Are Season Passes becoming ridiculous?

[AJ_Radio]

9 hours ago, Xillia said:

It's even not just Fifa. A lot of the newer AAA releases have had some sort of deluxe version that goes for €100 or more.

 

I was just looking at the Deluxe version for NBA 2K19. I couldn’t believe the shit I was seeing.

 

Absolutely despicable.

[tuddeee]

1 minute ago, Spaz said:

 

I was just looking at the Deluxe version for NBA 2K19. I couldn’t believe the shit I was seeing.

 

Absolutely despicable.

Same with NHL 19.  100€ for ultimate edition and you get like 85 overall Gretzky and all other stuff is crap still people bought that version.

[AJ_Radio]

Just now, tuddeee said:

Same with NHL 19.  100€ for ultimate edition and you get like 85 overall Gretzky and all other stuff is crap still people bought that version.

 

I think Madden 19 has the same sort of deal. Awful since nobody else can develop a good American Football game since EA has the monopoly.

[tuddeee]

Just now, Spaz said:

 

I think Madden 19 has the same sort of deal. Awful since nobody else can develop a good American Football game since EA has the monopoly.

Same with hockey. I am done with NHL`s. 

[Lordguwa]

i'm extremely careful on DLC but i'll skip it if it doesn't offer something good.

mafia 3 DLC pass when i buy had something good so no complaints.

[AJ_Radio]

22 minutes ago, tuddeee said:

Same with hockey. I am done with NHL`s. 

 

Kudos for having the Clint Eastwood spaghetti western as your avatar. 

 

Yeah hockey isn’t any better. I think MLB is my best bet, since those games are made by a studio who cares more for their audience.

[Super-Fly Spider-Guy]

No, because "becoming" implies they haven't already been ridiculous on the whole for years now, which they have.

 

Spider-Man is arguably the best value AAA season pass in recent memory and at 30 dollars, it's just over half what I paid for the game day one, the full freakin' game. Not cool.

[Mori]

Well here's my little story regarding DLC and Season Passes

 

I think there is not a single game I've knowingly purchased before all DLC was released and the ultimate or whatever complete edition was on sale.

 

Then the devs behind "Prey" come around and released surprisingly a DLC and want to charge 20 bucks. Shit happens.

 

Fast forward to september and suddenly the devs behind "The Surge" announce a new DLC, despite the fact that they just recently announced "The Surge 2". Ok fine, I've purchased "The Surge - Complete Edition", I should be fine. Right? No.

 

We've come to a point, where you can buy a complete edition and still dont have everything the game will offer. Not to mention, if anyone thinks about buying the game and sees "complete edition" and "agumented edtion" (which is then the complete edition with all DLC), probably will buy the complete edition if he doesnt look any further.

 

There are only a few really good DLC's, I prefer to call them "Expansion Packs". The Witcher 3, GTA IV or even back in the day Battlefield 2 from none other than EA who released 3 packs. Does anyone remember the Special Force Expansion? I probably spent 1000 hours just in that Expansion. Nowadays I wouldnt be able to even spend so much time into a battlefield, because the next entry is going to release a year later.

Edited September 19, 2018 by Mori

[Ptirle]

EA is in the shit right now because of the loot boxes and not respecting the laws of other countries meaning loot boxes are hopefully ending?

This thing with complete editions can be marked as false advertisement or something, so again, hopefully that will come to an end in the near future as well.

Edited September 19, 2018 by Ptirle

[majob]

I've honestly never been bothered by it because I can simply choose to not buy it. For me, there's no frustration with how a company chooses to run their business because they only get my money if I choose to give it to them. I also certainly can't tell or decide how other people choose to spend their own and Season Passes continue to exist because people continue to buy them and I don't see that trend stopping until the money behind that system stops coming in.

[AJ_Radio]

18 hours ago, Mori said:

Well here's my little story regarding DLC and Season Passes

 

I think there is not a single game I've knowingly purchased before all DLC was released and the ultimate or whatever complete edition was on sale.

