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AppleQueso wrote:There's so much wrong with this train of thought.

This isn't comparable to a full-length sequel at all. It's more like buying a book and finding out you have to pay for the last two chapters separately.

Perhaps, but you could also consider the game(s) in question too. XIII had an "end"...but then they changed it for XIII-2 to make sense, which in turn is a game about time travel and alternate futures/etc. So, the game could well have an "end" that isn't really the end because there's a different "true" ending, and so on.

It is kind dumb, but really not that out of place for the genre.

AppleQueso wrote:There's so much wrong with this train of thought.

This isn't comparable to a full-length sequel at all. It's more like buying a book and finding out you have to pay for the last two chapters separately.

You are overlooking that the details really matter. The first important thing is whether they tried to hide that the story wasn't concluded. Obviously that is not the case at all with Half-Life 2 episodic content, as it wasn't with Sonic 4. So the buyer should be informed before buying that particular game / book.

Writers are not forced to conclude their stories! Comics actually are rather typical in that they never finish their story and as far as I know there are frequent 2-parters where you buy a comic and need to buy the next one to get the rest of the story.

The other very important issue is pricing and whether it is good value. Imagine they sell 8 chapters of a book for 8 USD and the last 2 chapters separately for 2 USD. There is another book of the same length with 10 chapters selling for 10 USD and they are both the same quality. The book selling separately is giving the consumer more choice, not less, so how would THAT particular case be bad for the consumer?

Alternatively, consider that the original is 10 chapters worth, selling for 10 USD, the story is really good but incomplete. And then there is another 10 chapters worth for 10 USD, the story is left a bit open ended. And then they sell some self-contained packs of 2 chapters for 2 USD each, all at the same sort of quality. What is wrong with that?

Diablo 2 went out. They released LoD later, not at usual full price, but it included the last chapter of the story. It also included 2 new playable classes to complete the original 5, introduced some new class-specific items and such. They gave you more than 1/5th more game with the last chapter (quite a big chapter compared to chapter 4, for example). And there is the 2/7 worth of characters. It is not easy to quantify but I think most people would agree that the price they charged for LoD was quite fair given the content.

I am not saying that the DLC they will provide will be worth their asking price, I am saying that it is not impossible that it WILL be worth their asking price and if it is worth it, then there is nothing wrong with this practice.

Ivo.

I also think it is rather unlikely that anyone will need to pay to see ending of this game. You will need to pay to "play" the ending. If you really just care about the story I'm frankly pretty sure there will be FAQs and even youtube videos covering it (at the very least of whatever ending cutscenes).

So I really don't think this is a case where the developers / publishers of the game went "I had a great idea to screw our customers! We will withhold our extremely engrossing story! The ONLY way they will know how it ends is by paying for our episodic content! *Evil laughter*"

From comments I read the story is actually pretty bad even by the lower standards games tend to have...

Ivo.

The difference being that expansions used to be newly developed content that came at least 9 months after the release of the original game. They had time to see what worked and what didn't, to polish stuff, add new meaningful stuff and it also gave the game a longer shelf life.

DLC can come out on weeks, or even day one after the game is released, usually is just cut content from the game so it doesn't really add anything new, and it's a clear tactic to milk more money from the same consumer

THERE ARE exceptions of course, but those exceptions don't share any of the characteristics of the DLC I mentioned above. They don't come out just weeks after the game, they are not just cut content, but new content, and they improve upon the original game


Media Molecule, Rockstar, Sega (Valkyria Chronicles), Valve (even though it's DLC is free) did it right. Activision (who loves reselling the same maps from the previous games apparently and has the audacity to charge for them) is as always a prime example of doing it wrong.

And since this game is much shorter than a normal FF title apparently (something which I don't mind, but only if it was made shorter so it was more substantial....you know the less being more thing), something tells me the DLC will be just cut content.

Wow.

Another brilliant idea to get the average joe to pay again and again. Sure it wasn't an MMO?

I'll wait for the GOTY/Gold/Complete edition. And if it doesn't come? I won't ever buy it.

I don't have a problem with a continuous story distributed across 2 games, but I do have a problem with DLC-exclusive story. Can't resell it...and what happens when my PS3 dies again and PSN eventually goes offline? Part of the game will be lost forever unless it's pirated somewhere.

I also would like to get the actual finished game...

Valkyrie-Favor wrote:I don't have a problem with a continuous story distributed across 2 games, but I do have a problem with DLC-exclusive story. Can't resell it...and what happens when my PS3 dies again and PSN eventually goes offline? Part of the game will be lost forever unless it's pirated somewhere.

The average consumer doesn't think that far ahead anymore. In 5 years our consoles will be too "old" and "obsolete" to play.

Actually, I agree with Ivo. I know I'm not gonna be paying full price, but I'm definitely gonna be buying this eventually. And as long as the content is of high quality then I'll most likely buy it.

ZeroAX wrote:And since this game is much shorter than a normal FF title apparently (something which I don't mind, but only if it was made shorter so it was more substantial....you know the less being more thing), something tells me the DLC will be just cut content.

How so? Every article and review I've read have said it was just as long or longer than FF13. And that was 50 hours.