Deus Ex Mankind Divided Pre-Order BS

[Shauna]

Pre-orders aren't bad in theory. DLC isn't bad in theory. But the the way the AAA game industry are abusing this, what essentially is a great idea - it's not acceptable.

In this very example, extra missions for this game (a game that hasn't even been released yet so why couldn't it just be included in the finished product?) were being locked away from paying customers because they chose not to preorder the game. Sure, they'll be released as extra DLC whenever but it'll be like £10 a pop. Consumers are being punished for not throwing down their money before the game is released.

This isn't just skins and weapon mods - this is sections of game. Sections of game that are ready to play on the day of release. But only if you are willing to pay up front.

[Loony BoB]

So don't buy the extra stuff. *shrug* And honestly, beforehand never had the development of the scale we see today.

I don't *like* DLC that much, but I do believe that if it were completely cut, all these games wouldn't suddenly have all the extra stuff included by default at the same price. To anyone who thinks that, I'll point to all the threads about game developers going out of business, games bombing horrifically after years of development, etc. Now, you can say "That's the fault of those particular games" but just as easily can I say "and if you want companies and employees to survive such misses, you have to let them milk the hits."

If it's just stuff like skins etc, I don't give a rat's arse if they're DLC. Back in the day we didn't have them and I didn't care. Bonus guns? You don't need them, they're completely unnecessary and most games already have a ridiculous number of guns in them by default anyway. What else... bonus quests? Well, that's where I start to question things, I suppose, but I just don't bother buying them and it makes no difference to me. If I get them for free for buying the game on day one then that's an awesome bonus that I get for paying full release price instead of waiting for pre-owned games to hit the shelves. If you want 100% of the original game content then be prepared to pay 100% of the original price. If that's done through pre-order bonuses or free day one DLC that requires codes, I don't mind out of the two (and often pre-order bonuses for low sale games end up being easy to grab off the shelf with the original game).

Do I like DLC? No. Do I like pre-order bonuses? Yeah - they're included in the base price of the game. Do I care enough that I feel DLC takes away from a game? No - if I don't feel the original game was worth the money I spent on it and then some, I wouldn't pay for the DLC. People who think that games, regardless of quality, should all come out at the same price and that should include everything in the game? That I find interesting. As far as I'm concerned, not all games have a quality value of £39.99. To others I'm sure they all deserve to be £9.99 or less, but that's just the balancing act that developers, publishers and retailers have to consider when it comes to how many units they want to sell.

It's just so rare that I've ever been genuinely annoyed at DLC, and even rarer that I'm annoyed at pre-order bonuses. I think they may take the piss a bit sometimes (day one priced DLC the worst of it, I'd say, and this DE pre-order nonsense), sure, but no more than I think a lot of developers out there take the piss by pretending that their £39.99 game is actually worth the same £39.99 that the best video games out there are worth. "But Daniel, some sell more!" - So? I'm not the one buying all of them. I can only say how much each game is worth to me and these games are not equal.

I would most definitely take GTA V out-of-the-box, no-extras over similar games from before the pre-order and DLC era.

[Mirage]

It all comes down to how you look at it, I guess, and of course it comes down to the game as well. Think of any game out there that has DLC / pre-order bonuses. Now imagine it never had them. Nor was that content included in the game. It simply didn't exist.

Was it still worth your money? If so, DLC + pre-orders aren't bad for that game.

While pre-order bonuses and DLC may be a bit over the top in a lot of cases, that's down to the people who are actually spending money on these things. Pre-order bonuses I spend money on sometimes, but rarely. It's even rarer that I spend money on DLC. I just simply take the game for what it is. And compared to the old games I had before pre-order bonuses and DLC came into being a thing? For me, and the games I play? The games are still generally better. RPGs may be the exception, but that's nothing to do with DLC so much as overall gameplay quality just not being as high as it was in 1997.

This is a trout argument and you should be embarrased.

[Loony BoB]

I genuinely believe it and have no embarrassment over it. I just don't think much about DLC at all and focus on the base game.

And the only people who should be embarrassed in this topic are those that spend money on DLC and don't like DLC. If you don't like it, do what I do: Don't buy it.

