92 réponses à ce sujet

[AngryFrozenWater]

mjkjets wrote...

http://xbox360.ign.c.../1081389p1.html

This guy really hits the nail on the head. He seems to be on the fence regarding ME2 DLC.

Thanks for the heads up. I agree. It is nice to see that some people still have common sense.

[Kaiser Shepard]

Chuckonater wrote...

I think a cool DLC would be a 15$ arcade multiplayer shooter against other players on XBL

Check out Battlefield 1943, not really a DLC but still more than worth the money. Without a doubt one of the better Arcade games.

In any case, I have yet to felt cheated in any way by BioWare and their DLC. The only reason I have not yet bought Awakening (and Return to Ostagar) is because it omits my story choices. It's obvious that Kasumi isn't on the disc, just some files to help integrate her into the game for when she's downloaded. Also, the main thing most people want in DLC for WRPG's, besides obviously new content, are souvenirs to take back into the main game. While not containing a much loot as Fallout 3's Broken Steel, it has to be said that a new character, skill and weapon are nothing to laugh at.

The only justified way I can see a developer selling an unlock code is if it's really just that: a paid download to instantly unlock all normally attainable content in a game, which I remember having seen for the new Sonic & Sega racing game and Skate 2. Though I must admit that I've bought one unlock code so far: the Darth Vader  "DLC" for Soul Calibur 4, which will be the only time I've done such a thing.

Edit: Also, this week's Bonus Round on Gametrailers provides an interesting perspective on this, especially considering the fact that Dr. Greg is one of the guests.

Modifié par Kaiser Shepard, 02 avril 2010 - 06:34 .

[yuncas]

scyphozoa wrote...

its so hard to balance quality and budget. truth be told, i would rather see full fidelity content at a high price than micro-dlc or lesser quality content at a lower price.

dlc that offers less than 4 hours of content should not exist imo. substance only plz

Agree to the above. Quality over quantity. And to IGN, they can, in my opinion, be rightfully called masters at playing the skin flute belonging to game companies. How can a website truly give objective reviews for a product when said products owners are obviously large contributors by way of ad dollars?

This article however is great, although not perfect. I have had some experience with corporate types and the way some of these DLC add-ons are marketed just seems like business as usual, soulless and sickeningly greedy business as usual. This sort of content has the potential to be either great, exploitative, or somewhere in between depending on how it's implemented. Here's to hoping for the greatness. Because I guess this IS the future.

[AngryFrozenWater]

javierabegazo wrote...

From the article

So the first question is, since most DLC is developed parallel to the
actual game, are publishers releasing incomplete games and gouging you
for the missing pieces? Maybe.

What most people don't understand is that actually IMPLEMENTING the DLC into a game is much more complex than you think. I'm not talking about silly "map packs", but characters like Kasumi who, while they lack a dialogue wheel on the Normandy, still talk during missions, etc.

To actually make DLC possible, you need to have a couple of areas in the game that are prepped to accept the DLC. So DLC content like Zaeed and Kasumi need to be planned ahead of time. It's not as simple as adding a fighter to Tekken 15, is what I'm saying.

On that note however, 2$ for reskins of 3 characters in a game that features 12 characters is just down right silly, but that's me

Vote with your dollar I say

Javier... It really has to do with how you design the engine. You don't *have* to prepare *anything* to make DLCs work. Good examples are Oblivion and FO3. The community mods and commercial DLCs for those use the same mechanism. I've created a mod and it adds 13 NPCs to the game. In the construction set I created an entry for each which allowed me to determine their gender, their race, how they looked, what the wear by default, the armor, the weapons, their spells, their inventory, their schedules (when they sleep, work, eat, wander, swim, travel, meet), their stats, their aggression, their factions, their dialog and even their custom scripts. It's all accessible in one window. After that you'll open the location where you want the character to appear first and drop it in there. You'll save the mod/DLC, activate it from a game menu. When you start the game the mod will be loaded. Tata! It walks, talks, fights, etc. It *is* that simple.

That ME2 doesn't work that way is a problem of the devs. Other companies don't have their weird problems. And it shouldn't be *our* problem. Hehe.

