For some of us launch day isn't the thing we're looking forward to.
Sure we want to play the new awesome game but somewhere in the back of our heads we know we shouldn't purchase it day one. It's gonna set you back a lot of money and, here's the real kicker, a lot of titles nowadays get a shitload of downloadable content. Which is a good thing, especially with season passes cutting some of those prices down, but on the other hand I see more and more people rather waiting than buying. What gives?
Gold editions, Game of the Year editions and all that sorta thing. You could buy that cool new experience for 60 bucks fresh. Have a good old time. But when the DLC hits you're paying top dollar again. While, you know, you could just wait? Why spend full price + season pass right now when you could get a bundled edition before the year is done?
Some games, like Halo, Zelda or Mass Effect in my case, are so beloved that we spend the money willingly to live the experience. In terms of multiplayer games its often best to jump in at launch too if you want to find regular matches and not only face the dedicated fans that keep playing for years despite new sequels being released.
The thing here is desire. Do you want this game now? Do you need it? Probably not but there's always a few games you just want to play so badly it hurts. The trick is to make a difference between beloved franchises and flavor of the month kind of deals.
I kind of like the thought that there's a amazing load of games out there that I missed, ranging from smaller titles such as Shadow Complex, Limbo, Fez or Mark of the Ninja to whole games such as King's Bounty, Vanquish or every Assassin's Creed after the second. It's kind of good to know I can get such titles, complete and with bonus content, for less than fullprice.
Especially when I find some content feels forcibly removed to be DLC or that some games just feel better after a few patches.
When I got gifted The Witcher 2 (I will never forget it, you know who you are) I read up on what I missed and the amount of free stuff added, as well as bug fixes, made me enjoy the game a whole lot more. Over time some dedicated studios will often add and tweak a lot of stuff to their games. I was surprised to see how much of Mass Effect 3's multiplayer has changed from launch. It was now offering a vast choice of classes, weapons, maps (and they literally up and added new paths to that ice base level, awesome!) or stuff like challenges which gave players something more to work towards.
Are we going to see a trend in long term support like EA seems to be doing for ME3's multiplayer or CD Projekt's amazing work with The Witcher 2? I sure hope so personally because even if I had all the money in the world the way things seem to be taken apart and sold in bite sizes only serves to irritate me. I want full packages, I want complete games and I want the old school expansions back.
Morning Musings: Base experience now or gold edition later?
For some of us launch day isn't the thing we're looking forward to.
Sure we want to play the new awesome game but somewhere in the back of our heads we know we shouldn't purchase it day one. It's gonna set you back a lot of money and, here's the real kicker, a lot of titles nowadays get a shitload of downloadable content. Which is a good thing, especially with season passes cutting some of those prices down, but on the other hand I see more and more people rather waiting than buying. What gives?
Gold editions, Game of the Year editions and all that sorta thing. You could buy that cool new experience for 60 bucks fresh. Have a good old time. But when the DLC hits you're paying top dollar again. While, you know, you could just wait? Why spend full price + season pass right now when you could get a bundled edition before the year is done?
Some games, like Halo, Zelda or Mass Effect in my case, are so beloved that we spend the money willingly to live the experience. In terms of multiplayer games its often best to jump in at launch too if you want to find regular matches and not only face the dedicated fans that keep playing for years despite new sequels being released.
The thing here is desire. Do you want this game now? Do you need it? Probably not but there's always a few games you just want to play so badly it hurts. The trick is to make a difference between beloved franchises and flavor of the month kind of deals.
I kind of like the thought that there's a amazing load of games out there that I missed, ranging from smaller titles such as Shadow Complex, Limbo, Fez or Mark of the Ninja to whole games such as King's Bounty, Vanquish or every Assassin's Creed after the second. It's kind of good to know I can get such titles, complete and with bonus content, for less than fullprice.
Especially when I find some content feels forcibly removed to be DLC or that some games just feel better after a few patches.
