this post was submitted on 01 Sep 2023
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The fact that the game hasn't been fully released yet and they are including a DLC if you buy the premium version, is just asking me to pirate it.
There is nothing inherently wrong with DLC, and I'm tired of pretending that there is. If you think the base game is over-priced, then by all means complain about that - but if both the base game and the DLC are worth the price they're asking for it, then there is no harm done (and some advantage) in having modular buying options.
Sure, if the DLC isn't cut content from the game. That's the problem. If they have already developed the content, then it should be released with the rest of the game, for the price of the game. DLC, should it be developed at all, should be an expansion beyond the original scope of development funded by the excess profit from the game.
the worst fucking offender at this has to be Mass Effect, and this is coming from someone who deeply loves Mass Effect.
I don't buy DLC on principle, I will buy a proper expansion but not a DLC, so when I started Mass Effect 3 I didn't understand what the fuck was going on. I had to google it because the start of the game ties in with a DLC from the second game, what a crock of shit.
Yep big fan is Mass Effect here and I will FOREVER be mad at the Day one DLC for Javik. I finally got him in Legendary Edition and oh my God, he is so essential to so many stories, especially Thesia mission. Like holy shit!
I think the start of Mass Effects 3 they change it based off of if you played the DLC of Arrival. Because from my understanding, Shepard is in jail because they work with Cerberus, whereas if you have the DLC it's because of the Batarians.
Why? Genuine question. What does it matter to you as a consumer when the content was developed?
If the point you're actually trying to make is "if the game is developed as a whole, but then content is carved out such that the base game then feels incomplete without it", then this is already covered: a game which feels incomplete is inherently flawed, and so doesn't justify the price of a full game. That's my original point - most people are actually just pissed at inaccurate or unfair pricing, and DLC can enable that (but doesn't have to), so they misdirect their anger to all DLC instead.
When a company actually exists that utilizes your view of DLC, then it might be a valid criticism of the phrasing; but zero day one DLC released for any game has been anything but carving up a complete product into an incomplete main product and several DLCs to increase the price without increasing the price. Oblivion was the first example of this. Horse Armor was already developed.
No, that's precisely the point I'm trying to make - "every example of X that has existed so far is Y" does not imply "by definition, X is provably and definitively always Y".
You can claim that all DLC that has ever existed is predatory and exploitative (I suspect there are counter-examples; but, fine, whatever, not relevant to my point). You can say that, because of past performance, you are disinclined to trust future examples of DLC or give them the benefit of the doubt. That is all reasonable. But you can't conclude "because all DLC so far has been bad, the concept of DLC as a whole is bad and can never be used well".
As a super-simple example - here are some prime numbers: 5, 11, 37. Are all prime numbers odd? I can give you a bunch more examples if you want!
Day 1 DLC, no matter how optional it might be in practicality, is 100% a tactic to make people feel like they need to pay more to get the "complete" version of the game.
"_Every person who has ever done in the past, has done it with and it had _" does not imply "_The only reason anyone could possibly ever do is with to achieve _". That's a valid reason to be cautious, but not a reason to make blanket statements about an entire category of thing.
EDIT: for Day1 DLC in particular, a totally valid and non-exploitative reason for it is "we had a release date that we absolutely had to hit (because of marketing, contracts, etc.), which necessitated calling a production halt well in-advance of the release date for QA and testing - but instead of moving on to the next project, developers worked on more stuff for the same game. If that was too complex or didn't work out, we could drop it and no-one would complain; but if we'd kept developing it in the base game, and resulted in a slipped release date, there would be hell to pay"
I dont think you’re thinking about this right. Stuff like DLC has never been funded from profits of a specific game, that’s not how company finances work. They may decide to create an expansion or extension of a product they weren’t planning if a product does better than expected, but a lot of time, it’s too late by then and you’ve missed the wave to capitalize on the success. Most things like this are planned pretty early on based on the projected success. The base game and the DLC might even have separate budgets.
And all that to say, the DLC shouldn’t factor into your evaluation of a game at all. If you would like the amount of content in the game if the DLC never existed, then they added enough. You aren’t owed more content because of when they developed it, that’s absurd thinking. And if it for some reason got coded into law, it wouldn’t make anyone add more content to the base game, they’d just wait until after the game is released to start developing it. Which would make for a worse experience for both the company and consumer.
I agree with the person you replied to: if a game feels incomplete, then that’s the problem. I’m not going to pay for an incomplete game, regardless if it has DLC or not. But if a game is complete and I enjoy it, I’ll pay for DLC to get more experience from it and it doesn’t matter to me when the DLC is developed.
It's great to have someone else who gets it!
Yeah I don’t understand this mindset. It’d be like saying it shouldn’t be allowed for cars to have different versions with more features because they were developed together. DLC is supposed to be an additional feature like lane assist or something. You can get just the base version for cheaper or you can get a version with more features but you pay more. If the product sucks without the extra features than the problem is an incomplete product.
I get that we want to pay less and get more, but they can’t give away stuff for free.