Have Your Say: DLC Culture, Has it Gone Too Far?

It's so simple , just dont' buy it. Let's say ther is 100 million gamers on this planet and all 100 million gamers say no to DLCs .You even don't have to go on the streets to protest against the DLCs , just dont buy it , it's so simple
 
DLCs in a healthy amount with fair price and great new content is great and I gladly pay for it. See AC. However, day one DLCs with basically 30% of the game being cut to sold separately is what hurts the industry. See Project CARS 2.

Usually (at least in theory) Day one dlc is developed after the game has gone gold. In this time the company can't work on it anymore because it is being published. Thus working on the dlc gives the company something to do to which they can have a return on. So its not exactly a bad thing, unless content is being cut.
 
Gran Turismo doesn't really seem like an aggressive model. All of the content excluding a few packs for GT5 were free and included with major game updates.

DLC - I think it can be both good and bad. Good in the sense it can help extend a game's lifespan and keep players interest in the game, but bad in the sense many times the content is over priced or has shoddy quality. It just really depends on how the developer wishes to tackle it.
 
I don't mind it so long as it's reasonably priced, well made and actually contributes to the gameplay experience. But the game should really be able to stand on it's own two feet prior to any payed DLC injection. If it's requiring payed DLC in order to function, then it becomes a problem.

Assetto suffered from this in the early stages, but they've developed the game enough now to a point where it's a competent racing sim that can be used for more than just hotlapping, which is great :) I was against their DLC policy during the early stages as I felt more focus should have been placed on actually fleshing out the game rather than so much DLC, but that said Kunos do a very very good job with their DLC, so for me it's no issue in supporting them so long as the cars in the packs are actually ones I'm interested in driving.

I do think the developers need to be careful in how they deploy their DLC with regards to the health of the SimRacing community because if you wind up with a system like Assetto Corsa's whereby only those who own ALL of the DLC content present on a server can actually join it, then you'll end up fragmenting the community in a big way.
 
My friend does not buy all the DLC's because he does not like some cars in a pack. Why would he want to buy something that he would never race, Waste of money...
Because at least in ACs case, you're not only paying for the cars but also for the development of the game.
Yes, you get the new features for free (and sometimes they even through some free content in like the Mazda 787B or the group B Quattro), but nevertheless the development over 3 years has to be paid one way or another.

At least in AC's case the DLC are very cheap and they are what keeps development running.
That's also why I strongly disagree with what @protonv5 said.
In that case we'd look at the state of AC 1.3 + DP1 maybe and that's it.
I can ensure you that just about nobody would drive it anymore. It would be forgotten rotting in some shelf.
Actually not even that, some virtual shelf …
 
With the growing trend in the gaming industry to release DLC after DLC, has it now gone too far, and do you miss the old days of everything on a single disk?
I'm fine buying DLCs if it guarantees the development of the project for several years after the initial release.
 
Maybe this makes me a hypocrite, but my answer is "it depends".

I have much less tolerance for large, well funded devs who sell millions of copies doing it (Microsoft/Forza, looking in your direction).

I have much more tolerance for indie devs (Reiza, Kunos, etc) doing it, cuz I feel like I'm helping a product that the big devs wouldn't touch.

The one that really gets my goat though is the iRacing model - content I've paid for that I can't use because it's behind a paywall.

I just decided not to renew my sub because I dont have the free time I used to. So now I have $500 worth of content I cant use.lol
 
I don't mind them as long as they're good value like Assetto Corsa or Witcher 3, not like Forza. Also, devs should delay and make few big DLCs instead of many little ones. The one I hate most are pre-order bonuses and play2win like BattleFront2. They're even worse than DLCs.
 
I agree with many of the points already made. DLC is ok where it is fairly priced, directly relevant and adds to the hours of play value of the game. I also agree that DLC shouldn't create barriers between the community, being able to race against all other cars DLC or otherwise should be a minimum standard. The PCARS system where if the host has the car/track everyone can use it but not own it for that session seems good to me (overlooking many other issues with PCARS on consoles here of course).

Forza, yes expensive at £80-90ish at launch each time but I've had hundreds of hours of value from them. The Forza 6 Porsche and Nascar packs were both well worth £16. The Porsche pack with the story of Porsche through the decades is remarkable. The fact Forza also continuously update the online rivals type challenges and events also adds more value. If you like Horizon, the same is true of both the expansion packs there too, the Hot Wheels expansion is just pure car based excitement. Of course, if you don't like Forza you'll disagree. With Play Anywhere, Forza 7 just became even better value on PC and Xbox One, all the other games still require both the PC and console version to be purchased if you want to play on different platforms. For example we already play Horizon 3 against each other in the house on PC and one or more Xbox One's - and we are all using the same copy of the game and DLCs with Gold sharing. That adds quite a bit of value for us.

Assetto Corsa DLC has the same schizophrenia as the PC vs console versions. On PC the DLC makes sense and is cheap enough and comes with a good amount of single player special events / custom championships etc. I've had plenty of wow moments with AC on PC so have bought all the DLC. By contrast on the consoles the DLC pushing while the base game remains a broken shadow of the PC version has been infuriating. Fix the console game and make it match the PC version and the DLC would fly off the digital shelves.

