Dragon Age has shown the DLC trend is becoming a bad thing

All of us who have played the fantastic Dragon Age Origins had to cope with the restrictive inventory system, for those of you who don't know what I'm talking about, the game limits the number of item types you can carry: items stack but each type takes one of about 70 slots, which may seem a lot to fill but, since the game has hundreds of items, you'll get overencumbered real quick. The problem is you can't store your items anywhere, unlike games like Oblivion, Diablo and Fallout, where you can drop/store items and retrieve them later, here the only way to free inventory space is to sell stuff or discard it for good Resident Evil style, never to be recovered. What's really bad is that some items you'll find will only become usable much later in the game and you'll be forced to carry them around as a useless burden until then.

In response to the players' lamentations, Bioware lead system designer Georg Zoeller said:

Originally there was a small storage chest in the party camp, until we realized that due to the fact that there are several versions of the camp area [...] and that people were losing their items (as they were stored in the area).

By the time this problem was discovered, we had not enough time to fix the problem [...]

So, although Zoeller ultimately declines responsibility, Bioware admits they couldn't solve the inventory issue in time for release and that's fine, that's what patches are for, right? Right? Wrong: although the storage chest is now once again available, it's included in the Warden's Keep DLC that costs $7 (or 560 microsoft points).

Do you see where this is going? They can allow themselves to sell a $60/€70 game with a declared design flaw they expect you to pay to correct. Why couldn't the chest be added in a free patch? It would have been a way to say "look, gamers, we know the inventory was a bit inconvenient, here: we fixed it", but they chose to include it as a separate purchase.

I know it's a small thing and you can beat the game no problem without chest, but doesn't it foreshadow what they might do in the future with this DLC business?

I havent played dragon age yet, but i agree with what your saying. I'm not a big fan of the way DLC is going

"is becomming"? In most cases DLC is utter cr*p minute changes for a very high price, I think I can think of 2-3 games overall who did put out some decent or worthwhile DLC.

Most attrocias are the DLC that is basicly unlockables allready on the disk you bought, making it impossible to defend in the first place.

The Dragonage DLC is somewhat in the middle, its not earthshattering, and the reasoning is kinda "Meh" but atleast it does offer up something that can be useful, altho I would have liked to see it all in the game itself and not as DLC.

And yes, I am looking at you Capcom when it comes to cruddy DLC :P

Even patches are unacceptable, as far as I'm concerned. I had to deal with that "downloading patches" garbage when I was a PC Gamer, and that's a load of garbage.

Of course, with PC games it is sometimes unavoidable. Everyone's PC is different, so it's hard to anticipate every problem someone might have. But with consoles, it's unacceptable. They shouldn't be releasing games that have these kinds of problems, period. If you don't have time to fix it before release, then delay the game and then fix the problem before releasing it.

You do know there are back packs right, not that big of a deal

Even patches are unacceptable, as far as I'm concerned. I had to deal with that "downloading patches" garbage when I was a PC Gamer, and that's a load of garbage.

MrGeezer

Then dont take teh 5 minutes to patch and enjoy your buggier game.

You do know there are back packs right, not that big of a deal

Memoryitis

I don't think held bacl DLC, even cases as outrageous as that of DA, invalidate DLC as a concept.

DLC is like games. Some of it is worth the asking price, most of it isn't, and not everyone will agree on what is 'worth it'.

Patches are different from a DLC. Games come out with patches to fix bugs they didn't catch in testing. Fable 2 had to come out with 2 or 3 to fix bugs for example. Some DLC are good some aren't. As far as the Dragon Age storage issue you can store stuff without Warden's Keep. First off you can bye upgrades to your bag so that it can carry up to 120 items. Second, if you don't want something in your inventory you can sell it to a vendor and it will be stored at that vendor for the rest of the game. If you want it back just return to the vendor and buy it back for the same price you sold it for. Its kinda like a convenient bank system. The same was true in Bioware's Mass Effect.

