Expansion Packs - Your Thoughts

they can be great when a bit of effort is put in. the best expansion i can remember off hand was the one to diablo 2. it really added loads of new stuff to the game and made it better overall. the MEd2 TW expansion looks cool too.

they do have a bit of a bad rep since alot of devs just throw in some pointelss extras and call it an expansion (hi sims). but ill buy an expansion if its good.

expansions are great for providing content to games i love. for example, i was straight bored of DoW after a year, but then winter assault came and i was happy to finally have my IG and for a year i was entertained. then i was losing interest again, but dark crusade came out, and all my friends got into it, so i played that alot. now i've moved on to Company of Heroes and im excited for the Opposing Fronts expansion.

o ya, and i cant forget Yuri's Revenge for Command and Conquer Red Alert 2, now that was a great game!

One of the best expansion packs I remember was Mysteries Of The Sith for Jedi Knight. It was practically a full game in it's own right. Neverwinter Nights, Baldur's Gate, etc., also had some good expansions.

These days you're lucky to get another few hours of SP gameplay and a few MP maps thrown in, and they tend to cost more.

Well, whenever I think Expansion Packs, I think just like everyone else... Diablo II: lord of Destruction and Starcraft: Brood War, both of which were definately worth the extra money, and both of which were expansion packs. :)

It really just depends though, you know? Some aren't as good as the aforementioned games.

I sometimes buy expansions, it really depends on what the expansion adds to the game. I thought the DoW expansions were excellent. On the other hand, I remember the C&C and RA expansions being garbage.Skie7

i hope you mean CnC1 and RA1, cause youre right about those, they only added a few missions. but the later CnC expansions like Firestorm, Yuri's Revenge, and Zero hour were awesome.

and Zero hour were awesome.

DDX2

I think ZH saved the multiplayer aspect of Generals. It was so much more fun to play online with all the different generals and strategys you could use for them. I think ZH is one of the few Ex packs thats better than the orginal.

I think they are great, an excellent opportunity to make a cheap and BETTER product that fans will love. The profit margins are much higher, and sales are almost garunteed, in fact the sales of your main product itself might shoot up too.

As well as that, by keeping fans happy, they work on the real product. UbiSoft have been doing this for some time now for example SC2 was a rehash title (albeit good one) while SC3 was a complete revamp. Or GRAW, GRAW 2 is simply GRAW 1 bigger and badder whilst they work on a completely NEW sequel thats going to be completely different

What do you guys think about expansion packs in PC gaming? Do you buy them? Not like them? Which ones did you like and which games do you want one for. No many people really talk about expansion packs, so I'm interested to hear some thoughts on these add-ons. ThePostalWorker

Excellent question!

Generally, I find I ignore them--not because I resist the idea, but because it's rare that I feel like I've played a game which I both 1) feel I've played completely through the basic content, and 2) loved enough to want more.

I've got gamesthat I've stretched to their limit, but don't feel enough love and hunger forto pay for more.

More commonly, though, I've got games that I love a lot, and play a lot, but either don't finish, or don't fully dig through. Come to think of it, I've got very few expansion packs in my library. I've got Throne of Baal for Baulders Gate II, which was well worth it (I had played BG2 twice, explored every inch of it, and was loyal to my character and the story). The others were Winter Assault and Dark Crusade for Dawn of War. I didn't finish DoW, but I enjoyed skirmishing so much that I wanted to keep expanding that experience by adding more settings, units, and factions. I don't regret it!

It really depends on the game. If Ima fan of the game/series, I will definitely pick up the expansion (did this with Half Life, Civilization, Doom 3, C&C)

What I dont like is the trend that the market is taking, releasing "episodic" content instead of an expansion or a full game. I really dont like the idea. Sure the good point is that you get to wait less time until the next episode is released, but the VERY BIG BAD point of that is that you only get a couple of hours worth of gameplay.

I don't mind expansion packs so long as they aren't announced/released shortly after the game's release. If you're going to do that then just put it in the game in the first place rather than withholding content just so you can make a quick buck by screwing over the customer.

I hate "microtransactions" like Oblivion's little pay updates. It's a rip-off since those updates contain so little content. If I'm going to pay for a content update it's going to have to have a content level that is comparable to the actual game's, rather than just visual fluff (horse armor), or a mere 20-30minutes worth of gameplay.

