203 réponses à ce sujet

[jsamlaw]

How is this issue not disposed of by simply saying if you don't like the price don't buy it?

You're not *entitled* to play the DLC, nor are you *required* to spend money.  Life is simply one choice after another.

Modifié par jsamlaw, 27 novembre 2012 - 09:52 .

[Atakuma]

jsamlaw wrote...

How is this issue not disposed of by simply saying if you don't like the price don't buy it?

You're not *entitled* to play the DLC, nor are you *required* to spend money.

Because that is nothing more than a cop out people use when they don't have an actual argument.

[terdferguson123]

jsamlaw wrote...

How is this issue not disposed of by simply saying if you don't like the price don't buy it?

You're not *entitled* to play the DLC, nor are you *required* to spend money.  Life is simply one choice after another.

I'm not sure how many times I will have to answer posts like these, but here we go again. I realize that I do not have to buy them, but why should I not care about price changes that I feel are unwarranted when I generally care for the series. My initial post was feedback to Bioware that continuous poor business practices regarding DLC (such as ignoring customer satisfaction in favor of bottom line profits) will have negative long term effects. As a consumer, why would I not want to know what is causing massive price increases for something that I care about? If I like Baseball and want to buy a ticket but the price increases by 50% from the past year and the team made almost no changes to its roster, stadium, etc. why would I not want to know what is causing that price increase?

Modifié par terdferguson123, 27 novembre 2012 - 10:01 .

[Sidney]

terdferguson123 wrote...

I understand that it's optional. But as a fan of the series, why shouldn't I wonder what is causing the massive price increase when I see no foreseeable reason for it? It's cause for concern because I do not want to have to regularly face price increases when one is not warranted.

Really nothing has to cause the massive price increase. They charge what they can because the market will bear it -- or so they think. There is no "natural price" for a good or service. What warrants one is that it can be charged, Your only care is if you find the product or service a reasonable exchange for your money. If not, don't buy it.

In the end, DLC prices will go up. All prices go up over time so get used to the fact that whatever price you think is "right" won't be the price forever.

[Animositisomina]

Atalanta wrote...

It may be the post-Steam-autumn-sale-high talking, but when I saw the $15 price tag for Omega, I laughed. No way am I going to shell out that much after playing Leviathan (and struggling to finish it because I found it so boring).

BioWare points would have to go on sale, big-time, for me to even consider it.

This is pretty much how I feel about it right now. I just bought a total of 4 FULL games for less than $15 *total* because of Steam's sale. Why should I pay that same price for a couple-hour DLC?

Modifié par Animositisomina, 27 novembre 2012 - 10:50 .

[Reever]

Sidney wrote...

terdferguson123 wrote...

I understand that it's optional. But as a fan of the series, why shouldn't I wonder what is causing the massive price increase when I see no foreseeable reason for it? It's cause for concern because I do not want to have to regularly face price increases when one is not warranted.

Really nothing has to cause the massive price increase. They charge what they can because the market will bear it -- or so they think. There is no "natural price" for a good or service. What warrants one is that it can be charged, Your only care is if you find the product or service a reasonable exchange for your money. If not, don't buy it.

In the end, DLC prices will go up. All prices go up over time so get used to the fact that whatever price you think is "right" won't be the price forever.

But that only happens because people still buy them. As you said, it´s supply & demand. And some people just don´t seem to get that ( and with that I mean, that we have the "power" ).

[Sanunes]

terdferguson123 wrote...

jsamlaw wrote...

How is this issue not disposed of by simply saying if you don't like the price don't buy it?

You're not *entitled* to play the DLC, nor are you *required* to spend money.  Life is simply one choice after another.

I'm not sure how many times I will have to answer posts like these, but here we go again. I realize that I do not have to buy them, but why should I not care about price changes that I feel are unwarranted when I generally care for the series. My initial post was feedback to Bioware that continuous poor business practices regarding DLC (such as ignoring customer satisfaction in favor of bottom line profits) will have negative long term effects. As a consumer, why would I not want to know what is causing massive price increases for something that I care about? If I like Baseball and want to buy a ticket but the price increases by 50% from the past year and the team made almost no changes to its roster, stadium, etc. why would I not want to know what is causing that price increase?

Its about choice, as much as you don't like the price they felt it was set fairly based on information we don't have.  Maybe its because they don't have the same number of players or it could be because they invested more money for voice acting then previous DLC.  I was at the mall yesterday looking for Christmas gift ideas and I saw a couple of stores increasing their prices above what was before Black Friday sales, the way I complain or tell them that I don't agree with what they are doing is by doing my shopping elsewhere and I think the same can apply to this.

