DLC for Dummies

[mjc0961]

The only thing I slightly disagree with is #2. Single player DLC in itself is fine; it's just that pairing it with server check DRM/authentication makes it shit. Although I obviously agree with "Being unable to reach the internet should not impact a single-player game."

Other than that, I give a standing ovation to this article. This is what I want to say to every single person whining about the co-op costume items. Except I want to add one thing: the game is a first person game, so that means that unless you place your portals just right, you won't ever even SEE what your robot is or is not wearing. And if you can't even see it, you are absolutely not losing anything by not having it. And I really doubt the guy you're playing with who can see your character model feels like he's missing a piece of the game because your character isn't wearing a hat with a mini companion cube on top.

Oh, one last thing:

Hate it because protagonist Chell is just a boring analytical Latina woman instead of an awesome white Ex-Navy SEAL dude with short brown hair.

An awesome white ex-Navy SEAL dude with short brown hair? Damn, probably the only way to make Portal 2 more awesome than it already is would be to put Sam Axe (Bruce Campbell) in it. And now I'm sad because that will likely never happen.

Another is that I spend an awful lot of time playing real Valve DLC, and it's all been free. Every single bit. I've played all the new L4D and L4D2 campaigns

Yeah, I couldn't believe it back when I got L4D and L4D2. They were both on sale in this little pack, both games for $7 or something very low like that. And then I loaded it up and found a buttload of DLC in both games that had also been provided completely FREE. That is fucking sweet, and Valve is awesome.

 

[Elyxard]

I'm very glad you brought up the Dragon Age DLC salesman. It killed the game for me and I swore myself off of EA products after that. I can't even play it anymore knowing that the NPC is waiting for me at camp to try and sell me premium content. It's absolutely vile, disgusting, abhorrent. There is no atmospere anymore when you crush it that badly. I am absolutely pissed that there wasn't more of a backlash against it.

I don't like Portal 2's DLC but it's un-intrusive and non-essential, the way it should be. I didn't even see it was there when I played. There are much more important targets if we want to take back our rights as consumers.

 

[SenseOfTumour]

Slightly off topic, but it bugs me people complaining about the length, part of the reason it was over so quickly is because it was so good that people weren't stopping! One of the biggest sales taglines for books is 'I couldn't put it down!' but it seems when a game makes you binge thru pure quality it's a bad thing.

There's a lot of games I can take or leave, play a bit here or there, Portal 1 was not one of them, nothing else mattered until I'd beaten it.

I'm in agreement tho, if Portal 2 is the full game, but you have the option of buying a funny hat for a few bucks, where is the problem?

 

[JimmyC99]

The DLC in Portal, is basically, no exactly the same as the one in Team Fortress 2, TF2 has some hats and weapons (most if not all of which can be found in the game normally) is CONSTANTLY updated and Balanced, recently raised lots of money for Japan.

It was no surprise to me that this is in Portal 2. its Vanity items, the SINGLE best use for DLC. New Vegas has OP weapons for people who pre-ordered, Epically the Caravan Pack, that dam shotgun and armor are close if not actually the best in the game. DA2 has a sword that not the best in the game levels with you, and some good armor thats not as good as some i found in ACT 1 (Armor of the Fallen if your interested) DA:O had the Blood Dragon armor that was well balanced with its requirements (38/36 Strength i think) and some other pointless crap like an XP Ring (Really Bioware who isn't going to be high level at the end seriously).

But if and i hope to god not when, Activision or EA or whoever starts making DLC Op Weapons for Multi-player games like CoD or Battlefield, things might get bad, DLC atm is bearable and ignorable, Really Activision for just £7.99 i can get 4 bonus maps, wow i don't care. Really i can buy some nice hats for TF2 that i cant see its a FPS i think ill pass and just where the Top Hat (dam you TB) i found. Oblivions DLC, (PC and Xbox get the other crap thats not Expansions) is fine its a single player game and its mostly fun crap, like a Wizards Tower, or a Pirate base love that Pirate base, or Horse Armor, why did i buy Horse Armor. Fallouts again is Expansions with Crazy Op things. watching Josh use the Stealth Suit + Shishkabob + Pyromaniac and kill everyone in-front of everyone else was hilarious. but overall the game can be done and easily so without it, you dont have to play any of the DLC to get the full experience its just enhancement.

