Why does all DLC suck so much?

[Bateluer]

Bought Witch Hunt for DOA last week and just got around to playing it. Not even 2 hours. That's it? Almost no character development. No political interactions. No ending. And not a scrap of closure.

Complete waste of money, something that should have been a free patch to DAO. I'm not opposed to buying DLC, but jeez, give me something for my dollar. Something more than I can do with a 6 pack of beer and an hour in the toolset.

Could have bought a movie ticket for the same price as Witch Hunt and gotten more entertainment.

 

[OCGuy]

Thank the morons that support the "Pay to Play" PC gaming model.

Luckily every one except WoW has pretty much failed......

$40 to buy the game

$10-15/mo

$20-30/yr for "expansions"


Stop this crap or it will carry over to the rest of PC gaming....

 

[MagnusTheBrewer]

I hear they've got these things called 'books,' with story, plot, character development and descriptions so real you can imagine the scene in high def. Crazy, I know!

 

[StinkyPinky]

Yeah Witch Hunt was terrible. It was the only one I bought....I'n such a sucker.

I would mind if it was priced ok. Like a couple of dollars.

 

[Aikouka]

Borderlands has a few good DLCs. DLC1 was a fun sort of Halloween-ish DLC, DLC2 was kind of useless unless you have friends that you play with, DLC3 was good and DLC4... haven't had a chance to try it yet.

 

[Bateluer]

Thank the morons that support the "Pay to Play" PC gaming model.

Luckily everyone except WoW has pretty much failed......

$40 to buy the game

$10-15/mo

$20-30/yr for "expansions"


Stop this crap or it will carry over to the rest of PC gaming....

As I said, I'm not opposed to paying for content. Just give me something worth the money I paid. I'm thinking DLC should be 1 dollar per hour of game play. Thus your typical Bioware DLC, ME1/2 and DAO should be between $1.50 and 3 dollars. Bioware can still deliver a fun game, and decent expansions, but their DLC is a joke. EA's doing?

I hear they've got these things called 'books,' with story, plot, character development and descriptions so real you can imagine the scene in high def. Crazy, I know!

And I buy them.

Yeah Witch Hunt was terrible. It was the only one I bought....I'n such a sucker.

I would mind if it was priced ok. Like a couple of dollars.

For the 'Final' DAO DLC, it was a complete ripoff. Guess I should be cruising DAO2's forums before buying any future DLCs.

 

[Dumac]

I haven't met DLC that wasn't a complete ripoff. Horrible, horrible payment scheme. The contentrice ratio is terrible.

 

[StinkyPinky]

Look at Civ 5. $10 for a new civ. A civ that should have been in the freaking game in the first place.

And suckers buy it. No wonder these companies do it.

Soon we will be getting half assed demos and buying chunks of the game to unlock.

 

[KaOTiK]

Thank the morons that support the "Pay to Play" PC gaming model.

Luckily everyone except WoW has pretty much failed......

$40 to buy the game

$10-15/mo

$20-30/yr for "expansions"


Stop this crap or it will carry over to the rest of PC gaming....

MMO's have been around long before DLC reared its ugly head which the current generation of consoles.

As for the topic at hand, most DLC is crap, and most cases over priced crap at that.

There has been very little worthwhile DLC to come out and come out at a fair price tag for what it offered.

If you want to point a figure, it really started with the current gen of consoles. I don't get it really, console gamers really open up their wallets to be raped now, and willingly. Games go up in price by $10, high price DLC, horrible "collector/limited" editions that jack the price up big time.

If you asked most console gamers if they would spend say $100+ on a single game they would say no. But a vast majority of them do from the stated above. To top it off move on to new games very quickly and there have been few games that seem to actually stay popular after the next big thing a few weeks down the road comes out.

These pricing trends are now starting/have started to bleed over in the PC side. The main games on the PC side that see DLC are console ports, not many true PC exclusives have come out yet that have much in the way of DLC. But it will only get worse for big titles.

As for the DAO DLC, the only two I had were the one for Shale since anyone who bought the game new got it and I purchased Wardens Keep day one as well. Both imo were good (Shale was probably my fav character to have in my group and was just really entertaining to me) and were worth it. Didn't touch any of the rest and actually sold my copy of the game and figured I would wait for a GoTY version which now will be coming out with all the DLC and expansion pack soon. I really liked DAO, but I gotta say from what I've seen of DAO2, I have no interest in it sadly.

Only other DLC I've bought and also felt was worth it was Zombie Island for Boarderlands (haven't played bought/played the other BL DLC). I've avoided purchasing any other DLC then what I stated here. As I go on forums and such to find out how people gauge new DLC and in the over whelming amount of time people regret it so I simply avoid it.

My new standard now though is, for games that I am interested in and they have annoucned they are going to be doing DLC for, I avoid. I wait for a GoTY type version a year later with everything included.

 

[Bateluer]

My new standard now though is, for games that I am interested in and they have annoucned they are going to be doing DLC for, I avoid. I wait for a GoTY type version a year later with everything included.

This may become my standard policy as well.

Just delivered some very harsh words on the Bioware forums about Witch Hunt. Might have been more enjoyable to buy a 6pk of Schlitz beer than play Witch Hunt. I've never felt more ripped off for a purchase.