Edit: That same tool also allows to create outdoor and indoor areas and it includes tools for pathfinding. You can import models or create stuff for just about anything, from chairs to food, from basements to castles, from weapons to creatures, from shaders to lighting. You name it. You can construct levels with it like you were playing with Lego. It also allows you to create quests and quest specific dialogs and scripts. It's an all in one solution.

Modifié par AngryFrozenWater, 02 avril 2010 - 07:11 .

[MadLaughter]

I agree with this article. I don't blame Bioware, I blame EA/Activision for these things. I love MW2, but no way I'm buying 3 new maps for 15 bucks.

[I Deadbolt I]

interesting

[AngryFrozenWater]

Kaiser Shepard wrote...

Edit: Also, this week's Bonus Round on Gametrailers provides an interesting perspective on this, especially considering the fact that Dr. Greg is one of the guests.

Interesting. I don't think I would agree with any of the 3 gentlemen, though. I got the impression that they all think that a DLC should be no longer than 4 hours and should be more or less stand alone. One said that from a publisher's point of view most DLCs should be delivered within the first 6 weeks. Isn't that odd? I would think spread them overtime to extend the lifetime of the game. It all seems to be focused at the customer who wants the DLC as a quick snack. Hehe. I want the big stuff... Expansions.

But at least BW was honest in there by saying that they were trying out what would work. So far their shots missed, though. Let's hope that they read the forums to find out why.

[Fromyou]

he nails dlc down hard and i like it. no one (that i know of) wants mini dlc's that is a shirt or go to planet b or do a single mini side quest etc. we want story expanders (those should come with extra characters as a gift). Pricing is also an effect of making the dlc. if a game developer can't put like a major character in a game or something along that line then they should push the game back a week or two (not a month or two then thats what dlc is for). DLC should be a treat for being such good fans.

[Fromyou]

i get satisfaction for like ME2 for $60 but i feel robbed that i have to pay extra money to get a more awesome experience

[burncykle]

Lost all credibility when he started harping on Zaeed and Kasumi being on disc. LOL, ya a few placeholder files, some 4 sec audio clips and empty folder locations totaling a few hundred KB is DEFINITELY on disc content of 4 hours or so (totaling Zaeed and Kasumi together). Usually like his articles, lost all credibility and sounds like a moron for most of this article though. Not his style, I doubt he did his homework on this and was just rushing to put out a controversial DLC article to capitalize on all the fuss around BioShock2's DLC revelations.

[burncykle]

Fromyou wrote...

he nails dlc down hard and i like it. no one (that i know of) wants mini dlc's that is a shirt or go to planet b or do a single mini side quest etc. we want story expanders (those should come with extra characters as a gift). Pricing is also an effect of making the dlc. if a game developer can't put like a major character in a game or something along that line then they should push the game back a week or two (not a month or two then thats what dlc is for). DLC should be a treat for being such good fans.

You aren't entitled to anything.  The product you pay for is on the disc, and thats what you bought. Otherwise you would pay hundreds of dollars for a Mass Effect 2 yearly license fee which would entitle you to all updates/content release for your software for a defined amount of time.   If you don't want to pay for anything not on the disc, don't, that simple.

It saddens me that most gamers now have no concept of economics and subscribe to the theory of "the game developer owes me more"; gamers are generally referred to as nerds, but in reality 90% of the gaming community is some of the most un-educated fools on the planet.

Modifié par burncykle, 02 avril 2010 - 11:57 .

[damage1900]

burncykle wrote...

...gamers are generally referred to as nerds, but in reality 90% of the gaming community is some of the most un-educated fools on the planet.

Your greatness beams so brightly...

By your own reasoning, you must count yourself as being in the 10%, unless you are an un-educated fool also.

Pray tell what qualifies you as being educated?

[burncykle]

damage1900 wrote...

burncykle wrote...

...gamers are generally referred to as nerds, but in reality 90% of the gaming community is some of the most un-educated fools on the planet.

Your greatness beams so brightly...

By your own reasoning, you must count yourself as being in the 10%, unless you are an un-educated fool also.

Pray tell what qualifies you as being educated?

The 3 degree's on my office wall.

