DLC, or why isn't my game finished in the first place?

[Blazingdragoon04]

My opinion: DLC can be good, like some have pointed out, but it's been getting incredibly shady over the past years. DLC that is necessary for the complete story, DLC that gives players that download it an edge over the competition in multiplayer (really really stupid idea by the way), and DLC that is just utterly pointless all piss me off. However, I know that some companies will put the DLC to good use and make a better experience with it instead of just adding things that seem like they should have existed in the main game to begin with.

As for patches, they are great, but I also think that they do get used to ship less than complete products out to the masses. New Vegas was a joke in its initial form, and any company that releases a game as buggy as that should be ashamed.

However, what people need to be is proactive. Sadly, after buying New Vegas at gamestop and finding it to be an unplayable, buggy mess, I could not get my money back directly from Obsidian or Bethesda, since I did not want to give them money for a shoddy product. Instead I simply exchanged the game, thus giving some lucky buyer the chance to get it pre-owned and somewhat punishing the company, and at the same time I put my money towards a game and studio that actually released a good game that I wanted to support.

tl;dr: If a game sucks, releases DLC that pisses you off, or is complete shit without some patches, don't buy it. Spend your money else where and send the message that this will not do, and that you won't be spending your hard earned money on their bad product. Otherwise you just send the message that you hate their product but have no self control and are too desperate to NOT buy their product.

Until then, however, we're gonna see people complain about Black Ops and then spend millions of dollars on 15 dollar map packs (thanks for that by the way).

 

[The Robotman]

Your thoughts, spill 'em.

A couple of things:

Games have never been glitch-free. So don't say that bugs have only become prevalent in this generation because of patches. While there are companies that take advantage of the ability to fix their games later, most companies do it to improve and fine tune their products using the time that wasn't available during production. Take Daggerfall, for instance. That game was a buggy mess that could've desperately used a patch (or ten). When Oblivion was released, it was full of bugs that Bethesda couldn't have found. So when players reported them, they were able to fix the issues through patches. Granted, Oblivion still has problems, but it used to be a lot worse.

As for DLC, there's nothing wrong with it. Developers are offering additional content. It's up to you whether you buy it or not. What's the issue here?

Read what other people have reiterated many times over in this thread for the issue you desire to have answered.

 

[gavinshai]

So for years I was completely and quite vocally against DLC, not for any of the reasons listed, I just had a huge problem with buying psuedo-currency that never matched up with the price of the DLC I was interested in. That's been addressed by each platform in turn and now is a non issue.

To add to the discussion though, anyone remember how things worked before patches and DLC? If your game was a buggy POS you made an expansion pack with a patch and some new missions and sold it for a pretty penny. Yes that's right there was a time where patches were sold. We've come a long way since then.

Do we still have a ways to go? Sure. Some companies(almost always publishers) do seem to be out to nickel and dime you with their business models, but its been quite a long time since I bought a game that was legitimately low quality. Sure you have sub par releases now and again but take a moment to remember just how high we've set the bar now before you complain too much.

Most developers have already moved away from the actual rip off content we used to see, usually now you at least get a bit of bang for your buck. As time goes by the level of quality rises and the prices fall, but each time a new pricing model comes out theres a period of disappointment and growing pains.

If you want to see the current generation of what I'm talking about take a look at the pricing model zynga(brilliant from a business perspective incidentally) developed for its facebook games and be thankful the mainstream industry is kinder to us.

 

[thedeathscythe]

They actually had DLC back on the xbox and ps2, not just the ps3 and xbox 360, and let's not forget PC, which had expansion packs and DLC as well. I hate DLC when it's 5kb big and all it does is unlock something on the physical game, but if I'm actually downloading something, I can't see anything to complain about. How about you go and try and make your own game. When you feel you have a pretty complete project, release it, and maybe it's been 2 years of hard work, so you want to release it right away. But now that you released it, you think you can add more maps, more weapons, or even another game mode, so you start work on that. Is it better to release another game with small, minute add ons or should you simply build upon your current game?

In the future, I think a lot of games will operate with DLC. I think sports games will charge you $60 for the game, and every year you pay $30 for the new roster and maybe more for extra game modes or something. Digital distribution is going to take over, and DLC makes financial sense and pleases customers (other than you, apparently). It tides them over, and gives them more content to further enjoy their game. It's easy to release because you don't have to print more discs, and you can advertise your existing customers through your game, who are your main audience anyways. With a new game, you'd have to advertise to both your existing customers and try and tap into new customers as well.

I could see even shooter franchises and such operating solely with DLC one day, some games get so much DLC today it's ridiculous (in a good way), like Fallout 3 with it's five separate content releases, LittleBigPlanet with it's thousands of characters and stickers and stuff, Halo has quite a bit of maps released, Rockband and Guitar Hero are perfect examples. If you don't get used to DLC, get used to feeling like your game isn't "finished".

 

[mornal]

I'm siding with the "patches are good" argument. If I like a game I'd like it more if the bugs that got through QA were squashed. Sure you can never get every single bug but the more that are fixed, the better.

On DLC, I suppose it depends. If it's frilly stuff like character skins or extra weapons, I don't really care. As long as it isn't too overpriced, I wouldn't care about it. If it's more story based it starts getting iffy. Lair of the Shadow Broker for ME2 is a perfect example of something I feel should have been included or released as free DLC through Cerberus Network. It advances the story and I've heard that it will be referenced in ME3.

 

[CyanideSandwich]

I was pretty pissed with Assassin's Creed 2. What do you mean, "corrupted memory sequences"?? You're saying that I spent 100-odd dollars on a game that wasn't even complete? And I have to pay even more for the finished product?? Explain yourself, Ubisoft!

