Dragon Age Designer Says DLC Not Meant to Rip Off Players

[tehroc]

That really is a stupid excuse made up by some developer. Saying that moving the player camp to another place makes the item in the chest disappear is like saying your character loses all his items when changing area.

You've seen the coding for Dragon Age? All of it? You know how every bit of code works?

Yet the dwarven merchant retains every item I sell to him. BioWare's excuse is garbage, this reeks of typical nickle and diming of DLC by publishers. Still the game was great even if I had to pay in-game currency to use the merchant as my storage area.

 

[OldGrover]

That really is a stupid excuse made up by some developer. Saying that moving the player camp to another place makes the item in the chest disappear is like saying your character loses all his items when changing area.

You've seen the coding for Dragon Age? All of it? You know how every bit of code works?

Yet the dwarven merchant retains every item I sell to him. BioWare's excuse is garbage, this reeks of typical nickle and diming of DLC by publishers. Still the game was great even if I had to pay in-game currency to use the merchant as my storage area.

I'm not a game programmer, but I am a programmer of some fairly complex systems and I'll remind you that just because something looks equivalent or looks like a simple change doesn't mean it is, internally.

There could be some horridly ugly reason under the hood that the original planned storage chest didn't work in time for freeze - I've certainly seen 'simple' things turn into a nightmare. The WK storage chest isn't even what they were planning on giving - it was instead something that could be done without an engine change, just in content.

Don't know this to be true, but it isn't as unreasonable as people are making it out to be. Content and engine get frozen (except for bug fixes) quite a long time before release, because you can't test and certify properly on code that is changing. If a feature doesn't get done before then, it won't get done, even if there are still months till release.

As was said above, putting the content team to work creating new stuff is awesome - it means we get to feed our fixes continually, not have to wait months and months for new stuff once we finish the game.

DLC is a good thing - for gamers and for developers. We WANT game companies making games like DA:O - the way they will continue to do so is if they make $$$ - and more $$$ than tired old crap does. At the end of the day, nobody wearing a business suit gives a crap if a game is good or original or artistic or anything else, just that it makes money. DLC gives us our fix AND gives the suits theirs. Win-win.

 

[OldGrover]

Content and engine get frozen (except for bug fixes) quite a long time before release, because you can't test and certify properly on code that is changing. If a feature doesn't get done before then, it won't get done, even if there are still months till release.

With my project manager hat on, I'll explain why this is so. If a developer decided to make a last minute change to put that storage chest back in, he'd probably end up adding some code to the inventory system, recycling it for use in this storage chest. If he makes an error, he could cause a problem in the game that might show up somewhere quite separate - in a merchant's inventory system or in the player's, for example. Because this is last minute, it doesn't get noticed, it gets shipped and then reviewers are laughing at the game because some merchant ends up having unlimited quantities of things for free or something similar.

Adding features means adding code. Adding code means adding bugs (inevitably, more is the pity). Adding bugs means you need to add testing time. When you hit content/feature freeze, it means you now have a SET amount of testing time left, so you can't afford to risk adding more bugs, or the game will slip or you will pay huge overtime. Either is not a good way to STAY a successful game company.

DLCs have their own schedule, which includes their own content/feature freeze date and their own testing time. That's why they can add new stuff after the main game's content/feature freeze.

 

[TotallyFake]

Seriously why can't some people think for themselves?

Sometimes when reading something like this it feels like there's a bunch of Marketing-Robots at the other side of that Screen just swallowing up and reproducing what the Marketing people have implanted them with or something...

Leaving aside the morality of it all it is very obvious why they did certain stuff... e.g. both Warden's Keep and The Stone Prisoner were meant to be Game Content from the Get-Go... why? Because there's parts of it all over the game-world and in the gaming code...