[AdrynBliss]

Without knowing at least a rough estimate of the actual production values using 'basic math' to work out whether or not its worth the price is almost entirely invalid. Length of the DLC is a fair indicator as to whether or not you personally might be interested in purchasing it given its price but whether or not the price is justified in itself is impossible to know without knowing the production value.

For me personally i feel bio is asking this:
Bio: Hey we've put out some free content, keep the MP servers running and updated and add new content on a fairly regular basis add that to Carrie's paycheck and the overall production of the Omega DLC and the continued development of ME related cross media and we're gonna bump the price of this one up by a few bucks, that cool with you?

To which i'd reply, yeah no problem.

[terdferguson123]

AdrynBliss wrote...

Without knowing at least a rough estimate of the actual production values using 'basic math' to work out whether or not its worth the price is almost entirely invalid. Length of the DLC is a fair indicator as to whether or not you personally might be interested in purchasing it given its price but whether or not the price is justified in itself is impossible to know without knowing the production value.

For me personally i feel bio is asking this:
Bio: Hey we've put out some free content, keep the MP servers running and updated and add new content on a fairly regular basis add that to Carrie's paycheck and the overall production of the Omega DLC and the continued development of ME related cross media and we're gonna bump the price of this one up by a few bucks, that cool with you?

To which i'd reply, yeah no problem.

This is a naive answer unfortanately. Becuase if this succeeds, guess what will happen? All story DLC will be $15 regardless of the costs associated.

[EpicBoot2daFace]

terdferguson123 wrote...

I can nearly gaurantee that this been discussed to death, but EA/Bioware's DLC pricing has really hit my last nerve. I have always felt that the DLC price was a little bit over the top from a mathematical perspective, but I dealt with it hoping that the quality and length of those DLC's would eventually equal out the price and Mota from DA2 and Shadow Broker from ME2 had me feeling good about that theory. Now I see that the DLC has instead increased in price without increasing in quality or length. I am thoroughly confused about the price increase for this DLC. The DLC is roughly 3 hours long which for me is fairly similar to other DLC lengths from Bioware. Some will go a little shorter some will go a little longer than this. But with simple math we can show that this price increase is ridiculous and this pricing strategy desperately needs to change.

Mass Effect 3 took me 45 hours to complete, with no DLC. Some would say this is a long time, but that is because I generally take my time. Omega took 3 hours to complete, so in theory shouldn't the price of the DLC take this into account?

If a DLC is $15, and a normal game is $60, the DLC should be roughly: 15/60 = 25% of the base games length.

So, if we use this length of content theory, and ME3 base game took me 45 hours to complete, then this DLC should theoretically be close to: .25 x 45 = 11.25 hours.

Now I realize that this won't ever happen, and while that is a saddening point, I do understand it from a business perspective (Accountant irl). So what is supposed to make up this massive difference in length vs price comparison? Quality.

Let's look some more at the math.

Strictly by looking at a price vs length comparison, we are missing 8.25 hours worth of content. (11.25hrs(est.) - 3hrs(actual)), or 73.33% of the content (8.25/11.25) which is representing missing value. So, as I stated this difference needs to be made up by the quality of the DLC. That 73.33% of value that is missing needs to be made up by the DLC's quality.

So far, Bioware has released two DLC where the quality of it made up the difference between the price vs length comparison (Mota from DA2 and Shadow Broker from ME2), and these were both $10 dlc. With that said, this $5 price increase seems even harder to justify because the Omega DLC is frankly not up to the quality of either of these DLC's and it's price vs length comparison difference is even more obvious.

I am not posting this because I want to complain about DLC pricing, I am posting this because I love Bioware games and I think they are making some terrible business strategies that are going to cost them fans and potential revenues in the future. This is one of those poor business practices. I want to hear what other fans think, and if any Bioware reps are able to post in a thread such as this, please give some insight into what you were thinking with this inane price increase.

We already know DLC is overpriced. Nobody is happy about that. But the best thing for people to do is to vote with their wallets. If you don't feel comfortable with the price of DLC, simply don't buy it or wait for a sale. It doesn't solve the problem of publishers like EA demanding higher prices for less and less content year after year, but at least you can say you aren't taking part in it.

I rely almost entirely on GOTY editions and sales when stuff is half off. I'm currently playing through Fallout 3. If I were to buy all the DLC for that game, I would have spent $40 total. Instead, I waited for the GOTY edition which included all that DLC for $20. I got the Ultimate Edition of Dragon Age for only $15 at Wal-Mart, the same price as this Omega DLC.

The elitist ****s who make outrageous claims like "You're killing the game industry by buying used!" or "You should buy at full price. Support the game industry, man!" should seriosuly **** off and remember that the game industry is like any other business. If I can buy a used game for $20 instead of $30, I'm gonna do it and I don't care if you don't like it. At the end of the day, we're all consumers and I don't think the game industry needs special treatment from us to survive.