 

Then the devs behind "Prey" come around and released surprisingly a DLC and want to charge 20 bucks. Shit happens.

 

Fast forward to september and suddenly the devs behind "The Surge" announce a new DLC, despite the fact that they just recently announced "The Surge 2". Ok fine, I've purchased "The Surge - Complete Edition", I should be fine. Right? No.

 

We've come to a point, where you can buy a complete edition and still dont have everything the game will offer. Not to mention, if anyone thinks about buying the game and sees "complete edition" and "agumented edtion" (which is then the complete edition with all DLC), probably will buy the complete edition if he doesnt look any further.

 

This is why I’ve turned more of my time over to indies and older games. 

 

I took full advantage of Batman Arkham Knight’s DLC right when it came out, buying those short story DLCs and even those outfits that you had to pay for. I was disappointed. Granted there was a lot of DLC, but the only content I truly liked was A Matter of Family, and the Season of Infamy side missions. 

 

Today I see that 2K wants to charge nearly $100 bucks for their “Deluxe” Edition of NBA 2K19. And guess what? Nobody is going a give a flying crap one year from now, because NBA 2K20 will be out. That is an annual series that does nothing short of repeating the same content for the next game, with the usual roster changes. 

 

Same thing with EA’s Madden and NHL series. 

 

Sports games are one of the worst offenders when it comes to charging extra and paying to get DLC that is really just a bunch of cosmetic crap and whatever else the developers want to throw in. 

 

God of War did it right, making a full AAA game with no Season Pass. Ubisoft is never going to go with that, because they are too damn greedy to just have a game with no DLC. No, they have to release a Silver Edition, Gold Edition and Ultimate Editions for their games. And these days that DOES NOT GUARANTEE you’re going to get all the content. 

 

What a joke. I’m just grateful that I was old enough to remember a time when you only needed to worry about one or two expansions, and that was on the PC. I’ve played a lot of games on the original Xbox and PlayStation 2, all that was on my mind then was how good the games were. 

 

Now look at it. A bunch of shameless DLC. Content that doesn’t come out until an entire year after the initial game released, such as Destiny 2. Or that surprise DLC like the Crash Bandicoot 3 DLC. 

 

18 hours ago, Mori said:

There are only a few really good DLC's, I prefer to call them "Expansion Packs". The Witcher 3, GTA IV or even back in the day Battlefield 2 from none other than EA who released 3 packs. Does anyone remember the Special Force Expansion? I probably spent 1000 hours just in that Expansion. Nowadays I wouldnt be able to even spend so much time into a battlefield, because the next entry is going to release a year later.

 

The console market didn’t catch on to DLC until the PlayStation 3/Xbox 360 generation. 

 

I played a lot of Diablo 2 and Starcraft back in the early - mid 2000s. Only one expansion pack was released for both but for what they were worth they provided dozens of hours of gameplay. I played a lot of the Druid in Diablo 2, he was a fun character to play and the game as a whole remains one of my favorite RPGs of all time. 

 

These days you bet your ass you will have to pay a lot more for content that is going to last dozens of hours. Blizzard is backed by Activision, guess what they’re good at. 

 

I almost miss being able to just pop in a game and not have to worry about anything else. You can’t do that anymore. Even some indie and niche games are coming out with DLC, as well as at least 3 to 5 updates you have to download in order for those games to run optimally. 

[Galactic Hyper Balls]

Some content isn't that good while others is worth it

Then it goes on sale then people are happy or a game of the year comes out.

Same cycle over and over and that's how it will be for quite some time.

There are enough games to keep us busy for an eternity.

 

If a game comes out with a lot of dlc that I will never play, I'll just pick it up on Pc and play the base game.

Steam has so many sales.

 

 

 

[syumisan]

20 hours ago, Spaz said:

 

I was just looking at the Deluxe version for NBA 2K19. I couldn’t believe the shit I was seeing.

 

Absolutely despicable.

