171 réponses à ce sujet

[LadyDrusilla]

Everyone is going on and on about the cost/time ratio, what about actual enjoyment? I loved the WK story, I enjoyed the way the story unfolded the way it did, the rationale behind the Grey Wardens actions and their consequences for the order and Ferelden. I used some of the items right to the end of the game, I used the chest to store pretty clothing I picked up at various points and wanted to keep.

To me, it was worth the pittance I paid for it. I understand if others disagree, but please stop framing your statements as if they are uncontestable facts. You might think it overpriced and regret buying it, you might find the quest giver annoying. Others do not. Neither position is invalid. The moral outrage in this and other similar threads is simply disgusting. Bioware is a company which to survive has to make money, It is up to you to decide whether or not to buy premium content, but to act like it is some kind of sin to offer it to people in game is just damned stupid.

[hangmans tree]

About the sales man in the camp...is there a way to turn of THIS IRRITATING GLOWING MARKER abouve his head? I have no intention to buy dlcs, and yet this persistent motherf... is catching my attention and aggro eeeevery time. Its like some budweiser neon ad.

[Tweekle]

Well I suppose it could be worse ...you could upon starting a new game be literally slapped in the face by handfuls of notes and rumour popups detailing long lost cousins and twice removed aunts leaving you castles, forts and shiny things...

[revnant31]

Well to respond to a poster above don't remember the name but your right, i can assure you that Wardens Keep and Stone Prisoner quests were already done and put in the main game but taken out for DLC content.

I assume this because shale is integrated in to the storyline and the there's codex spaces in the journal for the codex notes you pick up in both these areas and if you want to find all the codex entries there even counted in the totals above in the tab. So yeah i can be almost certain this decision was done delibrately.

However, i don't blame Bioware for this decision one bit....this has EA's hands all over it and remember they are the bosses at the end of the day and THEIR decision is final.

besides $5 to $7 content is still cheaper than what some DLC is priced at for other games, that are in the range of $10-$15 or more.

Modifié par revnant31, 25 novembre 2009 - 02:10 .

[addiction21]

LadyDrusilla wrote...

Everyone is going on and on about the cost/time ratio, what about actual enjoyment? I loved the WK story, I enjoyed the way the story unfolded the way it did, the rationale behind the Grey Wardens actions and their consequences for the order and Ferelden. I used some of the items right to the end of the game, I used the chest to store pretty clothing I picked up at various points and wanted to keep.

Thats insanity...  the cheaper something is and the longer I can play with it the more fun I get out of it. Thats the bottom line nothing else matters and that is how everyone everywhere should think.  All entertainment products enjoyment value shale hence forth be determined by a arbitrary equation with arbitrary numbers made up on the spot. 
/sarcasim
With all that said, it seems that there is no need to buy anything since the greatest value you can get for your entertainment buck is by playing with yourself...

[Damiannnnn]

You all whine about DLC, which I agree, is nothing more than greedy money whoring, and yet you buy every single piece of DLC the instant it comes out.



Just don't buy it. I didn't.

[Kimberly Shaw]

My opinion: The cartoon has a great point in that the Dryden guy should not appear in your camp with a giant "!" over his head until you've paid for the download. Advertising should not appear WHILE you are adventuring in the world. Especially when it breaks immersion with references to credit cards and "download content".



2nd point. Has Bioware or EA or anyone ever explained why they didn't open the keep up afterwards? I imagine it was just cheapness in that they didn't want to re-draw the keep post cleaning it out; but holy cow. That has to be the biggest dissapointment in the game for me so far is that Warden's Keep is locked out after you beat it; reducing the content to 2 merchants and a chest.

[Roxlimn]

The only question worth asking is, "Is Dragon Age worth the money you forked over for it?" The answer is either yes or no. If it's yes, you're a satisfied customer. If no, you were a fool for buying something you didn't really want.



That is really, the long and short of it.

[Mad Method]

First, I'd like to stress that this thread is about more than just the issue of "is the DLC worth the $$$?"

Lady Drusilla, I agree with you that enjoyment is important, but this is an issue of quality versus quantity, and there is a trade-off. Given how ridiculously short the DLC is, it needs to be of a truly extraordinary quality to justify that price to me, and somehow I doubt Warden's Keep is just that good. You feel otherwise; that's fine.

Now onto the issue of moral outrage here. It's alright if you don't understand or do but disagree with someone else's moral outrage. However, it is not alright to insult it, and I'm afraid you touched a nerve there. Either take back those words or leave this thread.

Hangman's Tree, there doesn't seem to be a mod for it yet.

revnant31, lets let Bioware speak on this:

Christ Priestly wrote...

