Evolve Dev Responds to DLC Criticism

[RicoADF]

See, when you say "the minimum game possible", you're making a value judgment that the game as it stands on release is not worth the amount of money they're charging for it. If so, cool. You've decided the game isn't worth that price, and thus, won't buy it. It's just not what you're looking for. But the developers clearly think they've delivered a product worthy of release, and the people who buy it should do so because they agree.

Buying a game for the DLC is like buying a DVD for the bonus features. It's extra content that you can choose to buy if you want to, and not if you don't. You'll still have the main game regardless.

If they were holding back features for Day One DLC, that's one thing. But as this article says, none of the DLC is going to be ready by the time the game is released. It's bonus stuff for a game you don't have to buy if you don't think it's good enough on its own merits. I don't see the problem.

I would agree however the game has preorder DLC, and worst of all its 'reduce the grind' DLC which tells me that the game will get boring. You don't offer 'skip the leveling' as a selling point of the game unless something is terribly wrong. Also I've heard that one of the monsters is a preorder reward so they've locked off content. Games that do that can f#*k off.

 

[F-I-D-O]

Sooo... Finish the extra characters, put them on the disc, and release it later?

They probably cant. Publisher requirements and all that jazz. Also..developers cost money, and they might be simply over their budget and how it will take to do that content might not be cost effective.

Seriously, there is not enough content in the base game to justify a full-price release.

Based on 75% positive reviews out of 2475 review and it isnt even out yet, and some of those reviews probably out of date(therefore more would be positive due to more content)..... so stats disagree with you.

A decent amount of those negative reviews were due to massive server issues on the first day of the Big Alpha back in October (it took upwards of 45 minutes (per player in your party) to get in a game). Certainly not all of them, but if you look at some of the originals, its often "Can't get in game, 0/10."

I also agree with your first point - characters cost money, the game's been delayed already, eventually you have to launch.

Hmmmm....

You see, the game has what, 2 monsters and 8 hunters to start with? And this is a £40 game? And then I have to pay more and more for what is variations on the same gameplay?

I mean, the free maps are nice, and as an ex-player of Killzone and Space Marine, those map packs always split up the community into such small parts that it effectively killed it off.

But I just don't think there is enough there for a full release. Either price it at £15 and then sell DLC, or price it at £40 and put all this amazing DLC you're working on in the game. But both? I have avoided games I wanted far more for far less.

The game has 3 monsters/12 hunters at launch, with a 4th monster as a preorder bonus (which is a bad practice). The map variety on Hunt during the current technical beta is decent, with random weather actually changing the game (fuck hunting in the rain). They've confirmed something like four other game modes, a mini-campaign which combines them all with cutscenes and bonuses, and a solo mode (just mini-campaign with AI).

That said, I really feel they should have gone the Killer Instinct route. Give the base 4 hunters and Goliath for something like $10, and sell a platform for additions. The existing monsters/hunters seem balanced enough that buying additional ones doesn't "buy power." Have different tiers, with a $60 version giving full access to all new content (like Smite's model). That model would have the possibility for a much larger community, and give the game a longer tail.

Even after putting around ~40 hours in combined prerelease sessions, I'm still not sure if it's a launch purchase for me. Hunt is fun, but solo players get tossed into the monster role far too much (even if it's the last role preference), and nothing has been shown about alternate game modes except the IGN articles.

 

[F-I-D-O]

The problem is that DLC is there instead of something better. DLC in almost all cases is shit. A main offender being for example CoD (thank god I dont play it). Rehashed levels for exorbitant prices. What we COULD have instead, is moddable games.

The thing is, if a game NEEDS to rip off its customers after release, someone should have done a better job with the budget. If a game WANTS to rip off its customers after release, its just (or in a fair world should be) bad business, at least long term. If your customers see that you are ripping them off, they will abandon your product, and hopefully not come back the next time around. If you just make a good game instead, people will usually like it, buy it and play it. If you in addition make it MODABBLE, you will extend the lifecycle of the game, the value of the game (to no real cost to the company because it doesnt have to develop ANY addition content afterwards) and the goodwill of the company. A game with a lot of good mods can make much more sales as well. Half life would be a prime example of this.

