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| 3 OCT 2011 at 11:18pm | |
FnordSchattenjger  Posts : 2751 Joined: 15 SEP 2008 Location: SE, Stockholm Status : Offline | Pre-order bonuses seem to be the norm these days. Pre-order the game and you will get a small extra. But I'm really not fond of this at all. Pre-order bonuses come in several different forms. It can be extra skins/models (in other words vanity bonuses), extra equipment/missions or "free" first day DLC, and sometimes they give you some other bonus (but that is not as common) Extra skins can almost be ignored, they don't impact the game in a noticeable way, but I'll get to why I'm not a big fan of them in a moment. Extra missions or equipment can be an issue. They will often give you some form of in-game bonus, which at some point in the game will cause some balancing issues (either that, or they are useless, and the person who pre-ordered the game will feel cheated). Most games expects you to be at a certain power level at a certain point in the game, and any bonus that you might have will make that part easier, and in the end less enjoyable. Take a look at Fallout new Vegas for an example of a pre-order item that impacted the game balance: The vault 13 canteen. It made hardcore mode less hardcore. Another example of a bad pre-order item was the Chimeric Prism from Guild wars, that basically gave warriors a +5 mana bonus that they were never supposed to have (great in PvP!). First day DLC and vanity skins both share the same issue (first day DLC more so than vanity skins, and extra gear is also part of the problem), and that is that they take potential dev-time away from the game itself. Many games are released in a buggy state, yet a lot of manpower has been diverted towards working on something else, and sometimes it feels like it is content that was originally intended for the core game. I wonder how much less buggy the original Dragon age would have been on release without any of the DLC being ready from the get go... And finally, many preorder bonuses are retailer specific, meaning that unless you happen to live near a retailer (or happen to live in the right country), then tough luck, you have no chance of actually getting the preorder. And even then, many of the retailers that gets retail specific DLC are the retailers that expects you to pay 50€ for a game, when most others sell it for 40-45€. I wonder how much retailers pay the publishers for being allowed have these bonuses. I'm not against pre-order bonuses in its entirety though. They could for an example offer the first DLC that will be released for free to anyone who pre-ordered the game, or offer you the soundtrack on a CD or something like that.
Current Let's Play: Crusader: No Remorse |
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| 4 OCT 2011 at 12:26pm | |
markornikovJourneyman .jpg) Posts : 1303 Joined: 28 OCT 2011 Location: BE, Antwerp Status : Offline | I also hate the whole pre-order concept these days, steam regularly offers a unique 'team fortress hat' as pre-order bonus. Offering a free item for a game i don't own is ridiculous : I'm against the whole DLC concept anyway, those extras usually could have been included in the original product, but it seems to have become unavoidable these days :-/ The publishers should only offer a discount as a pre-order bonus, it's the only thing i care about. But what i don't get is that for some of the latest releases on Steam (Skyrim, HOMM VI) the publisher offers nothing in return for a pre-order. A customer should always have some incentive to buy a product beforehand, that's how capitalism works!
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| 4 OCT 2011 at 1:26pm | |
FnordSchattenjgerPosts : 2751 Joined: 15 SEP 2008 Location: SE, Stockholm Status : Offline | Well, team fortress 2 is free these days, so steam considers you an owner of the game (Just check any free game and you will see your entire friends list as "owners", even if they have never played the game) DLC in itself feels like it, for the most part, is a missed opportunity. I think DLC should work like expansions. As expansions themselves sell worse than the core game, it makes sense to lessen the risk by offering them as downloads rather than print CDs to sell in stores. Instead most DLC seem to just be extra quests, or minor trinkets (or worse, 5€ vanity stuff). As a person who uninstall his games when he is done with them, getting an extra quest for a game 2 months after its release is utterly pointless, I won't replay large portions of the game just to be able to see a little bit of extra content. Games on steam seem to often take the pre-order (or buy early)-> get a small discount approach. A 10% discount is not a horrible offer, and gives people a reason to impulse buy the game "because they save money" rather than wait for proper reviews, or for the price to go down again.
Current Let's Play: Crusader: No Remorse |
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| 4 OCT 2011 at 3:08pm | |
TravellerGuild Master  Posts : 4040 Joined: 3 JUL 2010 Location: US Status : Offline | |
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| 4 OCT 2011 at 9:15pm | |
markornikovJourneymanPosts : 1303 Joined: 28 OCT 2011 Location: BE, Antwerp Status : Offline | Originally Posted By Fnord (4 OCT 2011 1:26pm) That's the problem right now, there're quite a few recent pre-orders on steam without a discount. I know the publishers are experimenting with techniques like 'free to play' etc. So i'll boycott such pre-orders, otherwise publishers get the feeling this tactic is working [smiley=nono.gif]
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