The Myth of 'Good DLC'
May. 11th, 2019 08:47 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
owsf2000So I was thinking about what makes 'Good DLC' while replying to kane_magus over in his blog.
It was hard, REALLY hard, to think about what would qualify as good/justifiable/defensible DLC practices. Virtually every thing they do just pisses me off and/or it's extremely easy to see how it's nothing more than an excuse to nickel and dime (or "dollar bill" more often than not) the user base.
First batch of DLC that doesn't piss me off is the stuff that aren't a part of the game itself. This includes soundtracks, themes (For consoles), wallpapers/screen savers (for PC), user icons, and other similar things. Those things have zero impact on the game's content and are the least likely thing to entice a player to buy. About the only reason to buy these things are if the game was done VERY well and the player sees it as a way to 'tipping' the devs or the game is so awesome the player would like to have it on their wallpaper/theme/etc.
The only other thing I can think of as 'acceptable' DLC would be, for lack of a better term, 'Legacy Expansion Packs'.
I have to say 'Legacy' because normal Expansion Packs would not qualify as 'good' to me. Expansion packs these days stink of "Ok we're going to stop developing the game at this point, everything else will go into an 'expansion' pack."
Essentially the types of expansion packs I'm talking about are those that are released no earlier than 1 year after the original game is released. In addition I'd argue that the expansion pack should also not be PRESOLD/OFFERED or even ADVERTISED prior to that 1 year term.
Why the limit on presales or advertising of the planned expansion pack? Because it betrays the point that the expansion was pre-planned and that if it's delayed a year it's simply because they're doing it to pretend to be a 'legacy expansion pack'. (Something that would happen if people actually started to think like me on this.)
Ok, need to start a chilled out groove to help focus.
By putting the gag order on the expansion pack plans for 1 year, it means reviewers and gamers will be reviewing the game based on how it's actually released and they won't end their review with 'but the company says an expansion pack is on the way eventually that will fix up all these shortcomings."
If the reviews of the game, without expansion pack hints, show a game feels complete then you can probably assume the game isn't arbitrarily cut off by the devs. If it feels incomplete then you can assume they're doing the usual tactic of releasing a game before finishing their job. (Consider No Man's Sky as a glaring, obvious example.)
That's about the only thing I can consider 'good' DLC nowadays. Just about everything else I can think of stinks of unreasonable greed. Have I bought 'bad' DLC? (costumes, etc) Yes. And it feels like I was rewarded by encouraging the developer/publisher to push the DLC even harder. Look at my rants in the past about the Hatsune Miku Project Diva DLC practices as examples of that.
You'll notice I don't include "free" DLC as 'good'. I've seen free DLC used for a variety of reasons. One big example is as a way to cover up horribly inept game balancing. "Here have free stats/money/etc since we know the monsters are too strong, give too little rewards, etc" This includes DLC that are free to the original purchaser. Those are no different than paid DLC - it's just included in the cost of the base game.
The whole point of 'legacy' expansion packs are to revitalize a previous hit a year or two after it's release. This is why the packs shouldn't be mentioned prior to that 1 year delay (let alone put up as a preorder bonus). Ideally I'd say the work on the packs shouldn't even START prior to that first year after release. It gives a year of feedback to listen to what the players think they want more of. If the devs can already say by launch what they should have added to the game it's more of an indication that they cut shit out.
For example, one good example of a legacy pack for say Ar Tonelico would have been Conversation Packs. One of the big things gamers of that series enjoyed was the conversations between the player and the reyvatiels in their party - or as the second+ game started adding, conversations between the reyvateils etc. This actually shows why you need that 1 year gag order on the expansion pack plans. If during that first year you find players complaining about how lacking the conversation choices are in the game, then it shows the dev cut back on that important aspect of the game to sell separately. On the other hand if the players are happy enough with what the base game was then you can consider the game wasn't cut off by the devs.
If they released the exact same content as an "expansion" soon after release, or had it as a preorder bonus, it would immediately look like the devs were cutting content out.
