Hey Bioware, what's up with all the free DLC?

[thebobmaster_v1legacy]

why are we all such cynical assholes that if a developer wants to give us something free we immediatly start looking for ulterior motives and such.

It's not a developer. It's Bioware, a company owned by EA. Therefore, they can't possibly care about the fans. That's why they spent time and money to attempt to improve the ending, charging the fans nothing. Because Bioware hates the fans, and is thumbing its nose at us, while being controlled by the devilish EA.

Yeah.

 

[Jarek Mace]

why are we all such cynical assholes that if a developer wants to give us something free we immediatly start looking for ulterior motives and such.

It's not a developer. It's Bioware, a company owned by EA. Therefore, they can't possibly care about the fans. That's why they spent time and money to attempt to improve the ending, charging the fans nothing. Because Bioware hates the fans, and is thumbing its nose at us, while being controlled by the devilish EA.

Yeah.

They gave us a slideshow to fix an ending that was BROKEN, not bad, but BROKEN. It didn't fix it, it filled in a few cracks in the broken ending, but it's still broken.

They then give us a crap-ton of multiplayer DLC, which is funny because very few purchased Mass Effect for the multiplayer. Even better, all this is designed to get people to gamble more money. If they're ever so benevolent then why did they have on-disc DLC and charge extortionate prices single player DLC that is sub-par at best.

 

[Maeshone]

Everyone who thinks this has anything to do with damage control really needs to rethink. It's quite obvious that the MP DLC is "free" is because Mass Effect multiplayer is very niche. Having to buy the maps and DLC would only split the community and kill it off way to rapidly, something that THQ also needs to learn btw, so the maps are free, and garantueed, for everyone who downloads the free DLC.

Their money comes from the supply packs, which can be bought with real money. Since they are random, if Bioware keeps adding more content, the less likely it is for a player to get what he wants with the credits saved up from in game, and so there's a larger chance that he'll spend some real money to get a bunch of packs immediately rather than play the two or three silver matches it takes to afford the larger packs with a bigger chance for goodies.

So, it's basically all about the money and has nothing to do with damage control. The EC was damage control, the MP DLC, not so much (or at all really).

They gave us a slideshow to fix an ending that was BROKEN, not bad, but BROKEN. It didn't fix it, it filled in a few cracks in the broken ending, but it's still broken.

They then give us a crap-ton of multiplayer DLC, which is funny because very few purchased Mass Effect for the multiplayer. Even better, all this is designed to get people to gamble more money. If they're ever so benevolent then why did they have on-disc DLC and charge extortionate prices single player DLC that is sub-par at best.

Dude, opinions. You thought the ending was broken, I didn't, I just wanted more closure. Doesn't make me less right than you are.

I agree about the multiplayer DLC though, which is why I only spend money on it if I have some to spare after another XBL purchase.

As for on disc DLC, files for Kasumi as also found on the original ME2 disc, but noone kicked up a shitstorm over that. As for the pricing, it's pretty standard rate actually, Dawnguard was 1600 pts for about 4 hours of story content and a bunch of new sidequests, while CoD charges 1200 pts for 4 maps, most of which are rehashes.

 

[mrdude2010]

So Mass Effect 3 so far has had a bunch of DLCs so far, the bulk of which have been multiplayer expansions.

Not that I'm complaining, but jut curious, as to why Bioware has realeased all of the Multiplayer DLC, and the Extended Cut, free of charge?

because they're not greedy fuckheads like Infinity Ward.

Well, I mean, they are, because they're owned by EA, but less so.

 

[BehattedWanderer]

Did you not see the amount of both rightful and entitled whining that went on? The multiplayer is penance, and if they had charged for the extended cut, there would have been blood. This, son, is what is called damage control--they're trying to maintain and regain some love from the public. Between the Dragon Age 2 debacle and the way the Mass Effect 3 ending got FUBAR'd, any more SNAFUs on their part will pretty much bring their house down.

 

[srm79]

Can't complain, the multiplayers solid, and the games fucking awesome. I only just started playing it, and i have no idea what to expect from the ending as I have avoided all exposure to it. I'm in the middle of my complete Mass Effect trilogy run. and yes, it was hard.

I wish you better luck than I had. Damn curiosity won out before I realized what I was doing.

It's not easy. I just made it to the end of my first playthrough of ME2 & 3 (PS3 here, so no ME1) and this is literally the first ME3 thread I have read since the game came out.

