Season Passes have tainted DLC

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D-Man123

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Edited By D-Man123

Have season passes tainted DLC? Well, for me I would say yes they have. I remember a time when getting DLC for a game would fill me with excitement. The idea of returning to a game world that I love and enjoyed playing with fresh new content was always a thrill. Now, whenever I hear the word of DLC I'm filled with trepidation and nervousness. Ever since developers and publishers found out they could make money by withholding content from games and charging for them later and people would pay for things upfront without even knowing what it is. It was at that moment when most good DLC started to go by the wayside.

There have been more big releases these days using season passes to make a quick buck. Items and missions that could have been unlockable content, now are used to lure fans they know will buy them into overpaying for them. Now, I understand gaming is a business and making games are expensive, but you could actually make good DLC worth money instead of silly costumes. Dead or Alive 5 has a season pass worth $70 for merely cosmetic costumes. Who started the trend of season passes you ask? Well, it started with L.A. Noire when they introduced it to the world. It was only ten dollars and half the price of what it would be if it was all bought separately. Ten dollars isn;t so bad but, now you usually see season passes run the price of 30 to 40 to even 50 dollars for content we don't even know what it is. EA's Star Wars Battlefront charged you 50 dollars for a season pass after paying already paying 60 dollars for the game. That is nuts and they aren't the only one doing it. Bethesda had a season pass for Fallout 4 and at first was 30 bucks, which is alright, but then they raised to 50 saying they are adding more than they thought to it. Well, what we got was two story DLCs, a bunch of workshop add-ons, and glorified side missions, I will admit robot building was pretty cool, it wasn't enough to justify the raise in price.

Maybe, a reason why DLC and season passes is the way are the way they are currently is because of the strict deadlines publishers give developers to make a game. Instead of having the correct amount of time to get all the games content out they have to cut it and make it DLC later. Whatever it may be I for one am tired of season passes. They are still good games with excellent DLC content, like Red Dead, GTA IV, and Borderlands 2 so maybe we have to be more selective with how we spend our money to stop the horrible season passes from happening. Thank you for reading and have an excellent day.

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SpaceInsomniac

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If this is an issue that you care about, and you like multiplayer shooters even a little, you should own a copy of Titanfall 2.

All maps, modes, weapons, and anything else that has an effect on actual gameplay is free. The community is not split in any way. So far, there has been one new map, and one new weapon. With the next DLC drop, players be getting 2 new maps for a specific new game mode, and a new 1 vs 1 Colosseum map, with overall DLC plans for the months to follow announced soon after. More maps from the original game have also been announced.

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D-Man123

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I've been hearing good things about Titanfall 2 and it's on my list of games to play when I get my own system again. I'm glad that the DLC has been good so far and everything affecting the gameplay being free is always a plus. Will check it out asap

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Sinusoidal

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DLC hasn't been tainted. It was tainted to begin with. Oblivion Horse Armor. HUrgh...

I don't think many developers are really withholding content. I think what we're seeing with DLC is developers taking more chances. Picture people brainstorming in a meeting. Someone throws out an idea that's a bit radical and the boss says "Maybe in the DLC." What happens is, we get some great ideas that probably should have been in the main game but the developers weren't willing to take a chance on, and we get some terrible ideas that should never have been implemented but someone was willing to take a chance on in the DLC.

Of course, there are the obvious cash grabs in the form of cosmetic crap or random pack DLC. As long as people throw their money at that stuff, developers will keep making it. At the same time though, developers like FromSoftware, Inc and CD PROJEKT RED are releasing fantastic DLC.

@spaceinsomniac: That's awesome of them. If I were into online shooters, I'd be playing it.

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liquiddragon

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#4  Edited By liquiddragon

Well, I think the same argument for not pre-ordering applies to the season passes as well. Just wait 'til you know what you're getting or at least there is more info out there for you to make a better decision. I don't think in the history of pre-order bonuses have there ever been anything worth that risk of a blind purchase and it's not like they stop selling season passes at some given date. Maybe complaining and yelling on forums and social media helps to some degree but like it's been said a million times, vote with your dollar.

