I play Halo 3 quite a lot. Granted my amount of play has been steadily decreasing over time but it’s still statistically my most played game. I’m quite good. Not crazy good but I can hold my own pretty consistently. When I’m with a team of friends list people it’s great fun and we rock teh halols, so-to-speak. However, Microsoft’s money-grabbing antics are starting to irk me and have prompted this rant. It’s gotten to the point where I’m expected to pay through the teeth just to be able to play the game to its fullest extent.
I’m all for downloadable content. I think it’s a great idea and clearly an important stage in the development of our favourite hobby. It enables developers to continue to support their product beyond its release. I’m even a fan of DLC map packs. It’s a great way for developers to make money and it provides some optional content for the player. What I am not a fan of is being punished by having game features taken away from me just because I unfortunately don’t excrete cash or just because I spend what little I have on unimportant things like food.
Before I go on here’s a list of the playlist DLC requirements (not including double exp weekend playlists);
Ranked:
- Lone Wolves (No DLC Required)
- Team Slayer (Heroic, Legendary, and Mythic Map Packs Required)
- Team Doubles (All DLC Required)
- Squad Battle (Heroic Map Pack Required)
- MLG (Heroic Map Pack Required)
- Team SWAT (All DLC Required)
- Team Snipers (Heroic and Legendary Map Packs Required)
Unranked:
- Basic Training (No DLC Required)
- Action Sack (All DLC Required)
- Rumble Pit (All DLC Required)
- Social Slayer (No DLC Required)
- Social Team DLC (Heroic, Legendary, and Mythic Map Packs Required)
- Social Skirmish (No DLC Required)
- Multi Team (Heroic, Legendary, and Mythic Map Packs Required)
- Social Big Team (Heroic, Legendary, and Mythic Map Packs Required.)
Let’s have a look then. Four Playlists can be played with no DLC whatsoever including the beginner training playlist. Luckily enough for us cheap skates map packs tend to get made free after a while. Currently there’s one free map pack for Halo and one stand alone map (Cold Storage). The free DLC is the Heroic map pack.
Say a player has been wise enough to nab all of the free packs. What does this enable him/her to play? Six playlists. And that’s including the ‘no DLC required’ playlists. That’s Six out of fifteen playlists (the bold ones in those lists). Does that not strike you as unbelievably annoying.
Call of Duty: WaW does something that makes my blood boil. It allows players into any playlist, which is clearly a good thing. But it thinks nothing of starting a countdown into a game which requires a map that a player doesn’t have. Then, in a move that makes me want to dash the walls with my own brain matter, the game starts without you. It boots you from the lobby THEN OPENS THE GUIDE MARKETPLACE PAGE SO YOU CAN BUY THE MAP. That infuriates me. Did you see all of those upper-case letters just then? It takes a lot for me to use those.
One might argue that Halo 3 does something similar with its reminders upon starting the game. But even those have an air of tongue-in-cheek about them. I’ve always liked Bungie’s sense of humour. It’s difficult to take a studio too seriously when they keep a pickled dog’s head in their building AND include it in their seven step plan for world domination.
Would it be impossible to just mirror all the playlists and make one set DLC-enabled? Or perhaps just use a flag system which enables the matchmaking system to check which maps players in a lobby do or do not have and start games accordingly. Of course it’s not impossible. The way that have it now is the most efficient way of squeezing money out of us online gamers. Sigh.
Those are just two examples of paid DLC getting under my skin. Doubtless there are many other examples of thumbscrews being put on customers by developers. These are merely my own gripes.
iTunes
Ooooooh caps lock. That must have hurt.
This is the prime reason I gave up on Halo multiplayer and am actually debating whether or not I need to play ODST since I’m sure that it’s likely to follow suit.
I was thinking exactly the same thing when I started playing Halo 3 again the other day, great rant.
@Jay, If I remember correctly ODST is going to come bundled with all Halo3 DLC maps up to this point. I know it doesn’t solve the problem of map packs that will be released for ODST but at least it will bring us up to date.