The AMS Beta model also works well for me. iRacing I've tried and couldn't get on with it and the ongoing subscription model is a step too far for me for what the game offers. I don't like the Raceroom model either, that soon gets overly pricey for what it has been and is today.

I can't think of a direct racing game example but the Ghost Recon Narco Road expansion must be one of the worst examples of pointless DLC that has no place in the context of the game. A bunch of GTA V style mini games thrown into a gritty open world special ops game just makes no sense.

Forza 7 Ultimate is already ordered with a placeholder on my hard drive, I know I will get hours of joy from that game. PCARS2 is preordered on Steam but the base version only, after last time until I play the game for myself there is no way I'm risking buying DLC in advance.

Now what we really need is great DLC packs like the full B/WTCC grid and circuits, historic TCs and an annual full grid of Le Mans cars, I know, I know many barriers in the way to that but they'd be amazing expansions.
 
yes stop with this dlc crap, if you do that then the squeal game will be more exiting because you will have different cars to play with.

now days forza shits tons of dlc in every title and when the next game comes out everyone will be like "SAME CARS" "RECYCLING CARS".
 
well i think it hurts the mod community,and also because of lazy lobby does not help people to play together,also, add ons where there before dlc,and now the pig farme also ask you preorder(like they have no monney) see coddies,via steam or origin or what ever...
no wonder there is more in game investment than in hollywood,also the new script are difficult to find,so now you do tv, you pay a season pass
 
DLC that is part of the company's long term support of a game can be fine -they are the modern equivalent of game expansions.

The DLC that big companies sell, on the other hand, is usually a business strategy to raise the price of their games above the traditional $60 mark, just like collector's editions. By selling most of the game for $60 and another part of it for $20, you've effectively increased the average price of the game in an underhanded way with very little effort. What's even better is that you can use the excuse of resource allocation and certification processes to justify why that content absolutely couldn't have been included in the base game and (at least some) people will eat it up.

Forza is an exceptional case in that it does everything at once shamelessly: expensive basic editions, more expensive "deluxe" editions, even more expensive ""ultimate"" editions (which don't include all the content), season passes, DLCs and microtransactions. Comparing any other game to Forza is like comparing a pickpocketer to a banker.
 
DLCs in a healthy amount with fair price and great new content is great and I gladly pay for it. See AC. However, day one DLCs with basically 30% of the game being cut to sold separately is what hurts the industry. See Project CARS 2.

pCars 2 does it the normal way. ''Pre-Purchase now and get 17% off!!'' But in some weird way that 17% brings the price excatly back to normal price, what a coincidence.....

So im more against pre-purchese and those ''special pre-purchase contents'' that is made for the game, but then removed from the game so you only get it if you pre-purchase
 
Yeh, games that have day one dlc are the worse, should be included for free on release, and game developers that deliberately hold back dlc, even thou its already been developed for game, or should be a feature in game anyway, then a month later release it as a dlc, back in the day, you paid once a fair full price for game, and it had everything already in game, and back then they even gave you big updates/expansions for free, months and even years later.
 
I'm fine with DLC as long as it's reasonably priced and isn't withheld content released mere days/weeks after the game hits.

As far as I'm concerned Raceroom Racing Experience has taken a fresh approach in this genre by effectively making the whole product an 'a la carte' DLC offering. I often take issue with the pricing and the way the sales model is more complicated than it needs to be (e.g. buying credits in a third-party storefront, linked discounts etc...) but the principle is a good one: buy only the content you want and leave the content you don't.

It's certainly a divisive sales model but I prefer it to Assetto Corsa's DLC packs that make me buy a pack of six cars to get the one piece of content I want (therefore I only buy AC DLC when it's on sale).

R3E also allows the player to race against unowned content as AI cars (for instance in the GT3 class) which is a nice touch.
 
I dislike the "play the game before everyone else" Ultimate Edition stuff, but if it helps them to justify the demand for more resources and better support from mother Microsoft's beudgeting department, I can live eith it.

However what I absolutely hate is when I'm supposed to pre-order something (with pre-order incentives) like an UE, a season pass, an expansion pass WITHOUT knowing what will be in it and WHAT NOT.
Paying for the car pass up front, then maybe getting only 2/3 of the DLC cars and maybe even mainly the DLC cars that I wouldn't have wanted... that's not cool.
 
Because at least in ACs case, you're not only paying for the cars but also for the development of the game.
Yes, you get the new features for free (and sometimes they even through some free content in like the Mazda 787B or the group B Quattro), but nevertheless the development over 3 years has to be paid one way or another.

At least in AC's case the DLC are very cheap and they are what keeps development running.
That's also why I strongly disagree with what @protonv5 said.
In that case we'd look at the state of AC 1.3 + DP1 maybe and that's it.
I can ensure you that just about nobody would drive it anymore. It would be forgotten rotting in some shelf.
Actually not even that, some virtual shelf …
With any DLC or expansion you are paying to prolong the future of the game, development wise or the studio for future products. I touched briefly on this in my first post on the thread. But I still stand firmly that AC does it wrong by locking out it's user base from interacting with the large majority because they have not paid to access it.
 
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