash in some other way.
The question is, when a designer is working on creating that complex difficulty curve for the game, do they take into account this... optional content? In DA:O, you could be starting the game with some pretty substantial items. Someone with a vanilla purchase or who got it via resell, would be ill prepared compared to the person who paid earlier, or more.
Now we are seeing the same thing in Dragon Age 2, where there are, once again, special magic items, even entire shops! Only available to those who make these purchase options. At what point does it stop feeling like a DLC, and start feeling like you are forking over cash for a CHEAT CODE.
Imagine a game like Civilization where a pre-purchase allowed you to build musketeers in 4000 BC?
Not only does this seem like pretty low brow pandering, but it also can absolutely ruin discussions about balance in a game. Dragon Age Origins had patches that reduced and rebalanced some of the difficulty in it, due to... weird progressions on that front. Discussion's regarding difficulty were hard to have. This person says the game was easy... but did he have the Dragonthorn dagger to start with? Templar Armor? Other random DLC that opened up areas allowing them to get a few more levels under their belt?
I hope games pull away from this. I don't mind schnazzy looking skins for my characters, or other fairly innocuous gameplay changes. But the idea that people can pay more to make the game easier is just... uggh. Gross.
But most of them are sorta tacked on, almost like an afterthought. The original Dragon Age was a pretty big example of this. Starting items, new characters, all sorts of special things were available if you pre-ordered, delux ordered, or just forked over cash in some other way.
The question is, when a designer is working on creating that complex difficulty curve for the game, do they take into account this... optional content? In DA:O, you could be starting the game with some pretty substantial items. Someone with a vanilla purchase or who got it via resell, would be ill prepared compared to the person who paid earlier, or more.
Now we are seeing the same thing in Dragon Age 2, where there are, once again, special magic items, even entire shops! Only available to those who make these purchase options. At what point does it stop feeling like a DLC, and start feeling like you are forking over cash for a CHEAT CODE.
Imagine a game like Civilization where a pre-purchase allowed you to build musketeers in 4000 BC?
Not only does this seem like pretty low brow pandering, but it also can absolutely ruin discussions about balance in a game. Dragon Age Origins had patches that reduced and rebalanced some of the difficulty in it, due to... weird progressions on that front. Discussion's regarding difficulty were hard to have. This person says the game was easy... but did he have the Dragonthorn dagger to start with? Templar Armor? Other random DLC that opened up areas allowing them to get a few more levels under their belt?
I hope games pull away from this. I don't mind schnazzy looking skins for my characters, or other fairly innocuous gameplay changes. But the idea that people can pay more to make the game easier is just... uggh. Gross.
