Random rant about DLCs and Expansion

[chortles 263]

I'd also remark that the boundary between a DLC and a so-called "proper" expansion is a pretty artificial one that tends to do with evaluator's bias, although it seems that BI chose to differentiate Arma 3 paid DLCs versus the Expansion based on scope -- the Expansion being for now vaguely defined other than "new terrain" but presumably more general in what it'd add, whereas each paid DLC has consisted of thematically-focused assets and scenarios.

Speaking of expansions, one othe forums member remarked that eventually one effectively needed Resistance to play OFP online, and I remember how OA both superseded and became synonymous with "Arma 2"...

[twisted 128]

I hate predatory Dlc. Where the point is to milk money from customers rather than deliver a fully fleshed out Game. That said I do like bis approach where it adds functionality for everyone. Best Dlc model out there

Not keen on the monetization of games by mid makers as it tends to splinter the community into tribally polarized groups. Or becomes a pay to win crap fest.

[chortles 263]

tends to splinter the community into tribally polarized groups.

Ehhhhhhh, the Arma "community" managed to do that just fine even without money involved. :rolleyes: Money may make it worse, but as this highlights community splintering happens regardless...

Or becomes a pay to win crap fest.

Something that BI's server monetization rules specifically proscribe.

[galzohar 31]

If they make an expansion it must be on at least the scale of OA, with at least as many engine improvements on top of the additional terrain. Otherwise, it will just end up like the other DLCs - Some will buy it, some won't, and you should probably avoid using it in your missions if you want them to be playable by as many players as possible (and no, requiring a DLC-owning-pilot for the mission to play out as intended is not really "playable").

While I don't think they should be giving us free helicopters, the current way the helicopters are implemented makes them un-usable, since if you place them in a mission you pretty much guarantee your mission won't be played as designed since at least some of the time (and more likely - most of the time) you will not have a pilot that owns the DLC. So you never even bother making such missions and those who buy the DLC don't really have much to do with it.

Adding stuff that split the community is 2 can be managed if it's done every 1-3 years and provides a big improvement for those who decide to buy the "next big thing". Splitting it up every couple months with a tiny DLC that most people are not interested in buying will just make it a "buy it as a donation to BIS if you want, but don't expect to use it in multiplayer" (for reasons explained above - Using DLC in a mission you make will limit its target audience and thus should be avoided).

And of course there are the single player players who might buy it, but I find it hard to believe they are the real target audience of the DLC. If you're going to target a sub-group of the Arma community, might as well target the life players who would buy anything for $ if they can.

Edited February 14, 2015 by galzohar

[chortles 263]

If they make an expansion it must be on at least the scale of OA, with at least as many engine improvements on top of the additional terrain. Otherwise, it will just end up like the other DLCs - Some will buy it, some won't, and you should probably avoid using it in your missions if you want them to be playable by as many players as possible (and no, requiring a DLC-owning-pilot for the mission to play out as intended is not really "playable").

The only reason that OA worked like what you're thinking (in terms of being both adopted at large and "with as many engine improvements on top of the additional terrain") was because it was a separate game that ended up superseding (and becoming synonymous) with Arma 2...

[galzohar 31]

The only reason that OA worked like what you're thinking (in terms of being both adopted at large and "with as many engine improvements on top of the additional terrain") was because it was a separate game that ended up superseding (and becoming synonymous) with Arma 2...

And that is exactly what they need to do again if they want to sell well.

[chortles 263]

And that is exactly what they need to do again if they want to sell well.

On the contrary, "standalone expansion" is fundamentally different to the point of not being applicable... First, the only reason that OA appeared to have so many engine improvements was because of how bollocks'd A2 was at launch. :lol:

Second, OA being a standalone expansion meant that community-made mods could use OA as their game dependency without requiring prior A2 buy-in, yet none of the engine improvements were substantively backported to Arma 2; therefore OA became the "core game" that Arma 2 used to be, relegating the original Arma 2 game to essentially being a content pack (read: DLC) for OA. Heck, I remember that at one point Arma 2: Free was being used alongside OA as the cheapest route to a Combined Ops install during the DayZ mod's early days. ;)

Finally, the Arma 3 expansion being non-standalone means that there's no reason to expect that any derived engine improvements wouldn't be in the core game just like the Helicopters and Marksmen DLCs, so BI can't even really sell the expansion on that basis like they could have with OA...

[galzohar 31]

You are right that with the current DLC model it will be more difficult to sell something like OA, with a different executable etc.

The "standalone" part of OA was not the main part. It could have been made non-standalone and it would actually have made things better off in the long run if they just made sure to sell it in a cheap bundle with A2 (aka "combined operations" for 50$, which people who got the correct tips from the correct people bought anyway).

Trying to make the expansion like they did the DLCs will probably make it fail just as hard. I've yet to see any of the DLCs used in any of the servers I played on, and while I don't play on public servers often as I don't like their game modes very much, I did check out game modes like King of the Hill and EUTW and haven't really seen any DLC stuff there, and of course not in TacBF which is a more serious PvP mode that can't rely on people having DLC for missions to work. And then in DTAS of course I won't include any DLC for the same reason.

I'd be quite sad if BIS release an awesome island but buying it will be pointless because half the players won't buy it and thus most of the servers will never use it if they want to keep their player count high.

[brightcandle 114]

The only real concern I have right now is that the complexity of requirements for communities will get more complex. Right now its probably just a copy of Arma 3. But in the future you might have communities with Arma 3 + marksman + expansion 1 and a host of others as well. If the marksman content turns out to be good then people will buy it on mass, if it isn't then they wont. The same is true of the expansion. BF4 has this sort of splintering in its communities and its not too bad, at least with Arma 3 we are looking at mostly being able to play when missing the DLC. It doesn't break things even if its not ideal.