I have no problem with the way DLC is as a whole(though it strains me wallet), but it does seem cheap you have to pay for something they already were trying to work on. Hopeully its free by the time I get it. Certain things we should not have to spend extra for.

The nexus mod site has all of that including a respec mod that will let you respec your character and anyone in your party so your not stuck with points your not using. I've had one of those storage containers in my camp for probably 2 in half weeks now.

Then dont take teh 5 minutes to patch and enjoy your buggier game.

warmaster670

Apparently developers are sort of forgetting why casual gamers often loathe PC games.

When I buy a console, no. I don't want to spend ANY time looking for the right patch because the game was released before it was ready. This whole "release it now, patch it later" crap is just a way for developers to get away with laziness. First it's rushing games out the door with known issues. Next it's gonna come down to games getting released WITHOUT the issues be known. Then the developers will just sit back, let the public serve as unpaid beta testers, and THEN make patches for the issues that enough people complained about.

When I get a console game, I expect to pop it in, do not a damn thing, and then for the game to work right. This has been the expectation for DECADES. But now, suddenly everyone is just a-okay with their games being released with known problems.

The only good I see outta DLC (other than classic games re-released and good download-exclusive games) is the added content for rhythm games (tracks/songs).

It's not like the DLC was only the chest, although of course it should have gone into a patch (and it's not like the inventory is all that annoying either, if you sell everything unnecessary and leave all the bad loot it's not that difficult to stay under the limit). I don't like the way DLC is going though, one thing that is pissing me off is the Stone Prisoner; if they were going to give it away free, why not put it on the disc. I haven't connected my xbox to live, and because of that I'm missing out on something that was included in the box. Which is really freaking annoying.Ernheim

One of my biggest problems with patches.

My PS3 isn't connected to the internet. It's not GOING to be connected to the internet. I CAN'T download patches to fix a problem.

My PS2 wasn't connected to the internet, my Playstation wasn't connected to the internet, my Genesis wasn't connected to the internet, and we can keep on going. Back in the day, games with problems were called BAD GAMES. Not "good games that just need a patch".

**** that.

What are the estimates on the number of people who DON'T have their consoles hooked up to the internet? I'm not going to download additional content. I'm not going to go back to my PC gaming days where I sometimes had to go through huge amounts of crap to find specific patches to fix a specific issue that sometimes didn't pop up until I was already hours into the game. That was always the big appeal of console games. I bought them to play games, and that's it.

So here's the question. Is gaming going into a direction in which people like me are pretty much gone? Has the nature of console gaming really changed to the point where I (and people like me) ought to just give up and drop out? Has the market changed to the point where there's simply no longer any place in the console market for people like me?

All the people whining about the first day DLC make me giggle.

[QUOTE="warmaster670"]

Then dont take teh 5 minutes to patch and enjoy your buggier game.

MrGeezer

Apparently developers are sort of forgetting why casual gamers often loathe PC games.

When I buy a console, no. I don't want to spend ANY time looking for the right patch because the game was released before it was ready. This whole "release it now, patch it later" crap is just a way for developers to get away with laziness. First it's rushing games out the door with known issues. Next it's gonna come down to games getting released WITHOUT the issues be known. Then the developers will just sit back, let the public serve as unpaid beta testers, and THEN make patches for the issues that enough people complained about.

When I get a console game, I expect to pop it in, do not a damn thing, and then for the game to work right. This has been the expectation for DECADES. But now, suddenly everyone is just a-okay with their games being released with known problems.

Even patches are unacceptable, as far as I'm concerned. I had to deal with that "downloading patches" garbage when I was a PC Gamer, and that's a load of garbage.

Of course, with PC games it is sometimes unavoidable. Everyone's PC is different, so it's hard to anticipate every problem someone might have. But with consoles, it's unacceptable. They shouldn't be releasing games that have these kinds of problems, period. If you don't have time to fix it before release, then delay the game and then fix the problem before releasing it.