DLC gets in the way of all this. Who wants to pay 20? for a shitty map pack if there are five billion at least as good fan made free maps? No one. DLC is in the way of modding. Modding have given us mountains of great content. DLC is bad value, its unnecessary and greedy. It benefits NO ONE but the money grubbing developers. Give me ONE example of DLC as valuable (to the customer) as say CS, action half-life, DOTA (granted from just a map editor, but the editor is powerful enough to make want to call it a mod), RPG levels in Starcraft/WC3, Black Mesa, DayZ or the endless amount of extra levels/conversions for DOOM for example. This is what we COULD have instead of DLC, but we WONT have both, because no one would buy the shitty content if they could have all this awesomeness for free. DLC is bad, and anyone buying it should feel bad.

At the risk of saying "CoD is the whole problem with X" I really think that if it weren't for $15 3-map packs, DLC would have kept around the $10 window. The map packs sold like crazy (as CoD does), and told the industry people are okay paying $5 a map.

As for examples of good DLC, I'd argue for Secret Armory of Fort Knoxx in Borderlands 1, which gave players an endgame, tons of new loot to grind, 11 new levels (allowing for brand new broken builds), and fun characters. It's not the same value as the SC2 mod community, but it's a professionally made, lengthy addition to a game, making me think more of a full on expansion, and not of horses in armor. Tiny Tina's Dragon Keep in BL2 was already really fun, but didn't really fix the issues of the main game that Secret Armory did. Dragon Age Awakening also was a massive addition to the DA:O, to the point where it was practically a sequel, and sold for $30. Granted, you could get it on disk (making it closer to an expansion pack), but it predominately sold over digital means. Arkham Origins: Cold, Cold Heart is a better version of Origins, giving a great story with new gear that actually separates Origins from City. Endless Space's Disharmony added brand new factions and modifiers, allowing for a whole suite of new game options and ways to achieve victory. Oblivion's Shivering Isles had Sheograth, and that's all that needs said. Dishonor's Birgmore Witches DLC did more than most mods can, by bringing the extended world of Dishonored into the visible game, with full production values and staying true to the developer's vision of the world. Also, it did random enemy pathing and challenging enemies actually fun in a stealth game.

Finally, Firaxis has two notable DLC's to their name - Civ V's Gods and Kings DLC added in entire new game mechanics and politics with religion, simultaneously giving the base game and modding community a kickstart. The vanilla game became far more interesting, and modders had a whole suite of new tools to make enjoyable experiences. Xcom's Enemy Within added an entire new enemy faction, stories, and two new major customization paths that remained balanced to the original game, even as a (small) modding community had grown up around the game.

I'm cherry picking DLC here, but the same can be said of mods. For every XCom Long War, DotA (or Aeon of Strife), Prop Hunt, or stellar LittleBigPlanet community level, there's fifty piles of crap. Also of note is that DLC comes out much quicker than mods - DayZ was under development for years and has minimal moment to moment gameplay changes from the base Arma game. Cold, Cold Heart came out 6 months after the base game, had a meaningful story (which Origins lacked) with full voice acting and animation, and had new mechanics and tools. It also clocks in at maybe 4 hours of gameplay, while DayZ was designed for the player to lose all progress and start over repeatedly, allowing for hundreds of hours to be easily spent. That said, CCH feels much more polished to me than DayZ ever did, and felt more worthy of my time.

And I believe that DLC and modding can exist together - Firaxis, Bethesda, and Blizzard have all shown this. The issue with Evolve is they haven't announced pricing beyond the season pass, and it would be really easy to make something obscenely broken and post it on a steam workshop, working against the competitive nature that Turtle Rock seems to be trying to make. Honestly, I prefer using developer made characters and weapons over community ones, especially in competitive games. Good devs make balanced additions to the arsenal, whereas my experience in Killing Floor has shown that modders like to add broken laser guns before a sensible assault rifle. With maps, I don't care as long as there is a server browser as to avoid crappy fan maps.