I think there is one company that truly gets content right. Eve-Online, Eve is a subscription based MMO, but for your £8-9 a mounth (you can play for free just requires you to earn 375million ISK( in-game money) a mounth) you get the game in what ever its current release is (Incursion ATM) EVERY Patch, EVERY Expansion, 2 Test Servers (known as Singularity and Duplicity) seriously there is a alot of content and they keep adding to it theres a Mahoosive one coming code named Incara i wont go in to it theres a lot of info.

this is a copy of a facebook comment i made for this post

 

[DanDeFool]

While there are tons of Portal "OMG, Portal is the best thing ever" fans out there, who were going to support this game no matter what, I think there are actually more people who just wanted a good game and weren't involved in any kind of fan-cult even if they liked the first one. By many accounts, "Portal 2" is really a pretty poor game, that has been seriously overhyped due to the first one. One analogy I've heard is that Portal was an "indie" darling that took the world by surprise storm by being unique and differant. It's sort of like what " The Blair Witch Project" was years ago. "Portal 2" is the big budget sell out of the original, that was going down a checklist of cliques fans wanted to see, polished up, and made to be hip as opposed to being a "true to itself" product. Basically it's "Blair Witch 2", complete with it's goth girls, and "relevent" soundtrack. Unlike the movie industry though, an anticipated video game is going to sell like hotcakes due to early, unretunrable sales. You don't see word of mouth having quite the same effect on the game industry that it does with movies, especially given the way the industry can control information and surpress reviews until after the initial sales period when it first launches. I also think that since people are pretty much stuck with the games they buy, there is also a tendency for people to lionize even turds because they are dealing with turds they own.... or to defend franchises when an installment blows chips, in hopes that the next one will be better.

Now to be fair, I have not played "Portal 2". I am not a huge fan of the series. When it goes down in price, I'll probably give it a shot though, because the idea is interesting, but I'm neither a big FPS or Puzzle game player. I'm just going by some of the feedback I've heard bebopping around the internet (the "Blair Witch" analogy wasn't mine to be fair, I got that from a random post, but it seemed to be a good one for how some people were feeling about this). There is no need to shoot the messenger (so to speak).

Generally speaking I think "Portal 2" and "Dragon Age 2" are noteworthy because they are sequels right on the tip of a trend where the user meta-ratings are not matching the professional ratings, which were apparently paid for. What's more the response obviously involves enough people (as opposed to just troll groups) where traditional ways of "fixing" the problem, like having company employees shill for you, just aren't working.

Okay... I see what you're saying, but I think you really should play the game for yourself before deciding what opinions you want to parrot. And to be honest, I sincerely doubt that anyone's expectations were met when they played Portal 2, because Portal was so spectacularly good. At best, we were only going to get a somewhat longer campaign and some incremental improvements in the story and gameplay. We were never going to get "the best game ever made EVAR, OMGWTFBBQPWN!!!"

End part directed at Therumancer. Begin part directed at the people who actually played Portal 2 and then panned it for various reasons.

Shamus's point is that the DLC in Portal 2 is by no means the worst offender in the idiot-DLC department, and doesn't deserve to get down-rated solely for the issues with its DLC. If you want to say that Portal 2 was a vastly-inferior product because they sold out to the big time developers who completely missed the point of the original, that's fine. You still sound like a pretentious and incredibly stuck-up asshat, but that doesn't mean you're wrong. It just makes you sound untrustworthy, like a GameSpot reviewer.

However, if you've made that assessment because Portal 2 has lame DLC and not because the game itself was a disappointment, then I think you need to get your priorities straight. You do realize that we wouldn't be having this discussion at all if Valve decided to get rid of the DLC features entirely, right? What are you trying to say here? If you want to say Portal 2 is crap, talk about the game, not the ancillary content that you don't have to buy.

Also, I'm starting to agree more and more with Yahtzee that people should take the trouble to actually read the reviews because a complex opinion can't be expressed as a number. If you don't trust sites like GameSpot and IGN because their reviewers are all obviously bought-and-paid for, then follow <url=http://www.escapistmagazine.com/articles/view/columns/moviebob/8812-MovieBob-How-to-Read-Movie-Criticism>MovieBob's advice and find a critic you can trust instead. Stop whining about the things you can't control, like the fact that professional game reviewers are all corporate whores.