Plus Nathan Fillion is in Halo 3, that makes it a must play for me.
I think you’re overreacting about Halo 3. The game has been out for almost two years, an extra 20 bucks for 6 more maps isn’t bad, especially if you like forge.
I definitely agree with you about CoD:WaW though.
And this is why… Multiplayer PC games will always (for the foreseeable future) be superior to console games in this department.
Sorry, but someone had to say it ;)
I bought Halo 3 for 20 bucks. ¡I don’t want to pay another 20 for just 6 maps!
Halo 3 is one of the best multiplayer games out there, but still has a lot to learn from the PC games.
I wholeheartedly agree, Wex. Now if only someone would buy and maintain and future-proof a gaming PC for me…
It *is* possible to mirror playlists because I believe that’s how it’s done on the PS3. I don’t have the map packs for COD: WaW and when I play online I never see the DLC maps.
i.e.: PC > PS3 > XBox. ;)
I have all the DLC except Heroic. I still can only play those 2 out of several unranked.. Which does suck. Disabling a game’s playlists for anyone not paying to ‘keep up with the jones’s’ really bites.
@Halfleft: Well if you’re going to think about it that way, you could consider each hardware upgrade as a DLC pack for all of your games :)
Bah, I meant Mythic.. (Not Heroic, which I think is free.)
Thing is, I know & knew Halo will always have DLC, yet, to remove functionality is dumb. If ODST is a full price title (from last news I heard it WILL be full price) I will likely lose interest in ODST and any future titles. [I'm not made of money Bungie!]
I was playing halo last night and was thinking everything that you just ranted about (not to mention the incredible amount of lag on live last night). I’ve been steadily playing more and more pc games in the past while, I think there may come a day when I just give up on consoles and cancel my live account.
I agree with you 100%, back in the days of Halo 2 with 8 million sales, they made all the maps free after a very short period of time, with over 9 million sales for Halo 3 they continue to push this bullshit, it infuriates me as well because I bought the game and they’re just trying to push the maps packs for money so they can A)Make people have to buy them to play the game online or B)Make ODST sell well because of all the maps.
Here’s the thing, I’m sure Bungie would love to leave playlists open for those without DLC, but they’re limited. What about custom games? You can choose the maps you want then. No matter how DLC is dealt with, there will always be someone looking for a reason to complain. You can’t please everyone.
@nate:
Just give more playlists for the people who haven’t went out and spent an extra 20 quid for maps packs.
This is exactly why I never got into halo. Infinity ward did this right. If you don’t have the maps, you won’t play with people that have the maps (or they’ll disable them for everyone else, not sure which way that works). Hate the way Treyarch did it for W@W, but I’ve got those maps already.
RE: PC needing constant upgrading…PS3 only renders 3D games at 540P in most cases, while most 360 games are coming in at 540p or 720P for 3D…So it doesn’t take a high end computer or constant upgrades to play at 1024×768, or a custom resolution matching 720P. This is low res for most PCs. Once you can’t play games at 720P, then you upgrade to the current price performance video card or cpu that will fit your mobo.
On the contrary, most of the time WaW DLC maps get vetoed.
You are a liberal communist. Money makes the world go round, my friend. And if you moved out of your mom’s basement, you would know this.
You bought the original game in good faith and it does EXACTLY what it advertised it would do. Do NOT let your socialist and leftist liberal mentality interfere with my capitalist ability to augment my gameplay by purchasing DLC.
Damn liberal gamer.
@Naughton: Been awhile since I played any Halo, but didn’t they used to release the new maps for free after like 3 or 4 months of getting people to pay for them? As in, if you wait you won’t have to pay? Not that 20 bucks is bad, I agree; I’m just wondering.
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“Do a Barrel Roll!”
And that’s why video game companies are losing millions of dollars and sinking, at least those that depend on consoles; the average person does not want to pay 15+ more dollars for a game they already paid 60+ for. Sound cheap? Remember, not everyone is a ‘gamer’ (One of the stupidest labels I’ve ever heard of by the way) who is willing to throw down hundreds of dollars to play faux expansion packs.
