I could almost understand dlc after the game has been released with the devs feverishly working to create additional content to prolong the games adventure. But at launch all they are doing is taking parts of the game and charging you extra for it. Complete bs....imagine playing Dragon Age without the Stone Prisoner.
Imagine
DOOM - dlc --- pay extra for the shotgun?
Zelda -dlc- you want arrows?
Sonic - dlc- you want sonic speed?
Mortal Kombat - dlc- pick your fighter it cost's extra.
And finally... Sins of a Solar Empire - dlc- $ 8.99 additional for the Kol......you get the idea.
What's next? Books with additional chapters? I know you don't have to pay for it, but it just completly ruins the shared experience in games.
Just in case anyone misunderstands, I love this game. And I have no problem with DLC per se( almost like mini- mini expansions) , but at launch, it split's the game to the have and have nots.
Wow...I completed it much faster in hard mode...
I take my time, I don't rush a game like this just to "beat it" like some people. Not saying that is you of course. With Oblivion I spent about 80 hours on my first playthru and never finished it. About 140 hours on my second play thru and never finished the main quest (didn't touch it actually, pretty much did everything else). LOVE that game, may fire it or Morrowind up after I complete Dragon Age. So anyway, I'm playing DA taking my time and doing cool stuff. I'm not just standing there staring at stuff, but I'm not just rushing thru like it's a sprint or something.
Different strokes for different folks.
Just a tip, take shale with you to the dwarfs city, gives you alot more content out of the stone prisoner
kek
Hm interesting..it's a shame that I haven't used the golem at all.
You should and definately take him to the dwarf city.
I'll weigh in on this too as I've had pretty intense feelings on the matter. At first, I hated the idea. It felt like I was getting cheated somehow... But after some thought, and seeing a few examples of DLC, I've had a complete turnaround. I now thing DLC can be a great thing, CAN be. For me, it was Fallout 3 that changed my mind. I like the idea, and hope it catches on, but only under certain rules. The base game has to be complete by itself. It's cheating to design a game so that the experience isn't complete without the additional purchase of DLC. Cliffhangers are only ok in my book for full expansion packs or sequels. Also, the DLC has to be worth it's asking price. In my opinion, the very first DLC for Fallout 3, the one about Anchorage, wasn't worth it. It was too sloppy, more like a player made mod that wasn't polished. Trees floating above the ground.....come on.... I don't know enough about the second DLC to make a judgement, but the third set was definately worth it. It continues the story, increases the level limit, adds new skills, etc. It's not just a couple of quickly churned out maps and a handful of new gear.
If I'm going to shell out money for DLC, it will have to add some real value to the game, and be on par with the base game in terms of quality. If it's something that could be put together with just a modders toolset, I'm not buying. Not to say that modders contributions aren;t good, some are very good....but I'm not having to pay for them so I don't hold player made mods to the same set of standards.
Personally, I like the expansion model better than DLC as they almost allways had enough content to make it worth while. Since DLC are typically smaller, it's a crapshoot.....at least that's been my experience so far.
Well let's say for the sake argument that you purchased the 3 DLC for Fallout 3 and only one of them was worth the money involved. You've just hit a satisfaction of about 33% (I know you said you didn't buy the second so this is a rough example). Are we, those of us who are not liking what we are seeing in terms of DLC, really supposed to be convinced that it's okay since at least 33% of the DLC isn't ripoff.
Hey I know there are a lot of snobs on these boards against the Sims series, but EA has put out a prime example of what is wrong about DLC. A full priced game Sims 3 (though I rarely buy titles without some sort of discount) that comes with a lot less content then previous series so they can sell things like hair and shirts and furniture all that stuff that often the community tends to churn out in better quality at outrageous prices. I mean some of these sets are 24 dollars. It's not even an expansion pack here, just a set of furniture that is almost 50% the cost of the full priced game. The expansion pack they are putting out is 10 dollars more than most expansions packs at 39.95, so it's beyond the full price of an expansion pack and missing the kind of content they want to sell at the store, ie shirts, hair, furniture.
MMORPG are now doing DLC although in MMO world, we seem to call it microtrans for some reason. I am not talking about Free to play MMOs here, but the full priced pay to play games are selling things that range from cosmetic items, city of heroes, to extra bank space and characters slots (lotro) for 20 dollars, to pets in WoW. Now I am aware that servers and employees need to be paid, but there is no way Blizzard needs an estimated 165 million a month to keep the servers up and running for WoW. If they're not using that money to expand the game, and I won't even say for free because it's not free, it's being paid for by subcribers, what the hell are they doing with it? I don't play WoW, but I play a lot of games, MMOs and otherwise, and to see a company that is so widely popular and documented profitable as Blizzard do this money grab thing is pretty disappointing. There are plenty of other companies struggling to survive because of the crap games they could put out, but when Blizzard starts doing it, that's a problem in my book.
There is too much potential for companies to nickle and dime players to death with subpar or just outrageously priced crap. Even you said you used to hate the idea, but now you don't hate the idea but you still think its a crapshoot which to me is still not good enough. Because my gaming group is just too damn picky these days, we don't play Demigod, but I am under the impression that Demigod is going to get a couple of new demigods that companies like EA and blizzard would probably charge 10 dollars a piece for if they were to releaes added content later. I do own GalcCiV II and I know they released extra's for that without additional cost.
Like I said before, I do not yet own Dragon Age. I probably will in the future though when I am finished with my current games, but even then I still have an issue with DLC available on release day with the promise of at least 2 years of nickle and diming to go.