 

[timeadept]

Just a heads-up, Steam may not properly count the amount of time you spend in this game. After my first playthrough, it said 4 hours. I knew this was wrong, because it was FIVE A.M. The achievement times are buggy too. People need to learn how to use a clock and maybe even check if the sun is still up instead of blindly assuming that the time shown in Steam is the word of god.

I don't get the complaints about the DLC at all. Does anyone remember the campsite guy in Dragon Age: Origins? The one with the PREMIUM CONTENT QUEST? (EDIT: Ah.. didn't see it was referenced in the article. So, well.. that. Anyway.) That was the most jarring thing I have ever seen, yet nobody 0-bombed for that. This is all just petty bullshit and everyone involved should be thoroughly ashamed of themselves.

You're probably right, i think the timer usually works for me though, it says i've played 11 hours and that's what it took to beat the single and co-op, and that feels about right (7 for the story and 4 for co-op but the 4 for co-op might be off a bit). But steam still tells me that i have a 100% survival rate in L4D2 (as in I've escaped every campaign alive). I mean i'm awesome and all that but i'm not that awesome.

 

[embassy1010]

They should sell a "Boycott Valve's DLC!" t-shirt for the robots to wear.

 

[Therumancer]

Secondly, the attitude of "if you haven't played it, you can't have an opinion" is one of the most dangerous ones out there right now, and at the root of a lot of problems. Even if I was talking about the game content, as opposed to reception, the opinion of someone who didn't buy the game should be pretty well valued for the reasons on why they didn't buy it, as opposed to attacked.

You're allowed to have an opinion and weigh in on the issue, but having only indirect experience with what you are talking about does degrade your arguments somewhat. You're complaining about something you've only experienced by second hand knowledge, this is only a controversy you've heard about. Its the difference between someone staring out a window and wondering what the weather's like, and somebody who's standing outside in the weather and getting a feel for it. Sure, you can guess, and you're definitely intelligent about it. But if you talk to somebody who's actually out there, they have the right to correct you, because they have much more accurate information.

You'd be correct, if we were talking about the game itself. We're not though. We're talking about reaction to the game, and I'm standing in the same exact place as you or anyone else who played the game in this regard. Actually, I might even be closer to the truth than you depending on how many differant places you've been checking reactions on.

You'd be correct if I was saying that Portal 2's gameplay was lacking or something like that, but I haven't said that. In fact I've made no personal judgements of the game at all.

 

[JimmyC99]

In Reference to Portal 2's Length, its about 3-4x as long as Portal 1, its a Puzzle game with a great story and good humor, but a Puzzle game can only be so long before it grates on people, Portal 2, as much as i'd love it to be longer (I cant get enough of that game) its pacing and length are close to perfect, it was any longer i think, i would get annoyed with it, the best thing with Portal 2 is its story and hidden easter egg (i don't recall finding any) make playing it 2-3 or 5 times fun, DAM YOU STEPHEN MERCHANT DAM YOU. we'll all have to wait for Portal 3 which should be out in time for HL2E3, or the Freezing of hell (HA Vale-Time joke, its not funny anymore is it) and its obvious there will be a Portal 3. there probably wont be a TF3, they can just keep updating TF2 forever.

 

[ZiggyE]

Valve is one of the worst offenders when it comes to DLC.

That's with Team Fortress 2. About Portal 2, I agree with Shamus entirely.

 

[Flipao]

I'm happy with DLC that is reasonably priced and adds value to the game, like say Magicka Vietnam. I also have no problem with DLC that only adds cosmetic elements for "peacock" players to show off, like TF2 hats or MMO non combat pets.

The problem is we're starting to see DLC that costs as much as entire games while offering very little value, like the CoD map packs, and even so called DLC that ships with the actual product but you actually have to pay for in order to be able to play it (Bulletstorm).

Game development studios are also far more reluctant to ship modding and mapping tools for the games they release, Duke Nukem Forever being the latest example.

It seems paying $60 for a game is no longer enough.

 

[timeadept]

The point is that, as Shamus says, Portal 2 handles DLC the best I've seen - it's basically like a "donate" function; a paint job or extra animation for a couple of bucks, and only if you go out of your way to find them. Compare that to your list. Now ask yourself why the one game that gets it right deserves all this hate compared to all those other day one DLC titles that lock away quests, characters etc etc.

It doesn't, that's the whole point of the article. Many people ARE up against Portal 2 for no good reason. Shamus isn't defending DLC, he's defending a game that's being targeted for no good reason, and you seem to have missed that point with your post here.