That said, publishers/developers seem to be correcting course and shifting their game 'cause like you, people are tired of it and it's just not working like it use to. I mean Overwatch set the world on fire and their model is free characters, free maps and you can be sure people are taking notes. In terms of single-player season passes, I just can't think of any reasons why someone can't wait and see.

As for why or how and for what reason a DLC content was created, let's not act like we know or make blanket statements. All it matters is: was it worth it?

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Barrock

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#5  Edited By Barrock

The Arkham Knight really soured me on the entire concept. $50 for very little actual playable content.

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D-Man123

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@liquiddragon: You're right blanket statements shouldn't be made about why DLC are created in the first place. We aren't in their meetings to hear first hand why they make them in the first place. I know my opinion is towards the extreme when it comes to season passes and I do believe it is starting to dawn on developers/publishers less and less people are going to pay for DLC straight out the gate. At the end of the day the only way change is going to be made is to not buy it, but also if someone wants to buy season passes with there money we can't stop them as well.

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bigsocrates

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@sinusoidal: What exciting ideas are we seeing come out of season passes? Occasionally there will be a cool piece of DLC released (like the horror characters for Mortal Kombat X or Minerva's Den) but most of it comes down to maps and missions, and much of the cool stuff is actually coming out as separate small-sized games like Infamous First Light and Left Behind for the Last of Us (which launched as DLC but was turned into a standalone game) I'm not saying there's NO risky DLC, but it's definitely the exception and not the rule.

As for season passes and DLC in general...I am old enough to remember actual expansion packs, which used to be awesome and really extend the value of a game. DLC these days is generally pretty crappy by comparison, and a terrible value. For example baseline MK X cost $60 and came with 24 characters plus a story mode (and the cost of developing the engine, challenge towers, etc...) while the DLC cost more than $60 combined and only added 9 characters and no extras. This is par for the course. DLC offers less content for more money. It's a pretty crappy deal.

And even worse, while everyone says stuff gets "cut out" of games to create the DLC, I find that most games are balanced in terms of length and challenge so that the DLC detracts from the experience rather than adds to it. And it often comes out too late to be worth going back for. The best example I can think of is Sunset Overdrive. It had a $20 season pass that came with two relatively large expansions offering a few hours of play each. An acceptable value. I loved that game when it came out as the first singleplayer killer app for the Xbox One (Titanfall 1 was amazing too) and I played it to death, quickly buying the expansion pass....which I never got around to playing because I was done with the game after the time I put in, well before the expansions were released. I guess I may go back some day, but the game didn't need more added to it. What was on the disk was a lengthy, complete, experience.

I beat Uncharted 4 pretty soon after it came out and I bought the ultimate edition expecting to love the game, which I did. They recently released a co-op mode which I would have played if it came out with the game, but now it's like 8 months later and I am not compelled to go back. I think I'll also get the singleplayer stand alone thing when it releases in 2019 or whatever, and that will be cool, but at that point it will be like 4 years after the release of Uncharted 4 and I will have bought the world's longest pre-order.

Similarly DLC for multi-player games often splits the player base, and who knows if you will actually still be playing that game in 6 months.

Now I fully admit that I am part of the problem. I have bought a lot of season passes even though they are terrible. I have a completionist mentality when it comes to games and more money than sense. But I've also not bought games specifically because they have DLC (I probably won't get Injiustice 2 at launch for this reason) and have also waited for complete versions and big sales for the same reason. It feels crappy to buy a game and know you didn't get the best version or are missing the finale or whatever.

But even owning a ton of season passes I can name the ones that were worth it on two hands. Even good DLC is often badly integrated with the game (Mass Effect I AM LOOKING AT YOU!)

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ivdamke

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If this is an issue that you care about, and you like multiplayer shooters even a little, you should own a copy of Titanfall 2.

You're relentless I love it.