 

20 hours ago, tuddeee said:

Same with NHL 19.  100€ for ultimate edition and you get like 85 overall Gretzky and all other stuff is crap still people bought that version.

Same. I never buy sports games ever lol.

 

Last Hockey game I throughly enjoyed was NHL 2003. THAT SOUNDTRACK WAS THE BOMB lol. My father still plays sports games but not much anymore lol.

 

Anywho, OT, I buy season passes if it's extremely cheap or like the the game out front. I bought Ni-Oh and Dynasty Warriors 9 out front caused I love both games. Samething with Horizon Zero Dawn.

 

I won't buy Fallout 4 Season Pass or Witcher 3 cause.... I won't. Honestly Witcher 3 storyline kinda sucks for me after a scenario with a female character and it made me dislike the game greatly. Its a game women, just go with my choice lol.

 

[Tekyumeeee]

That is pretty troubling. I originally looked at Season Passes as being fine since you're getting all the DLC of a game at a discounted price. Releasing paid content outside a Season Pass just ruins the purpose of a Season Pass. Not sure if I've played a game where this is a thing, but if some are doing it then more will probably follow assuming it's proving to be more profitable.

[AJ_Radio]

1 hour ago, Jay_Cash said:

That is pretty troubling. I originally looked at Season Passes as being fine since you're getting all the DLC of a game at a discounted price. Releasing paid content outside a Season Pass just ruins the purpose of a Season Pass. Not sure if I've played a game where this is a thing, but if some are doing it then more will probably follow assuming it's proving to be more profitable.

 

My thoughts exactly.

[tuddeee]

1 hour ago, Spaz said:

 

My thoughts exactly.

But at least you can build good team on sports games even you dont open packs for real money and If you are good on them you can win with weaker team. Like I did it in NHL. Market sniping was good way to get profit. But games like Destiny they are just sad. Destiny 2 is full of annoying bugs (hot fixes all the time) and DLC`s are expensive.

[AJ_Radio]

2 hours ago, tuddeee said:

But at least you can build good team on sports games even you dont open packs for real money and If you are good on them you can win with weaker team. Like I did it in NHL. Market sniping was good way to get profit. But games like Destiny they are just sad. Destiny 2 is full of annoying bugs (hot fixes all the time) and DLC`s are expensive.

 

That's true, but it's very rare for sports games to change a whole lot from year to year, because they're annual and sports fans will want and need them anyway.

 

At least with Call of Duty, Battlefield and Destiny the games are different with each installation. Plenty of new content to keep people occupied, even if it's lackluster and too expensive.

 

Sports games on the other hand are the same games year after year, the only major difference is the roster changes. Madden 18 and Madden 19 really don't look all that different from each other, but EA still has the balls to charge more for extra content and shit that few people will care about. NBA 2K19, if you buy the Deluxe Edition is a complete fucking ripoff, doesn't matter if Lebron James face is on it. So what exactly are you getting with that version as opposed to just buying the regular version?

 

With Assassins Creed I know that there are story DLCs which aren't necessarily the same as the base game. So there's that going at least.

 

In the end Season Passes are a way to get more money out of you. Companies have done it over the past five years and it turns out that people will buy. Instead of paying $59.99 for a new game and just that like you did in the last generation and the generations before, you can expect to pay anywhere from $80 to over $100 for a new game plus the DLC, including story and multiplayer.

 

And these days, games without patches and DLC are practically unfinished, so you absolutely have to update your games and pay if you want some more story driven content. That's only going to get worse as time goes on.

 

I remember walking into a Best Buy back in 2011 to pick up LA Noire for the Xbox 360, thing came with more than one disc (the 360 was not a Blu-Ray disc reader) but what struck me was people on the internet complaining about DLC and the exclusive stuff. If you bought at Best Buy you got some exclusive content, if you bought at Game Stop you got something else. A lot of people didn't want to pay for that DLC, which was four cases (an additional case was exclusive to the standard PS3 version), because they felt that should of been in the main game to begin with, right on the disc.