But this ISN'T about Portal 2, at least not the anti-DLC outcry. Sure, you buy an extra skin now, but how long before every non-vital skin costs money, how long before every secondary animation costs money? It doesn't matter if you do it right or wrong, the problem is that you're doing it.

I wouldn't care if they made every emote and skin cost money. Honestly, i haven't bought any DLC, i was content with the basic stuff, hell i wouldn't even miss lousing the emotes that are free now.

Are you trying to pin a slippery slope argument onto this? If Valve has any DLC in their games at all then they'll move on to bigger stuff that matters? That's one of the

Spoiler: logical fallacies

http://www.nizkor.org/features/fallacies/slippery-slope.html

you have there.

I honestly can't see what's (inherently) wrong with DLC in games.

 

[ZiggyE]

and its obvious there will be a Portal 3.

No it isn't.

 

[AldeBaron]

The only time Valve ever pissed me off was with the Mann Co. Store.

Yes, some of that money goes to the creators, but $5 hats are insane whatever way you swing it. But the really infuriating thing was that you could just straight up buy weapon sets and get them before anyone else had the chance to get them in game.

Then there were the crates where you paid money to have a chance of getting a random item (which could also be another crate).

But cream on top the shit sundae was when specific hats became part of weapon sets. Some of the bonuses of those sets had no negatives. If you were using the same weapons with no hat, you could lose an extra 10% max health. Meanwhile the assholes who can afford to pay $50 for a fake hat and its matching guns can tromp around with that fancy buff on Day 1. Now, to their credit, Valve has removed the hat limitations from all future weapon sets, although that hasn't applied retroactively to the first 5.

Why do I bring this up? Because that's what screwed up in-game stores look like. It's not purely cosmetic hats and emotes, it's being able to buy an advantage, no matter how slight. Last I checked, there's no hat in Portal 2 that lets me shoot 3 portals or something.

 

[timeadept]

Valve is one of the worst offenders when it comes to DLC.

That's with Team Fortress 2. About Portal 2, I agree with Shamus entirely.

What's wrong with TF2 DLC? I never paid for any of it and i still feel that the game is fun and balanced. Or is there something i'm missing?

 

[Yureina]

Great article. It made me giggle a few times. Suffice to say... I completely agree with what is being said here. The uproar about Portal 2 is really pathetic. I don't recall these people being around to yell at games with Day 1 DLC's that Bioware/EA have been pulling for a while now. Some silly multiplayer gimmicks in Portal 2, much like hats in TF2, don't affect the game experience at all, but a missing questline that adds alot to the plot... that is the real crime.

Portal 2 is yummy. Haters are... well they smell.

 

[ZiggyE]

Valve is one of the worst offenders when it comes to DLC.

That's with Team Fortress 2. About Portal 2, I agree with Shamus entirely.

What's wrong with TF2 DLC? I never paid for any of it and i still feel that the game is fun and balanced. Or is there something i'm missing?

This guy said it better than I could have.

The only time Valve ever pissed me off was with the Mann Co. Store.

Yes, some of that money goes to the creators, but $5 hats are insane whatever way you swing it. But the really infuriating thing was that you could just straight up buy weapon sets and get them before anyone else had the chance to get them in game.

Then there were the crates where you paid money to have a chance of getting a random item (which could also be another crate).

But cream on top the shit sundae was when specific hats became part of weapon sets. Some of the bonuses of those sets had no negatives. If you were using the same weapons with no hat, you could lose an extra 10% max health. Meanwhile the assholes who can afford to pay $50 for a fake hat and its matching guns can tromp around with that fancy buff on Day 1. Now, to their credit, Valve has removed the hat limitations from all future weapon sets, although that hasn't applied retroactively to the first 5.

Why do I bring this up? Because that's what screwed up in-game stores look like. It's not purely cosmetic hats and emotes, it's being able to buy an advantage, no matter how slight. Last I checked, there's no hat in Portal 2 that lets me shoot 3 portals or something.

Not to mention the fact that there a certain hats and weapons that the only way you can get is by buying or preordering a completely different game that you probably would have had no interest in to begin with.

 

[Frostbite3789]

Unprofessional and uncool Shamus, calling people idiots for not agreeing with you is pretty much what your accusing them of. I like your column, but I think you went overboard here.