When I got gifted The Witcher 2 (I will never forget it, you know who you are) I read up on what I missed and the amount of free stuff added, as well as bug fixes, made me enjoy the game a whole lot more. Over time some dedicated studios will often add and tweak a lot of stuff to their games. I was surprised to see how much of Mass Effect 3's multiplayer has changed from launch. It was now offering a vast choice of classes, weapons, maps (and they literally up and added new paths to that ice base level, awesome!) or stuff like challenges which gave players something more to work towards.
Are we going to see a trend in long term support like EA seems to be doing for ME3's multiplayer or CD Projekt's amazing work with The Witcher 2? I sure hope so personally because even if I had all the money in the world the way things seem to be taken apart and sold in bite sizes only serves to irritate me. I want full packages, I want complete games and I want the old school expansions back.
I just moved in to a new apartment in October right when all of the new AAA games starting being released. So I haven't bought a game in a while, or even played any since I've been so busy moving in and finding a new job. One side of me is going crazy seeing all of the games coming out that I haven't gotten a chance to play yet, but the other side of me really doesn't mind because I know that by the time I do get around to playing games again they will all be way cheaper than they are now. I usually buy games for full price right when they come out just because I don't have the self control to wait, so maybe my current situation is a good thing since I'll end up saving some money when I finally start playing games again after the new year.
@TekZero said:
Gold/GOTY edition later. I'm still waiting for Skyrim to get a dlc bundle. So I can figure out what that arrow to the knee business is all about.
You have been warned.
Yeah that's true. A not often talked about downside to all this DLC.
I find myself doing that more and more. And it's not only that DLC that has gameplay I expect for the 60 bucks I already paid might be coming, too often I've gotten burned by games being busted out of the box and needing an immediate patch.
I definitely used to be a launch day guy. Up through Final Fantasy X I bought every one of them on launch day, same with Zelda through Wind Waker. But as more of my friends stopped gaming, well there's less social forcing me to jump o them. Dragon's Dogma was the most recent game I just felt I had to get it right away.
I'm with ya, I miss the old school expansions. But I don't think that's the way the world is going. League of Legends I really believe is the business model of the future. But hopefully we'll still have games like Me3 or Starcraft II where they are supported well after launch with no out of pocket for the players. It seems like every time I log in Starcraft II there's new subtle tweaks. Whether it be menu GUIor balance stuff, it's just nice to play a game like that, that is so maintained.
p.s. Limbo is freakin' Rad! I hope you get to play it! The black and white aesthetic feel to that game is incredible and hard to describe until you see it for yourself. You can blast through it in 4-5 hours easy.
@Slag said:
You can blast through it in 4-5 hours easy.
Really? Easy? It's not terribly hard, but it's not terribly forgiving, either.
@Video_Game_King said:
@Slag said:
You can blast through it in 4-5 hours easy.
Really? Easy? It's not terribly hard, but it's not terribly forgiving, either.
easy in the sense that you can finish the game in that time window easily if you want to. Not that the challenges in the game are necessarily easy themselves.
fwiw it took me about 6, but I was also taking my time since I was purposefully triggering death animations. Those things have an almost hypnotic variability to them.
@Slag:
Apparently, it took me 3 hours to get through it. I must have been hauling some major ass.
I became pretty hesitant over buying DLC after the poor choice that was the Saints Row Season Pass. Now, I just consider whether it would actually make the content better enough that it's worth forking out the extra.
It's especially hard on consoles for me, since I don't know exactly what MS Points convert to in AUD$. So your $15 DLC might be $22 for me, I still haven't worked out its metric. That shit ain't worth the risk much of the time.
EDIT: Also, since no one's said it: good morning.
@Slag:
That's not even my best time on a game, though. I got the exact same time on Bastion. I think I skipped one of the weapons because I didn't give a fuck.
@ComradeKhan: It might be a good start to a new business plan, so to speak! Having a small income also limits you a whole lot but in turns teaches you to appreciate other things!
