1741

Pushing out payed DLC on release day is incredibly tacky and dumb.

1742

They talk about the DLC over here. The basic gist is that they had a lot of designers and writers doing nothing while they were bug testing and porting to the consoles.

1743

The warden’s keep dlc does look pretty nice from the trailer up on youtube. Not sure how i feel about that, probably would side with the crappy move group.

1744

No kidding. They should at least wait a month or so. Imagine offering something right before Christmas and how much the fans would like that? Or spreading things out so there is a steady diet of DLC, like Fallout 3 but on a more regular basis.

On the other hand maybe they are afraid that once the editor gets into people’s hands no one will pay for extra content and are hoping to cash in ASAP.

1745

So is anyone offering a breakdown of who offers what special shit in their version of Dragon Age? Is the Best Buy version the one to buy or is it Amazon? Or maybe Gamestop?

Also, if you get the collector’s edition, will it come with whatever dumb stuff comes with the normal version?

I see that Amazon is offering ‘Lions Paw Boots’ and a ten dollar credit toward another game purchase. Though the ten bucks doesn’t apply if you buy the CE. Dumb.

1746

I disagree. I look for DLC on day 1, and if I don’t find it, I’ll never look again. I might not actually buy anything mind you, but I WILL look as I’m exploring the menu’s interface. If I don’t have the positive reinforcement that I should look for DLC, then I never will.

So I’d argue that it is a necessity. To each his own.

~C~

1747

Perhaps they should target DLC to people who buy it, though, rather than people who just like to check and see if there is any as soon as they buy the game.

1748

Yeah, I think you’re in a boat of one, Cougar. Most people are probably going to wait until they’ve played around with the game a bit before they start trying to figure out how to spend more money on it.

1749

I generally buy a lot of DLC, regardless of when it comes out. Really, the only thing that antagonizes me is vendor-attached DLC. My preferences are Amazon and Steam (and the latter only out of laziness, not because I actually think it’s a good system), and I don’t like feeling like I got cheated because I didn’t patronize some shithole like EB.

1750

I don’t mind them pushing out DLC on launch day–it’s a value-add proposition. Oh you bought the game, how about you pick up X or Y too?

Plus you’re made aware of it at the start, so even at first if you don’t buy it, the possibility is already in your mind. If they don’t push DLC until months later, you’re losing out on part of your customer base as it’s always best to capture people when they pay (for single-player games), rather than later on. Plus the publisher/developer would rather have that money upfront.

— Alan

1751

Capture, what perfect word choice.

1752

I don’t mind DLC on day one, if the game itself has enough content, and DA seems this case. But their excuses of why they have dlc on day one are pathetic. They do DLC because they want to make money, more money, and that’s about it. They enter in the discussion with the fans about this stuff (bad decision) and they enter in defensive mode with excuses and more excuses, and the impression that the fans recieve is even worse after the discussion and explanation with the devs than before, when they only had the official annoucement.

1753

Expansion packs generally offer more value to the player not only in the amount of content, but also a more tightly integrated central focus. For a RPG (especially one with a linear story), DLC runs the risk of feeling tacked on, generic, and pretty exploitive.

1754

Still, it does make him the captain.

1755

I’ll drop an extra $7 so I can go through the DLC on my first play through. /shrug

1756

Whatever DLC they eventually put out for Marvel Ultimate Alliance 2 would have been better released within the week of release. I’d be much more likely to buy characters or character packs when I’m finishing my first playthrough/starting my second. I’m unlikely to ever do a third.

1757

It’s not really an excuse, though, is it? When they delayed the game to release simultaneously with the consoles they suddenly had a bunch of designers with nothing to do. So they put them onto making some DLC. If this happened in the past, the designers would have been working on a new product or an expansion. With my limited knowledge of game production, it seems very plausible that something like this would happen.

1758

I’d be very annoyed if they’d held back content to make an extra buck, like one of those situations where the data is already on the disc but isn’t unlocked until you buy it. But in this case it genuinely appears to be extra so I’ll give them a pass on it.

1759

It’s obnoxious that Amazon seems unwilling to deliver the PC version to me on release day. Unsurprising, perhaps.

1760

Thanks for the tip, placed my order now!