People criticizing company for DLC practices is nothing new, but it's something that also never dies out.
I've been thinking about that, and my conclusion is that it shouldn't be such a given point that companies shouldn't release day one DLC or content "locked behind" amiibo, and that doing so is supposedly a bad practice.
Thing is, if a developer decides to lock content behind some kind of pay wall (be it amiibo or a DLC package), that will have consequences to their game.
Suppose a company decides that 20% of the content they created during development will be part of a DLC pack. That absolutely won't be of no consequence for the quality of the game, and that decision will definetely reflect on review scores, mouth-to-mouth promotion of the game and, finally, sales. Even if it doesn't make that huge of an impact.
So, it's not like they're "cheating". If the base package included in a game is good enough to make it a great game, then it doesn't matter if a part of what was developed is only going to be made available some months later for people willing to pay extra for it.
I think the mistake in the argument against DLC is that developers always make the decision to turn content into DLC after making it. In reality, I think that in most of the cases the developer only went the extra mile precisely because they knew that it could be turned into extra income.
Agreed. In most cases Amiibo DLC has unquestionably been content which wouldn't have otherwise been included in the main game.
The problem is envy and jealousy. People don't like seeing others have something they do not. And despite the fact you paid $15 for that DLC content, people complain about it and insist it be handed out for free to themselves, who paid nothing.
It really grinds my gears when I pay good money for Amiibo, yet all the bums of the world who envy what I have ruin it. They make such a fuss about the content not being unlockable in game, that Nintendo started making most Amiibo DLC content unlockable in game. What's the point of me buying Amiibo DLC if I can just get it for free? Like Mario Odyssey. Those unlockable costumes or whatever it is should absolutely not be included in the base game. If you want that content you can fork over your hard-earned cash and buy it just like I did.
It brings a smile to my face when I see stuff like Metroid Samus Returns Amiibo content. And people complained about it but such is the nature of life. You can't expect to have all the same content as someone who paid $30 more than you did. If you want equal content you have to pay equal cash.
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I haven't been bothered by it much, but games like Deus Ex, Middle Earth, and Breath of the Wild are all equally faultable. Nintendo has chosen to expend their special treatment ticket with amiibo.
@SeaCocumber You couldn't have chosen a better time to defend this now that it is confirmed AC: Origins will also feature lootboxes in a single player game, just like Shadow of War.
I don't think anyone is criticising DLC. Nobody had an issue with the MK8 DLC packs, nobody had an issue with the Witcher expansions, and nobody has an issue with the upcoming Horizon DLC.
The day one DLC however? That means they planned exactly how much should be in the base game, guessing how little content they can get away with for €60, while also charging extra for the rest of the game. I wish those publishers had the balls to ask €80 for their game if they think that's what their game is worth. But when games like the Witcher 3 are an easy success story with a relatively small budget compared to something that takes several hundreds of million to develop, then I also wonder where the issue lies if developers can't manage their own development budget properly.
Meanwhile amiibo are nothing more than glorified microtransactions hidden behind an expensive plastic shell. And it's physical mind you... physical DLC... DLC that can sell out and/or disappear from the store shelves. I think that says enough.
@Octane I hate it when people call amiibo "physical DLC" as though the figures themselves are worthless. I have Isabelle on my desk and I wuv her.
I don't think all amiibo-locked content is good though. It ought to be stuff that caters to your love of this character you bought a figure of - which tends to mean costumes, which are good fun but easily ignored by people who don't buy. I don't want to see amiibo being used for substantial content that's trying to sell itself to people who may not care much for the characters. Samus Returns strikes me as an example of amiibo done wrong. If they wanted to sell that stuff it should have just been DLC.
@Zyrac But that's highly subjective. I don't care for statues or figurines, even if it's of my favourite franchise. So to me it's buying €15 physical DLC if I want the content, cause I have no interest in the figurine itself.
I have no interest in the dolls either. Where's the option to buy some of this DLC without them? Like in BOTW, in order to get some of the costumes you've to buy a SCamiibo. They're normally about €20 but sure you can't even buy a lot of them, unless you're willing to pay a scalper triple the price or more. And what do some of those SCamiibo do outside of BOTW? Very little in a lot of cases. The worst probably being the Bokoblin SCamiibo. So anyway, ya, €60 for a skin, no thanks. Nintendo are very sneaky as well at times with DLC. Again in BOTW, that Path Tracker thing was tracking our movements from the very beginning but we could only access it by paying for the DLC pack.
@SLIGEACH_EIRE Firstly, calling it "€60 for a skin" only underlines my point. You don't want the figure, you don't buy it. You can live without the skin, I suspect.
Secondly, childish name-calling does not tend to help one appear credible in a discussion.
I'd like to be able to buy content locked behind an Amiibo, without buying an Amiibo. Because scarcity and all of that aside, I just don't want an Amiibo lying about the house, getting in the way, probably damaged somewhere along the road, which would make the content it represents unusable.