[Rive Caedo]

burncykle wrote...
It saddens me that most gamers now have no concept of economics and subscribe to the theory of "the game developer owes me more"; gamers are generally referred to as nerds, but in reality 90% of the gaming community is some of the most un-educated fools on the planet.

On the other hand, some of us DO have a concept of economics and understand the concept of pricing.
Do I have a desire for more Mass Effect 2 content? Absolutely!
Is that desire for more ME2 content enough to pay $7 for an hour of content and a new character in a game with an abundance of them? Ah... maybe? I'll think about it.
Is that desire for more ME2 content enough to pay say... $3 or $4 for an hour of
content and a new character in a game with an abundance of them? Sure!

I wouldn't be surprised if there's enough people in my line of thought to double the sales of Kasumi (making up for the lower price point) AND those customers will feel better about buying the content and be more likely to do so in the future.

Raniall wrote...

Good article. I like how he ackowledged
that DLC is the future of the industry. People don't like it, but people
have got to get over it. It's coming, hell its practically here, and
there isn't a damn thing we can really do to stop it.

Yeah, no. If something is overpriced from my point of view I'm not going to buy it.
Kasumi and Return to Ostagar have fallen into the "maybe" price level.
Multiplayer Map Packs (non-Bioware) and Warden's Keep have fallen into the "no" price level.

Modifié par Rive Caedo, 03 avril 2010 - 12:42 .

[Merci357]

Very good article, "Publishers want us to buy more game. We want more game to buy. But do not try to fool us. Do not try to cheat us. We will not buy it, or you. Fair warning." sums it up pretty much.
That said, I'll get Kasumi anyway. Not because I need another squad mate, not because I like another "Zaeed style 2nd class" character with no real dialogue, but because of the mission alone. However, imho BioWare still could do much better, there are lessons to be learnt from Bethesda how quality DLC could (and should) be.

Modifié par Merci357, 03 avril 2010 - 01:28 .

[RageBattle]

Yeah, there's no way the content is on the disc, other than the placeholder and a couple audio files left from when they likely stopped working on her because of constraints. If it were there, the PC crowd would have found it by now.

Modifié par RageBattle, 03 avril 2010 - 02:23 .

[kromm71]

This whole discussion is centered around value and market forces. Are we getting good value for dlc?...compared to expansions? The market will determine the price, as many posters already commented.



Imo, whether the dlc is already on the disc waiting unlocking or it actually has to be d/led, is a semantic argument that really has no bearing on anything. Either way the price is determined by market.



I think overall we get pretty good entertainment value. The prices of video games have not changed in 30 years. Yes, I've been playing them that long. Asteroids for the original Atari sold for $60 in 1981. It was a 2kb cartridge for an eight bit system, iirc. Doom2, which was shipped in diskette format was around a 7 Mb game and sold for $60. ME2, DAO are in the gigs and still $60. When you factor in inflation, games today are about half the cost in the 80s, meanwhile the quality has increased perhaps even as much as 10 fold in the past 10 years alone.



The only exception to this trend of lower prices and higher quality is of course, the lamentable horse armor! (Sorry for mentioning the armor again in this thread)

[sammcl]

yuncas wrote...

Agree to the above. Quality over quantity. And to IGN, they can, in my opinion, be rightfully called masters at playing the skin flute belonging to game companies. How can a website truly give objective reviews for a product when said products owners are obviously large contributors by way of ad dollars?

This article however is great, although not perfect. I have had some experience with corporate types and the way some of these DLC add-ons are marketed just seems like business as usual, soulless and sickeningly greedy business as usual. This sort of content has the potential to be either great, exploitative, or somewhere in between depending on how it's implemented. Here's to hoping for the greatness. Because I guess this IS the future.

Because the Editorial staff are not responsible for decisions on advertising. And no review can ever be truly objective, simply because there is a person writing it and his/her opinions will undoubtedly influence the review. If you listen to IGN podcasts you'll find most editors seem to have integrity, I'm fairly confident they don't take kickbacks, they have however admitted to warning a developer that their preview is not going to be favourable and asking if they really want it to go forward. Previews are not finished products though