171 réponses à ce sujet

[MikeWiz]

I didn't mind the extra $7. I've been waiting a long time to play this game and I wanted as much as I could get. It took me longer than 20-30 minutes too. It was the first place I stopped at after Lothering.

[pokemaughan]

I agree with OP 100%. Awesome post. I laughed pretty good.

Pseudo310 wrote...

Have you guys seen the follow-up news post about it? Tycho has expressed more sympathy than this post indicates.

Link?

Modifié par pokemaughan, 12 novembre 2009 - 02:04 .

[artmonster1967]

deastland0423 wrote...

People here are talking like $7 dollars is some huge amount of money - as if they chose to get Warden's Keep instead of make a car payment.

$7 is the price of a burger, fries and drink from a fast food chain. It's 1/2 the price of a movie ticket (1 hour of entertainment there). Jeebus...if you're struggling just to keep $7 in your pocket DLC from BioWare is the least of your problems.

kinda blind of the times arent you Skippy ?

7 bucks IS big nowadays.....

ask EA...they are trying to get that 7 bucks desperately from us every way they can, to the point of pissing people off, or are you blind to that too?

.....they even gave 17 percent of thier employees a "nightmare christmas" for it.

you can come off your high horse now.

.

[exetertbc]

the game is more than playable without the wardens keep chest. I have the DLC, I purchased the "complete" edition as penny arcade called it. But I found myself never making the trek up to the keep. Instead I would just sell off the excess crap I didn't really need. As a result I always had money to buy whatever I happened to need off any vendor I came into contact with and after a few backpacks rarely ran into storage problems.

[Brentra]

deastland0423 wrote...

People here are talking like $7 dollars is some huge amount of money - as if they chose to get Warden's Keep instead of make a car payment.

$7 is the price of a burger, fries and drink from a fast food chain. It's 1/2 the price of a movie ticket (1 hour of entertainment there). Jeebus...if you're struggling just to keep $7 in your pocket DLC from BioWare is the least of your problems.

It's not the point and your permissive attitude is not helping. Just because I can afford it doesn't make the pricing right.

Modifié par Brentra, 12 novembre 2009 - 02:36 .

[Auraad]

Brentra wrote...

deastland0423 wrote...

People here are talking like $7 dollars is some huge amount of money - as if they chose to get Warden's Keep instead of make a car payment.

$7 is the price of a burger, fries and drink from a fast food chain. It's 1/2 the price of a movie ticket (1 hour of entertainment there). Jeebus...if you're struggling just to keep $7 in your pocket DLC from BioWare is the least of your problems.

It's not the point and your permissive attitude is not helping. Just because I can afford it doesn't make the pricing right.

Thanks - I was about to say the same.

[krol146]

I really dont get the complaints. Its 1 guy, that you never have to talk to. If you accidentally do, just never talk to him again. Its not like hes standing in the Denerim marketplace, shouting about his low prices on quests...

[Delcar]

Brentra wrote...

deastland0423 wrote...

People here are talking like $7 dollars is some huge amount of money - as if they chose to get Warden's Keep instead of make a car payment.

$7 is the price of a burger, fries and drink from a fast food chain. It's 1/2 the price of a movie ticket (1 hour of entertainment there). Jeebus...if you're struggling just to keep $7 in your pocket DLC from BioWare is the least of your problems.

It's not the point and your permissive attitude is not helping. Just because I can afford it doesn't make the pricing right.

There are already storage alternatives, so the 'forced' into it argument is eroding fast.

For the people that find the price excessive, I'm curious what you consider a fair price point? 

Coming off the MMO thing (thank God) I'm happy for the chance to pick and chose the new content.  Compared to the $15~ a month where 80% of the new content didn't impact me one bit, this is a bargain.

Shale + Warden's keep is $22, and a better value together than alot of $29.99 game expansions I've seen.

Shale at $15 if you buy retail adds a new character, custom loot thats useless to the rest of the group, and a decent length quest chain.

The warden's keep quest is valued at half that - it has more useful loot (in that you can equip it on more than just one specific character) and a tighter quest.  I find half as 'valuable' as the Shale pack reasonable.