NOTE: I don't think the industry would ever try this. It goes completely against their efforts to reduce dev time and increase profit/gamer. Also I shouldn't post rants after waking up! :D
kane_magus over in his blog.It was hard, REALLY hard, to think about what would qualify as good/justifiable/defensible DLC practices. Virtually every thing they do just pisses me off and/or it's extremely easy to see how it's nothing more than an excuse to nickel and dime (or "dollar bill" more often than not) the user base.
First batch of DLC that doesn't piss me off is the stuff that aren't a part of the game itself. This includes soundtracks, themes (For consoles), wallpapers/screen savers (for PC), user icons, and other similar things. Those things have zero impact on the game's content and are the least likely thing to entice a player to buy. About the only reason to buy these things are if the game was done VERY well and the player sees it as a way to 'tipping' the devs or the game is so awesome the player would like to have it on their wallpaper/theme/etc.
The only other thing I can think of as 'acceptable' DLC would be, for lack of a better term, 'Legacy Expansion Packs'.
I have to say 'Legacy' because normal Expansion Packs would not qualify as 'good' to me. Expansion packs these days stink of "Ok we're going to stop developing the game at this point, everything else will go into an 'expansion' pack."
Essentially the types of expansion packs I'm talking about are those that are released no earlier than 1 year after the original game is released. In addition I'd argue that the expansion pack should also not be PRESOLD/OFFERED or even ADVERTISED prior to that 1 year term.
Why the limit on presales or advertising of the planned expansion pack? Because it betrays the point that the expansion was pre-planned and that if it's delayed a year it's simply because they're doing it to pretend to be a 'legacy expansion pack'. (Something that would happen if people actually started to think like me on this.)
Ok, need to start a chilled out groove to help focus.
By putting the gag order on the expansion pack plans for 1 year, it means reviewers and gamers will be reviewing the game based on how it's actually released and they won't end their review with 'but the company says an expansion pack is on the way eventually that will fix up all these shortcomings."
If the reviews of the game, without expansion pack hints, show a game feels complete then you can probably assume the game isn't arbitrarily cut off by the devs. If it feels incomplete then you can assume they're doing the usual tactic of releasing a game before finishing their job. (Consider No Man's Sky as a glaring, obvious example.)
That's about the only thing I can consider 'good' DLC nowadays. Just about everything else I can think of stinks of unreasonable greed. Have I bought 'bad' DLC? (costumes, etc) Yes. And it feels like I was rewarded by encouraging the developer/publisher to push the DLC even harder. Look at my rants in the past about the Hatsune Miku Project Diva DLC practices as examples of that.
You'll notice I don't include "free" DLC as 'good'. I've seen free DLC used for a variety of reasons. One big example is as a way to cover up horribly inept game balancing. "Here have free stats/money/etc since we know the monsters are too strong, give too little rewards, etc" This includes DLC that are free to the original purchaser. Those are no different than paid DLC - it's just included in the cost of the base game.
The whole point of 'legacy' expansion packs are to revitalize a previous hit a year or two after it's release. This is why the packs shouldn't be mentioned prior to that 1 year delay (let alone put up as a preorder bonus). Ideally I'd say the work on the packs shouldn't even START prior to that first year after release. It gives a year of feedback to listen to what the players think they want more of. If the devs can already say by launch what they should have added to the game it's more of an indication that they cut shit out.
For example, one good example of a legacy pack for say Ar Tonelico would have been Conversation Packs. One of the big things gamers of that series enjoyed was the conversations between the player and the reyvatiels in their party - or as the second+ game started adding, conversations between the reyvateils etc. This actually shows why you need that 1 year gag order on the expansion pack plans. If during that first year you find players complaining about how lacking the conversation choices are in the game, then it shows the dev cut back on that important aspect of the game to sell separately. On the other hand if the players are happy enough with what the base game was then you can consider the game wasn't cut off by the devs.
If they released the exact same content as an "expansion" soon after release, or had it as a preorder bonus, it would immediately look like the devs were cutting content out.