In answer to the OPs question I don't think so personally. I, as someone who generally spends too much time paying attention to the games industry generally find that I can tell what will be a worthwhile Season Pass and what won't. The Witcher 3's is a prime example of a quality Season Pass because they outlined what they intend it to cover, how much time you'll get out of it and exactly what type of content to expect as soon as the pass became available for purchase. The Dark Souls 2 pass is another example of this approach.

I can't say I share your love for DLC of old because to me up until the past year or two singular DLCs have amounted to no more than 45mins of shallow content. Content that doesn't add anything meaningful to the base game. Biowares DLC plan for example has been absolute garbage minus the one good DLC they release per game (but even those are still overpriced).

So it's hit and miss, and in the end you don't have to buy it until the content is out by which that time you'll be able to determine whether it's worth it or not.

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SpaceInsomniac

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#9  Edited By SpaceInsomniac

@ivdamke said:
@spaceinsomniac said:

If this is an issue that you care about, and you like multiplayer shooters even a little, you should own a copy of Titanfall 2.

You're relentless I love it.

I'm still playing and loving that game, although it'll be getting some competition in the near future with the new Mass Effect and its multiplayer. I played so darn much ME3 multiplayer.

And yes, I often find myself "promoting" games I enjoy. Speaking of which, Sleeping Dogs on PS4 can be picked up on the current US PSN flash sale for less than five dollars.

If value is an issue that you care about, and you like GTA style games even a little, you should own a copy of Sleeping Dogs.

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Teddie

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Depends on the developer entirely. Arkham Knight was awful, an example of quantity over quality in an attempt to justify a high price. Witcher 3 was fantastic, and all the little bells and whistles like costumes and extra monster hunts were free instead of used as another bullet point on the season pass content list (again, unlike Arkham Knight). The developers that are cutting content out of the game to sell to you later were going to do that regardless of season passes.

The good thing about them I guess is it leaves a way to get everything at once, occasionally at a big discount, some time after everything's released. That's infinitely better than what you have to go through if you want any Mass Effect DLC on PC.

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#11  Edited By Slag

I don't have a problem with Season Passes. Like others have said many are great values, allow devs to take some creative risks or basically act as expansion packs. They also allow games to stay at 60 bucks, which is crazy cheap compared to what they should be if they were adjusted for inflation.

What I do have a big problem with is the complete lack of standards around Season Passes. Platforms like Steam, PSN etc should mandate that publishers be absolutely explicit about what the season pass gets you (including a rough hour count if applicable) before they accept any pre-orders.

case in point, Batman Arkham Knight's season pass might be the greatest ripoff in games history.

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OurSin_360

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I hardly ever buy dlc, if the content isn't in the game already then it's probably not worth it. I would never buy a season pass at full price, half the games i own i don't beat anyway then adding on other shit i won't play doesn't sound like a good idea. I have been looking for the witcher stuff to go on sale, although i still haven't beaten the main game. I am also looking forward to the grim dawn expansion, otherwise I just leave all that stuff alone and if a game seems to rely heavy on dlc then i skip it all together.

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@slag: I've never thought about how developers can be allowed greater creativity when it comes to games through the means of DLC. As with everything in life there are positives and negatives and this is no different. Lately I've seen more bad season passes and DLC than good. It could be me focusing on the negative instead of the positive in this situation also which can be something I work on. I think we can all say that Arkham Knight season pass was a rip-off and shines a poor light on Rocksteady and company.

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isomeri

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@d-man123: I kind of think that we're not seeing as many season passes anymore. Especially when it comes to multiplayer games, maps and missions are usually free updates and skins or characters are the only things you need to pay for.

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D-Man123

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#15  Edited By D-Man123

@spaceinsomniac said:
@ivdamke said:
@spaceinsomniac said:

If this is an issue that you care about, and you like multiplayer shooters even a little, you should own a copy of Titanfall 2.

You're relentless I love it.

If value is an issue that you care about, and you like GTA style games even a little, you should own a copy of Sleeping Dogs.

