Yes $50

So did you get a chance to play the Star Wars Battlefront Beta? If you did you probably had a pretty great time like everyone else did. The game looks great plays pretty well for a game in beta and really I was thinking I may give the full game a shot. That was until I heard the news that EA unsurprisingly is releasing a Seasons Pass with the game, but better yet that pass will cost you an extra $50.

Yes $50 for a game that will cost you $70 to start with for the standard edition of the game. Now you might expect that for $50 EA will have a bunch of information on what this extra cash will get you. Well you thought wrong. All that they have told us is

"It extends the game with 4 expansion packs coming at a later date filled with new content that will take you to new locations in a galaxy far far away. Star Wars Battlefront season pass owners will also secure two week early access to each expansion pack and an exclusive 'Shoot First' emote."

Now using the word "expansion" to something that really is just adding new maps is kind of sickening. Now I understand not all companies add maps for free, but charging basically the cost of the game in an unknown time frame? It doesn't make you wonder why EA is known as a money first company.

First of all if you are charging this amount of money for something it should be comparable to what that price got you for the original game. Secondly, why not be a little bit more vague in what you actually will be getting. These 4 "expansions" really could just be 4 different locations meaning 4 maps.

The sad thing is people are going to pay these prices and then will keep making EA thinking this is ok. Soon we will be in a world where DLCs are going to be over and above the actual cost of the game, because we are approaching there without even realizing what we are getting out of it.

Thanks EA...

You Fail At DLCs If...

Fail Day! Yes it has already been a week and already so much fail to talk about. With that in mind everyday could probably be fail day, but then I am not sure it would be as fun. This week I thought I would take a look at DLCs you the love hate relationship we all have for them. So sit back and let's have a go.

You Fail At DLCs If...

• You had no idea it stands for Downloadable Content
• You have day one additional content DLCs
• You have consumable DLCs so people can get ahead quicker
• You pay for consumable DLCs
• You continuously release DLCs monthly for a large chunk of the full game
• You are Electornic Arts
• You make people pay for patches which fix bugs
• You have DLC content on the shipped disc which has to be paid for to unlock
• You have to release one of your DLCs free because you messed up your release of the game
• You have console specific DLCs
• You make DLCs manditory for quality of life improvements
• You make the true ending to a game be on a DLC

and finally

• You never pay for the expansion DLCs then complain you have no idea what has gone on with the story of the game when the next comes out

There you have it this week's edition of Fail. I will excuse you all now to go complete your downloads.

Token Fatalities

So as most of you know I am for the most part not against DLCs. I don't mind DLCs that are cosmetic where people have a choice pick them up to make characters look in specific ways or do certain things. I do hate day 1 additional content DLCs because to me if you are releasing a game and the additional content is there it should be included and be for everyone. Now this doesn't include collectors or limited edition bundles because again this to me is almost always purely cosmetic and is not really anything of significance to the game itself. Also I hate DLCs that unlock content which is doable in game as a shortcut. I know this doesn't effect me, but this to me defeats the purpose of going through a game and playing it. This is a mixing of free to play game style with a purchased game and in my mind is bordering on the greedy end.

One thing I can't stand though is companies is releasing addons or DLCs which are 1 time uses which are also shortcuts. The new Mortal Kombat has purchasable 1 time use "Easy" Fatalities. Basically giving you the ability to preform an easy fatality with a simple couple button combo. Not only are fatalities not hard at all to preform charging people a one time use shortcut to me is wrong. Now to me this purchase seems completely useless, but I know people will buy this.

Some might say this is a company profiting from players lack of skill, and who cares. I care. I hate it when companies think they can take advantage of people in such a way that rewards laziness and complete lack of motivation. Why? Because this breads a population of entitlement and these will be the people that will be the ones bitching on forums and causing the games that I love to be changed for their benefit.

Maybe I am overreacting, but there has got to be people out there that think this is wrong just as much as I do.

You Fail At Dead Kings If...

Fail Day! Yes it is that time of the week once again. Time to sit back and enjoy everyone's failures just so you feel slightly better than you do right now. Last week we got the first look at the first DLC for Assassin's Creed Unity and since it was a free DLC I figured it was the perfect opportunity for a Fail Day.

You Fail At Dead Kings If...

• You don't have Unity
• You have yet to complete Unity and you started it
• You have yet to download it
• You don't like creeping around catacombs
• You don't enjoy multi kills with guillotine guns
• You are not playing it out of spite
• You find it too difficult with the need for "Stealth" in an AC game
• You don't want to synchronize more viewpoints
• You are still working at opening all the chests in Paris
• You have Uplay issues
• You are still wondering where the hell Ezio is
• You thought this was going to be a WWII DLC
• You are still upset there is no pink colour scheme for your assassin colours

and finally

• You didn't know it was free

There you have it this week's edition of Fail. Enjoy your tomb crawling

Ask Gauss

Sunday end of the weekend here we are. I would say end of winter as well but it cannot really decide what it wants to do around here. Weather has been all over the place, that is Canada for you though. You are not here though to read me complain or praise the weather I am having. You are here to see me answer some questions. So I will just get right into it.

How do you feel about DLCs?

In general I have no issue with a company that wants to put out DLCs as long as they are addons to the game and are not essential to the experience. Some expansions are labeled as DLCs but at least they are explained to be such so never mind about those. I am talking about teh games which are not free to play which throw out all these DLC micro transactions which are needed to play the game correctly and effectively. It is wrong to treat your customers this way and really is something they should be ashamed of. EA is famous for this or famous for overcharging for basic things they add to the game.  A good DLC in my mind is something like the most recent DLCs for Lightning Returns they are just outfits for lightning which you don't need to play the game just something extra in case you wanted something different. Now if those outfits were needed to beat the game then it would be a completely different story.

Do you like the new D3 Paragon system?

I find this interesting because I was just having a talk with Ziggie about this the other day. I really didn't have a problem with it till he pointed out to look at someone's elite kills compared to their paragon level. When I did I felt cheated like I wasn't given enough for the time put in, and I wasn't even half the paragon Ziggie was. Just seems they didn't reward the people enough for their vanilla accomplishments if how people are leveling now is to be expected. Not sure their think behind I  really do feel for the people who had multiple 100 paragons whose time seems to have been wasted.

Did you get into Heroes of the Storm Alpha?

Sadly no, but hoping for the beta and I am sure you all will be hearing plenty about it when and if I do.

That's it questions all answered for this week. As always thanks to everyone who sent something in and make sure you enjoy the rest of your weekend.