crypticcat 2o2p wrote...
It is a bit OTT to have them buy a heavily discounted earlier installment and then force them to pay premium for DLC that isn't much older. By now, that DLC should be about 50% cheaper then it was while it was an item. Regardless of sales...
I think I didn't make my point as well as I could. I'm saying that if the DLC were discounted to that degree now then it's highly likely that the games we're now buying for ten bucks each (I'm a latecomer to ME as well) would be substantially more instead. I hadn't forgotten the completionists so much as included their polar opposites - those people who buy an old game and think 'Meh' and move on to something else. The important thing here is that nobody is making completionists be completionists any more that McDonalds makes you get a coke with your Big Mac. Sure, it's dangled out there in the hope that people do, and often that works, but the bottom line is that every time you give your money to anybody apart from the taxman you do so voluntarily. As things stand if we buy an old game and don't enjoy it we're only a small amount out of pocket, whereas cheaper DLC and more expensive old games would leave buyers maybe $30-40 down and thinking 'Well, that sucked' - neither is going to be interested in the DLC anyway if they didn't enjoy the game. Being as gaming is pretty free market I'd guess that maybe there are more of those casual types who don't get all completionist about games than there are completionists. If that changes then DLC pricing will probably change too, but in the meantime I don't think the pricing is unreasonable. If I'd spent $30 on the games and $30 on the DLC instead of $10 and $50 then I spend $60 either way, so what's the difference?
That's not to say I think Bioware are being entirely saintly. First day paid DLC is a bit dodgy, but what really infuriates me is having to buy DLC in Bioware points instead of actual money. I've said this elsewhere here but at the risk of going over old ground I found it ridiculous to pay Steam ten bucks each for two ME games and then fart around with Bioware's awful online shop buying points - in three separate transactions because there didn't seem to be a way to buy all the points I needed in one go - and only then finally buy the DLC. Compare that to Deus Ex: Human Revolution, which I also bought on Steam, and at the same time bought all the DLC I wanted for it also on Steam and all on the same transaction. And using these funny dollar things that have suddenly become so popular in the last couple of hundred years. It should go without saying that I think having the point cost of DLC packs set so that it's nearly impossible to avoid buying more points than you actually need is little short of gouging.
So to be clear, yeah, I don't like Bioware point pricing either, just for different reasons from the OP. The converted dollar (or £ or euros or whatever) price is a lesser issue to me than having to do a conversion in an online shop that seems to have been designed by someone who's either drunk or raving mad or both.
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