3 réponses à ce sujet

[SkippyMcGee88]

This is just my opinion... So flame away.

Most people who support this DLC are "fanboys" and that isn't a knock, since there is really nothing wrong with that...

For example... I'm a Cleveland Browns fan, I still pay for tickets to the games, even though the owner ruined the team and they blow. Yet I defend them and constantly spew out cash for their products.

But with that being said...

I realize I'm being duped, swindled, conned, or whatever other term applies there... I realize they're taking my money and only offering me the basic of appeasement. I realize I always am saying "Wait for Next Year".

Yet they still have my loyalty...

But back to the topic...

DLC, Micro-Transactions, etc... Are not about "improving" the game, they are about making that Company/Developer/Publisher MORE PROFITS.

Plain and Simple...

So defending said companies/developers/publishers with some of the reasoning I'm reading in many of these threads, make me slap my head and wonder if these are the same people who drank the Kool-Aid and voted for Obama because they believed all of the crap he said in his campaign...

Stone Prisoner... Decent DLC because of the the immersion... Worth it, debatable, highly debatable.

Warden's Keep... More like Warden's Coffee Break... 30minutes max, basically a Micro for some items and 8 codexes which quite possibly were more time consuming reading than the actual content.

Now sort of related, I read someone knocking WoW in how much people have spent on it compared to this game and others, besides the "genre" quite a few other things don't relate, mainly that it has the whole "MMO" in front of it...

So besides the fact that it's just plain not applicable to compare costs of the 2... Yet I still read comparisons, mostly in defense of the pricing/content of DA:O's DLC, so...

People still fail to realize it's been out for 5 years, and that content you've spent money on DWARFS
anything and everything any of these other DLC offer. Not too mention add in replayability, which destroys any other game not modded a plethora of times, and even then the odds of getting the same amount of content still won't equal what you can get out of a game like that. And yes some of it has to do with the MMO part...

Now with that said, I'm not defending WoW or Blizzard... Mainly because Blizz and Activisions merging I've noticed
many "EA" trends, ie, basically all the crap that was added in the last year which they charge anywhere from 10-35 bucks(transfers, faction changes, pets, etc, etc, etc) stuff they said they would never do.

But you CANNOT compare the pricing differences...

DLC and Micros are milking money from the consumer to bolsters said companies pockets without the majority of work... Nothing more, nothing less. Sorta like this stupid quote I think once heard, "Milking the cow twice in a day". Take from that quote whatever you want...

They add in, "Cheese above a Mouse Wheel" type things, to appease the appropiate % of the base, while "min/maxing" profits without losing the other consumers...

These do not improve the product the consumer recieves... In "most" cases.

They add in enough to justify what they spent, compared to the reaction it will get... All companies do this in all types of fields.

It will continue this way til the next big "Profit Increasing" idea comes out...

People forget... DLC used to be free.
It was called patches with content. Only recently had DLC been associated with paying money, it used to be DLC just meant that literally, DOWNLOADABLE CONTENT, not Downloadable Content that Costs
Money.

D2 did it with 1.10, TF2 did it... New content, cost? Nothing. Many games have done this, not so many now a days.

Why you ask?

They realized they could charge for it.

People also wonder why patches/hotfixes are not as frequent in most games anymore... Directly correlated to the DLC market.

I'll equate that to an Informercial(Ronco)... "Set it and Forget it". Basically get it out there, collect the cash, let it be. Patches? Well only if we're gonna release some DLC. I mean who's going to buy DLC for something that is broken? Cough, fanboys, cough... Obviously this varies with things, such as MMORPGs which generally have to patch alot to keep the subscriptions coming in.

So here are some  things that have become prominent in todays gaming business market... Not exactly sure if this timeline is accurate, but this is sort of the way it went. And I know I'm leaving some out... But whatever, you'll get my point.

I.E.
Expansions
Subscriptions...
Micro-Transactions...
Cross Marketing Promotions... (Buy this for Game 1, Get this for Game 2) or (Buy Product 1, Get this for Game 2)
DLC...
And whatever the "Next Big Thing" is...

It will continue this way til people eventually say enough... But that will never happen. It's all about money, of course, they're businesses, we're the consumers. They have a product we want, we have the money they want. Nothing more, nothing less...

Things were not always this way, Companies were not always this way, yadda, yadda...

Companies/Developers/whatever start of idealistic...

It's not about the money, it's about the product... (You hear this alot in Hollywood)

That eventually changes... Either they are bought up, or money changes them, or whatever.

It's just how the world goes... It's just how people are...

With all that being said... The new DLC... You can keep it EA/Bioware, you're not my Cleveland Browns.

Modifié par SkippyMcGee88, 22 novembre 2009 - 11:43 .

[Stanley Woo]

Hey, Crawling_Chaos, how about you tone down the inappropriate language?

[Gabo]

A lot of people have answered many of the questions on DLC and how they affect games, and many have hit the nail on the head. 

However, I'd like to add a few more things:
An epic game with production values like Dragon Age:
Origins takes a lot of love, time and resources to build: animators, artists,
writers, designers, programmers, QA, voice actors, production managers, misc
staff, plus building rent, services, food, distribution and marketing, just to
name a few. If you enjoyed DA and feel like expanding the experience a little
bit more, purchasing DLC should not be problem. We believe it adds to the game
and we do our best to make all the DLC good value for the money.

In addition, consumers are becoming more and more demanding (rightfully so), meaning that
only the games with the highest production values remain in demand. Dragon Age
is such a game and it not only has great production values, it also has an epic
scope and a lot of replayability. DLC adds to this. It's not just the raw hour
of gameplay you get, it also adds even more replayability to the full game. And
it's not just fetch quests and random battles either, these are modules that have
professional quality with a full engaging story including voice-overs and
cutscenes attached to them. 





For those that compare the "hour per cent"
value of DLC with the original game, you should realize this: DLC takes as much
effort to create as any part of the original game, however, DLC will not sell
as much as the full game because only a fraction of the people who played the
full game will feel the need to play more (however good the game or the DLC is).
Therefore, DLC will never sell as much as a full standalone game but it is
something that a considerable number of people appreciate. We do our best to
make sure that you are getting great value for your gaming dollar. 



Finally, people seem to believe that DLC involves taking a
complete game and removing parts of it so they can be sold for extra cash but
that is not how it works, at least, not here. There was a plan all along to
have DLC so that fans could have extra content without having to wait months or
years for a full sequel or expansion pack to come out, but all the content for
DLC was created specifically for this purpose; all of it was written or
finished well after the game design and story was locked. DLC allows games to
have new content more frequently and adds to the revenue of the IP, which turns
into more resources to create cool new content. That's just the way it works. 



For those that enjoy our game and its extra modules, I
hope this explanation can make you appreciate the value of DLC and enjoy what
we have to release currently and in the future.

[Gabo]

flamingdts wrote...
I rather have an expansion than DLC, but at the same time I want what I paid for first before Bioware begins selling me something else. If you brought a phone with one of it's main functions missing, are you going to want it fixed first or are you going to start purchasing accessories for this phone?

As has been mentioned before by another Bioware dev, there are different independent teams that focus on DLC and on patching. DLC is mainly content and writing oriented, while patching is more programming and technical design oriented. In addition, some of the development for the new DLC was already underway (but not finished) when DA came out and that gives it an advantage in time it takes to get it out the door. We definitely acknowledge all the feedback we receive and rest assured that people are working to improve things.

...And to answer another post, no, I can't comment on the existence or not of future products.