The prices of games have gone down since then and the cost of making games have sky-rocketed, gaming companies have to do something. DLC is a quite new concept so it might be done poorly right now, but unless you want game prices to rise DLCs or something similar will stick around.Orcus The Ultimate said:
Erradicate DLC ?
- Thread starter Orcus The Ultimate
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I think case 1 can fall down in some situations.Jfswift said:
DA:O and ME2. Both had day 1 DLC (free if you got the game new) which were Shale and Zaeed. Shale was supposed to be in the game, but they ran out of time so instead of pushing back the release date they added her as DLC. She affected the story, had tons of dialogue, and was an amazing tank.
Zaeed on the other hand is just a throwaway mercenary who has no personality, dialogue or importance at all.
To be honest it is a difficult one. Some companies make worthwhile DLC, others do not.
Examples of DLC I consider well worth the price and buying:
Fallout 3 - Broken Steel, The Pitt and Point Lookout (I found the other two a bit "meh", they were fun, but didn't fit in with the rest of the game). All of them are a decent length, and all of them add something to the game
Fallout New Vegas - Dead Money. Decent length, adds to the story with hints of things to come.
Borderlands - The Secret Armory of General Knoxx and The Zombie Island of Dr. Ned (Moxxi's sucks and I haven't completed the other one as it seems a little boring). Lengthy, funny and give some more fun to the game for those who want it (while those who don't are missing out on nothing.
Dragon Age: Origins - Awakenings. Decent length, carries on the story for those who want to.
Mass Effect - Bring Down The Sky. Good length, interesting story.
Mass Effect 2 - The Lair of the Shadow Broker. Well written, adds more character depth, hints at things to come.
Alan Wake - The Signal and The Writer. Both are fun, and both are a decent length, and both carry on the story.
Bioshock 2 - The Protector Trials and Minerva's Den. The first is just fun, but as it isn't story based, nobody misses out on anything important if they don't want to get it. The second is a separate story from Bioshock 2, so again, the player is missing out nothing in Bioshock 2 if they choose not to get it.
Prince of Persia - Epilogue It was a decent length and carried on the story for those who disliked the original ending.
Examples of terrible DLC or DLC that shouldn't have been made as they give you little:
Alan Wake - The Signal and The Writer. While the positives still stand, the fact of the matter is that Alan Wake not only finished on a cliff hanger, just to make these cash cows, but both of these DLC's finish on cliff hangers as well, just so you can buy the third and final one to complete the story. This is the kind of DLC I despise.
Mass Effect 2 - Alternate Appearance packs They removed companion armour customisation from their sequel in order to make these, again, it's a dickish thing to do.
Borderlands - Mad Moxxi's Underdome Riot It's basically a survival game-mode on three different arenas that takes forever, with five different waves types and the same enemies in almost every one of those each time.
Halo (3 and Reach, and any other company that does these) - Map packs. Halo 3 can get away with it to an extent as it had a decent selection of maps. Reach it is unforgivable because they released a pathetically low amount of maps when the game came out (despite it being their last Halo game, with dozens of maps to choose from previous titles) and they made these cash cows to keep people playing, as you can't play the ranked game-modes without them.
The other DLC I despise (which can include the above) is day one DLC. I can understand adding some stuff months down the line to keep people interested, but no way in hell should you be releasing DLC the day the bloody game comes out, [b[especially[/b] when a lot of the time the DLC is actually already on the disc and the player merely "unlocks" it, that should not be legal.
Examples of DLC I consider well worth the price and buying:
Fallout 3 - Broken Steel, The Pitt and Point Lookout (I found the other two a bit "meh", they were fun, but didn't fit in with the rest of the game). All of them are a decent length, and all of them add something to the game
Fallout New Vegas - Dead Money. Decent length, adds to the story with hints of things to come.