@TekZero: Right you are when it comes to Bethesda's rpgs. Those get a shit ton of stuff, or special editions like 3 years later.
@Slag: I understand there's money that needs to be earned back but they could be a little more subtle about it! That's exactly what I love tho, the subtle tweaks and all that! Coming back to Diablo has been a blast! So many things feel better now, but it's a bit sad they lost so many players because they shipped with a lot of problems (which are often personal, I loved the game but just found a lack of content, other's had other problems).
@RPGee: Good morning! I agree with the MS points, they force you to buy more than you need and often there's little you actually want besides season pass or big DLC's. Let me pay with IDEAL or something, Steam is having the right idea with this!
For games like Mass Effect and Bethesda RPGs I like to wait not because of the price, but because I like to have that content in my first playthrough. Finishing a game and then returning months later to load up a mid-game save to experience that content is a lot less fun for me. I lose all of the context that you have when playing through a game's story.
CD Project's support of The Witcher 2 post-launch should be the example against which all other developer should be held. Barring a few early hiccups (do I really need to download the entire game again instead of just the patch?), the support for that game has been great. Those guys obviously care a ton about the game they created.
@TaliciaDragonsong said:
@Slag ....That's exactly what I love tho, the subtle tweaks and all that! Coming back to Diablo has been a blast! So many things feel better now, but it's a bit sad they lost so many players because they shipped with a lot of problems (which are often personal, I loved the game but just found a lack of content, other's had other problems).
Well that's good to hear! And Blizzard deserves a lot credit for doing that. Too many wouldn't.
you know that's the kind of thing, that doesn't get a lot a press even from GiantBomb. Most game sites have written Diablo III off as dead or more accurately as non-newsworthy.
Jeff has alluded to several times that they will be rethinking how they do reviews on here after the relaunch. I hope that changes like this get taken into account in the new review system. Games are fluid and their communities are fluid. If I want to buy a game several months post launch (which is usually how I do it these days) it would be nice to know if there are still a decent number of people playing it and what the online experience is like.
Because really Blizzard and EA deserve credit when they make it right and for maintaining their games. As a consumer I want to know that kind of thing.
Ugh the worst is buying a multiplayer game and then finding out no one plays. Or worse yet that the servers are gone. That's happened to me more than once.
Heck, you barely have to wait these days. I was still finishing up a couple of games and thinking about picking up Batman Arkham City when BAM the bloody GOTY came out. Took em something like six months.
I take a variety of things into mind when purchasing things. How much money do I actually have to spend? Do I want to support this developer as much as possible? Will this game sell bucket loads? Will it get a Complete/Ultimate/GOTY/Gold Edition? Will I actually WANT that content? Will it be $20 a year from now?
I bought Borderlands about a week before it dropped to $40 and I felt kinda burned by that. Similarly with Portal 2 and Mortal Kombat last year, if I had waited a few weeks after they came out, I could have taken advantage of TRU's temporary price cut. The flip side was that instead of buying all the DLC for Borderlands, I waited for the GOTY edition to get cheap and I haven't had much of a desire to actually play that content. I also have no desire to play the Gears 3 or Saints Row the Third DLC because the base experience was quite enough for me. Skyrim's Dawnguard and Hearthfire stuff doesn't strike me as very interesting either. Yet I've grabbed every bit of DLC for the Double Fine (sans Kinect) games I own and enjoyed them all quite a bit.
I also used to feel this way about DVDs. I liked getting the special collector's edition with all the extras until I realized I actually didn't watch about half the content on those things. Now its just whatever I can get the best deal on. Games work similarly at this point, though I still jump at the chance to play new games from my absolute favorite developers asap.
@Ravenlight: No studio is perfect but they come pretty damn close! I really like the free updates and all that, the whole Witcher 2 2.0 thing. Other studios would have made a special edition and sold that. They're just like here have fun! Which gained them a fanbase who loves them, wants to play Witcher 3 asap and they have good interest in other projects they might develop.