EA is trying to use a model they're familiar with.  Look at the content for the sims 2, that's a license to print money right there,  $15 discs of stuff you won't use half of, mixed with just enough features/stuff/whatever to 'hook' the consumer.

I thought they were going the same route with Spore's 'Cute and Creepy' parts pack, but AFAIK there hasn't been a second parts pack.

I won't even talk about the Madden NFL games.

Much like the merchant in Lothering, if the price is too high, someone will see reason and browbeat them into a reasonable price point.

[Delcar]

krol146 wrote...

I really dont get the complaints. Its 1 guy, that you never have to talk to. If you accidentally do, just never talk to him again. Its not like hes standing in the Denerim marketplace, shouting about his low prices on quests...

Anyone play the Witcher?  There's a beggar that if you give him money he follows you around loudly hounding you for more.

Picture how bad this situation could have been, imagine if Alistair had scripted dialog nagging you to get the DLC?  That would be a deal breaker.

This?  I could easily ignore the moron, but I bought the pack anyway <shrug>.

[Ickabod27]

I know that I'm in the minority here, but I think it's a great idea. It lowers the barrier to entry for many people by having the purchase right there in the game, rather than having to go look for it (a lot of people don't troll the website like we do). Personally I'd like to see more of this type of interaction.



I know everyone has a knee jerk reaction to "Hey stop trying to sell me stuff in my games with advertising and such." but hey Bioware is a business and they are trying to make money. At least they are only selling you more of their game, not pepsi or something else.



And I do understand people saying, "Hey I just paid $50 for the game, I don't want to have to pay more." That is more understandable but microtransactions are a way of the future so you might as well get used to it. Thankfully the DLC is not required to play, much like it would be in a multiplayer game where you basically are forced to buy the DLC in order to keep up with everyone else.



As for requiring the storage space, you can download that for free now anyway because of the user made content, this is just simpler. As for the value of the DLC and being $7, I don't know I haven't done the quest yet but I purchased it, but what would be reasonable $5? oh wow an extra $2, if you're that strapped for $2 then don't bother, and if you say it should be free, what you want out of the DLC actually can be.



So maybe its the business degree in me talking, but I fully support this type of sales pitch in the game and hope that it's the way of the future. As for the value and cost of the DLC, that will be determined on an item by item basis. For example the DLC for Sims 3, that was a total ripoff.

[Mad Method]

eastoreispos wrote...

The in-game salesman in DAO, while relatively un-intrusive in my opinion, could be the start of a worrisome trend. How long before companies start inserting characters promoting other companies. Don't be surprised one day to slay a dragon and find the Shield of Coke Refreshness +2, or to be exploring a dark dungeon and encounter a troll who's hide is covered by tattoos that say www.mykittygirl.com.

I think in-game salesmen itself is the worrisome trend. We don't need more of those. Having a questgiver NPC with the exclamation mark in your camp serving no function but pitching Warden's Keep can be annoying and I find it rather distasteful. 

Ickabod27, the microtransaction model itself is worrisome. To begin with, the notion of DLC on launch smells rather rank to me since it tends to be content which should've been part of the game to begin with, but was released separately to milk out a higher price point. This goes for Shale and Warden's Keep. Shale in particular has me disgusted since Bioware essentially went out of their way to screw over the second hand market with that move and otherwise lock everyone into its online registration system. Yes, the game is fully playable without them, but that doesn't change the fact that it should have been released to begin with. Both Shale and Warden's Keep suffer considerably from the dubiousness of being DLC at time of launch.

Now, the next point that bothers me about DLC microtransactions is that game companies essentially use this as a means to charge money for content that should have been patch content. Whereas traditionally game companies would release a measure of additional content through patches, the advent of DLC means that they can now limit patches to pure bugfixes and charge money for every content upgrade that would have been part of a patch. A good example of this is again in Warden's Keep with the party storage chest. Bioware already knew there was demand for the chest. However, rather than accommodate this demand in the retail version or introduce it via a patch, the party camp chest was intentionally withheld so that it could serve as an added incentive to purchase Warden's Keep. Now I know several (iirc, even a Bioware employee) have argued that there are party chest mods you can use, so it's not a problem at all. Except, none of this answers the question of why Bioware wouldn't include such a thing officially in a patch so that everyone (not just those of us who look through the mods) would have immediate access to it. Not to mention, mods do not work for consoles.