Borderlands - The Secret Armory of General Knoxx and The Zombie Island of Dr. Ned (Moxxi's sucks and I haven't completed the other one as it seems a little boring). Lengthy, funny and give some more fun to the game for those who want it (while those who don't are missing out on nothing.
Dragon Age: Origins - Awakenings. Decent length, carries on the story for those who want to.
Mass Effect - Bring Down The Sky. Good length, interesting story.
Mass Effect 2 - The Lair of the Shadow Broker. Well written, adds more character depth, hints at things to come.
Alan Wake - The Signal and The Writer. Both are fun, and both are a decent length, and both carry on the story.
Bioshock 2 - The Protector Trials and Minerva's Den. The first is just fun, but as it isn't story based, nobody misses out on anything important if they don't want to get it. The second is a separate story from Bioshock 2, so again, the player is missing out nothing in Bioshock 2 if they choose not to get it.
Prince of Persia - Epilogue It was a decent length and carried on the story for those who disliked the original ending.
Examples of terrible DLC or DLC that shouldn't have been made as they give you little:
Alan Wake - The Signal and The Writer. While the positives still stand, the fact of the matter is that Alan Wake not only finished on a cliff hanger, just to make these cash cows, but both of these DLC's finish on cliff hangers as well, just so you can buy the third and final one to complete the story. This is the kind of DLC I despise.
Mass Effect 2 - Alternate Appearance packs They removed companion armour customisation from their sequel in order to make these, again, it's a dickish thing to do.
Borderlands - Mad Moxxi's Underdome Riot It's basically a survival game-mode on three different arenas that takes forever, with five different waves types and the same enemies in almost every one of those each time.
Halo (3 and Reach, and any other company that does these) - Map packs. Halo 3 can get away with it to an extent as it had a decent selection of maps. Reach it is unforgivable because they released a pathetically low amount of maps when the game came out (despite it being their last Halo game, with dozens of maps to choose from previous titles) and they made these cash cows to keep people playing, as you can't play the ranked game-modes without them.
The other DLC I despise (which can include the above) is day one DLC. I can understand adding some stuff months down the line to keep people interested, but no way in hell should you be releasing DLC the day the bloody game comes out, [b[especially[/b] when a lot of the time the DLC is actually already on the disc and the player merely "unlocks" it, that should not be legal.
If you boycott DLC its not going to make developers put the DLC into the initial game, it means that DLC will never get made. Developers don't laugh at you and giggle evilly by cutting up the game and reserving part of it. They continue to work after release to implement content that didn't make the final cut and to create new content that they release as DLC. saying "no" means that developers will just drop all work and move on to the next thing without bothering. Its not going to improve games. The irony is that since people will never know what DLC there might have been and what content they might have missed because it will never be looked at any more at that point. I think gamers need to stop being self-entitled brats who wine and think that when a developers continues to work on a game after release it should be pro bono and they suddenly don't deserved to get paid for the extra hours they put in. Games are never going to be developed like there were in the 90s and 80s again... ever. Stop being Nostalgic, face reality, and STFU.
Don't forget that before DLC we had expansion packs. Remember AoEII: The Conquerors? Remember that aneurysm you had when you were allowed to pre-buy farms and you had three new civilisations to play as? Isn't this just pretty much the same thing only digitally distributed? I'm not against DLC by any stretch, but I am against developers using it as an excuse to ship half a game, in the same way I'm against any excuse to ship half a game.
If i named them all, you'd be stuck with reading a fucking novel. Almost every single time, DLC is necessary to understand/fully experience the game. Take, for example, Assassin's Creed 2. Without their (excuse the laughter) DLC, the plot becomes a further tangled piece of shit.Sober Thal said:
There are a few (very few, mind) games where the DLC is released a good 6 months after the game is released, containing new worlds to explore, filled with great content...for every "Shivering Isles", there's at least 500,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 (FIVE HUNDRED MILLION BAJILLION) "Horse Armour"s.