There's room missing from the Character Screen for "Shale" to start with or they would have made it narrower, there is Codex-Entries missing with exact numbering (they are there in the game you just can't find them without the "DLC") #99-102 for example tell the story of "Warden's Keep", Shale is #183 in the "Characters" TAB right between "Oghren" and "Sten", they obviously had time to build in areas and annoying NPCs with marks over their head TELLING you to download those things AND had the DLCs day one, but of course they didn't have time to patch them into the game xD

This is stupendously wrong, and you are paranoid.
How is the gap for Shale any evidence that he was removed? Characters don't just appear fully formed into the game. As has been mentioned earlier: Things are removed because of deadlines. This is not them being lazy, this is them cramming in as much as possible. So when they realised they did not have the man-power to finish Shale they cut him, left him a gap, and then finished him afterwards. Or maybe they thought "Hey, it'd be kinda neat to have a character DLC, let's leave a gap" and then came up with Shale. Ditto the characters linking the quests.

Or are you doing to deny the developers the money they deserve for the months they worked on the DLC?

 

[fletch_talon]

Seriously why can't some people think for themselves?

Sometimes when reading something like this it feels like there's a bunch of Marketing-Robots at the other side of that Screen just swallowing up and reproducing what the Marketing people have implanted them with or something...

Leaving aside the morality of it all it is very obvious why they did certain stuff... e.g. both Warden's Keep and The Stone Prisoner were meant to be Game Content from the Get-Go... why? Because there's parts of it all over the game-world and in the gaming code...

There's room missing from the Character Screen for "Shale" to start with or they would have made it narrower, there is Codex-Entries missing with exact numbering (they are there in the game you just can't find them without the "DLC") #99-102 for example tell the story of "Warden's Keep", Shale is #183 in the "Characters" TAB right between "Oghren" and "Sten", they obviously had time to build in areas and annoying NPCs with marks over their head TELLING you to download those things AND had the DLCs day one, but of course they didn't have time to patch them into the game xD

This is stupendously wrong, and you are paranoid.
How is the gap for Shale any evidence that he was removed? Characters don't just appear fully formed into the game. As has been mentioned earlier: Things are removed because of deadlines. This is not them being lazy, this is them cramming in as much as possible. So when they realised they did not have the man-power to finish Shale they cut him, left him a gap, and then finished him afterwards. Or maybe they thought "Hey, it'd be kinda neat to have a character DLC, let's leave a gap" and then came up with Shale. Ditto the characters linking the quests.

Or are you doing to deny the developers the money they deserve for the months they worked on the DLC?

Not to mention "The Stone Prisoner" is free assuming you havn't pirated or bought a second hand game. That seems to be its purpose, to deter the second hand games sales of their game.

"Warden's Keep" if you did your research, was free with purchases of the digitally distributed collectors edition. Its a way of offering a bonus for people who don't value the physical copies of the game, however they wisely did not offer game changing DLC and make it unavailable to non-special-edition-digitally-distributed-version owners.

 

[FoolKiller]

The only reason that I felt ripped off about this was the lack of the keep. I loved the chest and the story (albeit short) that was Warden's Keep.

I got to traipse through the entire place killing and learning and then upon returning to MY keep all I was allowed to do was dick around in the courtyard. I would have liked being able to go, chat with Avernus again, and sleep indoors for once.

 

[hypothetical fact]

I said it the first time the topic came up and I'll say it again. First day dlc is fine as long as it's free. They may not have been able to meet deadlines on it but they didn't have to charge us for their inability. They are still getting paid for the time they work on the game and would be delivering a better product which draws more customers and delays piracy. If we accept the deadlines bs then any time a company wants to release a game with day one dlc, they can claim deadlines which just doesn't cut it.

 

[theultimateend]

*Actually ignore this post*

I changed my mind. Arguing about DLC is like arguing about religion.

Either side of the debate is unwilling to listen to the other sides points and nobody gets anywhere.

So yeah. Deleted the original post and am going to go have an otter pop.