The Warden's Keep was created by members of the DAO team while the rest of the team worked on finishing the PC and console versions. It was never in the core game and has been added in once the core game is complete. This extra team is working on more DLC for the coming months. We have lots of plans in the works for coolness to come.

Shale (the Stone Prisoner) WAS originally going to be in the core game. However, Shale was cut as the team could not get things such as pathfinding, etc working correctly in time to meet our projected release date. Back when DAO was going to be released back in the spring of 2009, the decision was made to cut him. Since the team had extra time once the release date was moved to November, the Dev team worked to fix the outstanding issues and included this back into the game as Day 1 DLC.

Blood Dragon Armor. This was added in a few months ago as a cool way to tie both Dragon Age and Mass Effect together.

Also, Shale DLC is around 12 USD, I think.

Modifié par Mad Method, 26 novembre 2009 - 12:19 .

[Roxlimn]

There is no room for moral outrage when talking about enjoying an optional past time that has many analogues and alternatives. None.

[Mad Method]

Roxlimn, you're wrong. There most definitely is room for moral outrage. And I think you've missed many of the talking points of the thread because the question of "should you get Warden's Keep?" is only one of the issues raised, and it's not even the predominant issue here. The main issues are with Warden's Keep and Shale being Day One DLC and the business practices at hand, as well as general discussion on the article.

Now, to be clear, when I speak of moral outrage I don't mean I endorse hysterical yelling and angry finger-pointing and what-have-you. I do believe, however, that I have the right to find such a thing to offend my sensibilities and to declare that I find the practice repugnant. Is it the end of the world? No, of course not. But is it wrong? I think so, yes. There's room for moral outrage.

Modifié par Mad Method, 26 novembre 2009 - 01:39 .

[Majspuffen]

I havn't read the whole thread, because there's flaming here and flaming there. I'll try to contribute with something, though I doubt it's worth the time.



Dragon Age: Origins = the full game. You get to play from the beginning to the end. The game itself is great.

Downloadable content = Minor additions to the game that they charge money for. Now, you can complain as much as you want but there's enough people willing to pay for this, so they hardly have a reason to stop. You cant change everyones mind, no matter how much you whine. I for one think wardens keep was worth the money. I'll no doubt buy "return to ostagar" too. I dont mind, I'll gladly play them, in hope of seing more dlc in the future.

Summarize: You dont need to buy dlc to complete the -game-. No matter how much you whine I do not expect bioware or ea to stop charging points for the new content... but one cannot defeat the human spirit, no?

[GlassRain]

In my experience the DLC took away from the game as a whole. The items offered there made the game far easier than it should have been and took the enjoyment of finding other gear down a few notches after being handed superior loot.



I'm all for the DLC stuff, that's cool, power to those who want to spend 5-10 bucks for a few new models and 30 minutes of game play. Personally I'm in the party that is far more interested in expansions rather than sideshows.

[Mongoose-Epsilon]

I don't have an objection to day one DLC--as with anything else, I'll evaluate what I expect the value to be. In the case of Warden's Keep, I paid $7 for an interesting, though somewhat short, bit of story. Was it worth $7 standalone? Probably not. Am I bothered by paying for it? Nope. I'm enjoying Dragon Age as a whole and find the regular game a very good value, so I'm not unhappy contributing a bit to Bioware's financial numbers. CE+$7 for the whole experience is still a very good deal in my book.



I don't mind the idea of the DLC quest giver, but I don't think it works well in execution. When I decided I wanted to buy Warden's Keep, I figured I'd go to the quest giver, pick the "download" option, and be taken to an ordering form on the EA website. Instead, I was told I was missing Bioware points. I then had to go online, find the proper place to order the points, go back into the game, talk to the guy, then wait for the download. Getting an activation key (similar to the CE DLC) would have been much easier, and then the obnoxious exclamation point wouldn't have been in camp.



The one other thing I worry about is the need to activate the DLC online every time the game is started. Those times when my internet is flaky are perfect for single player games, but I wouldn't be able to connect, and thus my DLC enabled saves wouldn't load. Not cool.

[Fodder007]

The only question you need to ask yourselves is whether or not you think that the content provided on the disc, excluding any DLC, free or otherwise, is worth the money that you paid for it.



Game developers must provide a certain amount of content to satisfy the game's price tag and without a doubt DAO provides that content and much much more.



Instead of the 80 hours or whatever for a first play through they could easily have only provided say 50 hours and charged the rest as an expansion pack.



