"A Role-Playing Game That Makes You Pay For Your Party Members"

[kane_magus]

I have to agree with Mord that this is a really crappy thing, and yet another sign of things to come.

Here's the comment by NIS America on this issue: "Unlocking characters through DLC is nothing new to our games. The difference for this time is that the additional characters are already in the game. Having these characters already in the game will help players attach to the characters, and if the players would like to play the characters they have options to download the DLC to unlock them. Having these characters in the party is like a tease."

That, in my opinion, is absolutely abominable. The ways that some game companies are handling their DLC these days is utterly beyond the pale.

<Insert Penny Arcade Dragon Age DLC comic here>

Comments

[hikarugenji.livejournal.com]

Yeah, that's a pretty shitty thing to do. You can make the argument that they're extra things you don't need, but I don't like the idea of making DLC unlock things that are already on the disc. DLC should be for additional content developed on top of an already finished game, or for things that really are optional (like paying for XP or gold; not something that I would personally do but I don't feel like the presence of such DLC harms my playing experience).

[rabbitucker.livejournal.com]

Dude. That sucks donkey! This is just greed, pure and simple!

And yes, I know, they're in business to make a buck, but still. There really should be some sort of limits, if for nothing other than decency and fairness!

[owsf2000.livejournal.com]

They're in it to make a buck, I agree. And they did. When people are paying upwards of 70+ for it. I make my hatred of DLC no secret on my journal, but it infuriates me 10x as much when they insist on advertising their shit in-game. (And having the characters walk around with you in your party is indeed advertising. A constant reminder of what your 70 dollars didn't pay for.)

I also hate Nagware being added to games. I'll let Kane comment on that though.

[kane-magus.livejournal.com]

So yeah, the nagware stuff.

In addition to stuff I've already mentioned in the past, such as Jasper in Fable 3 nagging you every other time you go to the Sanctuary about DLC you haven't bought yet and the Dragon Age crap mentioned above...

Okay, for Marvel vs Capcom 3 they released a patch 1.01 a week or so ago. As far as I can tell, the only obvious thing that this added to the game was a DLC check. As in now, when you start the game, every single time you start the game, it spends about 10-20 extra seconds "checking for DLC." When I started it last night, the game oh so helpfully informed me that, hey, there's new DLC available! It was some AI bots for the new Shadow Mode thing, and it was bugging me about this every time I started the game. Since it was free, I went ahead and downloaded it, though it wasn't all that spectacular or anything. There's also some DLC that costs money, some extra character costumes for $5, which I am not going to buy. Strangely, though, the game hasn't told me about this as of yet, even though it's the stuff that actually costs money. It does still do the 10-20 second DLC check every single time though, regardless.

[hikarugenji.livejournal.com]

MvC3 is another game with DLC that's already on the disc that you just have to pay to unlock -- I guess it's not as bad as Neptune because the characters aren't visible, but it's still pretty lame.

[owsf2000.livejournal.com]

Blazblue is another fighting game that apparently has a couple "DLC" characters on the disc. Their unlock codes are apparently just 8 dollars each!