The DLC dilemma

[InvertMouse]

Hi there . So I finished Fire Emblem Conquest this morning, and for a while there, I thought I wasn't going to make it. There are no sidequests that you can repeat and grind on, so if your units are underleveled, or you lose too many of your characters along the way, you can get pretty screwed over.

Of course, if you buy the DLCs, that's an entirely different story. Now you have extra chapters to level up in, more opportunities to earn more gold, etc. When I got stuck during one of the final chapters in Conquest, I was tempted to buy the DLCs for that purpose, but then I thought, does that count as cheating? Surely not, because I am not using any cheat codes, or abusing any glitch in the system, right?

When a game features DLC, I always have a nagging fear that the creators will design the game so you will be tempted to pick on those add-ons in order to beat the game. When I struggle or lose, I start to make excuses, saying oh yeah that's just because they want me to buy DLC. A lot of mobile games make me feel that way.

Preordered games are another thing as well. If you preorder the game, you get extra cash, an exclusive gun, and things of that sort. I do preorder games on rare occasions, and when I do, I usually avoid using those exclusives unless I am on a second playthrough. Start with more of a pure run, that sort of thing.

What are everyone's thoughts on this? Thank you .

[Soulless Watcher]

Well, I havn't bought any Fire Emblem DLC. I have been very tempted by some of the story based dlc, but the pricing for Emblem dlc is quite atrocious and very unreasonable. 

I had quite a hard time playing through conquest as well, until I learned that you could keep replaying the free dlc to grind characters.

Preordering games was a nasty habit of mine to break, me being a completionist collector and all, but I found the extra stuff that you get at the beginning really broke the immersion and took a good portion of the challenge away from the game.  

[RenRekt]

I think that DLC are okay if they add something different to the original game, for example side-stories. Unfortunately, game companies are using dlcs to chop the game in little pieces and sell it to you for more money, resulting in crappy content that is also really expensive if you want to buy the whole game... But some dlc have been wonderful, Red Dead Redemption Zombies for example.

[Okarin]

I hate DLC with a passion, as I feel it's a sleazy practice and oftentimes the DLC's quality is subpar.

However, I don't know if it's justifiable in Fire Emblem's case. I guess Revelation is like an altogether new game, so it can be worth your time.

Also I have a policy not to preorder games at all, normally I get games on discount (that means months after release), I test them -if I like them, I keep them, if not, I look for a refund. This is done in Steam, of course.

[kyrt]

I have unfortunately boycotted all of fire emblem fates dlc for the simple reason that they have not yet given us the festival of bonds and the character dlc that expand via conversations the various characters. DLC is more or less a bad thing. This is essentially content that is cut out of a game to make you pay more for it. These concepts and ideas are already in place before you have the game and often times they are already made. Admittedly there are a few exceptions to this rule.

There are two companies that do DLC more or less right and those are Bethesda with the fallout and elder scrolls series and CDProjektRed with the Witcher 3.

Fallout/Elder Scrolls: The majority of the dlc you find in these two series is actually worked on post-game not pre-game. While pre-production might start on the dlc these usually don't feel like they were taken out of the main game. They feel like added content. 

Witcher 3: Witcher 3 released 16 pieces of DLC for free on a weekly basis for a few months. This was the smartest way of handling DLC I've seen yet. The free content keeps people interested and keeps your game relevant while they worked on the first expansion. Now one might argue that Witcher 3's two expansions were nothing more than DLC but considering how developed and separate from the main game they were and the length of work time on them it's quite obvious these two were worked on after the main game. They were also excellent additions and had enough content to be full games. Well worth it. If they ever do something like this again though I think they should have more free dlc to space between the two expansions...blood and wine while excellent and pretty long also took quite some time to release. DLC can be done right and taking something that people hate about video games these days and putting a positive consumer friendly spin on dlc is nothing short of brilliant.

 

[Kurisu-Chan]

On 17/10/2016 at 8:52 AM, Okarin said:

I hate DLC with a passion, as I feel it's a sleazy practice and oftentimes the DLC's quality is subpar.

However, I don't know if it's justifiable in Fire Emblem's case. I guess Revelation is like an altogether new game, so it can be worth your time.

Also I have a policy not to preorder games at all, normally I get games on discount (that means months after release), I test them -if I like them, I keep them, if not, I look for a refund. This is done in Steam, of course.

In the case of revelation, it's not only a whole new game, it's basically the true route. 

[Okarin]

If buying 2 or 3 parts bugs you, stick with Fire Emblem: Awakening, though you probably already have that.

It has clichéd story about heroism and saving the world from doom, but it's otherwise quite enjoyable if you like this type of game. I guess Fire Emblem has always been that way... even Shining Force was...