Modifié par Mad Method, 12 novembre 2009 - 07:39 .

[smattias]

First of all, both of those things were FREE when you reserved the game at gamestop right? so stop whining. if you didn't reserve, thats your fault, not biowares.



Day one DLC is great. I'm sorry but to complain about content that "should have been in the game to begin with"just doesn't make sense to me. There's over 100 hours of gameplay in the game already! And unless you work for bioware, i doubt you know what was "supposed" to be in the game. Maybe if they tried to squeeze that on the disc it would have pushed back the game? Or maybe they needed to finish bug testing. Who knows. but i doubt it was something that was done and ready and specifically held back on purpose (unless EA demanded it). People want MORE content when they purchase a game, yes; and they want to not have to pay for it. But when a game gives you more than you'll likely play in a month? then i think it's time to stop whining about DLC and having to pay extra because they gave you more than $50 worth to being with. As always, if you don't like the idea of paying, then don't. Nothing you say or do will convince a company that more money is bad. And nothing you say will convince me that more content, day one or not, is a bad thing.



As for "this be patch content": ARE YOU KIDDING ME? Im sure it would be a patch if it was just extra items and gameplay tweaks but fully integrated dialouge? someone needs to get paid for that. start making me pay for unique items and such and then yeah, i see your point (horse armor anyone?) but entire locations, quests and characters are more than just a few changes in code. These are like mini expansions, people spent HOURS making them, probably sweating a deadline, and to whine that they didn't just GIVE it to us is a disservice to them.



Remember, if YOU don't like it, YOU don't have to pay for it. I was happy with both and would have paid for them if they weren't FREE to begin with.

[Boycarino09]

Sometimes I spend $7 on a premium coffee... Sooooooo.... Yeah it was worth it to me. If it wasn't I wouldn't have bought it. I mean, my office has a free coffee pot just down the hall, but I think the trip down the block for the gold stuff is just worth it.



The game proper is so long and I get so much bang for that buck that the DLC is worth it for the sheer pleasure of revisiting the world again. After the DLC came out for Mass Effect I replayed the whole game again with a new character incorporating the new stuff and it was fun...again...



I think mayhaps we should talk about the definition of 'value'. It's definitely in the eye of the beholder.

[Cbowsin]

Tycho is a tool and I feel bad for those who succumb to his rhetoric. lol.

[MisterShine]

Crawling_Chaos wrote...

Oh Penny Arcade, you always manage to make the most incredibly unfunny comic on the internet (well, not that any internet comics are funny in the least anyway).

http://xkcd.com/123/

If you don't think this is hilarious, you're just not human.

As for this DLC business, I compare my apples to apples. How much and how long does it entertain me? Is it useful overall? On my mage, I used one of the abilities probably in just about every fight, trading hp for mana was a god send. Also I found the story interesting, and look forward to revisiting it on subsequent play throughs.

I don't really think of it as "Is Warden's Keep worth 7$?"

But moreso "Is Dragon Age + Warden's Keep worth 57$?"

To which the answer is a resounding yes.

[MisterShine]

Double poooooosssttttt....

Modifié par MisterShine, 12 novembre 2009 - 09:08 .

[maikanix]

Ickabod27 wrote...

So maybe its the business degree in me talking, but I fully support this type of sales pitch in the game and hope that it's the way of the future.

I heard by the second or third quarter they have your soul actually leave your body.
Or at least that's what a business degree-pursuing friend of mine said.

I don't know if it can be helped. They're taking advantage of the fact that it's possible to do what they're doing in order to make more money. I would prefer the content to be installed from the get-go. It was obviously already made, bioware doesn't have money issues - they just want MORE MORE MORE (motto of american society). So why didn't they put it in the game? Because they're not trying to make a good product, they're making a good product because if they don't they won't make money. It's a subtle difference, but an important one. So, they don't put it in there, saving it for people who want to pay extra.