MrGeezer

All of us who have played the fantastic Dragon Age Origins had to cope with the restrictive inventory system, for those of you who don't know what I'm talking about, the game limits the number of item types you can carry: items stack but each type takes one of about 70 slots, which may seem a lot to fill but, since the game has hundreds of items, you'll get overencumbered real quick. The problem is you can't store your items anywhere, unlike games like Oblivion, Diablo and Fallout, where you can drop/store items and retrieve them later, here the only way to free inventory space is to sell stuff or discard it for good Resident Evil style, never to be recovered. What's really bad is that some items you'll find will only become usable much later in the game and you'll be forced to carry them around as a useless burden until then.

In response to the players' lamentations, Bioware lead system designer Georg Zoeller said:

Originally there was a small storage chest in the party camp, until we realized that due to the fact that there are several versions of the camp area [...] and that people were losing their items (as they were stored in the area).

By the time this problem was discovered, we had not enough time to fix the problem [...]

So, although Zoeller ultimately declines responsibility, Bioware admits they couldn't solve the inventory issue in time for release and that's fine, that's what patches are for, right? Right? Wrong: although the storage chest is now once again available, it's included in the Warden's Keep DLC that costs $7 (or 560 microsoft points).

Do you see where this is going? They can allow themselves to sell a $60/€70 game with a declared design flaw they expect you to pay to correct. Why couldn't the chest be added in a free patch? It would have been a way to say "look, gamers, we know the inventory was a bit inconvenient, here: we fixed it", but they chose to include it as a separate purchase.

I know it's a small thing and you can beat the game no problem without chest, but doesn't it foreshadow what they might do in the future with this DLC business?

How can you complain about been ripped off, Dragon Age has LOADS of reply value, it has 6 diffrent starts, so many choices to make every playthrough different, and the best story of any game this gen, the reason for the Stone Prisioner DLC, is to try and get more people to buy new games rather than buying second hand or pirating, and besides, im at the end of the game with my Dwarf and havn't run out of item space, and I didn't even know there where backpacks to increase your space, and the ammount of enjoyment I have had from Dragon Age I would be happy to by DLC to further enjoy the game regardless of an item chest that I would never use, and it's not like there charging a lot for the DLC unlike the mostly worthless map packs for game like Halo 3.

As a solution to a glitchy camp chest causing some players to lose items, why didn't BioWare just expand the player inventory by x-amount instead of "fixing" the problem of limited inventory with $5 DLC. That reasoning to me sounds like total BS...more like, it was an answer to the question "how are we gonna get people to buy our crappy 15 minute Warden's Keep DLC?"

I don't get it, anyway. Why limit inventory space at all? Is micromanaging backpacks something gamers clamor for? No. Maybe I'm just old school..but back in the p-n-p days, we had bags of holding. If you don't know what that is..it's like the mother of all fanny packs...you could put a car in those little velvet drawstring purses and hang it from your belt. Better yet, you could put a midget holding another bag of holding into your bag of holding and walk around like one of thos Russian egg-people dolls.

I like DLC a lot...I just had a blast with the new Borderlands stuff...but Bioware has been terrible in the DLC department...total rip-offs in terms price paid/content receieved. Doesn't diminish my enjoyment of DA or ME..both games I've put many hours into...i'll just remember to ignore any DLC from BioWare in the future.

How can you complain about been ripped off, Dragon Age has LOADS of reply value, it has 6 diffrent starts, so many choices to make every playthrough different, and the best story of any game this gen, the reason for the Stone Prisioner DLC, is to try and get more people to buy new games rather than buying second hand or pirating, and besides, im at the end of the game with my Dwarf and havn't run out of item space, and I didn't even know there where backpacks to increase your space, and the ammount of enjoyment I have had from Dragon Age I would be happy to by DLC to further enjoy the game regardless of an item chest that I would never use, and it's not like there charging a lot for the DLC unlike the mostly worthless map packs for game like Halo 3.

spike6958

No one is being forced to buy this, its not even needed, you just expand your back pack as suggested by my buddy smerlly.