That said, i've never purchased DLC for a game before. If a game has pre-order DLC, or announced DLC before the game is released, that game comes off my "buy list". The few games with DLC that i own are because Steam was kind enough to drop the price to that of a sandwich and include all the DLC to boot.
As for the thread, this is the most boring attempt to spark a forum-conversation i've seen in a while. And yet i've bitten the bait...
I know, lets also smash all the looms!
Some DLC is great, and worth the money. Some is sub-par. All are optional. Just like all games since their invention. Stop basing complaints on the very odd property of video games, where all big budget, newly released games are in a window of $10, and not based on the amount of content. Weigh cost of the product to the quantity and quality of the product. Everything else is pretty much irrelevant.
Some DLC is great, and worth the money. Some is sub-par. All are optional. Just like all games since their invention. Stop basing complaints on the very odd property of video games, where all big budget, newly released games are in a window of $10, and not based on the amount of content. Weigh cost of the product to the quantity and quality of the product. Everything else is pretty much irrelevant.
http://www.blisteredthumbs.net/2011/04/gaming-in-the-90s-really-sucked/Orcus The Ultimate said:
I will refer you to this piece of informative discussion and i suggest you watch the first video. It compares gaming in the 90's to modern gaming and shows us that they were as equally sucky, the video i linked you (the second part) touches on the subject of DLC's and why they are not as bad as you think and why they existed in the 90's.
DLC can be abused, yes. DLC can also allow developers to expand upon the game that they've spent all of that time on instead of just leaving it be. It's not that you're getting "half a game" in most cases; it's not like they would have spent all of the extra time to put that content in anyways. It gets developed post release to expand upon existing work.
Sadly, I do think that DLC has somewhat done away with expansion packs. I'd like to see more of those.
Sadly, I do think that DLC has somewhat done away with expansion packs. I'd like to see more of those.
from what i can tell, (at least every time i've got DLC), you're never not getting a full game, they just give you added stuff...
so instead of giving you 80% of the game and selling the other 20, they're giving you the full 100% and adding another 20 once it actually gets complete...
better that they release updates and extras bit by bit as opposed to leaving the game unrefined and fast-track the eventual boredom and habituation... plus it'd probably cost jobs too
so instead of giving you 80% of the game and selling the other 20, they're giving you the full 100% and adding another 20 once it actually gets complete...
better that they release updates and extras bit by bit as opposed to leaving the game unrefined and fast-track the eventual boredom and habituation... plus it'd probably cost jobs too
DLC is perfectly fine in my opinion. 15$ for Battlefield BC 2 Vietnam was completely worth it, and I like a lot of the extra stuff Blizzard adds with the online store for WoW. Preorder bonuses are also fine, as long as they will later ALL be released as DLC. Its ok to give people a free bonus for buying the game at a certain store, but everybody should have the option of paying for that bonus if they really want it. Plus, thats more money that they make.
The only DLC I hate is DLC that comes out within one month of the game's release. Thats complete BS. Any DLC completed before the game is released should come on the damn disk, or at least for free download.
The only DLC I hate is DLC that comes out within one month of the game's release. Thats complete BS. Any DLC completed before the game is released should come on the damn disk, or at least for free download.
This is a touchy subject, DLC is always optional, and people vote with thier wallets. day 1 DLC is complete bullshit designed to generate preorders and make more money, but so what, publishers have a right to offer anything they want at whatever they think we will pay for it. What really Irks me is how people complain about it. mass Effect 2 was a 30 hour complete game. If you think thats not worth $60 then fuck you. The arrival DLC was written to give a teaser to ME3 and add more gameplay to an already fantasic game. Same goes for the elephant in the room, the stimulus package, If you hate COD, then fine, but 15 bucks for what amounted to an extra 24-50 hours of gameplay is well worth it. when its a game Ill gather friends round to play nightly, any extra content is good value. Anyone that says "Ill never buy a game that supports DLC" is a fucking tool, DA2 shipped with a stupid amount of DLC and preorrder bonuses, but none of the extra content was essential, it was all fluff that was only worth it if you were a completist, you still have a 100 hour game to enjoy so quit whining about them holding back a 2 hour mission.