Personally, I see good DLC practices as the current version of expansion packs - meaningful additions to the game that don't merit a full sequel [sub](BL: Pre-Sequel should have been DLC)[/sub]. Modders existed side by side to expansion packs back in the days of Warcraft 3 and Red Alert 2, and I don't see why they can't now. While DLC like Deathstroke challenges in Arkham Origins, Horse Armor, or others give the method a bad reputation, there were bad expansions packs too (ex: Soulstrom and Red Alert Uprising). I hope Evolve eventually goes mod friendly, but I'm more willing to have a year or two of developer-made additions before the community roulette wheel starts spinning (similar to how Killing Floor's mod support came into being).

I would agree however the game has preorder DLC, and worst of all its 'reduce the grind' DLC which tells me that the game will get boring. You don't offer 'skip the leveling' as a selling point of the game unless something is terribly wrong. Also I've heard that one of the monsters is a preorder reward so they've locked off content. Games that do that can f#*k off.

One of the monsters is preorder, but I think it's similar to the statement they released here - something they've been working on, but won't be done by launch. That said, preorder bonuses need to die in a fire, and releasing an infographic about how awesome your preorder monster is before the game/monster are done is just obnoxious.

Edit: First captcha: "Which one is hottest" - Lettuce, snow, fire. I answered fire. It told me I was wrong, made me do a second Captcha. Captchas are dumb.

 

[Strazdas]

I wonder where the gotcha is. Content actually made after the production of the game is the way it's supposed to be. Add ons rather than patches and completions/touchups.

yeah, but traditionally those addons used to be free on top of that 60 dollar release price, now we got to see 80 dollar preorder plus 20 for those addons.

I would have thought people would appreciate a lot of DLC in a game like that, but not usually the case.
Free maps is a wonderful thing as splitting the "community" into smaller and smaller chunks is never a good thing.

thats because in game like that critical DLC like half of player characters (the monsters) is supposed to be free content already present in the game. Not to mention the precedence for these devs - they used to work on L4D series, which was full of "Free DLC" that were bigger than their 20 dollar ones.

"When Evolve hits the shelves, none of the DLC will be done," says Turtle Rock.

then noone of them should be buy-able till they are "done".
You already have preorders with the main game. your not an indie dev thats going to starve till release date. stop being greedy

ANd yeah, im still not buying your games over the clusterfuck of you firing Josh Olin

 

[Falcon123]

See, when you say "the minimum game possible", you're making a value judgment that the game as it stands on release is not worth the amount of money they're charging for it. If so, cool. You've decided the game isn't worth that price, and thus, won't buy it. It's just not what you're looking for. But the developers clearly think they've delivered a product worthy of release, and the people who buy it should do so because they agree.

Buying a game for the DLC is like buying a DVD for the bonus features. It's extra content that you can choose to buy if you want to, and not if you don't. You'll still have the main game regardless.

If they were holding back features for Day One DLC, that's one thing. But as this article says, none of the DLC is going to be ready by the time the game is released. It's bonus stuff for a game you don't have to buy if you don't think it's good enough on its own merits. I don't see the problem.

I would agree however the game has preorder DLC, and worst of all its 'reduce the grind' DLC which tells me that the game will get boring. You don't offer 'skip the leveling' as a selling point of the game unless something is terribly wrong. Also I've heard that one of the monsters is a preorder reward so they've locked off content. Games that do that can f#*k off.[/quote

See, the "holding back features" thing was the part I didn't know. If they're locking off content for preorder DLC, then yeah, they deserve as much shit as the community can give them. I was only responding to the comments in this particular article, as I hadn't heard much about it otherwise.

 

[DarkBlood626]

'When Evolve hits the shelves, none of the DLC will be done, if we thought we could have finished all those monsters and hunters for ship we would have put them in the box'


Seeing as they announced the DLC before they announced the game itself, and seeing as they are selling one monster for $15, that statement made my BS detector scream like a live pig being fed into a sausage maker.