Just feel that if you don't think your game is good enough in its own right to deter second hand sales then you haven't made a good enough game. I own probably 2 thousand dollars in video games dating back to the atari. Every last one of them has justified their existence in my collection. How fucking hard is it these days for people to make a game that is good enough to be kept?

Not saying DAO isn't but if they are so lacking in confidence with their own product then they might want to rethink the industry they are working in. Maybe start making cookies or something.

At the end of the day, nobody wearing a business suit gives a crap if a game is good or original or artistic or anything else, just that it makes money.

Are you Bobby Kotick?

 

[LordZ]

I am always struck by exactly how ignorant many gamers are of how game or software development actually works. Let me try to explain this for you all:

First, any studio-developed game has a set time limit and budget for development. This should be common sense. All of the time that artists, writers, voice actors, programmers, and QA testers spend working on content is time that they are paid for.

Because of this, there is a set amount of content that can be included in a retail game (which pretty much has a fixed price). This is typically decided early on, and as the game development progresses things are added and removed depending on the difficulties the developer encounters. At each point, a decision is made as to whether X feature is important enough to increase the time/cost of the game development - if it's not, it can get cut from the game. Many of these features might be very cool, and developers can be sad to see them cut, but this happens with every game.

At some point in the development process, the designers have to stop adding new features and content. At this point, the programmers and QA become very busy testing, optimizing, and porting content. In the past, this is the stage where most of the writers, designers, and artists either get fired or get moved to another game.

Instead of firing the content creators, many newer games are deciding to instead have them make more content, to be tested and released separately from the game as DLC. This does not mean that the time that is used to create this is free, or that it is a part of the retail game. In some cases, the designers go back to stuff that was cut from the original game and rework it and fix the problems, because they really didn't want to see it removed in the first place.

While this is happening, the final "gold" version of the game is created. This is the version that first needs to pass the console manufacturers' certifications, and then need to be sent to manufacturing. This can take several weeks. During this time, the programmers and QA can test the DLC content that the rest of the team had been working on. Because they're working off the final version of the game now, and this is just extra content, this process goes a lot faster. It is easily possible that digital content can be tested and ready to be released before the retail versions of the game are even done being manufactured.

But all this time isn't 'free' - the assumption that the people working on this content would otherwise be being paid to add things to the retail game is just stupid. That game development time and budget has already been spent - they would either be working on something else entirely, or looking for a new job.

To create this new stuff, it has to be paid for somehow. For The Stone Prisoner, it's being paid for to see if it helps make up for used game sales - a particular problem for a mostly-linear story-based RPG. The Warden's Keep content, on the other hand, is a marketing promotion to sell the more expensive digital collector's edition (sans cloth map). If you aren't 'paying' for the content in one of those two ways, then you should expect to pay for it directly.

I don't buy it. If they couldn't get it ready to be on the disc then why is there an NPC in the game offering the quest but telling you "Oh wait, you have to download the DLC first." or something to that effect?

I suppose you could say that they could get the NPC ready in time but not the DLC itself but wouldn't we have to assume they'd have no way to know when or if the quest would ever be available as DLC? More importantly, why put the NPC in at all? It completely breaks immersion by showing you a quest that isn't really available. The last thing I want to do in the middle of an rpg is to suddenly have my immersion broken by a quest that wants me to make an account, buy the quest(or not, if you got it free), download it, install it and then relaunch the game to continue. It seems like a very, very bad decision for anyone that cares about the flow and immersion of their own game.

Also, from a game designer perspective, you'd have to have the mental fortitude of dirt to not be able to add a working storage box to a game. I could write the code for something like that in my sleep. I'd bet anything that the reason it's only available in that DLC quest is because of their desire to line their pockets. It's not like we have any proof that there was no way they could add it to the game before release, other than their word. After the outright lies I've heard from them lately, I wouldn't trust them as far as I can throw them.

At best, DLC seems like nothing but a lame money grab. It's forgivable when the DLC is not important or in any real way game changing. In the case of DA:O, this is definitely not forgivable.