Modifié par EpicBoot2daFace, 27 novembre 2012 - 11:43 .

[terdferguson123]

AdrynBliss wrote...

Without knowing at least a rough estimate of the actual production values using 'basic math' to work out whether or not its worth the price is almost entirely invalid. Length of the DLC is a fair indicator as to whether or not you personally might be interested in purchasing it given its price but whether or not the price is justified in itself is impossible to know without knowing the production value.

For me personally i feel bio is asking this:
Bio: Hey we've put out some free content, keep the MP servers running and updated and add new content on a fairly regular basis add that to Carrie's paycheck and the overall production of the Omega DLC and the continued development of ME related cross media and we're gonna bump the price of this one up by a few bucks, that cool with you?

To which i'd reply, yeah no problem.

Regardless of the costs associated, they cannot justify a 50% increase in DLC price. The problem most people are forgetting is that they see $5 and think "no big deal", but that is in fact an enormous price increase for something that has just as much content and arguable quality compared to DLC that was $10 just a few months ago (Leviathen). Do you see the point?

Secondly, your comment about length not being an indicator of value is rubbish, in fact that is one of the most important aspects of deciding the value of a game or DLC. Always has been and always will be. I am not trying to cruel by saying that. I understand that game length is variable based on the genre, but an RPG that is only 15 hours is going to suffer from customers disliking the value the same way that an FPS that is only 4 hours will. DLC should be no different and should be proportional to the genre. Example: Half Life 2 Episode 2, I forget the price of it when it came out but it was not more than $30. This DLC was about 6 hours long, which is close to 50% of the length of the base game. Interestingly enough, it cost half as much. More on that point, it's quality was through the roof. It had both the correct length to price variance and the quality to more than make up for whatever was lost in between. In this same scenario they released this DLC with the Orange Box for fans who hadn't played the original game that also included the first DLC, a multiplayer addon that is still immenself popular to this day (TF2), and a little game called Portal all for a price less than a full retail game. Guess what? Valve fans love the company for that series, that DLC, and in general just love the company because they have sound business practices.

Thirdly, I stated in my OP that I would be fine with this massive length value discrepancy if the quality of the DLC made up for it. But aside from rare circumstances, it really doesn't. Shadow Broker was excellent, Mota from DA2 was also excellent, those are the only 2 DLC that have overcome that gap to justify the pricing.

Modifié par terdferguson123, 27 novembre 2012 - 11:59 .

[TweedleDee66]

Well considering that this company is charging money for weapon packs for the single player game that we got for free in the multiplayer game, is it no wonder they are charging $15 for a download?

Looking at the downloadable content from EA/BioWare in the past I don’t have high hopes for this one being to good anyways. Why should I when almost all the others before it have more or less stank to one degree or another.

Omega comes in at 1.99 GB, Leviathan was 1.7 GB and Lair of the Shadow Broker was 1.6 GB and $10 each, so why the $5 more price hike?

I certainly wont buy this download anytime soon, if at all.Maybe when it gets knocked down to 50% off will I pick it up. I got Leviathan for $5 a few days ago on Xbox live marketplace and still have not played it.

Downloadable content isn’t like buying a game in a store. Once you buy it you cant return it or trade it in if you are not satisfied with it. You also rarely get any useful review of the product in question to help in anyway either. You certainly cant trust the majority of the “fans” at a forum site for that game either, since they tend to be back up the game maker regardless how bad the product may actually be. The only option is to complain and voice your opinion in the hopes others will not buy it and the developers get their heads out of their rears and realize they are screwing over their consumers.

[EpicBoot2daFace]

TweedleDee66 wrote...

Well considering that this company is charging money for weapon packs for the single player game that we got for free in the multiplayer game, is it no wonder they are charging $15 for a download?

I sort of see it a EA testing the waters. If this DLC sells as much or more than Leviathan, $15 could be the new standard for single-player content.

Modifié par EpicBoot2daFace, 27 novembre 2012 - 11:58 .

[Obadiah]

$15 is a quarter of the price of another full size game, and half the price of lots of discounted games I have yet to play. Hell, I just got Halo 3 for $20. It is hard to justify this price tag.

Omega still looks pretty good though. Dunno - I'll consider it.

[terdferguson123]

Rubios wrote...

I don't see how this is an issue, being an accountant you should know how supply/demand works.

As a consumer this is was the last Bioware DLC for me, not worth the higher price point when they are going down on quality.

Let's see how this works for them in the long run against this thing called piracy which offers better product (that's the biggest problem) for free and works perfectly fine on the short run for the "consumer" (not really a consumer, but you get the idea).

It isn't so  much that it is an issue, but a poor choice on the part of the decision makers. It's my personal belief that this pricing decision will have bad long term effects. And you are correct, the higher the price goes the more it will be pirated, just an example of said bad long term effects.

