That’s a lot, though I don’t think they imagine anyone would actually buy all or even more than 1% of that of that. Who possibly has the hours in the day to play more than one RPG campaign at a time?
I think the same is true of Train Simulator, actually. In both cases you’re talking about a computerized version of a real-world hobby.
But its not about having the time to play them… Its about owning the complete experience. ;)
I will never understand why people are annoyed that there are products/options for sale that other people WANT and BUY, buy you don’t.
I don’t buy child seats for my car, I don’t buy extended warranties for electrical equipment, I don’t buy insurance for my pets. I’m absolutely fine that these thinsg exist and other people buy them. Why wouldnt I be?
Between the time you posted that screenshot and now, they’ve added more DLC.
Balance decisions get made in mind with DLC additions that often result in a poorer experience for non-owners.
This happens often enough with Paradox (even though they try to “normalize” things).
Heard about it? I’ve played the hell out of that game. Of course the only DLC I’ve bought is additional routes, not new engines, because come on man!
Cars, child seats, extended warrants… pet insurance, there are some of the weirdest comparisons to DLC yet.
Maybe a better one would be that single track of music to various albums. Some people don’t mind buying one track at a time and will do that for years and tell everyone how much it was worth it, full price each time. Some people like to buy albums and some people prefer compilations and all that extra stuff that comes with it. The way DLC for some games is presented today is they only cater to the first group, and then that first group runs around telling everyone they don’t understand why people want albums or compilation editions as if those other two things have never and should never exist… not the other way around.
I actually liked the pizza comparison. I’ll take an Everything, please, your largest size, because I’m economical like that.
at the OP, no mention of Age if Wonders 3 as dlc done right?
shocking.
If you wish to provide more details then go ahead, I have little interest in fantasy 4x games so it didn’t make the short list of games I wanted to play.
I just dont get all this hate that some posters here have for everything about gaming. You dont like the epic store? shop elsewhere. You dont like DLC? dont buy it. Its called a FREE market for a reason, you are free to NOT buy games you dont want.
devs only make DLC that sells, and only release on stores that sell copies. If the people complaining were the majority these things wouldnt happen.
I think my eyes rolled under that dead horse you’re hovering around, can you pick them up for me?
Wouldn’t you as a developer want to know why a percentage of your customer base for whatever reason doesn’t want to buy your product, especially if the reason is of administrative nature like dlc bundling/fragmentation?
This is my CK2 dlc list (note that I own every last one dlc):
This is what I get if I try to buy one of the supposedly missing collections:
Do you have any idea what kind of clusterfuck DLC buying with long lists like these is? You have 10 different bundles that have overlapping items, different editions on top of that, some of which include dlcs, some only additional cosmetics that cannot be acquired anywhere else (not sold as separate dlcs). It’s a nightmare. If I need to come up with a spreadsheet just to figure out which items to buy then someone in sales should get a stern talking to.
And this is before we even get to the actual content of these DLCs.
DLC comes down to value for me. If it’s good value I don’t mind it. If it’s not good at all I don’t mind it. If they’re ripping me off for something I’d want at a reasonable price- I don’t like it.
Paradox hits that last category heavily.
To be fair It’s not really DLC in the classical sense though. It’s different RPG rulesets and different RPG adventures and ressources. Can’t compare that to a single PC game with DLC.
You mentioned Endless Legends…
AoW3 had 2 dlc.
The first gave you a new race, new specialisation, 2 new victory conditions iirc (unity and seals) and mechanics.
The second gave you a new class, 2 new races, 3 new specialisation.
Happened to already own it from back in the day when I was more desperate for a good 4x. Plus the whole Endless universe is closer to sci-fi than fantasy.
I think there may be two separate through lines in this conversation -
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Discussion about (to some degree) close-ended DLC that rarely if ever gets bundled. Say, stuff that runs from launch to, say, 24 months post launch of a title that could easily be rolled into a GotY later on for a lower price.
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Discussion about products that support and push an endless stream of DLC rather than pivot towards sequeling a title, and rarely (if ever) bundle that content into packages that cost less than a la carte purchases.
The former I understand the dismay about, at least to some degree. For wait-and-play folks, they’re thinking that if they wait out the DLC window, they can just get “everything” for the same (or less) than they would’ve purchased the original title. If a title doesn’t do this, I can understand how that is aggravating. I’m not saying I necessarily agree, I just think that this is something that is understandable since many other titles do it.
For the latter, I’m not really sure what to think; I’m generally not one to play the types of titles this seems to apply most to (strategy, simulation), so I really haven’t formulated an opinion, and so anything I think now would be completely uninformed, and thus knee jerk. So - useless. I won’t even bother.
But I think they are two distinct conversations.
I don’t really worry about the economics aspect of the DLC stuff, since I am much more time-limited than cost-limited for games these days, and development is expensive. I also don’t worry too much about getting the “complete” experience. I think Paradox has learned from a few mistakes and are doing a better job of folding needed changes into the base game these days.
I do worry about the effect on the game design, performance and pushing off major engine changes. I might be reading between the lines too much, but turnover on the team seems to mean that devs are afraid to touch certain areas of the code. I’m thinking specifically about some bugs and AI problems in HoI4 that have been carefully detailed by the community (to the extent of reverse-engineering the code) but no fixes forthcoming. That has definitely been a phenomenon on some longer-running software projects I’ve been involved with.