05-18-2017, 02:52 PM
DLC as we know is a common practice in the industry these days, but some DLC is better than others and some DLC costs more than the base game, for less content. Take a look at the soon releasing Fire Emblem Echoes: Shadows of Valentia, priced at 40 dollars. There is a season pass for this game which has varying prices on what's in it if you buy it piece by piece. The Season Pass, costs 45 dollars, buying things on their own costs 52 dollar. The content in the season pass will include at least 3 dungeons and 4 new maps, as well as a prologue to the entire game, and something else that has yet to be announced. Here's the problem though, even though that sounds like a decent amount of content when I say it that way, but some of this content, people aren't going to care about. For example, one of these pieces of DLC that costs 10 dollars, has some extra hard maps, not everyone is going to want that challenge. Now, you think yourself, that's fine, let them just buy the rest of the DLC, but even if they do that, they are still going to end up spending 42 dollars. which is still two dollars more than the base game, and all for content that's clearly not going to be as much as the game's base content.
There's also the fact that the release dates of this content are really shady. For example, the first bit of DLC launches tomorrow with the game for 8 dollars, bringing up the total price of the game should you get just that DLC, up to 48 dollars, before Tax comes into play for the game itself which brings it up over 50, add to that if you bought the two Amiibo which cost 25 dollars together, which is the only way to get either one, and your total price for the base game and one bit of DLC, which promises easier money, items and EXP, perfect for the start of the game, comes up to over 75 dollars. Even without tax, assuming you bought the season pass and the Amiibo, to play the game and all it's content, because Alm and Celica each unlock a dungeon when tapped on the 3DS, and you are spending 107 dollars for all the content, and 112 dollars if you don't buy the DLC. Destiny, when it finished all it's year one content, cost 7 dollars less than that without the season pass, 17 if you did buy the pass, and of course, they may have had that 40 dollar DLC which you had to buy to continue playing after year one content concluded, but they also sold the entire thing for a base price of 60 dollars and had versions of DLC of year 2 that were available that cost only a little bit more. But to play everything in Fire Embelm Echoes: Shadows of Valenita, which is by the way, a remake of the second game in the franchise called Fire Emblem Gaiden, meaning it's literally 25 years old, costs over 100 dollars, and that's just in USD, some places around the world, it might cost more and it wouldn't surprise me. Also there's the fact that most of this DLC, will be out by Month's end. The only things coming out for DLC that don't release this month, are the prequel DLC, which launches on June 1st anyways, and the DLC with no name or release date.
I don't get what the point of doing DLC like this is, especially when it's Nintendo doing it, the same Nintendo that by the way, has two games coming to the Switch that will have free content updates in ARMS and Splatoon 2 a trend carried over from the original Splatoon. Look at the DLC for even for Bayonetta 2. It offered many different costumes that actually changed the gameplay style, and released with the first game ported for the Wii U and it's controllers all at the base price, because none of the costumes cost anything. With that in mind, even if the game's main story had only been about 5 hours, each costume would have given you a reason to play it over again, just to see what changes. The Fire Emblem DLC, doesn't do that. Instead it costs more, and gives less, and that wasn't really all that different with Fates or Awakening, in fact this DLC is kind of the same idea. Sure Fates had that special edition where you could get everything at launch for 100 dollars but at the same time, that didn't include DLC maps or missions or anything of the sort. Problem was, there wasn't enough of those to begin and they sold out right on the first day, and never came back, as with the special edition for this game. So the model actually improved with Fates a bit because there was a lot of content, and got horrifically worse with this one? That makes no sense.
This is just one example of bad DLC practices that I thought about as it's coming up so soon, but let's talk about this kind of thing, I think it's important.
There's also the fact that the release dates of this content are really shady. For example, the first bit of DLC launches tomorrow with the game for 8 dollars, bringing up the total price of the game should you get just that DLC, up to 48 dollars, before Tax comes into play for the game itself which brings it up over 50, add to that if you bought the two Amiibo which cost 25 dollars together, which is the only way to get either one, and your total price for the base game and one bit of DLC, which promises easier money, items and EXP, perfect for the start of the game, comes up to over 75 dollars. Even without tax, assuming you bought the season pass and the Amiibo, to play the game and all it's content, because Alm and Celica each unlock a dungeon when tapped on the 3DS, and you are spending 107 dollars for all the content, and 112 dollars if you don't buy the DLC. Destiny, when it finished all it's year one content, cost 7 dollars less than that without the season pass, 17 if you did buy the pass, and of course, they may have had that 40 dollar DLC which you had to buy to continue playing after year one content concluded, but they also sold the entire thing for a base price of 60 dollars and had versions of DLC of year 2 that were available that cost only a little bit more. But to play everything in Fire Embelm Echoes: Shadows of Valenita, which is by the way, a remake of the second game in the franchise called Fire Emblem Gaiden, meaning it's literally 25 years old, costs over 100 dollars, and that's just in USD, some places around the world, it might cost more and it wouldn't surprise me. Also there's the fact that most of this DLC, will be out by Month's end. The only things coming out for DLC that don't release this month, are the prequel DLC, which launches on June 1st anyways, and the DLC with no name or release date.
I don't get what the point of doing DLC like this is, especially when it's Nintendo doing it, the same Nintendo that by the way, has two games coming to the Switch that will have free content updates in ARMS and Splatoon 2 a trend carried over from the original Splatoon. Look at the DLC for even for Bayonetta 2. It offered many different costumes that actually changed the gameplay style, and released with the first game ported for the Wii U and it's controllers all at the base price, because none of the costumes cost anything. With that in mind, even if the game's main story had only been about 5 hours, each costume would have given you a reason to play it over again, just to see what changes. The Fire Emblem DLC, doesn't do that. Instead it costs more, and gives less, and that wasn't really all that different with Fates or Awakening, in fact this DLC is kind of the same idea. Sure Fates had that special edition where you could get everything at launch for 100 dollars but at the same time, that didn't include DLC maps or missions or anything of the sort. Problem was, there wasn't enough of those to begin and they sold out right on the first day, and never came back, as with the special edition for this game. So the model actually improved with Fates a bit because there was a lot of content, and got horrifically worse with this one? That makes no sense.
This is just one example of bad DLC practices that I thought about as it's coming up so soon, but let's talk about this kind of thing, I think it's important.