Do You Have Any Unpopular Gaming Opinions?

[Segata]

Bethesda ruined DLC and what was once a joke is now the standard. Horse Armor DLC was once laughed at but now it's accepted and expected. It's pathetic. Mario Kart 8 DLC is great as it gave like 40% more game for 12 bucks. I think Witcher 3 added a whole new place to explore for free? Expansion packs are great. the idea of DLC is great. Sadly most the time the practice is horrible. Skin packs and 6 bucks for a costume in Persona 5. Pay $1.49 for extra healing items or materials in Ys VIII. So much bullshit and as demonstrated by Ys VIII it's no longer just an AAA game thing. Valkyria Revolution game quality aside added a bunch of stories and side missions as DLC but ALL of it is free. Metal Gear Rising had 2 expansion packs for free. Yakuza Kiwami added costumes in an update for free.That is fine. That is awesome and more should follow. I blame Bethesda for starting the trend. I'm not a fan of theirs, to begin with, but my dislike for their games does not play into my comments. Fuck Bethesda for starting this trend, fuck the industry for continuing it and fuck those who were suckers and gave them money.

[Kuruwin]

Metal Gear Rising DLC's werent originally free and europeans never got them for free because Rising was a PS+ game (they gave it to sell those dlc's)

But yeah. I'm not fan of DLC in general. Even the free ones are kinda annoying me because most of the time that content is probably cut from the game and it's presented as free DLC so that you would have that "yay, i'm getting something for free" (add them to the game as patch if you are genuienly giving something new free) It's annoying because the PS4 download list is shit and free DLC's just clutter the list.

I wouldn't mind DLC costumes if the prices were right but almost every damn developer is really greedy and demanding several euros for one or three costumes. If the costumes were like 50 cent each then i would buy them to spice the game up but i'm not paying larger sums for cosmetic dlc.

I've played several bigger expansion and i don't think i have ever been really satisfied by any of them. Usually the larger DLC's are more of the same and not top content that i'm expecting.

Usually i'm tired already with the game when i get to the point of being able to move to the DLC so more of the same doesn't really cut it.

[alienjesus]

Bethesda didn't start the trend anyway. PC games were getting cosmetic expansion packs years before. See: The ten million Sims expansion discs which just contained new furniture.

[PartridgeSenpai]

Do you mean in-game narrative as in flavor text in the rule books, story based off games between players, or video games? Because Warhammer and 40K have a ridiculous amount of lore if you seek it.

I'm aware of all of the lore around 40k & WH. It's just that there are very very few actual stories, plots, narratives built around those things that are presented around/with that lore in any medium. Therefore I'm totally okay with Blizzard's use of very similar themes and settings to tell very character-driven stories because that's a niche Games Workshop just isn't filling.

Bethesda didn't start the trend anyway. PC games were getting cosmetic expansion packs years before. See: The ten million Sims expansion discs which just contained new furniture.

Fun fact: Toejam & Earl 3 was the first game to have DLC!

[marurun]

I have zero problems with cosmetic/non-functional DLC. No problems whatsoever. I'm not going to buy it, but I don't care if others do. It doesn't bother me in the least. If someone cares enough about how their character looks in-game (outside of the default options) then that is their business and I don't fault publishers for looking at that for additional revenue.

[Sarge]

The key for me and DLC is whether it compromises the core experience or not. If it does, it's a non-starter for me, otherwise, whatevs. Cosmetic items are pointless for me anyway, but if someone cares enough to buy them, sure, why not? Cut out big portions of the experience and gate it behind an expansion pass or loot boxes? Not gonna be happy.

I do remember one game that I have where I bit the bullet, despite the game feeling incomplete without the DLC: Asura's Wrath. The whole game is enough of a spectacle to have made the purchase worthwhile, but it still isn't really very cool what Capcom did there.

[Segata]

I have zero problems with cosmetic/non-functional DLC. No problems whatsoever. I'm not going to buy it, but I don't care if others do. It doesn't bother me in the least. If someone cares enough about how their character looks in-game (outside of the default options) then that is their business and I don't fault publishers for looking at that for additional revenue.

Thing is a lot of this stuff was originally already in games before the BS DLC practices began. Then they took it out of the game and made you purchase it separately. That is some fucking bullshit. DLC isn't inherently bad but today's industry practices of it are.

[marurun]

Thing is a lot of this stuff was originally already in games before the BS DLC practices began. Then they took it out of the game and made you purchase it separately. That is some fucking bullshit. DLC isn't inherently bad but today's industry practices of it are.

Let's unpack this. First this idea that they took stuff out of the game and gated it behind a DLC paywall. How do we know that content would have been included otherwise? How do we know it was in their original vision of the game? Just because a past iteration of a series included something doesn't make a sequel beholden to including that content. Fighting games used to include all the characters, and when there was an update to the roster they would just update the entire game and release a new version: Street Fighter II, Street Fighter II'/Champion Edition, Street Fighter II'/Turbo: Hyper Fighting. In these cases there was no way for a home consumer to download an update, so you just bought the game again. In some ways, DLC is an improvement on that model.

But as to cosmetic DLC, which is specifically what my post referred to, modern art assets, both models and textures, are much higher in detail and more expensive for artists to make. It's not as easy or cost effective any longer to just make a ton of different costumes or skins and toss them into the game for the heck of it. You have to pay the artists who are doing that, and given that development costs have risen far faster than inflation while actual game prices have largely languished, it makes sense that tertiary content like skins and other cosmetic content (TF2 hats and whatnot) would be items that developers target to charge extra for.

Not all artists and programmers on a project are engaged for the entire length of a development cycle, and companies can maximize their investment in staff if they keep those staffers working on content that can generate a little additional revenue on the side.

But even though I'm not a big fan of DLC (I have far more problems with essential loot box content that's random draw), I haven't played a game on my PC yet that hasn't felt like a good core experience without it. As much heat as Bethesda took over horse armor in Oblivion, I didn't miss it. The core experience of Oblivion was not harmed for lack of it, and not really enhanced with it. Borderlands 2 had a lot of overpriced head models and character skins. I didn't buy any of them and I still played over 300 hours of that game. Does this mean problematic DLC doesn't exist? No, of course DLC is an imperfect practice, and there are some frustrating cases of it being done badly. But the truth is that even today it is rare, exceedingly so, that the presence or absence of DLC will make or break a game. And that is an indication that the core of game development is still in a similar place to where it has always been.

So, DLC has some troubling trends, but nobody is forcing anyone to buy DLC, and DLC has, in large part, not had a major impact on the playability or fun of most games. That means that there's a lot of energy and vitriol being expended about a practice that is still, in many ways, tangential to the core experience of playing a game. Doesn't mean we shouldn't talk about it, but we should keep it in perspective. This ain't the end of gaming, folks. Loot boxes as essential elements for progression are the end of gaming.

[Exhuminator]

I'm not a fan of Jim Sterling, but he released an interesting video recently:



The video goes into loot boxes, DLC, and other modern monetization factors.
While I don't agree with all of his opinions, he does make some interesting points at times.

[Segata]

Not a fan of sterling either but he still often nails it with the modern gaming industry..esp AAA bullshit. The thing I fully agreed with him on is the term "Cinematic" and his hatred of Cage. There we are in full agreement. Thing is he shit all over VanQuish and I can't forgive him for that.