I like DLC, like the MGS4 Database and the free LBP stuff

Lol yeah a friend of mines was telling me about this the other day. Apparently, the devoplrs are intentinally leaving out features in teh game that were supposed to be there in the first place and charging you for the DLC so those features can be added back. What a huge rip.

DLC has always been a bad thing and if it becomes a ruling force in gaming, I hope gaming dies off.

Totally agree op. But theres nothing we can do.thisguy51

Don't buy the game. Sadly most people would rather be ripped off than be deprived playing an average game.

Totally agree op. But theres nothing we can do.thisguy51

People will still buy it, though. Kinda makes me sick the way people will complain about being ripped off... and then proceed to get ripped off.

[QUOTE="warmaster670"]

Then dont take teh 5 minutes to patch and enjoy your buggier game.

MrGeezer

Apparently developers are sort of forgetting why casual gamers often loathe PC games.

When I buy a console, no. I don't want to spend ANY time looking for the right patch because the game was released before it was ready. This whole "release it now, patch it later" crap is just a way for developers to get away with laziness. First it's rushing games out the door with known issues. Next it's gonna come down to games getting released WITHOUT the issues be known. Then the developers will just sit back, let the public serve as unpaid beta testers, and THEN make patches for the issues that enough people complained about.

When I get a console game, I expect to pop it in, do not a damn thing, and then for the game to work right. This has been the expectation for DECADES. But now, suddenly everyone is just a-okay with their games being released with known problems.

Console games are patched automatically, you don't have to look for anything.

I can understand that you expect a finished product, but at the same time you must realize how much more complex games are now then they were a decade ago. No amount of testing can guarantee that no bugs exist. All games have a virtually infinite number of situations and testers have to come across the buggy ones by chance. Some are bound to slip through.

I am a programmer myself and I can tell you; even small games there can be a lot of bugs which are provoked by the strangest circumstances. To find them you have to play the game in a very specific way. Then some bugs may appear periodic because they depend on some random factor or timing.

Just be happy that it is at all possible to patch games post-launch. We haven't always had that luxury. Old games had bugs too.

On topic: I really really hate the way bioware is pushing their DLC. Very bad trend and I'm not going to reward it by purchasing anything. The in-game salesman is just sooo bad taste. Also the meteor random encounter which is in the main game, the special item you get mentions that maybe a smith will be able to fashion something from it. Turns out you need to get the Wardens keep DLC to get access to that smith (correct me if another smith can do it). They are trying to goad me into buying it. I don't care how cheap it is, I do not approve of this way to push it.

I'm ok with DLC, WHEN IT IS OPTIONAL! That quest giver and that meteor should not be in the game unless you HAVE bought it. The way it is is insulting.

Console games are patched automatically, you don't have to look for anything.

I can understand that you expect a finished product, but at the same time you must realize how much more complex games are now then they were a decade ago. No amount of testing can guarantee that no bugs exist. All games have a virtually infinite number of situations and testers have to come across the buggy ones by chance. Some are bound to slip through.

I am a programmer myself and I can tell you; even small games there can be a lot of bugs which are provoked by the strangest circumstances. To find them you have to play the game in a very specific way. Then some bugs may appear periodic because they depend on some random factor or timing.

Just be happy that it is at all possible to patch games post-launch. We haven't always had that luxury. Old games had bugs too.

On topic: I really really hate the way bioware is pushing their DLC. Very bad trend and I'm not going to reward it by purchasing anything. The in-game salesman is just sooo bad taste. Also the meteor random encounter which is in the main game, the special item you get mentions that maybe a smith will be able to fashion something from it. Turns out you need to get the Wardens keep DLC to get access to that smith (correct me if another smith can do it). They are trying to goad me into buying it. I don't care how cheap it is, I do not approve of this way to push it.