@Sinusoidal: That's when I got it. I wanted to play Batman pretty bad (was late with Asylum as well) but then suddenly the goty edition already comes out with all the DLC.
Sold!
@Slag: I hate EA. In my eyes they ruined a lot of franchises. But seeing them maintain Mass Effect 3 for nothing, adding so much stuff and in general reworking a lot of stuff just impresses the shit out of me. The game feels better than ever and it already felt great at launch, they managed to better the experience, for free, while not locking any content or making things harder on the player (which is often the case with free games). I was 100% sure they'd lock some of the Alien classes for cash because stuff like Drell Infiltrator (which isn't in yet btw, how weird), Krogan Vanguard (<3) and the Geth are all hot items people would love to play.
Which brings me to another thought that while some classes feel a bit cheap in their powers/animations (especially humans) there is something to be said for races like Vorcha and Volus being added. Playing a Vorcha last night and feeling quick and deadly but having half the endurance of a Batarian just felt right in how the Vorcha were portrayed in the games. It's not just a skin change! Oh and pulling an enemy over cover for execution, which is normally just a omni-blade or punch (Krogan!) to the face resulted in the Vorcha lashing out like a maniac at the victim with several claws to the face, which just felt perfect for the entire race.
@Zippedbinders: I've said this before but some DLC is just hit or miss. I loved Awakenings expansion for Dragon Age Origins, others hated it. If it's not part of the base experience with some games like Gears or Saints its hard to get back into the flow. Having a (good) story like in Mass Effect/Dragon Age just helps you back into it where a simple game that requires some focus to get back into (Saints, GTA, etc) is too barebones to just jump back into.
I loved buying every piece of DLC for Borderlands 1 but I fully understand if someone didn't like it. Sometimes you want to enhance your experience however, or you come back because you wanted some more Borderlands.
As far as Collector Editions go, yeah. There's good and bad ones in that scenario where some games offer you insane goodies, logs and other stuff (Halo Reach!) and others might just offer you a skin for multiplayer, a small artbook and a keychain. The Halo 4 LE was only 60 bucks for me so that's a bloody good deal for a game I wanted full price anyway, including the map pass and a whole lot of other stuff like Spartan Armor blueprints and a UNSC handbook. A package I would have paid 70 or 80 for perhaps. But thinking back to Mass Effect 2 or 3, games I got full price as well with collector editions, they offered stuff but often didn't justify the pricetag in my opinion.
But that's what it all comes down to right? Opinions and preferences.
@TaliciaDragonsong: Yeah actually when i think about it when it comes to EA and Bioware they are sort of cool with some of the dlc. I mean because of my obsession with DA:O i went ahead and pre-ordered Dragon Age 2 (something that i rarely do) and they rewarded those who pre ordered early with the exiled prince dlc for free, I realize this was a monetary thing for them by making sure people bought the game new etc. but that piece of content was fairly decent and the character was interesting enough. So this thing in addition to the wicked ME3 multiplayer dlc was awesome. I think incentivized dlc would be good or something better than season passes where you have to buy all of them, like buy 2 get 3rd half off. That way people could stay away from shittier dlc's like battle royales (Genki Bowl) and just pay for the ones they are interested in. But yeah dlc is of right now messed up.
Also I typically don't have the patience to wait for the ultimate editions of games (specifically Bioware games) but i am attempting to learn especially with Bethesda games where I want to wait for extra story content and for them to have patched the game (PS3 player here lol). So for example this year I was contemplating getting either the third Saints Row or the Read Dead Ultimate editions and I realized I just like the option. I have time to figure out if I want the attached dlc what the cost is between the two versions etc. So i'm on the wait and see side of the camp but i often can't wait myself. oh well.
I couldn't agree more. My time is limited and valuable, so there's no chance I can stay on top of things. It's great to purchase later and get extra content for less money. I love this trend.
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