I am not convinced small updates are worth while, they add unnecessary complexity and dependency issues. Its better IMO you go with bigger bulks of content together that an entire community will buy, because karts and a few helicopters aren't.

[gibonez 18]

The only real concern I have right now is that the complexity of requirements for communities will get more complex. Right now its probably just a copy of Arma 3. But in the future you might have communities with Arma 3 + marksman + expansion 1 and a host of others as well. If the marksman content turns out to be good then people will buy it on mass, if it isn't then they wont. The same is true of the expansion. BF4 has this sort of splintering in its communities and its not too bad, at least with Arma 3 we are looking at mostly being able to play when missing the DLC. It doesn't break things even if its not ideal.

I am not convinced small updates are worth while, they add unnecessary complexity and dependency issues. Its better IMO you go with bigger bulks of content together that an entire community will buy, because karts and a few helicopters aren't.

wouldnt the way Bohemia incorporates dlc prevent that ?

The player joining those communities without the DLC would join just fine just not have access to the dlc content.

[brightcandle 114]

wouldnt the way Bohemia incorporates dlc prevent that ?

The player joining those communities without the DLC would join just fine just not have access to the dlc content.

While that is a reasonable strategy for a public server on the surface its not really good for a community. Lets say the Marksman DLC sells the weapons and we choose to run that as our marksman rifle, its no longer optional within our community. You can't play any role that would require it, nor would you be able to pick it up and use it if needed. Its not really practical to not buy it if a community chooses to use the content. Even with the helicopter where we can be sure the pilots have bought it the rest of us don't really want the nag message when we get in. Its simple enough to just make the mission maker choose a different helicopter, then if things do go wrong (pilot crashes to desktop) one of us can jump in and fly it rather than crash into the ground because no one bought the DLC!

But even on a public server if you put a helicopter down if you use a DLC one then very few people are going to actually be able to fly it. That means the game is broken until someone with that DLC turns up. So as a mission maker for public missions you aren't going to use DLC content.

Its a system where we get to play with the content partially and BI gets to sell. But the actual game situation is to avoid using DLC content and if its present it can't be the only way to do things. Private communities don't mandate stuff that isn't worth the outlay either. Overall its a recipe for not having the DLC content used. Whereas when expansions for Arma 2 arrived everyone moved over, because it was a package of worthwhile things that everyone could find something they wanted in it. The fact it was a different exe/standalone wasn't really what drove that, it was that it was big enough to be worthwhile and thus didn't cause community fragmentation. The DLCs aren't currently causing fragmentation really either, but those who buy them probably aren't finding these items in games very much because of the impact.

[gippo 38]

So, what's the solution? Make more content, then release it in one package and all players will buy it and they won't complain?

I wasn't an Arma player when OA came out. Just looked at the features and yeah... it is far more content (maybe they are doing the same with the upcoming A3 expansion)

IMO, everyone will complain about something, people don't understand that BIS is not an EA which sells to million of gamers and ALWAYS introduces first day DLCs which just means another pile of money in their backyard.

Soon, my hours in the game will be over 1000 hours, and I'm not even done yet. I'm even scripting (kind of learning) apart from playing, I'm also member of a community which just keeps and keeps updating their mission (and we do have more and more plans), but I can't wait to see who will be the next who comes up with a great mission / mod. I haven't even tried private groups...

So for that experience, I would gladly give some money to support th developers and get a "smaller" dlc which may or may not fragments the community.

Yeah, the game may have serious half / 1 year old bugs (fix the VON pls BIS) and some other stupid things (you discover more if you are scripting / running server), but it's still giving players more and more enjoyment.

Bottom line:

While I agree the Helicopter dlc ( could be better, and DLCs are kind of ruining the gaming industry, I must say, BIS's method is maybe the greatest of all IMO.

[Jackal326 1181]

IMO, everyone will complain about something

That sums this community up perfectly. What is that old saying? "You can please some of the people all of the time, you can please all of the people some of the time, but you can’t please all of the people all of the time�

This community as a whole is NEVER satisfied.

BI release an expansion/DLC and people complain that they didn't include what they consider to be an obvious addition that should have been made, and then whine with some imagined sense of entitlement.

An addon maker releases an M4 pack and people ask for M16s.

A mod team make an island themed around the middle east and people immediately expect/want/demand units and vehicles to populate it.

A player makes a fun mission and people demand a campaign.

The list goes on, and you get the idea.

[galzohar 31]

So, what's the solution? Make more content, then release it in one package and all players will buy it and they won't complain?

Something like that. Pretty much.

People might still complain anyway, but at least you can get new stuff and improvements for your game and actually get to play with them in multiplayer.

The current DLC situation means that even if you buy it you won't get to play it because mission makers will avoid using it and server admins will avoid using missions that do use it.

The goal shouldn't be to avoid complaints, but should be to be able to sell stuff to people without them regretting their purchase, and coming back the next time you want to sell them something. I don't believe the current DLC system can achieve something like that.

[CaptainAzimuth 714]

Something like that. Pretty much.

People might still complain anyway, but at least you can get new stuff and improvements for your game and actually get to play with them in multiplayer.

The current DLC situation means that even if you buy it you won't get to play it because mission makers will avoid using it and server admins will avoid using missions that do use it.

The goal shouldn't be to avoid complaints, but should be to be able to sell stuff to people without them regretting their purchase, and coming back the next time you want to sell them something. I don't believe the current DLC system can achieve something like that.

Best compromise i've heard...