I'll also be honest in saying that I disagree with you about how big a deal the DLC for "Portal 2" is. There is a reason for that, and one you didn't seem to consider. The problem is that nowadays the game industry is trying to charge extra money for the kinds of things that have traditionally been included in games as part of the overall product.

This is the part I took offense to the most in this reply. Aside from the fanboy comment. Are you saying League of Legends (a F2P game) should not be allowed to charge for skins? And how long have alternate costumes been a part of a game, where you don't have to jump through stupid hoops to get them?

Evidently you can unlock them by getting achievements, but can also pay money for them with Portal 2. It's just like with the Be a Pro Mode in the NHL games, you go online and pay real money to buy the boost equipment, or you can man the hell up and earn it by meeting certain requirements and playing the game well.

And Shamus is right, out of all the DLC this is what we as a gaming community have evidently decided we won't stand for? Not Bioware withholding basic quests in both Dragon Age and Mass Effect games? Not $15 map packs that provide 1/50th of the content at 1/4th of the price? The gaming community has decided to be outraged about this and take a stand? This is our line the sand?

I'm ashamed to be a part of such a community right now.

 

[Therumancer]

While there are tons of Portal "OMG, Portal is the best thing ever" fans out there, who were going to support this game no matter what, I think there are actually more people who just wanted a good game and weren't involved in any kind of fan-cult even if they liked the first one. By many accounts, "Portal 2" is really a pretty poor game, that has been seriously overhyped due to the first one. One analogy I've heard is that Portal was an "indie" darling that took the world by surprise storm by being unique and differant. It's sort of like what " The Blair Witch Project" was years ago. "Portal 2" is the big budget sell out of the original, that was going down a checklist of cliques fans wanted to see, polished up, and made to be hip as opposed to being a "true to itself" product. Basically it's "Blair Witch 2", complete with it's goth girls, and "relevent" soundtrack. Unlike the movie industry though, an anticipated video game is going to sell like hotcakes due to early, unretunrable sales. You don't see word of mouth having quite the same effect on the game industry that it does with movies, especially given the way the industry can control information and surpress reviews until after the initial sales period when it first launches. I also think that since people are pretty much stuck with the games they buy, there is also a tendency for people to lionize even turds because they are dealing with turds they own.... or to defend franchises when an installment blows chips, in hopes that the next one will be better.

Now to be fair, I have not played "Portal 2". I am not a huge fan of the series. When it goes down in price, I'll probably give it a shot though, because the idea is interesting, but I'm neither a big FPS or Puzzle game player. I'm just going by some of the feedback I've heard bebopping around the internet (the "Blair Witch" analogy wasn't mine to be fair, I got that from a random post, but it seemed to be a good one for how some people were feeling about this). There is no need to shoot the messenger (so to speak).

Generally speaking I think "Portal 2" and "Dragon Age 2" are noteworthy because they are sequels right on the tip of a trend where the user meta-ratings are not matching the professional ratings, which were apparently paid for. What's more the response obviously involves enough people (as opposed to just troll groups) where traditional ways of "fixing" the problem, like having company employees shill for you, just aren't working.

Okay... I see what you're saying, but I think you really should play the game for yourself before deciding what opinions you want to parrot. And to be honest, I sincerely doubt that anyone's expectations were met when they played Portal 2, because Portal was so spectacularly good. At best, we were only going to get a somewhat longer campaign and some incremental improvements in the story and gameplay. We were never going to get "the best game ever made EVAR, OMGWTFBBQPWN!!!"

End part directed at Therumancer. Begin part directed at the people who actually played Portal 2 and then panned it for various reasons.

Shamus's point is that the DLC in Portal 2 is by no means the worst offender in the idiot-DLC department, and doesn't deserve to get down-rated solely for the issues with its DLC. If you want to say that Portal 2 was a vastly-inferior product because they sold out to the big time developers who completely missed the point of the original, that's fine. You still sound like a pretentious and incredibly stuck-up asshat, but that doesn't mean you're wrong. It just makes you sound untrustworthy, like a GameSpot reviewer.

However, if you've made that assessment because Portal 2 has lame DLC and not because the game itself was a disappointment, then I think you need to get your priorities straight. You do realize that we wouldn't be having this discussion at all if Valve decided to get rid of the DLC features entirely, right? What are you trying to say here? If you want to say Portal 2 is crap, talk about the game, not the ancillary content that you don't have to buy.

