DLC vs Expansions - KNOW THE DETAIL!

I have been following PA from the day it came on Kickstarter and since then I have seen a lot of people talking about DLC.

D L C people come on, you don't remember the good old days?

That's right, the good old days where we had EXPANSION PACKS.

Expansions pack (example: Supcom: FA)
100 new units, all new experimental units, Graphics overhaul, new faction you name it.

DLC (Supcom 2)
Add 1 new unit.. aka: monkeylord

Wow DLC .. Imo no DLC please. It breaks the online community.

Again I can't stretch this enough! Screw/NO DLC >.>

lol

I also don't like downloadable content.. expansions pack is much greater in terms of feeling and epicness..
I think that 100% of the comunity thinks the same way

I certainly do. DLC sucks, in my opinion. But hey, it makes more money, so 'everyone' usesit nowadays. Sigh.

Expansion packs over 1 unit DLCs is the general consensus among the people on the forum. Although not officially confirmed by the devs yet.

As discussed over here:
viewtopic.php?f=61&t=34646

There are getting more and more people on the forums, so threads are going to page 2 in half a day.

You could have a 2 - 5 unit DLC for something in the range of $1 - $5.

That said, with the focus of ease-of-modding, I think DLC will have to have some other features... such as DLC for new planet types, or something like that. Or a proper expansion.

Interesting idea: What about the steam workshop? Where modders can get compensated for their work? (Like TF2)

I thought the fps game Killing Floor did a nice job of it, they sold cosmetic dlc (essentially $5 for a pack of character skins) in order to pay to develop their content expansions, which also helped to prevent splitting the community. I don't know if that economy would scale up to the budget needed for an rts expansion, but I'd defiantly fork out $5-10 for a couple of unique acu/commander models if they showed up in multiplayer, more for a race pack.

With modding being a huge part of this game, DLC wouldn't really work. Any DLC would have to compete against mods that have very similar features.

If you made a DLC texture pack then you would be competing against all the free texture mods already available. If someone really wanted to, they could take the textures out of the DLC and repackage them as a free mod.

I ain't afraidof DLCs, and neither should you. Anything that extends the game and its shelf life shold be considered a boon!

Nevar! thats as bad as freemium.

Official dlc units like that will have to be free to prevent pay to win scenarios. [Insert everything people said about custom units from experience here].

This is an area where expansion packs really shine as they make a clear definition between what version you are playing instead of just two dozen minor aspects. Although there have been some DLC's that really shined (shivering isles) those were really more like expansions anyway. Plus there is so much more you can do in an expansion, say if the game funding some how stopped at 900k, expansions could do naval maps and units.

I look forward to any stretch goals that go unreached or beyond our dreams to get released as expansions.

I don't mean one party gets the units and the others don't..., if you're going to have pay-units then all parties need to have the units -- or at least the host needs to (or something like that).

Agreed.

Also, what about this?

that would mean they are either required for ladder play (which would suck) or be dissallowed in ladder play (making them no different from unofficial units).

If the DLC units were free though... then my opinion goes from very no to very yes. Although then its not so much as dlc as bonus patch content.

Yes please. Bring back the concept of expansions rather than DLC. Its frustrating to realize that people don't even realize how badly they get ripped off with DLC. A game normally takes 2 years of development time (3-5 if they have to make the engine from scratch), but a DLC that takes 3 months of work, just requires slapping in a couple of quest scripts and a new table of weapon statistics (nothing that the community couldn't do on their own if they had access to tools), and suddenly 1/8 development time is sold for 1/3 the full retail price (ie, $60 game and $20 DLC).

What makes it worse is that they often bundle in that DLC with the original game as some kind of "Gold Edition" which pumps up the original game cost as well (that is, instead of buying an older game for $30, you pay $40 base price + $20 DLC = $60 for 'Gold' edition).

And thats not even covering zero-day DLC. Or DLC that are really just patches you pay for.

The cycle should be:

1. Work on a game.
2. Make game AWESOME.
3. Release game.
4. Based on game release feedback, start working on expansion.
5. 6 months later, release first expansion, with potentially new modes of play.

DLC is just a money-grab. Work less, offer less, charge more.

DLC has its place, but not in an RTS game.

You also seem to be forgetting how much DLC costs, some are over priced sure but they do tend to be worth the 5-10$ if you want them. then as i brought up before, shivering isle is a super expensive DLC ($30) but it was basicaly a full expansion that probably wouldn't have existed without the concept of DLC as before that any increase in content outside of patching required the person to go out and buy a new box with a new disk (if it wasn't downloadable it would probably cost twice as much so... conversly because it was DLC it was half price).

Its DownLoadable Content... not satan.

Small DLC packs would split the MP community too much. How does it work if someone has the DLC and their opponent doesn't?

I thought the Sup2 DLC added about a dozen units in total. For what it's worth, with patches and DLC Sup2 was an okay game (thanks in part to Sorian's devilishly amazing AI).


But both DLC and expansions have the potential to rip off the consumer. Suppose that Uber thinks of an idea for a super special amazing unit, that requires lots of effort to implement. But then, at the last minute, Scathis says "wait, that thing is terrible for balance, it doesn't work properly and everyone will be upset. We need to drop the unit before launch."

And so that super special amazing unit doesn't get shipped.

But...

Uber has spent a few weeks paying one (or more) art guys to model and texture it. Then Azo to animate it. And finally someone was paid for a few days to write code for it. That all adds up, and that cost needs to be considered in the shipping cost of the game. After all, we're paying for the time and effort spent developing the entire game, including time spent working out what shouldn't be there.

This is all well and good, until six months down the track someone decides to sell that unit as DLC. Suppose that Scathis worked out how to get it balanced, and neutrino fixed the buggy code: we get a new unit to smash together! YAY!

Except that we were billed twice for that unit. Once when we paid for the game, and again in the DLC.

Now replace the word DLC with expansion pack. Same rip off, different name.

My point is; just because it's DLC doesn't mean that it's automatically a scam, and just because it's an expansion pack doesn't automatically mean it's the second coming of Christ. It's all dependent on how honest and good-intentioned the developers are.

Well yes DLC is a distribution method technicaly, but i believe going back to the roots of this threads existance:

We are discussing an appropriate ammount of content for DLC/Expansion.

How long is a piece of string? Now how much does that arbitrarily length string cost?

it depends on the piece of string, the one i'm holding is 17.2cm

Some DLC is 3-5 units. This is what i get the impression most people are refering to as DLC.

A what we would refer to as a downloadable expansion (downloadable means its still technicaly DLC) would be the equivalent of water worlds and naval units. if you want a number of units something that probably in their mind would be two teirs of at least 5 units (10), naval versions of basic structures like mass extractors and fish mines (+6), factories (+2). Thats a conservative estimate of about 20 units. Seaplanes would be about +50% of that again.

DLC for cosmetics only, if there is going to be DLC at all.

I'm much more in favor of expansion packs.

I would rather have one game, where everybody can simply update to the latest version and can play with everybody else on the servers.