 

[Hugh Wright]

Surprised no one has thought of the financial benefits of the free DLC of EA/Bioware.
Once most people finished the game it would be unlikely that they would pop the disc back in, as there are other games to play.
The fewer people playing the game, the few people buying the paid DLC when it comes out.
Therefore these free DLC and the weekend missions, keep the game fresh and in peoples consoles (or higher on the start menu) and more likely to purchase the paid DLC, and equipment packs.
If you look at the speed and regularity of these free DLC packs it is more likely they were planned from the start, so I doubt that it is damage control (that was the EC)

 

[The Heik]

And you are making the same friggan strawman I have spend 5 post stomping out. The random element is part of the product.

You dont like that?

Fine!

You are still better off than are in Dungeon Defenders, Torchlight, Diablo, just about every MMO ect.

I did not make the argument that the random element puts you in a better position as a customer. I said that there is no difference between product you get as a non-paying customer and as a paying customer. Only the rate witch you receive it.

You starting going "bullshit" and then following up with a strawman flaunts your bloody ignorance. I dont want to go through 5 posts again to defend a point no one made.

And you flaunt your ignorance by completely missing my point. I was trying to point out about how putting such a HUGE random element into the primary advancement system of the game (especially when actually monetary funds are tied into it) is an absolutely terrible design. The whole process is like a blind hog looking for acorns. There is no clear goal or objectives for the player to strive for, so trying to get a new weapon or a character you like has no reliable rate of appearance, thereby diminishing any desire to continue the game. When I stopped playing ME3's multiplayer I was STILL waiting on the Black Widow sniper rifle, Sabre battle rifle, Eagle Pistol, and so many more things to grace my armory, yet I had a dozen high level shotguns and SMGs despite the fact that I barely ever used because my play style almost completely excluded their characteristics. I couldn't play half of the multiplayer content because it was locked behind random chance, while most of the other half was almost useless to me unless I used a style that I did not enjoy playing. Had this been any other shooter (4eg CoD4) I would have already unlocked every last weapon and perk by that point and would now have been free to experiment and refine my play style as I saw fit, which would have increased my enjoyment of it by a pretty substantial margin.

At least in Diablo and Dungeon Defender you could swap loot with other players or buy equipment off the markets if you considered the price was worth what you wanted. Heck, even with their random elements you were at least given a general guarantee that what you got would be a higher tier than what you started out with. In Mass Effect though you are LITERALLY gambling with your money (whether it be real or in game). This is akin to going to a casino to win your rent for the month. It's unreliable and rarely rewarding, and it just makes people grind the game with no clear goal in sight. No one except the greedy bastards at EA could seriously think that this is a good way to unlock content. It's a system that directly conflicts with a player's capability to enjoy it and advance in it, and it honestly ruined what I would have otherwise considered a generally decent co-op mode.

 

[crazyrabbits]

If I remember correctly, ME2 had single player DLC a few months after the initial release. "Kasumi Stolen Memory", that added the 2nd DLC character. Then they released more DLC over the next two(?) years. Some of it was silly, I can't imagine paying $2.99 for some character skins, but the new single player missions were fun enough.

The difference between Stolen Memory and From Ashes is that Kasumi (a character that also has a placeholder model on-disc) cost half of From Ashes ($4.99) and, pound for pound, offered more content in the game - a 2-hour recruitment mission, new gun, more upgrades, content in main game. Zaeed was the same setup, but he was merely a free-DLC incentive for everyone who bought the game new, not a CE bonus.

The "alternate appearance" packs, if I remember correctly, went for $1.99 each, and were based on fan requests on the Bioware Social Network. That was a good example of listening to the fans (although they never got around to the other six squad members because of the development cycle for 2 ending soon afterwards).

Given the way it ended, I don't see advantage to DLC unless it really adds more story/gameplay elements. Just adding missions that give you more war resources won't actually impact the game after a certain point.

Maybe they could create a mission where once you complete it, your galactic readiness won't slowly drift back down to 50%?)

I've heard rumors of DLC for retaking Omega, but what could they reward you with that it would make it worth paying money for? BioWare said they weren't adding more characters... At this point, I don't think BioWare is going to do more single player DLC, it feels like they're focused on multi-player as the "post-ending" strategy.