I have played Sleeping Dogs and I love it very much so. If I had money at the moment I would snatch it up, but alas I do not :(

@isomeri: I agree with you the volume of season passes have gone down as of late and there will always be bad DLC out there to avoid. I feel I'm the only one who sorta liked the horse armor in oblivion. I know it's completely stupid, but the fact me and my horse could have matching armor kinda made me happy. It made my character stand out and feel all the more special. It's still was completely stupid I will give you that.

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SpaceInsomniac

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#16  Edited By SpaceInsomniac

@d-man123 said:
@spaceinsomniac said:
@ivdamke said:
@spaceinsomniac said:

If this is an issue that you care about, and you like multiplayer shooters even a little, you should own a copy of Titanfall 2.

You're relentless I love it.

If value is an issue that you care about, and you like GTA style games even a little, you should own a copy of Sleeping Dogs.

I have played Sleeping Dogs and I love it very much so. If I had money at the moment I would snatch it up, but alas I do not :(.

If it makes you feel any better, the PS4 version is a pretty bad port. It's not 60fps, and it basically just looks like a 1080p version of the original. Well worth the price if you never played it, but not a huge loss if you have played it before.

More to the topic of this thread, the DLC that is included isn't that special either. It's nice to get it with the game itself, but it isn't very long. The 70s Kung-Fu movie DLC was probably best, but you can finish it very quickly.

Seems to be the way most DLC goes. You would think the logic would be "they already spent loads of time and effort making the game run and selling it for 60 dollars, so if they charge 20 for the DLC, they should easily be able to make that about a third the length of the full game. Instead, no, you get about another hour or two of gameplay, and sometimes not even that.

Thankfully, there are exceptions to the rule, such as the previously mentioned Witcher 3 and Borderlands 2.

@slag said:

case in point, Batman Arkham Knight's season pass might be the greatest ripoff in games history.

It's funny you should say that, because I recently played The Return to Arkham collection on PS4, and was able to play the DLC for the first two Rocksteady Batman games for the first time. Yeah. Anyone who bought that Arkham Night season pass after the way Rocksteady handled the DLC for the first two games should have known what they were going to get out of it.

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The pushing that a 'standard' video game is something lesser, something incomplete has been bothering me a long time. Photoshopped for emphasis

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SpaceInsomniac

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#18  Edited By SpaceInsomniac

@funkydupe said:

The pushing that a 'standard' video game is something lesser, something incomplete has been bothering me a long time. Photoshopped for emphasis

No Caption Provided

Does this have the opposite effect for anyone else? Many times I see this crap and think, screw this, I'll just buy the game after it's been out a month or two.

Things like this actively make me not want to buy games at launch. 30 day "champion status" for a SEASON pass. This ISN'T a free to play game, and crap like that shouldn't be anywhere near it. It also sounds like an awfully short season. They're going to have to work hard to get all that DLC out in the same month.

Ugh.

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gunflame88

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DLC has always been by and large a waste of money. But I guess people nowadays would rather have overpriced cosmetic fluff, some guns and a couple of extraneous side missions instead of full-fledged campaign expansions like in the olden days. Seriously, everyone laughed at horse armor DLC, and yet everyone continues buying it. I don't understand.

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ivdamke

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#20  Edited By ivdamke

@spaceinsomniac: @funkydupe:

I crossed out everything I couldn't give two shits about.

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None of any of that shit is worthwhile. It's all superfluous garbage aside from the 6 All-New Warriors. For the warriors my stance is "I'll play this game, but will I want to play it for as long as it takes for all those 6 All-New warriors takes to develop?" If I'm still playing it when all of those have been released then I'll probably be comfortable buying that season pass at that point assuming it's the usual Season Pass price.

As it stands nothing there comes even close to enticing me to buy a season pass so what they're going for totally falls flat. This chart basically tells me that the base game is best value. The more people that look at it this way the less you'll see this marketing tactic used.

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Cameron

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DLC has always been terrible, at least 99% of it anyway. There are a few good examples of DLC, but they are almost always what would have been called expansions a decade ago. The Witcher 3, Pillars of Eternity, The Last of Us, and Read Dead Redemption are the only games I can think of with good DLC that felt worth the price. Even Pillars of Eternity's DLC wasn't that great, but it's head and shoulders above most of the junk that comes out.