Also, I'm starting to agree more and more with Yahtzee that people should take the trouble to actually read the reviews because a complex opinion can't be expressed as a number. If you don't trust sites like GameSpot and IGN because their reviewers are all obviously bought-and-paid for, then follow <url=http://www.escapistmagazine.com/articles/view/columns/moviebob/8812-MovieBob-How-to-Read-Movie-Criticism>MovieBob's advice and find a critic you can trust instead. Stop whining about the things you can't control, like the fact that professional game reviewers are all corporate whores.

I'm not parroting anyone's opinions though, all I'm doing is pointing out that there is a negative reception. The point here being that rather than acting like there is something wrong with the people for making the complaints, perhaps when you have this strong of a negative reaction, you should simply accept that there is something wrong with the game.

The point here being that just because a game is getting a bad user review, does not mean it's being "metabombed" for some trivial reason. Especially seeing as the whole "metabombing" concern has been recent, due to a couple of high profile games getting tanked in user reception, despite the groups that are considered to be responsible for it having been out there for a long time, and having never gotten this kind of noticible reaction.

The bit about the DLC is a side point, I think it upset people, especially coming from Valve of all people, but people have been complaining about day 1 DLC for a long time, and nobody has gotten "metabombed" to this extent for something like this before.... bsides which, a "bombing" isn't likely to do what we're seeing. We're looking at a ton of dissatisfied people as opposed to say upsetting a bunch of people on /V/ exclusively.

What's more I don't think anyone can rationally defend things like these outfits, or "Horse Armor" as being GOOD things. Trying to do so is just as ridiculous as trying to saying that an issue like this that has been around for so long, is going to inspire a massive reaction all on it's own all of a sudden.

Like it or not, Valve released a game that wasn't well received despite massive hype. That seems to be the bottom line, and trying to deny it or make excuses doesn't change it. It seems like the defenses are kind of pointless which is why I'm bothering to respond. Let things stand on their own, instead of trying to make excuses for companies like Valve or Bioware, and hope they can adapt and recover.

It didn't get de-rated soley because of the DLC, even if it upset a lot of people, it's not going to have any more effect here than it did for other games with DLC that POed people. It got de-rated because apparently a lot of people who bought the game were less than thrilled with the product they received. While it wasn't my analogy, I again think back to the whole "Blair Witch" vs. "Blair Witch 2" analogy. A game that is loved because it was the little "also ran" that could from "The Orange Box" that gets expanded into a full fledged "AAA" type ultra-hip title with massive marketing and specific exposure, and then crashes because not many people like it despite the fact that it should be "perfect" going by what people say made the first one great.... we've seen it before, within video gaming even, it shouldn't be shocking anyone, or need people to come up with excuses to explain what happened.

 

[timeadept]

The only time Valve ever pissed me off was with the Mann Co. Store.

Yes, some of that money goes to the creators, but $5 hats are insane whatever way you swing it. But the really infuriating thing was that you could just straight up buy weapon sets and get them before anyone else had the chance to get them in game.

Then there were the crates where you paid money to have a chance of getting a random item (which could also be another crate).

But cream on top the shit sundae was when specific hats became part of weapon sets. Some of the bonuses of those sets had no negatives. If you were using the same weapons with no hat, you could lose an extra 10% max health. Meanwhile the assholes who can afford to pay $50 for a fake hat and its matching guns can tromp around with that fancy buff on Day 1. Now, to their credit, Valve has removed the hat limitations from all future weapon sets, although that hasn't applied retroactively to the first 5.

Why do I bring this up? Because that's what screwed up in-game stores look like. It's not purely cosmetic hats and emotes, it's being able to buy an advantage, no matter how slight. Last I checked, there's no hat in Portal 2 that lets me shoot 3 portals or something.

So don't buy $5 hats then, simple as that. Let people buy $5 hats if they think they're worth it,same goes for the crates i have a couple just sitting there that will never be opened. But you're saying that this shop shouldn't even exist because you would never use it?

I can almost see your argument about buying weapons holding weight. Except that the new weapons simply re-balance the game giving advantages but at a price (not monetary), allowing the class to preform a slightly different (or completely different) role. I still feel that the game is balanced despite the new weapons for each class. I honestly use the standard weapons just as often as i use newer ones. And in the end, you can still find all the weapons by playing the game, or trade your doubles for it.