[:1]no I'm not trolling I think DLC could be a good thing. I saw some other threads about it but they turned into pointless arguments about why SC2 sucked.
I posted this over at gamereplays but they seem dead.
Quote:|||Every dlc splits the community, which will be a big problem.|||coveryfire|||Free DLC doesn't split - paid does.
You can mitigate the splitting by doing as what Headless suggests with DOW2, but that's not a perfect solution.|||What DoW 2 did with Chaos Rising is the best way to handle this though: provide new (regular) units for existing races for free with each addon and completely new races or new major heroes are only available for paying users. People will get teased by playing against the new races/heroes.
It does mean that every new unit for an existing race absolutely has to be free or it wouldn't be fair or balanced. But you can easily turn that into the Free DLC part of this business scheme and get some great goodwill from the community that way. New maps... hmm, in all honesty, they should be free as well. Again, it's too big a risk to split the community. New races/heroes, new campaigns, new game modes: that's all suited for paid DLC packs imo. The SupCom 2 DLC is, while totally worth the money, flawed in that it does split the community. For a new original IP RTS that's a risk which GPG can't take.
Seriously, it isn't as bad as some make it out to be. Practically every independent developer offers a mix of free and paid DLC/small addons, whether it's on Steam or not doesn't matter: the Killing Floor guys, Paradox, Arcen Games, even Valve. You just have to do it in a smart way so that everyone, DLC users and non-DLC users, feel like they get something valuable and that they feel like they're not separated from each other.
GPG has every right to pursue the same business sense as long as it is done with common sense so it never splits the multiplayer community. Charging for new Kings/Queens isn't the end of the world.|||call me old fashioned, but i dont get the DLC fascination. im really just happy with something awesome out of the box, decent balance & bug fixes, and maybe an expansion if it warrants it. imo if something is worth having, it should've been in the original game. i guess im not the micro transaction type.|||pkc|||northwestcore|||Why change a formula that works so well?
You said it yourself, Starcraft and AOE2 were made better with the ir expansions, released a year or two after the original. The same goes for AoM, Supcom 1, Red alert 1, Red Alert 2, C&C Generals, Company of Heroes, Dawn of War, SoaSe, Every total War game, Warcraft 3, and im sure more.
See where i'm going with this?
Every single RTS game that has ever been any good (give or take a few) has released an expansion pack a year or two later, based on the wants of the community, and it has greatly improved the game. There is no need to change this by swapping an expansion pack out for DLC.|||The DLC will probably give you the same functions, over time, for a higher total prize. Perhaps with more polish, but I fully expect it to cost more than it would in a single expansion pack. If its all multiplayer material (factions, maps, units) and not single player (campaign, fancy new loading screens, fancy new AI, single player only-units, "challenges" a-la RA3 uprising), im fine with it. It would also be acceptable if single player and multiplayer stuff is split up, so i can choose to buy an extra faction, but not a campaign - the total could be $60, while an expansion would be $50, but if the multiplayer stuff is $40, ill be happy to just buy that.|||Nephylim|||Nephylim|||northwestcore|||I only buy DLC if they release them on disc. I am rather old fashioned that way.
In my experience the DLC trend in general is for the worse. As customers we generally pay too much for too little when buying individual snippets of DLC. It sometimes is very noticeable where content purposely has been left out to sell it to us separately later on. But if I had to choose a genre where DLC hurts the least it would be RTS. A few new missions, some units and new maps are always welcome. But I personally still would not buy it until it was released on disc.
DLC for RPG/action games like Mass Effect 2 and Fallout 3 are a terrible thing I think. The new DLC content most of the time is released when you have already played through the game and it's story. Therefore the new DLC content does not have the momentum and the impact of the main story. It simply is added too late and playing it separately after the fact feels odd and pointless. This was very noticeable for several of the Mass Effect 2 DLC's. And I am not even mentioning the useless little weapon and clothing DLC and the failure of that pointless vehicle DLC for Mass Effect 2 (although it was for free, but that is not the point).