@Octane The loot-box argument brings a whole new level of bad with it though, due to the addiction factor of the boxes, the randomized content, dopamine release, basically gambling. As for Shadow of War, I was intending to buy that on my PC, but I'm boycotting it over those loot boxes, and I'm already hearing that the 4th level or chapter or such, is a grind-fest and that it isn't if one buys loot boxes.
@Zyrac I've always called them SCamiibo because that's what they are to me, a SCAM. I wanted the costumes but I didn't want the clutter of the dolls or the hassle. So, I bought an 18 card pack of Zelda NFC tags on Ebay. That's €20 Nintendo could have got had they an option to buy the content another way but instead went to some unscrupulous person in Asia. I own at least a dozen SCamiibo, bought mostly through Collector's Editions but I do have the likes of Link, Luigi, Samus, Zero Suit Samus and others.
I'd agree that we need to be talking about it in more nuanced terms than DLC good/DLC bad. A few commentators have already made some good contributions in breaking the debate up into finer pieces.
With regards to amiibo, there was an editorial on this site arguing that the figures in their current role don't offer enough value for money, but personally I'm happier with them being limited to 'aesthetic' functions. I feel that if you buy a figurine, you should at least want to actually own the figurine, not simply treat it as a glorified unlock code for a semi-core part of the game.
It seems petulant to complain about Splatoon 1 given the amount of free content that came with that game over its life, but I admit I never liked that the campaign had so many amiibo specific elements. I'm much happier with the current setup in Splatoon 2, where the base game is much fuller than the original without the need for swiping toys.
The amiibo still do something, but it feels like an extension of the amiibo themselves, rather than some random chunk of core gameplay.
I still don't like the notion of paying full price for a newly released game that has content that is locked until I pay even more money. Whether it's Day 1 DLC or Amiibo doesn't matter to me. It's still fleecing their customers for as much as they can get away with.
Some games do amiibo well (Smash Bros), but for a lot of games amiibo is an expensive way of accessing locked content. Splatoon 1 still seems like the worst offender to me. The single player is very short in Splatoon 1, and you'll need to pay out for 3 different amiibo if you want every mission.
I wouldn't mind so much if there was a cheaper way to get the locked content without needing to buy the figurine. If they had also sold the locked content for cheaper through traditional DLC, or they sold cheaper amiibo cards, then I probably wouldn't have minded the situation for most games.
Another reason why these sorts of practices are occuring is because publishers don't have the guts to add more content to their game and command a higher SRP for it. Remember RE: Revelations on 3DS? The press were ripping them to shreds until they reversed their decision to sell it at an increased SRP, so now we have crap like the Revelations on Switch where Capcom doesn't even bother to provide a cartridge for the second game, because they're convinced that the userbase is unwilling to pay full price for a couple of cartridges, so instead we get a cheaper, but substantially inferior product (one that I absolutely refuse to support in its current state).
I'd much rather have more expensive games with what would other have been DLC or whatever than these stupid limited editions that contain useless trinkets with nothing more than the base game on the cartridge/disc.
Hell, I'd be happy to double dip on some games if publishers later rerelease their games with all of the DLC on the cartridge/disc, but Nintendo is yet to do this.
I'd have no problem with Amiibos if they were easier to get. But as it is scalpers are the only way to go if you want certain amiibo. I too purchased the Zelda nfc cards purely because scalpers were asking too much and Nintendo had no more stock.
@UmniKnight Yeah, the last chapter is supposedly a 20 hour grind to get the ''true ending'', 20 hours of repetitive gameplay without any side quests, story or cutscenes. Of course those loot boxes are going to make your time a lot easier
Mario odyssey is by far the best implementation of amiibo aside from maybe smash brothers. Completely cosmetic, not locked to physical figures that will disappear with time, and anyone who wants them works harder for them instead of just tapping the figure for a reward.
Let's be honest, people are buying them for the figurines, not what they do. I'm entirely certain their actual functionality is secondary to most people. And I think Mario Odyssey is proof they realize that now. Bravo to them, I hope they keep it this way. No one should have to feel like they missed out on pieces of a full priced game just because they weren't around when a figure sold out in seconds online. Hopefully at worst they'll offer any bonuses as standalone digital DLC
I think Nintendo are slowly realising the gig is up with SCamiibo. They're a niche product for the hardcore collector at this point. A lot of retailers have stopped stocking them. Nintendo are going more and more down the season pass route. I wouldn't be surprised to hear that Odyssey has a season pass but it'll be announced post launch after the backlash they got for mentioning that other high profile games would have DLC prior to launch.
Let's be honest, people are buying them for the figurines, not what they do. I'm entirely certain their actual functionality is secondary to most people.
This is not what the internet told me the first 3 months of Amiibo's existence.
I was there, people constantly wanted more use out of the Amiibos in games, and anyone who tells you otherwise is lying.
(note: this doesn't inherently contradict your point, since the internet is not a good basis for a definitive answer of what most people want)
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Topic: In defence of amiibo-locked content and DLC
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