I'm ok with DLC, WHEN IT IS OPTIONAL! That quest giver and that meteor should not be in the game unless you HAVE bought it. The way it is is insulting.

Blodbad_DK

I do see your point.

However, if a developer DOES find a problem, and then eliminates a feature because there isn't enough time to fix it, then the game isn't ready.

Delay it a week or a month, then release it.

If they simply didn't find the problem until the game was almost ready for release, that's one thing. But didn't they supposedly limit the game BECAUSE they already knew about the problem?

[QUOTE="spike6958"]

How can you complain about been ripped off, Dragon Age has LOADS of reply value, it has 6 diffrent starts, so many choices to make every playthrough different, and the best story of any game this gen, the reason for the Stone Prisioner DLC, is to try and get more people to buy new games rather than buying second hand or pirating, and besides, im at the end of the game with my Dwarf and havn't run out of item space, and I didn't even know there where backpacks to increase your space, and the ammount of enjoyment I have had from Dragon Age I would be happy to by DLC to further enjoy the game regardless of an item chest that I would never use, and it's not like there charging a lot for the DLC unlike the mostly worthless map packs for game like Halo 3.

wizdom

They tried to force the playerbase to pay for something that should have been included as part of the game from the beginning. And it's not as if they had to do extra work to create the storage box. It was ALREADY CODED. They just forced you to pay for it by tacking it on to a part of the DLC content, instead of adding it in a patch like they should have, as a company with integrity.Greyfeld

Yeah, that's bull****. I'm kind of taking a hard stance and not buying games where they do this kind of trivial DLC unless they are MMORPGs with no subscription fee.

Good DLC - GTA IV Chapters (though I never played GTA IV), Sins of a Solar Empire $10 "microexpansions", items in "free-to-play" MMORPGs, Fallout 3 DLC.

Bad DLC - Items in games you already paid money for, inventory slots, character costumes (unless they were dirt cheap, like $0.25 each), unit packs that don't really change a game enough to be considered expansions (Empire: Total War), horse armor, inventory slots, multiplayer mode (RE5).

[QUOTE="Blodbad_DK"]

Console games are patched automatically, you don't have to look for anything.

I can understand that you expect a finished product, but at the same time you must realize how much more complex games are now then they were a decade ago. No amount of testing can guarantee that no bugs exist. All games have a virtually infinite number of situations and testers have to come across the buggy ones by chance. Some are bound to slip through.

I am a programmer myself and I can tell you; even small games there can be a lot of bugs which are provoked by the strangest circumstances. To find them you have to play the game in a very specific way. Then some bugs may appear periodic because they depend on some random factor or timing.

Just be happy that it is at all possible to patch games post-launch. We haven't always had that luxury. Old games had bugs too.

On topic: I really really hate the way bioware is pushing their DLC. Very bad trend and I'm not going to reward it by purchasing anything. The in-game salesman is just sooo bad taste. Also the meteor random encounter which is in the main game, the special item you get mentions that maybe a smith will be able to fashion something from it. Turns out you need to get the Wardens keep DLC to get access to that smith (correct me if another smith can do it). They are trying to goad me into buying it. I don't care how cheap it is, I do not approve of this way to push it.

I'm ok with DLC, WHEN IT IS OPTIONAL! That quest giver and that meteor should not be in the game unless you HAVE bought it. The way it is is insulting.

MrGeezer

I do see your point.

However, if a developer DOES find a problem, and then eliminates a feature because there isn't enough time to fix it, then the game isn't ready.

Delay it a week or a month, then release it.

If they simply didn't find the problem until the game was almost ready for release, that's one thing. But didn't they supposedly limit the game BECAUSE they already knew about the problem?

I don't believe for a second that the loot chest was left out because there was technical problemss with it if that's what you are referring to. And of course it is no coincidence that it is part of Wardens Keep either. The game is stock full "incentives" to buy wardens keep from the second you pop it in and it has been available from day one.

Again: I'm OK with DLC, just not like this.