As a game collector I would much rather pay for substantial expansion packs on disc for any game than pay for little bits and bites of DLC.|||I agree with OP insofar that DLC/expansions should never split the community.
Secondly, i strongly agree that dlc should never ever contain maps, as they too split the community into fragments as to who has the maps and who doesn't.
See: Avp, COD map packs, etc.
As for monthly dlc, that is highly dependant on the developer. Looking at valve's track record on L4D1 & 2, they do add mutators to l4d2 on a bi/weekly basis, but even they do not add "dlc"-grade content monthly.
Also, with regard to the concept of already having the content but not having any access to it, if KNC is going to be modable, those DLC units/maps/races would easily be transfered to mods. You can stop that in its tracks by not having any moddability, though, but that really shoots the game in both legs.
"DLC" is good when used appropriately, and so far the best experience i have had with DLC is Borderland's "Secret armoury of General knoxx" because it adds an entire sp/coop campaign that is better in some rgards than the original game.
Hence...DLC as singleplayer expansions? That would be favourable to the multiplayer scene, and its sort of what Blizzard is doing with starcraft, except you replace "DLC" with "standalone game"
I woulnd't mind Singleplayer DLC campaigns that tied up various loose ends in the campaign, so long as its done "sensibly".|||You can have DLCs without splitting the (online) community. Just patch the DLC content into everyone's game but only activate it in multiplayer games if the host has bought the DLC and only activate it in ranked games if one of the participants has bought it. This way you give people an incentive to join multiplayer games, and once they are hooked they'll get the DLC for sure.
What certainly isn't an optimal solution is the DLC On/Off-switch in SupCom2.|||harrier0|||re1wind|||Mithy|||You don't need to change a single core file to add a new unit to any of the moho engine games. Literally just include that unit in a mod directory, enable the mod, and the unit is used automatically. If they tried to block units based on their unitid, you could just change the unitid. Short of using some sort of encryption in the unit's content files (which would negatively impact load times) and flagging the unit as DLC within those files, there's no way they could block this from happening.
Likewise, there are tons of changes that even basic mods need to make to 'core game files'. It would utterly destroy the game's moddability if you couldn't modify any core files.
I can say as a modder that this is a very complex issue. This is the reason I brought up faction-only mods - that's the only conceivable instance where the engine could actually block mods from using it, without totally removing moddability (or really affecting it at all, other than blocking faction-add mods, which nobody has ever completed to date for a moho engine game).|||Couldn't you just prevent the models and textures to be used in mods? So, you could mod the stats of existing units or create entirely new ones, but you can't reference existing models in new units? (Yes, people would probably still be able to extract the models, textures, etc. from the game, but they would break copyright law if they distributed such a mod.)|||Well, it would, obviously, be bad for modding, because I might want to recycle models/textures for my mod. Say I want to make another unicol unit, but smaller. In SC2, I have made a second darkenoid, but bigger. That would be impossible...
Besides, people will always find a way to pirate DLC.|||OTOH, you can't really expect GPG to give a modder the right to freely copy, modify and distribute all the existing model and graphics content.|||I cant see why not. People reused models in FA mods. I reuse models in starcraft 2 mods/maps. That doesnt mean you dont need to buy the original model (DLC), just that modders should be able to use it IMO.
Edit: After all, I I doubt you could use it without some core files. You could make it so that certain files are locked, and that you need the DLC installed for the game to read them. So that if you dont have the DLC, the unit with the recycled textures/behaviours/animations appear broken.|||That's what I meant when I said encrypting the DLC units' content files. Of course someone will find a way to decrypt them and the DLC will be pirated, but then at least the whole decrypted DLC package would have to be distributed or a cracked exe created, and it won't be usable online or seamlessly enabled by a code-only mod.
However, then they could still be used by mods as long as the DLC is properly owned and installed.
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