 

[Pia]

DLC is just a mode of delivery / business model. A piece of DLC could contain a huge pile of stuff normally referred to as an "expansion pack", or some horse armor. I'm guessing the current console platform owners have structured their business in such a fashion, and customers have such entrenched expectations, that it's not currently worthwhile to deliver much that is worthwhile as DLC.

That said, I have been very happy with my few purchases. Deathsmiles, for instance, has brilliant DLC.

 

[Zenoth]

Of all the DLCs I've bought I do like just a few of them, but those I like were really worth it in my book, namely the three out of four DLCs for Borderlands, and the Lair of the Shadow Broker for Mass Effect 2. I have bought almost all of the Dragon Age Origins DLCs except for the Darkspawn one in which you can play as them during the Siege of Denerim, that one I've just avoided since it just doesn't interest me at all to play as the Darkspawn for any reason whatsoever, but the DLCs for DAO are relatively good, although they are short, that's certainly right.

In DAO's case however the best "DLC" for it is the extra custom content created for it by the modding community, some of the mods available for it at DragonAgeNexus is better than some of the content in most of the official DLCs. I admit however that in general DLCs tend to be very short, are often over-priced (but that's extremely subjective) for what they offer and more often than not simply offer nothing more than new weapons/models/items and very rarely go the "story-line continuation" and/or "character development" route, that's probably because most DLCs out there are for story-deprived action-focused games. I would indeed expect better from BioWare with the DLCs for DAO, but I think they've done a good job with at least Lair of the Shadow Broker, and Overlord wasn't bad either, but LotSB takes the cake by a light year.

 

[Spike]

I have to agree that borderlands has great DLC, especially for the ~$2.50 I paid for each.

 

[Borealis7]

i agree,borderlands DLC was good. and the Stone Prisoner for DAO was also great, added a new (funny and awesome in my opinion) companion, integrated into the storyline, and added a quest or 2.

 

[RavenSEAL]

Soon we'll all be getting menus for $50/60 dollars and if we want to play, it's gonna have to be another $30 dollars i tell you what.

 

[Qbah]

I wouldn't say all DLCs suck...

- Fallout 3 had great DLC imo (I enjoyed all, The Pitt probably the least)
- Mass Effect 2 had some great DLC (Lair of the Shadow Broker and Overlord)
- Borderlands has 3 good DLCs (the Moxxi DLC is a frustrating pos)
- Dragon Age : Origins - the golem DLC was fun, Leliana DLC was fun too, didn't try the Witch Hunt yet (still have to finish vanilla DAO).

Of course there is bad DLC out there. But you can read up about it before buying. Watch some video reviews maybe? It's not like you have get it day 1 - you waited for it for some months, might as well wait a few days more to get the general opinion on it?

Me? I welcome any DLC for games I enjoy.

 

[lupi]

Blame the console girls. Prior to consoles being hooked up to the net in such a degree as they are now, these types of things when release for a pc product were done so as a no charge patch. Now with cross-platform development and crap they think just because the idiots playing with mommies credit card on his shitbox360 will keep forking over a couple bucks a time that everyone should do so. It's only getting worse with this supremely dumbass crap of having dlc at the release date.

 

[PingSpike]

I just buy the GoTY editions now. They usually drop down to like $30 anyway and then I don't have to worry about that crap. I have to really, really want a game to break that rule and I have to really, really, really want it to break that rule for a game with DLC. I bought Oblivion right when it came out and just couldn't see why I'd spend $0.50 on a couple pieces of horse armor. Even when they released all the DLC together as an expansion pack I looked at the back and said "Really? $20 for a few missions, a tower and some horse armor? That's not even worth $5."

The worst DLC, which I haven't fallen for since I pretty much saw where it was going from the start, are maps for multiplayer games. Nobody plays them or at least it ruins the server population since half the players drop out when the server switches to it.

 

[BladeVenom]

The best DLC is usually free.

 

[spaceman]

the vast majority of gaming sucks period 2day
its the reality of the situation
most games aint worth $6 let alone $60
they run outta ideas
and when they dont..its just gimmick
gaming as we know it has jumped the shark

 

[Red Storm]

The real problem is that there are enough idiots out there that will happily buy any and all DLC no matter the price. The devs and publishers know this, so can you really blame them for playing the market? They're trying to increase profits as any other company would do. Sure I don't like it, but they don't owe me anything.

 

[Schadenfroh]

I hear they've got these things called 'books,' with story, plot, character development and descriptions so real you can imagine the scene in high def. Crazy, I know!

They are not interactive, now text based RPGs on the other-hand.

 

[mmntech]

Fallout 3's expansions were generally pretty good. Broken Steel, The Pitt, and Point Lookout probably add 10-15 hours to the game. The other ones weren't great though.

 

[s44]

False premise.

All Dragon Age DLC sucks because Dragon Age is a long-format game that demands long (10-20 hour) chunks to make an impact.

Lair of the Shadow Broker, on the other hand, is the best part of the Mass Effect franchise and well worth its price.

 

[skace]

Well, I guesss I should be glad I just bought Lair of the Shadow Broker. What about Leilianas song though?