 

Then there was the whole Mass Effect 3 incident where there was content on the disc, but you had to pay in order to access it.

 

People have already forgotten about these because this was several years ago. But look at the situation now, it's gotten worse.

 

This is a big reason why I've gone back to playing older games and looking at new indie games from people who care about us. Guacamelee 2 looks very tempting to buy and isn't full of bullshit like you see in Destiny 2 or Star Wars Battlefront 2. There are niche games like the Yakuza games and others that don't have this crap either, so I would definitely recommend looking at niche and indie games if you're sick and tired of the shit in a lot of modern AAA games.

[NaRayquaza]

Dead or Alive's Season Passes/DLCs are online lewd costumes, you can live without them. But it is not fair to put tons of overpriced DLC characters, like they did on Senran Kagura PBS for example.

Edited September 20, 2018 by NaRayquaza

[Inuty]

6 hours ago, Spaz said:

Now look at it. A bunch of shameless DLC. Content that doesn’t come out until an entire year after the initial game released, such as Destiny 2. Or that surprise DLC like the Crash Bandicoot 3 DLC. 

 

To be fair, the DLC for Crash Bandicoot are free   but I know what you mean.

 

1 hour ago, Spaz said:

There are niche games like the Yakuza games and others that don't have this crap either, so I would definitely recommend looking at niche and indie games if you're sick and tired of the shit in a lot of modern AAA games.

I love Yakuza but I´m not sure if this is only the case because the release is so late in the west. I think the DLCs that are already included in the west release will be sold in Japan but I´m not sure.

Edited September 20, 2018 by Inuty

[Gommes_]

In short, yes. Season passes are ridiculous and they are not the only bad trend in gaming. Microtransactions, unfinished games, lootboxes, lousy quality games in the PSN, buying platinums for a dollar, day 1 patches, etc.

[AffectatiousDonk]

It is amazing that in 2 pages of this post not one person has acknowledged that seasons passes came about in an attempt to stop or at least slow gamers from trading in games for a partial or full refund to the store after beating it quickly. This practice obviously hurts Devs sales as the TOTAL VALUE from the resale goes directly to the store. This is why I am looking forward to the fully digital game future, it is beyond time this issue was redressed. Dress it up all you want but this issue exists solely because of this, be careful where you cast stones, everyone deserves to make a living for their work, even from "gamers" that seem to hide their weird sense of entitlement to free stuff behind a facade of being ripped off.

 

[Suparichie123]

I wouldn't be mentally able to contribute to this problem. Financing such stuff wouldn't really be an issue for me, but there are just so many cheaper options to enjoy games! I tend to just wait a few years after it's release before I play a game. The last game I have bought relatively shortly after it's release and at a full price of 70 bucks was Monster Hunter World, before that probably Witcher 3 in 2015. The only game I ever bought a season pass for was for Rainbow Six Siege in 2016, but just because it was heavily reduced and I really enjoyed playing the game haha. It probably helps though that I have only gotten into more serious games in the past few years, so there's a great amount of old games I can still look forward to!

[JPageMartin36]

I don't mind DLC when it's clearly a new narrative arc away from the main game (The Witcher).

 

When it's clearly just cut content though charging through the nose for what should be in the main game (Black Ops 4), not impressed. 

[AJ_Radio]

1 hour ago, Inuty said:

To be fair, the DLC for Crash Bandicoot are free   but I know what you mean.

 

I didn't mind this as much as some others, but releasing DLC an entire year after the initial game released is bad in my opinion.

 

Since it's Crash, I wouldn't mind going back to it again. Strongly doubt the second game will have DLC.

 

1 hour ago, Inuty said:

I love Yakuza but I´m not sure if this is only the case because the release is so late in the west. I think the DLCs that are already included in the west release will be sold in Japan but I´m not sure.

 

Japan got Yakuza 6 two years before we did. Whether that's a bad thing or not I'm not entirely sure, but those games are free from the Season Pass bullshit and all the other shenanigans. I plan to get Yakuza 0 once I finish up a couple dozen games or so.