Sure, if you only play a certain game and you really like it then fine, go ahead and spend 20-30 dollars on it’s extra content. It just gets ridiculous when you have to do that for every game you buy just to actually ‘enjoy’ the game (because really you can play the core but how fun is that when there are only 1000 people on the core server and 302900 on the expax). It makes it too costly just to own four games and keep them up to full capacity. For example, since we bought our X-Box me and my room mate have only purchased Halo 3, Call of Duty 4, Fable II and Fall Out.
We kept up with Halo 3 DLC, Myth, Hero, and Legend. 30 bucks for a game we spent 50 on. Call of Duty 4 cost another 10, so 60 total for that. That’s 140 bucks combined. For, two, games. And that doesn’t include the possible future expansions, not to mention the fact that these games will soon be dead because of the constant releasing of sequels. If we kept Fable and Fall Out up to snuff we’d be looking at 300+ for four games. And that doesn’t include the price of X-Box live as well.
In addition, NONE of the DLC is covered by Microsoft. If it gets erased, deleted or corrupt tough cookie. When our console Red Ringed a little over a year ago we sent it in. Microsoft told us it had nothing to do with the hard drive, so they supposedly didn’t touch it. After getting back our old drive and new console my room mate went to play Call of Duty 4 and found out that all our DLC content was corrupted, and had to be re-downloaded. For, full, price. Thankfully Microsoft was already flooded with PR disasters like this (Just google Microsoft X-Box pr disasters) so we were given 2000 points; not enough to cover all the lost DLC but unless we filed a lawsuit we weren’t getting anything else. How nice of them, since they didn’t have to cover content they CREATED, RELEASED, and that I PAID FOR. And I know people from my relatively small town who have the same experiences.
To compare, I bought Oblivion for my computer. Not only was everything released FREE, with more patches and updates then the console version to boot, but there is a wealth of free community created content that make the game far more superior to it’s console ‘twin’. And I only have to pay for internet access to get at all this stuff, so free porn and movies come standard. So that’s 60 bucks, plus 30 dollar internet fee, for infinitely more accessible material than the 360 or any other console will ever hope to offer.
Sure, some people don’t mind throwing their money away on uncovered content. Some people prefer the more user friendly multiplayer that comes with consoles, and are willing to trade off more money for less content, no guarantees included. All the power to these folks. But the majority of people who play the consoles are sick of getting burned and spending exorbitant amounts of money just to be able to enjoy their library of games.
I, personally, am glad that these companies are losing millions of dollars and dying out. It serves them right for trying to hold people’s money hostage. I made a mistake of buying a 360, the last console I bought before it was an N64, and Mario Kart 64 alone gets more play time then all our 360 games combined. I will never again buy a new console, at least not from existing companies or those utilizing this mind boggling business model.
Even if the industry some how puddles through this low point though, how long before they are making people pay for patches? Or releasing ‘updated’ consoles every 6 months? Game companies want to make money; big DUH there. And they have the right to, if their product is salable. But there is a limit to how much people will spend on cash grabs and frankly I think most ‘gamers’ have reached theirs.
Oh, and Rebel, liberalism and such has nothing to do with it. People don’t want to have to purchase a half completed product that will not be updated for months; yet still being sold for the same price as a whole product. If you think Capitalism is blindly spending as much money on as little product as a company wishes to release to you, then you need to throw out that first year economics book of yours and really think about how and why these companies are sodomizing your wallet and why you apparently like it so much.
ya i have the same issue…i just baroowed halo 3 from a frined thinking oh ill play some ranked games but i was puched in the balls….i only wanted to play online not to have to pay for it….another game with dlc rip offs is gears of war two… you dont have to have them bought to play but there are some achievments that you can only unlock if you have the maps downloaded…but they dont requre you to do it on those maps….greddy faggss