I'd prefer to see expansion packs around $19.99 rather than their $29.99 as well... $30 is close to a brand new game's cost. Unless the expansion has considerable amounts of content it's not worth that price. I generally don't buy expansion packs because they're rarely worth the money. The only genres I can recall purchasing any for would be the MMORPG's since they add actual content that I'll be able to spend hours upon hours in.

You'll never find me paying $30 for a couple extra races in an RTS, or a couple new weapons+maps in a FPS.

HL2 Episode one cannot be classified as an expansion pack. It's somewhat of the new breed of "Episodic Content". That is, to drive forward the story of a game while only introducing minimal changes to gameplay etc.

As for expansion packs? Well look at the Sims 2 series. I'm no Sims player, but I know my girlfriend, along with millions of other Sims junkies, buy those suckers the week they come out. Which is like every 4 weeks..

There are two kinds of expansion set's.
Ones that adds to the core game and ones that just continue.

Like an expansion set for a FPS. None of the upgrades or new units effect the original game.
It's just a continuation with some new stuff.

Unlike Diablo II: LoD.
There you had new characters, tons of new items, several new type of items that shows up from the beginning and a new chapter.

Personally I love expansion set's! More of a game I like!
But most of all I like expansion sets that add to original game too. (Civ IV: Beyond the Sword anyone?) :)

I like expansion packs that add more content to the previous game, but change the gameplay minimally. More stuff like items, levels (or environments), character types, guns, spells, models and such are all things I like to see in an expansion. Bonus points, if I can use the majority of the new content in the old content. Examples of this were already mentioned: Titan Quest: IT and D2:LoD. Lets throw in AoE: Rise of Rome for a non-RPG one ;)

I sometimes like the expansion packs that change the gameplay. If they mess up the gameplay changes, the expansion is no longer fun to play, but the original isn't either, because you lack the good parts of the expansion. Good qualityexamples of gameplay changes in expansion packs would be CivIV: Warlords (and Beyond the Sword looks promising) and some Sims expansions. Poor quality examples would be Age of Mythology: Titans and some Sims expansions ;) The former entirely changed the scrimmage match by turning it into a race to build a Titan and the latter added aspects that would be preferabbly ignored.

Add ons/ex packscan rock as long as they do introduce atleast a few new aspects, andalso they should still be fairly beefy content wise the``it is very short because it is an add on`` isnt working anymore.

dawn of war have some good expansion packsPoshkidney

Excellent expansion packs, indeed!

I usually don't like them...They are quite cheap but they require the original game to have.

although they cost like 75% from the original game, they almost never seem to be worthy for even a cheaper price.

Of course they have advantages. Awhole new sequel has a whole new graphics, and that means that sometime the new sequel will not run well on your pc...

So...I don't like them but they are better then now sequel at all...they can be good if you put some effort in them.

I like expansion packs, but I'll only buy them if the original game was worth the $49,99. Of course, a cheap price (like $20,-)would also be good. Expansion packs I really liked were: Bloodmoon & Tribunal for TES 3 Morrowind, and Underworld for Sacred gold.I usually wait for the expansion packs to go to budget pricing, cause if I pay only $4.99 of $9,99, then it can't really be a huge waste of money.

What I like to see in expansion packs: the original storyline continued, new features (like becoming a werewolf in Bloodmoon) and generally more landscape to explore. But for the new landscape, it almost has to be in another setting, cause if you walk in a desert for the whole vanilla game, then you don't want to be walking in deserts again in the expansion.

Pfff..Long post.

I like expansion packs, but the primary game it is benefacting from it better be in its own right a complete game. Which means it better be of good to high quality. ARMA is not one of those titles that need not apply to an expansion at this time.

Anexpansion on top of the gameis just an expansion, which it should only add to the games content and not changing it like JO:Escalation had done to the original Joint Operations. Also, an expansion should not take the place of a needed patch.

Otherwise if an expansion offers a proper price to reflect amount of content added, at the same time not doing some of the negitives I previously noted, I will buy it.

The producers could include all the stuff in the original game but instead the new races/items are left for the add-on on purpose. Like in Heroes V, they could included all the factions from the beginning instead making a new add-on for each new race. Imagine if Starcraft 2 would ship only with terrans and protoss as playable, and zergs would be left for an expansion pack.

And usually a game has enough gameplay possibilities to offer, so and add-on would make sense only after I completed the game a few times and I feel that I've had enough of it. Even so some add-ons have a bad habit of unbalancing the gameplay, because usually the new features are too overpowered.