Modifié par terdferguson123, 28 novembre 2012 - 12:09 .

[Fawx9]

Hell MOP is/D3 was on sale for $20.

Even if I have no intention of going back to that life sucking game (knock on wood) it's ridiculous to think that a DLC is almost the price of games that can literally last the buyer years worth of content.

[Ninja Stan]

Game product pricing is not based on playtime or game length, just as the admission price for movies is not variable based on how long the movie is or what kind of budget it had. Not to mention that expecting product pricing to be based on how much time you played it is a little ridiculous. There is no way for a publisher to know how long it will take you, specifically, to finish a game product, let alone set their prices accordingly.

DLC pricing is also not based on its size compared to the size of the main game, nor on how long it takes a player to finish is compared to how long it took that same player to finish the main game. Keep in mind that the number of players who purchase DLC remains but a small fraction of the number who purchase the main game.

DLC is, of course, completely optional and is not required to enjoy and complete the main game.

[Fawx9]

Ninja Stan wrote...

Game product pricing is not based on playtime or game length, just as the admission price for movies is not variable based on how long the movie is or what kind of budget it had. Not to mention that expecting product pricing to be based on how much time you played it is a little ridiculous. There is no way for a publisher to know how long it will take you, specifically, to finish a game product, let alone set their prices accordingly.

DLC pricing is also not based on its size compared to the size of the main game, nor on how long it takes a player to finish is compared to how long it took that same player to finish the main game. Keep in mind that the number of players who purchase DLC remains but a small fraction of the number who purchase the main game.

DLC is, of course, completely optional and is not required to enjoy and complete the main game.

I guess that's kinda fair. My only arguement may be that a lower price point would allow for more people to try it out even if a DLC were to get more avergae reviews than expected. Whereas a clearly higher one is a stopgate if word of mouth isn't that great.

Also who do I need to kick to get ME2 DLC to go on sale. Hell Leviathan was just this last week , but I have never seen anything from the prior games have any sales.

[xsdob]

I didn't know you managed to get hold of the financial records for this dlc's creation? How did you get your hands on such documents?

Or did you simply use some flawed equation that misses key variables like some salarian grad student?

[A Bethesda Fan]

Even a smaller fraction since the DLC so far has being disappointing and many fans gave up hope.
I'll wait for a sale if I intend to buy it, or I'll buy Dragonborn if I don't buy a PC.

[Ninja Stan]

Fawx9 wrote...

I guess that's kinda fair. My only arguement may be that a lower price point would allow for more people to try it out even if a DLC were to get more avergae reviews than expected. Whereas a clearly higher one is a stopgate if word of mouth isn't that great.

That may be true, but part of hte job of the bean counters at any company is to find that price point where they can maximize profit based on the number of people likely to purchase the thing at that price. Charging less than that may or may not be "leaving money on the table" and charging more might mean alienating more players than is worthwhile.

Also who do I need to kick to get ME2 DLC to go on sale. Hell Leviathan was just this last week , but I have never seen anything from the prior games have any sales.

Probably your preferred online retailer.

[Fawx9]

Ninja Stan wrote...

Fawx9 wrote...

I guess that's kinda fair. My only arguement may be that a lower price point would allow for more people to try it out even if a DLC were to get more avergae reviews than expected. Whereas a clearly higher one is a stopgate if word of mouth isn't that great.

That may be true, but part of hte job of the bean counters at any company is to find that price point where they can maximize profit based on the number of people likely to purchase the thing at that price. Charging less than that may or may not be "leaving money on the table" and charging more might mean alienating more players than is worthwhile.

Also who do I need to kick to get ME2 DLC to go on sale. Hell Leviathan was just this last week , but I have never seen anything from the prior games have any sales.

Probably your preferred online retailer.

BW is going to have steam support again?!?!? Oh happy days!

Ha, don't try to trick me, we all know Origin never has good sales. *grumbles something about no black friday deals like Xbox Live had*

Modifié par Fawx9, 28 novembre 2012 - 01:21 .

[Maximazed]

Well it is kind of crazy to think that ME1 is coming to PS3 next week for the same price. Even if it is like 5 years old.

[Andromidius]

If I'm paying more, I expect more in quantity or quality. Instead we get neither.

Rather insulting, I think. Considering how long this was being worked on, and the among of hype it was getting from the developers, I expected something polished at least. Instead we get glitchy cutscenes and enemies with broken AI half the time.

Not. Impressed. I'd let it slide if it was half the price or had any baring at all on the rest of the game.

Leviathan managed to do that just fine, and it was longer, more involved, had more lore and story, had new gameplay mechanics and seemed reasonably bug-free. And was cheaper.

So sorry, I won't swallow 'higher production costs' as an excuse.