Most season passes and the DLC they contain are just absurdly overpriced, like several people have already mentioned. My strategy has been to only buy season passes when they are 50%+ off. At that point, the content is usually all out so you know what you're getting, and the price is more in line with the value of the content.

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OurSin_360

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wow man, is this real? I mean dude, it's not even an established franchise and you want extra money for all the characters? I mean wow, at least establish a player base before you try and milk them dry lmao. smh, was looking forward to this game too. :-(

The pushing that a 'standard' video game is something lesser, something incomplete has been bothering me a long time. Photoshopped for emphasis

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@cameron said:

DLC has always been terrible, at least 99% of it anyway. There are a few good examples of DLC, but they are almost always what would have been called expansions a decade ago. The Witcher 3, Pillars of Eternity, The Last of Us, and Read Dead Redemption are the only games I can think of with good DLC that felt worth the price. Even Pillars of Eternity's DLC wasn't that great, but it's head and shoulders above most of the junk that comes out.

Most season passes and the DLC they contain are just absurdly overpriced, like several people have already mentioned. My strategy has been to only buy season passes when they are 50%+ off. At that point, the content is usually all out so you know what you're getting, and the price is more in line with the value of the content.

They are only overpriced if you purchase them separately. A lot of time the bundled items (gold editions, super deluxe, collector's editions) come in cheaper. They are also significantly cheaper if you purchase through Amazon Prime or Best Buy Gamers Unlocked. Take the For Honor Gold edition for example. $99.99 retail but if purchased with Gamers Unlocked is $79.99. So for 20 bucks more than the original cost of the game without any discounts I can get just about everything the game has to offer. That's a steal for me and worth the price of investment. Some people know that they want stuff no matter the quality and if i can get that stuff at a discount from the get go I'm gonna do it.

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#24  Edited By ArtisanBreads

I pretty much agree with @cameron on the DLC. For me The WItcher franchise has been handled perfectly. Those guys are awesome so I get not everyone can do it like them but the value and improvements in their games is huge compared to others.

I have never seen the value and so skipped out on DLC on all the Bioware games, for example. Fallout as well. I think paying for a season pass ahead of time is crazy to do.

Splitting things up in multiplayer games with map packs should go at this point.

I wonder if games shouldn't just go up in price. I wouldn't mind games being more expensive if they wouldn't feel diced up like this and stuff was sure to be added over time. At some point maybe that sounds the same as a Season Pass, but all I can say is I would pay more for The Witcher games I have bought.

For me, I would say a key thing developers should learn is less is more. Don't make 5 DLC packs for Fallout, just make 1 or 2. Charge more but make it add quite a bit.

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Cameron

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@zirilius: I still don't think those are a good deal unless the content is good, which you can't know ahead of time. The season pass for Arkham Knight would have been a bad deal if it was $20, because the content was junk. I guess I don't ever just want stuff, even if it's bad. There's too much good stuff to play.

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I am wary of games that include a lot of little stupid shit in their season passes or DLC 'plans'. When I see a bunch of outfits, collectibles, accessories, or other digital trash, it really makes me look and question the content of the base game and future, meaningful DLC. Sometimes it turns out to be a case where the base game is great, and publishers probably couldn't find anything else meaningful to put behind a paywall like in Dead Rising 2. Other times, the base game is lacking and DLC feels like it should have been included in the game from the start.

I don't really buy DLC anymore unless I really like the base game, and I have done extensive research on what the DLC is. The only exception is when DLC is included in "Game of the Year" editions - I'll buy the whole package at that point if I really want the base game. Even then, I do my research, though.

There are companies that have consistently offered good content in their DLC packs though (Netherealm, CD Projekt Red, and Bioware). Interestingly enough, those people make some of my favorite games. I also am a big fan of Blizzard's continued support for their games (WoW, Diablo, Hearthstone, and Overwatch), because usually it's free and/or substantial.

It's difficult to look at DLC in a vacuum though, because the base game has to be good/offer a fair amount of content for me to care at all.