 

48 minutes ago, Gommes_ said:

In short, yes. Season passes are ridiculous and they are not the only bad trend in gaming. Microtransactions, unfinished games, lootboxes, lousy quality games in the PSN, buying platinums for a dollar, day 1 patches, etc.

 

Mostly everything from the Playstation 4 generation forward.

 

Sony decided to let shit from Steam make it's way to the Store. Before the Playstation 4 came out Sony was a lot more selective with what games were going to be on PSN. Plus the platinums for a lot of games took a lot more dedication and effort to earn.

 

Spider-Man for the PS4 is about as casual and easy of a trophy list as it gets. I guess Sony is trying to attract younger, more casual gamers to their games. You compare this to something like Metal Gear Solid 4 which took a lot of effort and dedication to get that platinum. Or Resistance 2, which required you to get 10,000 kills in multiplayer matches.

 

Sometimes I wish we were still in the Playstation 3 generation.

 

45 minutes ago, Cjshai said:

It is amazing that in 2 pages of this post not one person has acknowledged that seasons passes came about in an attempt to stop or at least slow gamers from trading in games for a partial or full refund to the store after beating it quickly. This practice obviously hurts Devs sales as the TOTAL VALUE from the resale goes directly to the store. This is why I am looking forward to the fully digital game future, it is beyond time this issue was redressed. Dress it up all you want but this issue exists solely because of this, be careful where you cast stones, everyone deserves to make a living for their work, even from "gamers" that seem to hide their weird sense of entitlement to free stuff behind a facade of being ripped off.

 

 

People have sold and traded in games for decades.

 

I can tell you right now that the all digital game future is going to be a big problem in of itself, a part of which because you do not own your games. I have many digital games on Steam and Sony and they have every right to take away those games from you. Plus there are games that get delisted, which has gotten a lot worse these past two years. Like a number of games Activision published that you can no longer download online, you either have to buy the physical versions or try to get someone to game share with you, which is a big risk since that is sharing account information.

 

Is that why Season Passes are issued? To try to get people to play those games for longer and not just return them for a partial refund after a week or two of release?

 

It's all about the money, now more than ever because the video game industry is the most powerful entertainment medium, long surpassing the music and movie industries.

[starcrunch061]

58 minutes ago, Cjshai said:

It is amazing that in 2 pages of this post not one person has acknowledged that seasons passes came about in an attempt to stop or at least slow gamers from trading in games for a partial or full refund to the store after beating it quickly. This practice obviously hurts Devs sales as the TOTAL VALUE from the resale goes directly to the store. This is why I am looking forward to the fully digital game future, it is beyond time this issue was redressed. Dress it up all you want but this issue exists solely because of this, be careful where you cast stones, everyone deserves to make a living for their work, even from "gamers" that seem to hide their weird sense of entitlement to free stuff behind a facade of being ripped off.

 

 

This is a convenient sophistry, but it's simply untrue. Further, if this was the case, why is the DLC train gaining steam, even as digital sales make up greater and greater proportions of overall game sales?

 

As for the rest of your apologetic, no one would disagree that everyone deserves to make a living for their work. This might be relevant if anyone was asking for government law to stop DLC sales. As it is, this is simply a thread to bitch, and possibly state an individual's refusal to purchase it (an "entitlement" that has been a cornerstone of consumer-based capitalism since its inception).

 

8 minutes ago, Spaz said:

I can tell you right now that the all digital game future is going to be a big problem in of itself, a part of which because you do not own your games.

 

Honestly, I don't think this will matter. However, I'm unconvinced that an all-digital future is in the cards for consoles (at least in the current format of purchasing a console to play games). It's possible that game streaming will take off the way that video streaming has, but I find it hard to believe that people will purchase a console to do this, and if consoles try to be a multitask tool, they'll get eaten alive by phones and the like.

 

Truthfully, I'm interested to see where this all goes at the end of the day.

Edited September 20, 2018 by starcrunch061