Join the club. Most people I've seen who've heard about the DLC are questioning why it's even in the game in the first place when it won't change anything related to the ending. We also knew about the Omega DLC months ago - it was part of the early script leaked in November of last year.

BW is focused on multiplayer right now because:

a) It's promoting a hybrid free-to-play model, which is what EA is currently shifting their priorities towards. They just recently announced an entire slate of F2P products coming out in the next year, and they see it as the way all developers are going to go.

b) Multiplayer doesn't cause controversy. They spent half their time at Comic-Con talking up the new multiplayer pack. It doesn't take many staff resources, and there's a certain market sector (one, I would wager, is much different from the core ME fanbase) that's willing to stick with it.

c) As mentioned before, F2P transactions bring in more money than single-player DLC because they're cheap to produce, rely on random drops and chance, and there's no downside to rushing it out in the middle of a controversy.

 

[The Heik]

Random element is a completely separate and irrelevant issue to what i said.

But even with the benefit of changing the argument into something completely different you fail to be factually correct.

Heck, even with their random elements you were at least given a general guarantee that what you got would be a higher tier than what you started out with. In Mass Effect though you are LITERALLY gambling with your money

You can buy different tiers of quality. Making what you said factually incorrect.

Oh you mean the tiers that divides weapons that for the most part are equally balanced? Yeah that's not completely and totally arbitrary /sarcasm. Look, unless the weapons in the higher tiers are measurably better than the ones you start off with (which they aren't), then the tier system means jack shit in terms of unlocking better things for the player as it ultimately comes down to personal preference. My aforementioned friend managed to unlock every weapon and class in the game, yet he still stuck to his human soldier with a mantis sniper closer than a mother to a child, making most of the unlock packs he got completely pointless. The game would have been far more enjoyable had they used the buying system from the game's single player, as you get exactly what you pay for.

If you can point me to where I am arguing that the random element puts you in a better position as a customer and you can keep on your strawman. Untill then deal with the fact that I haven't said that. I havn't gone into the random elements effect on you as a customer. I have spend 5 posts before this stomping this strawman for another person.

Stop wasting my damm time and deal with my original quote.

That you are in a better position as a customer because the product is free. That the product is a lottery ticket doesn't change that it is free.

You don't seem to understand the concept of free. Just because you aren't paying real money doesn't mean that you still aren't paying. Time is still a valuable commodity on this planet, seeing as we humans are mortal and therefore limited in the time we have here. So how much time would you have me spend to see if I can get the unlocks I want hmm? 100 hours? 200 hours? After some point the game just gets boring because you've already played out the stuff you've got, and as I've mentioned before, unlocks that you don't want do not liven that up. And that's the issue. The game is inconsistent in it's playability, and just because it's free does not automatically give it a free pass. A lot of the games that you mentioned as being worse off than ME3's multiplayer are just as free, and at least they are consistent and have the option where if you don't want to grind all that time you can use actually money to cut through it (Which as I've proven with my first post ME3 doesn't even come close to solving). Those systems are good because it rewards paying customers without making the free customers feel at a disadvantage, as opposed to ME3 forcing both paying and free players through a crap shoot where your hoped for gun could be in the next pack, or it could be 100 packs after the point where you've given up and decided to play something else.

So let me reiterate the whole point of why I've been arguing the "Random Element" and "Bad Design" points against your "It's free" thesis:

Just because something is monetarily free, does not make it a better product than other games. When it has to deal such a broken system you will pay for those unlocks. It'll just be with life force and willpower rather than bank accounts. And at some point, getting the unlock you want stops being worth all the time and effort you've put into into it.

 

[Shavon513]

It's damage control so they will be able to sell dlc later on.

 

[Eddie the head]

The multiplayer stuff is not "damage control." They can just get money out of people by using a simple Skinner box. That pays for the DLC and then some.

 

[GloatingSwine]

anc[is]The multiplayer stuff isn't free, it's specifically designed to push people towards gambling with real money. And if they had charged for the EC it would have been the same disaster all over again, but without day one purchasers to fall back on.

This. The multiplayer DLC just allows you the possibility to unlock the new content. To unlock it you still need to grind multiplayer or whip out your credit card. It is quite crafty, I'll give them that. It looks as if they are being very generous with all the new free content, when it is in fact just an attempt to milk the playerbase for as much as is humanely possible.

You can still play on the new maps and difficulty. Hell, a couple of new maps would be all you would get from some games' DLC.