More and more is expected from games at launch these days and developers have to strike the right balance between what is included in the disc price and what is sold separetly. Ultimately it will come down to a financial balancing act; what content can they include on the disc that will give them the level of financial return they are looking for and what content needs to be pushed to DLC.

[Sibelius1]

Delcar wrote...

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

Exanctly, you hit the nail on the head.

Someone modded camp storage into the game within days of release, yet Bioware were unable to add it to the base game, despite sitting around for 8 months waiting for the release. Instead they hit out with excuses that it could not be added to the main game due to technical reasons and could only be added to DLC. Why?

Not everyone who has this game on the PC wil be comfortable using or installing unofficial mods, but you can bet your bottom that they will find extra storage a very desireable feature. I am certain that it proved to be irresistable for some.

[arpegino]

I'm going to repeat a post I made in a different thread. I payed 40$ for a game that had me glued to the chair for 50 hours. That's 50/40=1.25 hours of great storytelling and gameplay per dollar spent. Somewhere along the line I was offered to buy WK for 7$ and without knowing anything about it, I purchased it. Having finished it 30 minutes later, sitting astonished in my chair, I realized that I just paid 50 cents for gameplay and 6.50$ for a set of armor, a staff and two useless talents. I haven't felt that ripped off since I bought take-away at McDonald's only to find out later that they forgot to put the fries in.



But that was a valuable lesson and I blame no one for it. The DLC trend itself is disturbing, but a company has to survive with all the piracy I imagine is in the world. It's already seen in games which are released for consoles several months before coming to PC, if ever. And you have to agree that EA and Bioware both employ marketing geniuses who know better than all the people in this thread combined what sells and what doesn't. Pseudo-content like this Shale and WK will be fed to us for as long as it is considered profitable, and then they'll find another way to make more money.

[Mad Method]

Majspuffen, if you'd look through the thread you'd notice there isn't actually that much flaming. The majority of flaming, in fact, comes from detractors such as yourself who label our discourse as whining. The rest of your post was essentially without merit.

GlassRain, I agree. The DLC and preorder items have been made good items on purpose to be attractive and and as such they outperform most other items you would get in the game and trivialize large sections of the difficulty curve. As a result, the game is in fact less enjoyable because it becomes less of a challenge. Though I imagine there are others who don't want to be concerned with challenging gameplay and would rather just pursue the story, but they can just cheat past the combat.

arpegino, I get the feeling this kind of module merely tempts one into piracy. When it comes to Warden's Keep I think to myself, "I would like to play that." I also think, "It's not worth paying for." Not that I pirated it.

Modifié par Mad Method, 29 novembre 2009 - 04:25 .

[BelgarathMTH]

I bought the Warden's Keep content. (The rest came free with my collector's edition.)



I wasn't mad about it - after all, it's completely optional to the game and story. I just looked at it as a way to give a "tip" to the devs for excellent service rendered.



I'm in love with this game, marketing ploys and all. I want more of the same, so I'm willing to spend more of my money on it.

[Mad Method]

I looked at purchasing the Collector's Edition the same way, which is why I didn't mind that I bought it. I did, however, notice that the bonuses that came with it were rather lacking. It featured a map of Ferelden which was already coming apart at the seams before I'd so much as touched it, MP3s placed on the DVD rather than a soundtrack CD that could be directly played, concept art as video rather than usable image files, and game tips like "go help the elves to get a good bow" and "go to the circle of magi for mage gear."



If you view it from the perspective that you're just paying to "tip" Bioware then certainly it isn't money lost, but if you're purchasing it for the content, then I think the price point is distinctly less appealing.

[Mad Method]

In light of the Awakening expansion pack, I'd like to build a little on my second point regarding DLC microtransactions here and point out that respecs have been added in Awakening. While expansion packs certainly aren't the same as DLC, I do believe it is a continuation of that trend (to package incremental content upgrades that should be patch content into larger content modules that cost money instead) to require people to get Awakening to be able to respec their characters.

[hardvice]

Mad Method wrote...

In light of the Awakening expansion pack, I'd like to build a little on my second point regarding DLC microtransactions here and point out that respecs have been added in Awakening. While expansion packs certainly aren't the same as DLC, I do believe it is a continuation of that trend (to package incremental content upgrades that should be patch content into larger content modules that cost money instead) to require people to get Awakening to be able to respec their characters.

Except, of course, that respecing your character in Awakening doesn't do anything for your character in Origins.  Origins still has no respec.

Also, the way the devs tell it, respecs were included in Awakening because of the new abilities being added, so people wouldn't be locked out of trying cool new abilities by having avoided their prerequisites.