 

[DenSomKastade]

It's not only the developers fault, It's you for supporting those who crank out half done games as well. Just saying...

 

[GotMalkAvian]

I agree completely with the patching problem. Releasing a game in basically unplayable form, expecting people to pay full price at release, and then making them wait a month or more before fixing the problems is just inexcusable.

As for the DLC, I think that some DLC is a good thing. DLC released a while after the game that extends the life of the game and fills in some backstory and moderately priced or free DLC are always welcome. I feel that Mass Effect 2 was a perfect model for all of that. DLC released at or just after a game launches, however, is complete bullshit. Beautiful Katamari is a great example of this. When the game launched, there were locations present in the game that told a player they had to download the appropriate content, and some of the achievements couldn't be earned without the DLC (this was out of 1000, not the higher score cap that DLC usually introduces).

The problem is that we, as a community, accept this. Since open software can't be returned at most retail outlets, game publishers and retailers have our money and there's no way to get it back, and we just accept that. In any other industry, faulty products can be returned, or if the problems are severe enough the manufacturers will recall them. Unfortunately, we're essentially addicts, and will take whatever they give us if it means another fix.

The following illustrates this perfectly:

http://img5.imageshack.us/img5/6062/1258035395841.jpg

The vast majority of gamers don't have the willpower to show developers or publishers that we won't stand for this sort of treatment. Instead, we complain on internet forums and completely fail to speak with our money.

 

[CrystalShadow]

You've got a point, though it's a bit disconcerting to see Wii glitches. (Metroid crashing anyone)?

The PC, the 360 and PS3 can all do updates to games. The Wii cannot, so... Glitches aren't even correctable.

However, on the upside, this usually means developers try harder to avoid there being any serious issues, because it would essentially involve the equivalent of a product recall, which is seriously expensive.

In that sense, the ability to patch games is something of a negative.


Still, as a software developer, I know creating glitch-free software, especially something so complex as a game is a nightmare.

You have to test just about every conceivable situation that could come up, otherwise something is bound to break when a few million people get hold of it.

For open-world games though, this is almost impossible to do;

The general rule is, the more freedom the player has to do things, the more effort required to debug the game.
And it's not linear either. twice the number of things that a player can do, means 4 times as many opportunities for bugs.

So, what you need to do is focus on the game-breaking ones above all else. Things that crash, render unplayable, or even destroy save files are by far the worst.

As a side note though, console developers have less excuses; They have fixed, predictable hardware, so whatever bugs they get are their own fault, and if it's the hardware, is going to have a specific workaround.

For PC, creating bug-free software isn't just difficult, it's impossible. No 2 PC's are the same;

Code that runs fine on one PC may crash another. - Fine, you might think, fix the cause of the crash...
Sure. If you can figure out what it is. But what can happen here, is fixing it for one system may break it on another.
It's perfectly possible to have 2 sets of code, both of which fail on the computer the other set of code works fine with.
This leads to needing to create code to identify what computer a person has, and switch out what the game does as a result.
That might fix things for a while, but then new computers are released, and you get backwards compatibility headaches because these new systems introduce new bugs...

In other words Bug-free PC games are impossible. The difference between good developers and bad ones on PC, is the frequency (how many people have the problem) and severity of what does, inevitably go wrong.

 

[jamesmax]

money

 

[The Lunatic]

Mixed feelings on DLC.

Day-one DLC I regard as disgusting.

Generally I like DLC which adds a good chunk of Content for a game (Such as "The Armoury of General Knoxx") while retaining a reasonable price.

 

[Smooth Operator]

Well they sell it because dummies buy it, you want to pay $15 for 4 maps? Activision provides
And many people would gladly shell out $20, luckily Activision doesn't know that yet

If however you are any sort of sensible stay away from DLC, it is complete money making bullsh*t, especially the new breed of "experience points" DLC, or "ingame money" DLC..., yes there are worse things then "we locked part of your game" DLC.

 

[thenumberthirteen]

Old games didn't get patches, but they still shipped out as bugged as all hell, and nothing was done about it. I'm glad that developers have the infastructure to fix issues with their games after release, and DLC can be a great way to develop a game further for the fans. I haven;t played a game where I HAD to buy the DLC to get a complete experience (the closest to this I've played is Fallout 3's Broken Steel).

 

[mew4ever23]

Patches: because sometimes the players find a way to break a game in ways developers never imagined. Now, when it's an emergency patch because the game is very broken on, or the day after, the games release, that is inexcusable.

I don't mind DLC, personally - sometimes the developers of a game think up new things to add after the game is released.

 

[WanderingFool]

If its DLC that is not on the disc, but is actual extra content, Im all for it.

*throws dirty look at Capcom*

Also, Im one of the lucky PC gamers of Blops that suffers from the occasional disconnect, and that is rare still.

 

[drbarno]

so long as the game isn't completely unplayable or really difficult to play because of glitches and bugs (which the developers should have at least noticed before release) it's alright with me. but it's mainly the fault of the publishers pushing for releases the developers can't handle, having to release the buggy games and use patches for later.

and as other poster's have said, glitches and buggy games have been out for ages, a good example: Pokemon red/blue. Full of glitches, but still playable and you can even play without ever bumping into these glitches.

and slightly off-topic: I've noticed the word assume keeps popping up in this thread, so much that's it's appeared in my captcha.

 

[4173]

Without knowing how long it takes to manufacture and ship physical games, I have a hard time forming a solid opinion. I frequently don't have enough information to distinguish between content I think should have been included at launch, or content that was made afterwords. I certainly don't want companies sitting on a completed game for months on end, just in case they have any more ideas in the meantime.