DLC's have kept me from getting Fallout: New Vegas. Last time I bought Fallout 3, not knowing DLC would come out, never did get all of them. All DLC is doing is making me wait till the game is released with all the DLC included in the game as was last time.
i never considered it to be selling half a game, i consider dlc (at least the dlc worth getting) to be more like an expansion pack. the enslaved dlc didnt fit into the main story but was more like a 5 hour back story on one of the characters. it wouldnt have fit into the main plot but gave much more depth to one of the more unique characters. batman arkham asylum had dlc, but i certainly wouldnt call that an unfinished game. stuff like the extra costumes in little big planet, yeah thats kinda stupid, but for the most part i think of dlc as developers providing gameplay that wouldnt have fit into the main story. its like saying diablo 2 was an incomplete game because blizzard also made lord of destruction.Orcus The Ultimate said:
i think whoever posted that argument is just trying to villanize developers, to make him or herself feel better about being a cheap bastard. and im not saying its bad to be a cheap bastard. im a cheap bastard. the majority of my games are used. the reason gamers are cheap, i think, is because gaming is an expensive hobby. if you play a lot of games, you cant afford to be paying $60 for each one
The real problem that you're possibly deliberately failing to understand is that a lot of DLC is either being worked on while the game itself is in development, or was originally slated to be included and then removed - often simply to make more money by selling it as DLC. This happens consistently enough to be a serious problem. No one should be willing to plunk down extra cash for something that should have been available with the game from the start or could have been made available if the game had seen even a mere month of delay.Radeonx said:
There's no call for it and no justification. Getting a game out as quickly as possible not only causes them to often be unfinished or buggy as hell, but it can easily backfire on the developers/publishers for selling a game of such low quality that any good or awesome potential it had is lost to the wayside. Day 0/Day 1 DLC should be a crime, and there's absolutely no excuse for it. Don't tell me "oh, two groups worked on them," cause that means the two groups were either working together (meaning it would've been pooled if they'd been given the okay to do so), or they were working seperately, meaning the content and the game itself may not even go together well or feel like it fits at all.
The difference between Expansion Packs and DLC is that the Expansion Packs were typically released between 6-months to a year after the game was initially released. Never within a month of release, let alone within a week or so. Oh, and the other big thing. Expansion Packs were usually a whole lotta content for a reasonable amount of money, sometimes it was like having a whole second game (SC: Brood War, for example) where as DLC is often a very small amount of content being charged at a wildly uncontrolled price ranging from Free, to reasonable, to ridiculous.Ymbirtt said:
The IDEA behind Downloadable Content is a good one. Keep the game alive by releasing new content from time to time. The execution of DLC, on the other hand, is out of control and almost always handled poorly. What's worse, if the DLC itself goes dry because the provider has gone out of business, or they've strangely just stopped offering it, then people who missed out may never be able to experience it regardless of what it was priced. This is less a problem for PC users who can just go and get it anyways, but for console users, it's a slap in the face. I seem to recall there being a fighting game not too long ago that kept adding and removing a set of characters, for instance.
I don't know if I think we should get rid of DLC completely, because as I said the idea behind it (or rather, our idea for it, rather than many of the developers) is a sound one. But as long as it's only done for profit and not with any sense of intelligence, reasoning, or control.. it's not doing anyone any good.
As it stands, a lot of people are just gonna grab the content for free if it is online (and unreasonably priced/hard to get a hold of) for the PC, and a lot of console gamers will either go without or become frustrated and buy it out of desperation when all their idiot friends say how much it is worth it (when it often isn't).
And until gamers themselves (and I'm a part of that group) start seeing these problems (not just DLC) for what it is and start actually raising their fucking voices about it, it's not gonna go away and/or nobody is going to fix it.