NOTE: I don't think the industry would ever try this. It goes completely against their efforts to reduce dev time and increase profit/gamer. Also I shouldn't post rants after waking up! :D
no subject
Date: 2019-05-12 09:15 am (UTC)The way I see it, in the old days, expansion packs used to be unexpected, and welcome, additions to an already good, or even great, but most importantly complete game. A year or three after you'd already played the game to completion and found everything, you'd be all like, "Oh, wow, <Game> is getting an expansion pack? Holy shit, that's awesome." Or, at least, I used to be that way, anyway.
Nowadays, though, it's like "<Game> hasn't even been released yet, and they've already announced the DLC/season pass/expansion packs? It's like they want to let people know that they're explicitly chopping shit out of their game to sell later (or maybe not even 'later,' in more and more cases, but on the same day as <Game> itself is going to release)." The smaller the distance in time between the release of the game and the announcement of major DLC for the game, the less excited I am for said DLC and, in retrospect, for the game itself, and especially if said announcement comes before the release of the game, and the farther before the release of the game, the farther my interest in said game plummets.
It's why I have not bought a single new game, on initial launch, at "full base-game price" since the original, "base-game" version of Skyrim back in November 2011. That is the very last game I ever bought at full price on its initial launch date. And after that, apparently, I ended up re-buying the whole game on Steam in July 2013, in addition to the Dawnguard, Hearthfire, and Dragonborn DLC/expansion packs, for the total, combined price of, Steam tells me, $24.61 USD, which was less than half of what I would have paid for the original base game, just by itself, just a year and a half or so before that. (I can't recall if PC Skyrim was $49.99 or $59.99 on initial release, but either way, $24.61 is still less than half of even the lower $49.99 amount.) And I remember that Dawnguard had already been announced in May 2012 or such, which was six months after the game was released, and then it came out like three months after that for PC (even earlier for Xbox360, I think) and even that was pushing it as far as acceptable lapse of time between game release and first DLC/expansion announcement, at least as far as I am concerned. I remember explicitly thinking (as I said in the above linked comment) something along the lines of "Hmm, well, I know I've already played a fairly good ways into the game so far, but I might as well just stop now and then wait for the DLC to all be released, since they already said that at least two more would be coming after the first one, and just start a new game then, when it is actually, finally a full, complete game."
...and then, to this day, after I played maybe roughly halfway through the game on initial release (I know that I'd completed Whiterun, Riften, Windhelm and Winterhold, and most of the sidequest shit in between, on the east side of the world map, and had been heading toward the western cities when I stopped), when I later got all the DLC stuff, the number of times that I've actually bothered to install the game and try to get back into it can be counted on one hand with fingers left over, and I rarely even make it to the first big town (Whiterun) and the first dragon battle before I just let it lapse yet again. I haven't touched any of the DLC content at all, even though I aborted my initial playthrough specifically to wait for said DLC, and, on the whole, just never really got back into it ever again, at least so far. Steam says I've played the Special Edition of Skyrim (which was made available for free to already-existing owners, so I'll give them that much credit, for what that's worth) for a grand total of 15 hours, which, in a game like Skyrim, is barely scratching the surface. Maybe someday, I'll go back and give it a real chance, but...
So, yeah, in this one example of Skyrim, at least for me, the DLC (and, more specifically, the early announcement of the DLC) actively harmed my experience with the game. If I don't ever give it a full playthrough, I would even go so far as to say that it completely ruined my experience with the game. If I hadn't heard within just a few months after the game was released that DLC was already on the way (and, let's be real, this was already well into the age where such DLC was expected for such a game, so I'd already known that something would be coming, even before they officially announced Dawnguard), I probably would have finished my first playthrough and been completely satisfied with the game, but... that is not what happened, thanks to DLC and greed of developers/publishers and my own increasing apathy for the modern video game industry and its bullshit in general. And that experience, again, along with the shitty DLC shenanigans of Batman: Arkham City, is why I finally and fully implemented and self-enforced that policy by which I've stuck, to this day, with so far not a single exception having been even remotely considered, much less made.
Now that this "short" rant is complete, for now, I'm going to bed. >_>;
AlmostWell after 5:00am now... >_>;;