Microtransactions are fine with me if it comes with post-release content. But this was, from the start, a ploy to make money. Then, they give it to a certain type of pre-order buyer, in order to say that all they were doing it making sure the rest of the player base had access to something that only certain types of players got for free. But it's an ability set, and a hour of play. This should have been in the game. Items, I can understand. post-release content, I can understand. But I don't think this was the case. :\\

The fact is, when people hear it gives new abilities, and new areas, they're going to respond just like Gabe did. And Bioware, or EA, or whoever, knew they would.

Microtransactions also make perfect sense in MMO's, since small amounts of content can always be added, and it's only acceptable if their either insignificant to the gameplay, or the game is from the start free to play. But this, this was comically greedy. I'm not angry, just sad. This is, after all, "the way it is". Greed rules, values are worthless except inasmuch as your need to maintain your reputation in order to make more money.

Maybe overly cynical, lol, but still.
I always imagine how great games would be if the world wasn't obsessed with money, and the developers were allowed to make their work the best they could.

Also, if they ever start charging for player content...as in...bioware makes profits off of other people's work, that'll be sick, and pathetic. :\\ So i'm hoping they don't.

[armacham]

7$ is really no big deal. I get a laugh at the folks who get pestered by the guy in camp, I talked to him once. Ok hes a premium content guy, Ill talk to him again when i want to do that.



So what he has a "!" over his head. Hes just an option.

[armacham]

armacham wrote...

7$ is really no big deal. I get a laugh at the folks who get pestered by the guy in camp, I talked to him once. Ok hes a premium content guy, Ill talk to him again when i want to do that.

So what he has a "!" over his head. Hes just an option.

*edit* Yeah being a player of mmo's some of their "Micro-transactions" are ludicrous, like 50$ for a mount or a flying accesory.

This Dl-content pales in comparison to the greed of most mmo companies.

[friketje1]

But is there anyone that thinks like, hey, realy liked that 1 hour quest, this is totaly worth my money, how nice from the bioware people that they give us extra content for a price, this makes my game so much better.



I dont mind dlc, or the price they ask for it, or how it is being sold, but a company should at least try to please customers for the money they charge, and this dlc is rip off, no more, no less.

Im not mad or anything, but saying this dlc is value for money or being pleased with is is a bit weird.

[hannahb]

eastoreispos wrote...

The questgiver doesn't 'pester' you, as stated above. He simply sits quietly in your camp until you decide to talk to him.

Yeah, for now .. this time ..

How often are things in this world static?  Eventually, just like commercials on TV, these in-game sales bots will be interupting you once every five mintues with special promotions. 

When you give somone an inch they take a mile .. so support this DLC crap to your own peril.

[Papahet31]

This is a good thread. Everyone makes interesting points that are worthy of thought. I for one, purchased Warden's Keep right from the start because, as one poster pointed out, that DA:O + WK for them was worth $57. And for me it was as well. It took me about 45 minutes to finish it and I enjoyed the time. My largest complaint has more to do with barring me from content I paid for after I have finished it. I was excited about the idea of a "base of operations" that Warden's Keep was marketed as. I didn't finish one of the quests (the lore quest I believe) because I believed that when I returned to WK, I would be able to go back into the keep and finish. I was, after all, under the impression it would be my new "base of operations." I was slightly sad and disappointed when I returned to find the keep was all sealed up and I couldn't go in any longer. I suppose I have no one to blame but myself for making assumptions.

But I just don't understand why they made this decision.

Would it have really hurt things to leave the keep accessible?

Only Bioware knows I guess

Modifié par Papahet31, 12 novembre 2009 - 10:34 .

[daem3an]

maikanix wrote...
I don't know if it can be helped. They're taking advantage of the fact that it's possible to do what they're doing in order to make more money. I would prefer the content to be installed from the get-go. It was obviously already made, bioware doesn't have money issues - they just want MORE MORE MORE (motto of american society).

Bioware is Canadian. Just sayin'.

[Duck and Cover]

I've decided not to buy it. But out of curiosity how many hours of gameplay is it?