However, the reason that the DLC has been free is that it stops the market from splitting. If your online shooter isn't basically already Call of Duty then charging for map packs is a good way to kill your online scene, because relatively few players are going to buy them, and the ones that do are never going to be able to use the thing they bought because too few people own it to have a decent number of games running.

Free map packs means that everyone with a connection is likely to download them, so there's much less splitting of the playerbase.

 

[spartan231490]

better question, why the fuck haven't you patched and fixed biotic charge yet. One of the coolest abilities in the game, and it doesn't even work 1/4 of the time. It's obscene, it shows gross incompetence on your parts so fucking fix it.

 

[Eddie the head]

better question, why the fuck haven't you patched and fixed biotic charge yet. One of the coolest abilities in the game, and it doesn't even work 1/4 of the time. It's obscene, it shows gross incompetence on your parts so fucking fix it.

Well it always works for the host. So I got to imagine that it has to do with some unforeseen latency issue that they didn't account for. It dose suck but if your having trouble just play as the host.

 

[Souplex]

The extended cut was essentially a patch.
The free multiplayer DLC is to motivate you to spend microsoft points on the packs.

 

[spartan231490]

better question, why the fuck haven't you patched and fixed biotic charge yet. One of the coolest abilities in the game, and it doesn't even work 1/4 of the time. It's obscene, it shows gross incompetence on your parts so fucking fix it.

Well it always works for the host. So I got to imagine that it has to do with some unforeseen latency issue that they didn't account for. It dose suck but if your having trouble just play as the host.

I am host. I spam Y 20 times and still don't charge, or I charge something, hit it, and then die without ever getting the shields back like I should. It's a broken ability, and they need to fix it.

 

[Sheo_Dagana]

anc[is]The multiplayer stuff isn't free, it's specifically designed to push people towards gambling with real money.

So what? I have a ton of credits laying around in ME3's multiplayer, so I just bought packs until I got what I wanted. Sure, you could buy packs with real money if you're stupid, or you could just do a few matches and get the packs with in-game currency. Weekend missions generally tend to give players one of the newest classes as a reward as well.

I've never spent a dime, but if other people want to, who cares? I admit, I'd be pissed if they charged money for the "chance to unlock a new race", like if I'd had to buy the DLC, but that's not the case.

This is how many free-to-play games work. Patient gamers like me take advantage of free content which is put out due to the existence of impatient gamers spending real life money on shit they could get by just playing the game for free. You can call it a grind, but I enjoy the grind.

It's been said before, but I'll say it again; that's just them doing business. If you don't like it, take your business elsewhere. I'll help myself to all the free stuff I can get. Of course I'm forgetting that it's cool to hate BioWare now...

 

[Saviordd1]

Damage control, I'm guessing.
Just wait until Leviathan comes out, then we'll see if it's all free.

If leviathan isn't free...I don't see a problem.

Most DLC isn't free, the fact that they're putting out all this free stuff is nice and for damage control as you put it. But I don't expect them to release a real DLC for free, they've repaired most of the damage with all the free stuff; short of sending me boxes of chocolate and hookers they can't really do much better.

 

[Fr]anc[is]

anc[is]The multiplayer stuff isn't free, it's specifically designed to push people towards gambling with real money.

So what? I have a ton of credits laying around in ME3's multiplayer, so I just bought packs until I got what I wanted. Sure, you could buy packs with real money if you're stupid, or you could just do a few matches and get the packs with in-game currency. Weekend missions generally tend to give players one of the newest classes as a reward as well.

I've never spent a dime, but if other people want to, who cares? I admit, I'd be pissed if they charged money for the "chance to unlock a new race", like if I'd had to buy the DLC, but that's not the case.

This is how many free-to-play games work. Patient gamers like me take advantage of free content which is put out due to the existence of impatient gamers spending real life money on shit they could get by just playing the game for free. You can call it a grind, but I enjoy the grind.

It's been said before, but I'll say it again; that's just them doing business. If you don't like it, take your business elsewhere. I'll help myself to all the free stuff I can get. Of course I'm forgetting that it's cool to hate BioWare now...

Ah yes, "it's free, therefore completely immune to criticism" followed by a passive aggressive jab. I'm sick of being quoted, so I'll just say no matter what else you think, being random is needlessly obnoxious. If you completely ignore it's intent and say you'll never buy one, then you are worse off than having a structured unlock system.