Cody211282 said:
manaman said:
Furburt said:
No, I don't think we're being extorted. It's all to do with how DLC is made.
Basically, once devs have finished making a game, they have nothing to do for months. The game is in testing, and then it's in marketing. The guys who developed the game have the game engine, but they can't do anything with it because the other guys are using it.
In the past, this was wasted time, but then they figured out that they could design little bite size chunks of content during the time they had off. Thus, DLC. I don't even mind on the disc DLC. If you don't like it, don't pay for it. Sure, you might get the odd swindler, but DLC itself isn't extortive in itself. It's just extra content. Only when devs actively withhold content that should have been in the game, i.e. things that were in the game from the beginning, does it become a problem.
Ah, Furby you can't believe that. Take two of the largest games at the forefront of the DLC outbreak. Mass Effect 2 and Dragon Age. Both games felt naked, barren, and incomplete. They lacked all depth: Until you installed the DLC. Face it those games where left minimalist so that they could sell a bunch of crap later on without over-crowding the game world. ME2 was especially bad, the episodic feeling you where left with (as really the game was only told in four or so missions) was a direct result of this. It's almost like they designed the game around being able to add shit in later. DA just felt like half the game was missing, almost as much as the first Gears of War did.
Expansions, and added content are nothing new, but at least the games felt complete, and the content came out six months later.
How does a 40-50 hour game feel half done?
Here, hold this cardboard box. Now stick it in this cardboard hole 500,000 times. There I made you a long game! Woo! You can't seriously believe that length has anything to do with that? If they can trick you into doing the same thing for 20 hours they don't really have to worry about doing much else do they?
There was a complete lack of weapons and armor in that game, side quests where few and far between. It was basically a straight linear shoot from one end to the other, with some minor character development[footnote]Yes this requires this footnote. I understand that you learn at lot about the character through the dialog tree, but the characters never actually do anything other then tell you, and eventually run off with you on a side quest, get some new item, then exclaim how happy they are you got them some new item.[/footnote] and few side quests. 90% of the character development in the game was between the two "love interests" the third kinda thrown in because they didn't want the only love interests to be female.
You didn't even need 50% of that game play, you where told who the bad guys where at the start, then told to find some allies. A few ally quests done in whatever order you feel like it, and your off to face the real bad guy, with a minor shock value reveal then the the game ends.
Neverwinter Nights 2 gets a bad rap, but play through that, then play Dragon Age. At least It's not a completely on rails story with minor RPG elements.
I am not saying I didn't like Dragon Age. I did like it, but I am not going to kid myself that because the game could stretch on for 50 hours it wasn't barren in areas RPGs usually are not, areas it's really easy to add some stuff in with DLC, you know side quests, armor, and weapons, extra areas, and creatures.
