One thing I find really annoying regarding game companies is the release of DLC on the day of game release or in some cases preorder or even open beta. It's as if they made the game and DLC all that the same time then make it look as if "Hey look we made this, and this, and this" and then try to flog everything at you hoping you will part with your money. Usually the DLC looks like it was something that should have been part of the main game anyway but they decided to give it to you as an extra part instead. That annoys me. That's just my pet peeve. Anyone else got others?
I've only started playing a few games recently. I never really noticed till buying stuff last year. It's such a con.
There's a simple solution that I've found quite beneficial: Don't buy games on release. If you wait, then all the DLC usually gets bundled in the with main game and sooner or later appears in a steam sale, at which point it's worth the price. This approach has the added bonus of not being surprised by bad ports or otherwise buggy games as most of that is exposed way before I usually pick up a title (example: see Arkham Knight, which I did and probably am never going to buy.) You're only being ripped off if you choose to be.
That depends on the game. Smash Bros is one that is far from release and has the DLC separate from it. Maybe it'll go into GOTY status some day.
Or DLC that is actually already inside the game but you pay to unlock it. That's just very bad behaviour to do that IMHO.. I mean it's already there in the game files but locked away... Love games like Just Cause 3 at the moment but they release the game onto the market then wait for people to say hey it's got X and X bugs and broken bits. That's just not right, but it's what we have come to accept. Or games like The Crew, which while fun got boring after a while so much so that I had to uninstall it. But kept a backup in case I change my mind. It just got too samey. On Steam forums there are no end of people complaining about this title and all the bits that don't work, with a lot of people who can't even run the game as it won't get past the loading screen, or crash to the desktop. Supposed AAA game too.
Yea that's annoying too. But as long as it isn't mandatory it doesn't bug me too much. Agreed. I gave up on a game once due to that. It was so broken that I couldn't get past a part of the game without having it freeze on me. Nothing I did helped me be able to get past it either.
LOL Random_Spock. Your signature gave me a big laugh. Who would Santa visit in the Trek universe, I wonder? Santa visits the Borg "Merry Christmas ho ho ho" "You will be assimilated" "Oh snap!"
The first and only game I ever bought a season pass for was Borderlands 2. I loved the game so much that I just knew the DLC had to be as good. So, I plunked down $20 (chump change now when you compare to season passes for games like Batman: Arkham Knight and Call of Duty: Black Ops III) and I was fucking pissed when I saw the garbage they gave us. Not only was it outsourced to another studio (except the Tiny Tina DLC), but all the campaigns could be beat within a couple of hours. The only reason I wasn't completely irate was the Mr. Torgue campaign, just because Mr. Torgue is the best character ever. A textbook example of DLC done wrong is the Forza Motorsport series. Forza 4 had something like 400 cars, right from day one. When the Xbox One debuted and Forza 5 debuted, it had something like 200 cars and you had to buy the rest as DLC. That's shitty. You get half the game, but still get charged the full-game price. Speaking of things developers and studios are starting to do that really brings my piss to a boil is store-specific day one rewards. I know for Batman: Arkham Knight, if you bought the game from Gamestop or Wal-mart, you got the Harley Quinn missions. If you bought from Target, you got the Red Hood story missions. I'm also thinking the Scarecrow missions were specific to a certain store. And these missions were available after a certain time window for all users (something like six months). Don't release the game and withhold missions from me because I happened to buy a game from Wal-Mart instead of Target!
I hate the last one it's pretty shitty of game companies to do that. I have to wonder if the actual stuff is already inside the game just waiting for some kind of unlock activation. It's pretty scummy that they can get away with that. Surprised modders haven't found these kind of back doors.
DLC that's already installed but just needs unlocking is nice for people with capped connections, assuming the DLC is already on the disc or whatever. Launch DLC is dumb but if you just wait for the GOTY (and wait for that to be on sale) then you'll get it for cheap. Honestly, adjusting for inflation, games have never been as cheap as they are now, even accounting for DLC. Consider what you get for your $60-80 nowadays vs. what a typical $80 game got you in 1990 (note: that's $145 in 2016 money.) There are some shitty business practices, no doubt, but there's nothing so great I can't wait a year or two to play it.
The only way I ever had fun at video games was at an arcade--and in those games where you sit in an enclosed cockpit deal that shut most--but not all of the world out. Console home games just never gave me that feel. It has to be more than a screen. I was watching C-SPAN last night--about a Gemini flight--and the old rocker switches all but had me salivating.