The Glade 4.0

Mission accomplished! I find that most of my posts are funnier when narrated by Pam.

I agree with Khross, and I love those games.

You pay $60-70 for a release day game, then it's not done for another year and seven storyline-relevant DLCs, which each cost $10 more.

EA's business model has been similar for two decades. EA Sports? Release a the same game 4 years in a row with updated rosters at full price. Maxis? Release the same game with updated graphics every 4 years for 12 years, then release the same dozen full price expansion packs for each one of them. Now RPGs...yay, nickle&dime the customer to death with microtransaction DLCs.

**** you, EA. I'll pirate all my DLC, thank you very much. In fact, I'll buy most of my games on Steam when they hit $20 or less, then download a hacked version and pirate all the DLC.

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Well Ali Baba had them forty thieves, Scheherezade had a thousand tales
But master you in luck 'cause up your sleeves you got a brand of magic never fails...
...Mister Aladdin, sir, What will your pleasure be?
Let me take your order, Jot it down -You ain't never had a friend like me
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I'd like to interject and ask that this doesn't devolve into a piracy/hate EA/game rant thread, please and thanks

We all get that Mass Effect 3 is a big release, Lenas. The franchise is the reason Bioware isn't past-tense. However, we can discuss the implications of their content deployment model and how they monetize experience, particularly as it relates to this game.

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ME1 wasn't that bad. One of their big DLCs was free, and there were only two others. EA hadn't dug their claws in too deeply, yet.

ME2's DLC was horrendous. There are no less than 15 DLCs available. Some are free (5 of them - free if you bought your game new, anyway), some are premium content (10), some are storyline-relevant, some are stupid equipment packs. It's insane.

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Well Ali Baba had them forty thieves, Scheherezade had a thousand tales
But master you in luck 'cause up your sleeves you got a brand of magic never fails...
...Mister Aladdin, sir, What will your pleasure be?
Let me take your order, Jot it down -You ain't never had a friend like me
█ ♣ █

I didn't see anything wrong with ME2's DLC. They gave an awesome story pack (LotSB), a game extension and segue into ME3 (Arrival), extra characters (Kasumi is worth it just because she's an awesome squad mate) and weapon packs for those that wanted some extra flair on their game. All of that seems like a perfect use of DLC to me.

Sure, if they didn't turn a $70 game into a $160 game.

DLC isn't a new thing. PCs have had it since the World Wide Web went mainstream. However, up until about 5 years ago, content addons like this were free. Or they were packaged into a much larger, almost full game-lengthexpansion pack for half the price of the original game (instead of adding 30 minutes of gameplay for more than double the cost of the original game.

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Well Ali Baba had them forty thieves, Scheherezade had a thousand tales
But master you in luck 'cause up your sleeves you got a brand of magic never fails...
...Mister Aladdin, sir, What will your pleasure be?
Let me take your order, Jot it down -You ain't never had a friend like me
█ ♣ █

In 1992 I bought Super Mario RPG for $85, which is something like $130 adjusted for inflation. They never even gave me the option of game add-ons

I'd just like to point out that it doesn't matter if something was free. Your sense of entitlement is showing.

I can adjust SMRPG and ME2 for inflation if you want ...

The latter will be far more expensive.

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Even without inflation, I still paid $85 in 1992 for SMRPG versus paying $60 in 2012 for ME3.

It's not entitlement to observe that the old model of selling a PC game was "We sell you a game, and then to keep our sales robust and the multiplayer servers full 6 months after release, we continued to support our game with additional content that was included in the box price."

I should point out that the Unreal Tournaments and Team Fortress 2 were very, very good examples of this. The number of maps for each of these games more than doubled, for free, providing an excellent value for your box purchase.

Under the new model, this sort of additional content is no longer included in the box price, which is degrading the value of the box by comparison.

That's not entitlement to comment on. When I say, "You know, it's funny how we used to get 5 chicken nuggets on the dollar menu at Fast Food place X, now we get 4 for $1.29 on the 'value menu' instead. We used to get more for our money," that's not entitlement.

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"Aaaah! Emotions are weird!" - Amdee
"... Mirrorshades prevent the forces of normalcy from realizing that one is crazed and possibly dangerous. They are the symbol of the sun-staring visionary, the biker, the rocker, the policeman, and similar outlaws." - Bruce Sterling, preface to Mirrorshades

Yeah but it is definitely entitlement if you went on to say that if you didn't get your 5 chicken nuggets you were gonna come back with a gun and jack the register. Or, you know, whatever the McDonalds equivilent of this is:

Fair enough. But that's not quite the broadened context your statement

implied.

