Games-as-a-Service

[TedEH]

can you explain exactly what you think a "live service" version of Dragon Age 4 will look like vs what it would have looked like in the first place?

I can only speculate, much like you already have. Those are questions that only someone who was on the inside of the decision would be able to really answer meaningfully. I also don't know the Dragon Age series very well, so I can't speak much to that either. But when I read something that says "we need to start from square one with the game as a service in mind", that signals to me that a live monetization model is now informing the core gameplay loop, because otherwise (as you said) you could probably shoehorn some cosmetics into a game without having to restart everything.

AC: Odyssey, a game I've seen disparaged as "live service," plays just like a damn Bioware RPG with a true beginning, middle, and end in the base game and the microtransactions are things like tons of cosmetics, weapons, and then in-game currency/exp boosts that don't do anything other than let you skip lots of sidequests to get to the end faster.

I've also never played that one, but my understanding (based on quick google searches) was that their service-like monetization was based on selling a story in broken up pieces.

From Kotaku, about a month before release:

Odyssey is set to have months of free and paid content. The main offerings appear to be a staggered set of episodes that’ll alternate between free “Lost Tales of Greece” releases and paid chapters of two three-part “story arcs,” one focusing on the first wielder of the Assassins’ hidden blade weapon and the other on Atlantis. (Yes, as in the lost city of Atlantis.)

They go on to mention things like "premium story arcs" and the like. That, to me, is not a standalone game product, nor is it really the traditional DLC model.

 

[wankerness]

Having gotten a platinum trophy in Odyssey and also played through all of the DLC and most of the "weekly updates," all of the DLC is completely peripheral (it doesn't involve a single main character from the plot apart from your character) and there is ~100 hours of real, voice-acted content in the base game that includes an entire main plot and some huge, in-depth side-quests along with the standard tons of smaller ones. Even if you ignore the DLC entirely, it's one of the most generous 1 player games I've ever experienced - it's Skyrim level. Like Skyrim, once you've thoroughly exhausted every written sidequest through the world, it still procedurely generates additional side material (which is marked as such) so it doesn't "end," but the main plot is totally resolved (whatever main characters lived through the ending on good terms with you are part of your ship crew, etc). No one who buys the most "minimal" version available is going to feel like anything's missing.

Which is why I can't comprehend what the hell Bioware was told to do to DA4 that would so negate its status as a standalone 1 player game that it had to be nuked and entirely rebuilt. Clearly it's something radically different to what Ubisoft did here!

I forget what you've played in the whole realm of comparable games to Dragon Age. I'd say the last two games are a combination of an action RPG and a traditional RPG. The character interactions, etc are very comparable to Mass Effect, but the combat's much more party-based - you can switch control between all characters, pause the combat to give commands to all characters in a very micro-managed fashion, etc. All party members have their own associated questlines and "rep levels" with you that affect what abilities they learn, or they can even leave your party if you tick them off too much.

The only thing I can even remotely imagine that would make it a "live service" and might require a game nuke would be if EA demanded that they pull something like a recent shitty fighting game where you barely get any characters in the core game and they cut most of them out as DLC, so the game had to be hacked down and made "modular" with tons of the plot sliced out and the combat totally rebalanced to allow for the fact that not everyone would have the same characters.

 

[TedEH]

I don't disagree with you, so much as I think your example of intentionally trying to stretch is exactly what some people are worried about happening:

The only thing I can even remotely imagine that would make it a "live service" and might require a game nuke would be if EA demanded that they pull something like a recent shitty fighting game where you barely get any characters in the core game and they cut most of them out as DLC, so the game had to be hacked down and made "modular" with tons of the plot sliced out and the combat totally rebalanced to allow for the fact that not everyone would have the same characters.

I wouldn't put it past any game company at this point to head in that direction. On some level, it's not a matter of "I think that's where we are now" and more of a "I don't it to go that way, but it kinda looks like we're pointed in that direction".

 

[TedEH]

So this popped up on youtube yesterday and seems relevant to this thread:

 

[Mathemagician]

Maybe to me, Nintendo doing it makes it sort of "feel worse". In my head, Nintendo is where you go for a game being a single one-time purchase for a complete package and that's it. Obviously, that's nostalgia talking, but still. Seeing characters as paid DLC in Smash makes me think "no, Nintendo, not you too. "

The alternative is no more characters after launch though.

And I don’t want that. Piranha plant alone was a super funny but also good character. I want more playable characters in the “too big and dumb a roster to be real” game. And if I have to pay for more than the original 60? So be it. Capcom is considered generous for launching a game with 15-20 fighters and many are not fully realized new characters.

 

[TedEH]

The alternative is no more characters after launch though.

And? That's how basically all older games worked, and it wasn't a problem then. Original Smash Bros gated new characters as "hidden" or "unlockable" instead of making you pay for them. What's wrong with that model? You still don't get 100% content right away, and it serves as a reward for skilled players.

 

[Mathemagician]

And? That's how basically all older games worked, and it wasn't a problem then. Original Smash Bros gated new characters as "hidden" or "unlockable" instead of making you pay for them. What's wrong with that model? You still don't get 100% content right away, and it serves as a reward for skilled players.

I think you’re misunderstanding me.

I don’t “care” about unlocking content. I personally want 100% of the content available up front. But a game eventually has to launch. So if they have to submit a final copy and then go live, I want more characters as I don’t want to relearn a whole new game in order to get that. If a Nintendo/whoever game launched with 20 characters, or with 40, it didn’t matter that was all you were getting.

Nowadays they release more characters which mixes up the field. I’m discussing fighting games specifically there. I typically don’t buy single player DLC unless it’s an enormous chunk of new story content AND I loved the game enough to want more.

With Smash it’s already a 100% amazing game. No one has to buy squat to feel like they got a great game with tons of attention to detail put into it, etc.

The DLC characters are for people who like me, want even more characters to play with.

I’m ambivalent on “the good old days” of Nintendo releasing a game and that being it. I want like 50 new tracks for Mario kart. And I want them today. I don’t want a new Mario kart game where they rehash 20 tracks then add 20 on top and call it 40 total. So i’ll pay $20 if it means I get tons of new content for a game I already like.

I remember paying full price for a new street fighter just because I wanted the 4-8 or so new characters. I’ll take $10-20 instead.

But that’s just my opinion on it.

 

[TedEH]

Nowadays they release more characters which mixes up the field.

I get it from a competitive point of view, but outside of that, I don't personally get any value out of "mixing it up" post release. I'm not disagreeing with your angle, cause I get it, but if I had to choose between a single release and that's all you get, vs. new characters but you have to pay for them, I'd rather have the single release because I know realistically I'm not going to spend money on extra characters. I can't justify spending money on DLC in almost any case, so I almost never do it. I can't think of any cases where I did. But then I'm left with an incomplete experience because of not wanting to participate in getting gouged by a monetization strategy.

I'll grant that a competitive game is a space where maybe it can be justified (almost) in terms of keeping the scene fresh, and I'm not against the idea of DLC as a whole if it really is adding something of value that didn't otherwise belong to the core experience. But what's the excuse in something like Breath of the Wild? There's no "field" to mix up in a case like that, it's just bonus stuff that could have been included in the base game to begin with. What would be the tradeoff? That it took a month or two longer to come out? A year longer? Would Ocarina of Time or Majoras Mask have been better if they had DLC?