If they can profit from it, then they will by all means do it. Would you not want to make a profit?
I do not like the DLC, but as long as people are willing to pay for it, then by all means they should go for it. It is business for the company. Yes it sucks for the people who do not pay, because we feel like we got the raw side of the deal, but in the end people are willing to pay money for this content.
The is why EA is able to do it, because people are willing to pay for the couches in Sims that should have been in there in the first place.
It sucks.
Or just wait for the "Game of the Year edition" that will be out next year that will include all the DLC's most likely. It's what I'll be doing with Fallout 3. I'll get the GoTY for less then $50 and it includes everything released so far. I will save a ton of money. It's usually what I do with pretty much any game. Dragon Age is the exception since I've been waiting for this game forever.
I don't like DLC's as well, but I look at it from the perspective of what it costs the company to make the DLC's. For a company to make DLC's, they have to invest some time, money, and certain employees get assigned to those tasks and those resources cannot be re-allocated elsewhere as a result.
Whereas as a consumer, I would prefer the company to instead allocate those additional resources into making an expansion or a full blown sequel instead. The DLC budget is a lot smaller and requires less resources than a full-fledged sequel, but instead of Dragon Age having 2 years of DLC support, Bioware could probably add about 15+ hours of extra side-content to Dragon Age 2 instead. And that content would get well-integrated into the game & story. (eg. no jarring Operation Anchorage DLC that takes you off to a different place that you never see again once your done, or even Warden's Keep that seems quite 'separate' from the main campaign).
I think there are economies of scale in terms of adding content to a game. So it is cheaper financially for producers to add a lot of content to the main game, record all voices in one go, etc. then bug-test after post-production lockdown. Whereas for DLC, if you need extra voicework done, you'll have to re-hire former voice actors, re-test the game compatibility after each DLC so nothing unexpected creeps in, etc. It just seems a lot more inefficient to add bite-sized DLC then adding content in one fell swoop. And in the end, the consumers pay for those inefficiencies and I'd rather not .
$ for $, I'd rather wait 1-2 years for a sequel or expansion like BG2:Throne of Bhaal and get relatively lengthier and well-integrated content, rather than waiting a couple months and getting small pieces here and there that really don't add up after a couple year span when taken in as a whole.
You know, it's quite funny that some people here are claiming DLC is taking time up that they could be spending making a full expansion... when I was a kid, I often got pissed off at expansions, because in my mind, they could've used that time to make a full sequel instead of throwing a poorly-written mini-campaign, a couple new MP maps then sell it again for full price. And for bonus brownie points, make its MP incompatible with the original version, fragmenting the community forever and forcing everybody to pay for the game again if they want to keep playing with the same people.
I'd much rather have reasonably-priced, non-essential side-stories than full-priced expansions that are the only way (short of reading a Wiki) of knowing what happened to the freakin' *protagonist* and cover guy of the original game, or finally fighting the third one of the guys you've chased for the entire game.
No, in retrospect, The Stone Prisoner isn't really worth $7 ($3 would be pushing it), but neither were The Frozen Throne or Lord of Destruction, and I *wish* they had been only $7. There's nothing inherently wrong with DLC nor anything inherently right about expansion packs, some will be good and worth its price, some won't, but I personally prefer DLC as they're neither required to achieve a complete understanding of the storyline, nor as bloody expensive so one or two bad purchases won't hurt you *that* much.
Lord of destruction was very much worth its price At least that is my opinion!
You know, I'm usually against DLC, but I really liked the Fallout 3 downloadable content, some of it anyway. I felt that Operation: Anchorage was a bore and that the weapons you got in the end made the rest of the game experience a little too easy, even though I adored Jing-Wei's shocksword. But Point Lookout was amazing, in my opinion. It added so much more to the game. My friend had good things to say about The Pitt too.
But really my impression of the Dragon Age downloadable content is basically that you're paying $7 for basically a short but good NWN module that is just sort of tacked onto the rest of the game. Empire Total War released a new expansion/campaign for only $10. I can't really think of anything that would be so fun that I'd spend $3 to play one hour of gameplay. I'd spend maybe $5 for a great deal of gameplay extension and $10 on some dramatic broadening of a game and a lot of new content... I can't imagine paying more than that.
Scratch that, I can imagine paying more than that. I can't imagine paying more than that and not feeling regret.
I'm not opposed to these DLC's but I do feel that Warden's Keep was too short for the money I was charged. I don't have a problem with it coming out on the day of release since I accept their reasons as to why it happened.
On the other hand, go look at ebay and see what people are selling relating to Dragon Age: Origins. People are paying as much as the new DLC is going to cost (and more!) for preorder exclusive items! One guy even wants $80 for something called Lion's Paw and Dalish Promise Ring (I hope to the Maker that no one buys this). I bet some guy at EA is looking at this and is thinking that it will be a good idea to implement in the future.
Oh and this guy is trying to prevent some scam where someone is selling you a free in-game item called the Lucky Stone (looks like a ring).
http://cgi.ebay.com/Dragon-Age-Origins-Lucky-Stone-NOT-RARE-PC-PS3-360_W0QQitemZ160380055787QQcmdZViewItemQQptZLH_DefaultDomain_0?hash=item25576570eb
He doesn't want you to bid, but if you look at the description he describes how you can get this item for free.
I have that item, didn't have to pay a dime for it.
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