It does matter if it "was" free. Because now, it's not, and so the value I get from buying the base product is less.

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"Aaaah! Emotions are weird!" - Amdee
"... Mirrorshades prevent the forces of normalcy from realizing that one is crazed and possibly dangerous. They are the symbol of the sun-staring visionary, the biker, the rocker, the policeman, and similar outlaws." - Bruce Sterling, preface to Mirrorshades

It's just frustrating that people are ***** about such minor stuff when I can say with 100% certainty that in a few days I'm going to be playing what is sure to be one of the best games of this generation. When in the past we were perfectly happy with exponentially smaller productions, and sometimes at a higher cost. It's just crazy what people expect (and are subsequently pissed when they don't get) these days.

The amount of work and man hours that Bioware has put into the Mass Effect series is nothing short of astonishing. They're not allowed to use some new monetization models? It's frustrating. No one is required to get the DLC, it's all completely optional. I don't even see how people justify getting mad about optional content. Someone could groan on and on about how Bioware just took story content, removed it and decided to charge people to complete the story, but that's BS... You don't need it to make the game fun and you don't need it to understand the story.

There may be a vocal minority against DLC but it's obviously a successful and popular business model.

That's not really true. Several ME2 premium DLCs are integral to the storyline. If you didn't get it, it's like missing a couple chapters of a novel.

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Well Ali Baba had them forty thieves, Scheherezade had a thousand tales
But master you in luck 'cause up your sleeves you got a brand of magic never fails...
...Mister Aladdin, sir, What will your pleasure be?
Let me take your order, Jot it down -You ain't never had a friend like me
█ ♣ █

Lenas:

If they were monetizing DLC as post-production add-ons, I'd have no problem. I happily gave Riot $200 for window dressing in their game. EA/Bioware isn't monetizing DLC. Burn the Sky shipped with Mass Effect 1 and was held back from you until you paid an additional charge. They've done the same thing with every game since ...

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ME2 summed up part 1 pretty nicely and ME3 starts out with repercussions from ME2 DLC. You still find out what happens if you don't buy it.

Wow, because I really want that to happen in a game story.

"Here, you can play this first bit, and this last bit, but if you want to have any impact on what happens in this middle bit right here, you'll have to fork over some more money. Oh, and don't worry, it has repercussions on what you have to deal with in the last part that you're already going to play, but it's totally okay to miss it, because we tell you what you didn't get to have an effect on!"

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"Aaaah! Emotions are weird!" - Amdee
"... Mirrorshades prevent the forces of normalcy from realizing that one is crazed and possibly dangerous. They are the symbol of the sun-staring visionary, the biker, the rocker, the policeman, and similar outlaws." - Bruce Sterling, preface to Mirrorshades

Bring Down The Sky came out at least three or four months after I finished ME.

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Grenade 3 Sports Drink. It's fire in the hole.. Your hole!

Dalantia:

It did "ship" many months after you finished ME; unfortunately, all of its actually in your default install from the retail disk.

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Are you focusing on only the PC version? Because as I recall, it was free with that one.

On the Xbox, however, it was non-free, and required a fairly long download.

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Grenade 3 Sports Drink. It's fire in the hole.. Your hole!

I'm talking about my 360 version ... which took a 20 second download.

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Oh no! Companies are trying to...*gasp* make money! Good lord, when will the madness end!

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Los Angeles Kings 2014 Stanley Cup Champions

"I love this **** team right here."
-Jonathan Quick

My whole point is that you don't NEED to buy the DLC. Is it cool for people that want more of the game? Yes. Does it expand the story for those that play it? Yes. Is it required to play the game to completion, enjoy it, and understand the story completely? No, it's not.

And customers are wrong to complain and protest with their wallets if they don't feel they're getting as good a deal as they used to get? Why doesn't McDonalds cut the size of their meals in half while doubling the price and making you pay extra for salt and ketchup? Because people would stop eating there, maybe?

Game conglomerates in their current form such as EA or Activision are doing exactly that. And anyone putting up with these practices and helping them make even more money with them is facilitating it. Demand more for your money. Make them serve the customer again, rather than nickle and diming you for everything they can.

_________________
Well Ali Baba had them forty thieves, Scheherezade had a thousand tales
But master you in luck 'cause up your sleeves you got a brand of magic never fails...
...Mister Aladdin, sir, What will your pleasure be?
Let me take your order, Jot it down -You ain't never had a friend like me
█ ♣ █