[Psychotic]

I don't *like* DLC that much, but I do believe that if it were completely cut, all these games wouldn't suddenly have all the extra stuff included by default at the same price.

Read my example about Metal Gear Solid V.

To anyone who thinks that, I'll point to all the threads about game developers going out of business, games bombing horrifically after years of development, etc.

Five Nights at Freddy's cost how much to make and made how much? Minecraft cost how much to make and made how much? If you do a Square-Enix and spend millions on hi tech graphic engines that consumers aren't interested in, yes, you will lose money. It's simple supply and demand and yes companies will lose money if they put out poor products. Likewise you're seeing a growing consumer backlash to companies employing these practices.

Do I like pre-order bonuses? Yeah - they're included in the base price of the game.

No, they're not. As I've said, I could buy a game on the day of launch at full price, the same price as someone who has pre-ordered. Therefore the bonus is not included in the price of the game.

You can say "Ah but you should've pre-ordered". Nonsense. There is no benefit to the customer to reserve a copy of any game (rare collector's editions notwithstanding). They're not going to run out of copies, especially with digital distribution. A sensible consumer would wait until journalists and critics they trusted had got their hands on it and provided a review score to make sure it's not a piece of trout. I would point you in the direction of many Triple A games which have released in an awful and buggy state - Assassin's Creed Unity and Arkham Knight are two examples in the past twelve months. Indeed, the new Tony Hawk game got released this week and is an unplayable piece of trout. Pre-Orders mean that game developers have no incentive not to do this trout. They've already got their money and can release a buggy piece of crap and then patch it weeks later. It's unacceptable.

Educate yourself:

[Shauna]

I don't know if you can call something a "base game", when the devs have actively chopped out story missions that currently exist and will be available day one, so they can lock them behind a pay wall. Because it sounds to me that it's the "base game" minus whatever the heck the dev thinks they can get away with.

[Fox]

Pre-order bonuses are but a stone's throw away from 'XP microtransactions'. You know, the stuff that lets you level faster/skip parts of the game/unlock stuff earlier in the game if you pay real money for the privilege. The defence for those is similar: "If you don't like it, don't buy it!" "This allows people who don't have time to play the game to still enjoy the game!" Back in the day of course this all used to be taken care of with cheat codes. Or, you know, just non-trout game design.

The current AAA industry has inherited a ridiculous gold mine with this pre-order stuff, because it doesn't face the same stigma that other forms of DLC and microtransactions do. It used to be that pre-orders made sense - there would be limited stock, you needed to make sure you reserved a copy. But even then, most outlets wouldn't make you pay full price before release, you'd just put down a deposit and then pay the difference when you picked up your game. Stock problems don't really exist any more; certainly not with games backed by a major publisher like SE. But because the practice already existed, certain people in the industry were able to exploit it and warp it into something awful.

Here are my main objections to pre-order bonuses:

1. It is insulting to the people who don't pre-order. I will pay the same price for a less complete game, just because I had the cheek to make sure the game wasn't broken or terrible before buying it.
2. It is insulting to people who do pre-order. Make no mistake, from the point of view of an executive the loyal fans who pre-order are the suckers. In horrible F2P terms they are the 'whales'; the gullible people who can be enticed to drop cash - sometimes huge quantities of cash - sight unseen with the promise of exclusive shiny things.
3. It creates confirmation bias within many people who pre-order. When you've invested money in an unreleased product and thus a product of unknown quality, you are gambling. People like winning gambles, and they don't like feeling they've been duped. So many will evangelise and defend the game to others, or at the very least they will tend not to ask for a refund if the product is bad because doing so would be an admission of failure. In short, once you've put money into something you are invested in its success.
4. It reduces the incentive to create a quality product. If you can make a huge amount of money before anyone can assess how good your game is, you don't need your game to be all that good to sell it.
5. It takes resource off the full product. This isn't universally true - sometimes publishers will generally invest more capital 'on top of' what was already earmarked for the main game, purely to create pre-order incentives. These situations are not common though - it's usually cheaper to just make the full game and then say "what can we lock behind a pre-order incentive?" It's almost impossible to tell whether or not a pre-order bonus is a genuine 'bonus' or not.

[Ayen]

In short, it's bulltrout. Absolute bulltrout and I'm glad this particular case was stomped out like it was.