Can we all stop bitching about DLC on a whole. There are some companies that take advantage of DLC and take parts out of games (I'm looking at you Ubisoft) and then sell them again, however if you look at most DLC, it's all unnecessary add-ons.
[li]Fallout New Vegas DLC merely adds a little more content and an extra story to the game.[/li]
[li]Call of Duty map packs are entirely unnecessary to the game, it's all multiplayer add-ons that mean nothing to the games story.[/li]
[li]Red Dead Redemption DLC added a completely random story to the game, completely unrelated to the canon game, it also added on some extra bits to the multiplayer[/li]
It isn't developers being cheap, they need the money to work in a market where half the games played are pirate copies. It's self-entitled gamers being too fucking idiotic to realise that the industry needs to bring money in to keep giving you this stuff.
When a developer abuses DLC and cuts parts out of the game, then yes complain. When a developer releases DLC fairly, buy it if you want it.
[li]Fallout New Vegas DLC merely adds a little more content and an extra story to the game.[/li]
[li]Call of Duty map packs are entirely unnecessary to the game, it's all multiplayer add-ons that mean nothing to the games story.[/li]
[li]Red Dead Redemption DLC added a completely random story to the game, completely unrelated to the canon game, it also added on some extra bits to the multiplayer[/li]
It isn't developers being cheap, they need the money to work in a market where half the games played are pirate copies. It's self-entitled gamers being too fucking idiotic to realise that the industry needs to bring money in to keep giving you this stuff.
When a developer abuses DLC and cuts parts out of the game, then yes complain. When a developer releases DLC fairly, buy it if you want it.
I personally wait until the game drops down to $30 or less before buying it, so waiting a bit longer for an edition that includes DLC is no big deal for me. I bought Fallout 3 with all the DLC new for $25. I would say that is probably the best value per dollar that I have ever gotten.
DLC's value really depends on the publisher. Some really do seem to just be expanding their game with it or releasing a version of the game that you can play earlier than otherwise. Others do it just for the money, this is mainly seen with "map packs" and other odds and ends (the infamous horse armor).
One good argument that I have heard for DLC though is that the majority of the money you pay for it goes directly to the developer rather than most of it being hacked off by middle men, but then the companies should really just release the entire game as DLC and reduce the price.
Another possible plus of DLC is for games where the funding might otherwise dry up, or to prevent an overall loss if the game isn't as successful as expected. If the developer knows that it is a popular game based on the units sold, they can continue past the game's dead line (and prevent an extremely long development period) while getting more funding to improve the game.
I wouldn't suggest boycotting DLC in general, it can be very nice for extending the life span of a game and giving you more hours of enjoyment. Perhaps boycotting companies that don't let you own your DLC (the ones that give vouchers rather than putting the DLC on the disc), and companies that are greedy in general (needless DLC or stuff that should have been included in the game) would be better.
Oh, also anyone who sells week one DLC needs to die.
DLC's value really depends on the publisher. Some really do seem to just be expanding their game with it or releasing a version of the game that you can play earlier than otherwise. Others do it just for the money, this is mainly seen with "map packs" and other odds and ends (the infamous horse armor).
One good argument that I have heard for DLC though is that the majority of the money you pay for it goes directly to the developer rather than most of it being hacked off by middle men, but then the companies should really just release the entire game as DLC and reduce the price.
Another possible plus of DLC is for games where the funding might otherwise dry up, or to prevent an overall loss if the game isn't as successful as expected. If the developer knows that it is a popular game based on the units sold, they can continue past the game's dead line (and prevent an extremely long development period) while getting more funding to improve the game.
I wouldn't suggest boycotting DLC in general, it can be very nice for extending the life span of a game and giving you more hours of enjoyment. Perhaps boycotting companies that don't let you own your DLC (the ones that give vouchers rather than putting the DLC on the disc), and companies that are greedy in general (needless DLC or stuff that should have been included in the game) would be better.
Oh, also anyone who sells week one DLC needs to die.