[Loony BoB]

No, they're not. As I've said, I could buy a game on the day of launch at full price, the same price as someone who has pre-ordered. Therefore the bonus is not included in the price of the game.

You misinterpret what I'm saying. I'm saying that I don't have to pay any additional fee for them. I have no complaints about getting them when I do pre-order. I don't have any complaints about not getting pre-order bonuses when I don't pre-order, because I have yet to experience a single game where I felt the pre-order bonuses were the difference between me really feeling the worth of the money spent on said game. If a game isn't good enough on it's own, then it's not good enough. Bonuses or no bonuses be damned.

"But I'm not getting the full game! They cut all this stuff out that could have been in the base game!" - What, you didn't invest so you can't dress the character in skin #22? You can't use the marginally different shotgun from the other three shotguns you've got? You don't get to experience the game two days earlier? You don't get x amount of currency free, allowing you to not experience the game as it was intended (ie, earn your own damned in-game currency)?

Oh no.

Sorry, with that kind of stuff I just don't feel it's a problem at all. I've stated beforehand that when it's bonus missions etc. that I start to question things.

[Psychotic]

They got away with weapon skins because people say "oh no" in italics. Now they're seeing what bigger and better items they can get away with. In the case of Alien: Isolation you could only play as Ripley, the main smurfing character, and do her missions if you pre-ordered. Oh no indeed.

Indeed, see the pre-order bonuses this very thread is about...

[Shauna]

I've stated beforehand that when it's bonus missions etc. that I start to question things.

This is what is literally happening right now on a regular basis.

Although many people say "Don't like it, don't do it", people are still pre-ordering and so what content can be cut out without people kicking up too much fuss will continue to be pushed.

[Loony BoB]

They got away with weapon skins because people say "oh no" in italics. Now they're seeing what bigger and better items they can get away with. In the case of Alien: Isolation you could only play as Ripley, the main smurfing character, and do her missions if you pre-ordered. Oh no indeed.

Indeed, see the pre-order bonuses this very thread is about...

I've already stated earlier that I'm glad that the fans stood up about the DE:MD stuff and that SE changed it.

As for the Ripley thing, how was she the main character if you could only play as her via pre-order? Either way, that too, is bad.

But just like a race shouldn't be determined by the actions of individuals, nor should pre-order bonuses be declared inherently bad because various developers are doing them wrong for some games.

Again, I rarely pre-order, and I never pre-order because of bonuses. I've never judged a game by it's pre-order content.

[Psychotic]

Pre-order bonuses are inherently bad because it is of no benefit to the customer in any way to put down money for a game sight unseen and the use of psychological manipulation, creating "haves" and "have-nots" in order to achieve this is a disingenuous business practice, creating short-term gains for the industry at the expense of its longer term reputation with its customers. As well as the wider issue that, as I have stated, games are now more regularly released in a broken state or alternatively trailers for games (see Watch_Dogs, Aliens: Colonial Marines, Infamous Second Son) use false footage, outright lying to people in order to acquire pre-orders.

You mentioned companies going under, I can't understand why you don't see that underhanded business practices like this are a contributing factor. Too many people have been burned now.

[Mirage]

While not all games have lots of bonus things like alternate outfits, modes and other easter eggs, it is my experience at the game series/studios who generally did put things like these into their PS1 and PS2 games (and other consoles from that time and before) have very steadily decreased the amount of these bonus things while releasing more and tiny DLC packs.

I mean I can't prove that a game has had its content cut, but please don't tell me it's a coincidence that Super Mega Adventure XI has one alternate costume and 20 DLC costumes, while Super Mega Adventure V had 10 included in the game.

Or Turbo Dogfight 3 has 5 bonus "joke" aircrafts while Turbo Dogfight 7 has 0, but 5 offered as DLC.

[Ayen]

They got away with weapon skins because people say "oh no" in italics. Now they're seeing what bigger and better items they can get away with. In the case of Alien: Isolation you could only play as Ripley, the main smurfing character, and do her missions if you pre-ordered. Oh no indeed.

Heh, glad I got that used. Though it's kind of sad how quickly a copy with the Ellen Ripley content was being sold at Game Stop...