LogFAQs > #969470565

LinkPizza posted...

While many of the characters are the same, there are certain characters that are only playable depending on which game(s) you got. Some are not available (to play) in the other Some character are for all the routes, but many are for 2 different routes (one usually being revaluations), and a few for only 1 route for each character And even when they are in multiple games, depending on when you get them can change how the game is played

Every single character is available in all iterations of the game; the only difference is whether they are playable or not. Their art assets, their voice clips, so on and so forth - all the things that actually took up development resources and require space in the game files are present in all three games. Any character that isn't playable in a specific version in the game shows up in the single player campaign as an enemy (excepting the child characters) and can pop up in online matches.

In other words, it's all part of the same development effort.

adjl posted...

And they're all long enough to function just fine as standalone games.

Except "long enough" is a pretty nebulous distinction. How long is "long enough to function just fine as a standalone game"? I've seen big-budget games that take 4 hours to complete - by that metric, Fire Emblem Fates is enough for at least 10-20 games, though few people would consider releasing it as such to be anything but a wholesale ripoff. I've also seen big-budget games that take hundreds of hours to complete; by that metric, Fire Emblem Fates isn't even half a game, but for whatever complaints I have about how it was released, "not long enough" isn't one of them.

That's why measuring the game by "length" doesn't strike me as a helpful analysis. At the end of the day, Fire Emblem Fates had a single development cycle, and the end product was - if you look past how it was marketed - a single game with a single engine, set of characters, soundtrack, combat system, etc., with three campaigns. It was entirely a marketing decision to release it in multiple parts to try and get more money out of the end user.

adjl posted...

Depends entirely how well the base game ends. If the base game is satisfying without buying the DLC, then the DLC is optional content. [...]

Now, saying this, I still haven't finished either of Birthright or Conquest, so I haven't played Revelation and I can't speak to how satisfyingly either one ends.

Without getting into details and spoiling things, I wouldn't characterize the ending of Birthright or Conquest as "satisfactory". Story threads and highlighted mysteries are left unresolved, and the overarching force that caused the game's principle conflict is only obliquely alluded to, with some of the characters seemingly drawing attention to it by saying things along the lines of, "I wonder what caused ______ to happen. Guess we may never know."

In order to truly understand what happened in the story, including the actual identity of the game's villain, you need to play Revelation. Not coincidentally, that's also the only campaign that can't be purchased as a standalone title.

adjl posted...

I don't have an issue with selling an epilogue separately from a story that doesn't actually need an epilogue

Revelation is most decidedly *not* an epilogue. Again, it's the actual story that provides the context and resolution for Birthright and Conquest. There are things that are only brought up and described in Revelation that have absolutely no business being relegated to "extra content."

adjl posted...

You're absolutely right that the market is rife with claims of "it's optional!" when the companies have done everything they can to make it as close to mandatory as possible, but that's not what's happening here.

Isn't it?

Again, you're locking away the actual ending of the game and some fairly important parts of the story behind a paywall (after your customers have already paid full price for your game - Fire Emblem isn't exactly a freemium title). That doesn't strike me as a trivial omission.

adjl posted...

A purchase being attractive on its own merits (as opposed to being relatively attractive because the alternative has been made deliberately terrible) doesn't mean it's not an optional purchase.

Setting aside the specific example of Fates, the flipside of this argument is that just because something is an "optional" purchase doesn't mean it isn't moneygrubbing to charge for it, particularly if little-to-no development effort is involved in the purchase. "You don't have to buy it!" is not, on its own, a valid defence against exploitative or greedy DLC.

As an example, an increasingly common type of DLC in RPGs is various forms of item packs/in-game gold/experience boosters (the Tales series is particularly notorious for this, but they're far from the only games I've seen it in - Trails does it as well, off the top of my head). In those cases, as long as the game isn't designed to be a grindy slog if such items aren't used, the statement "it's optional!" is entirely valid. However, what exactly am I being asked to pay money for? The items in those item packs are already coded into the base game; there's no actual new content or assets in the DLC pack. If I buy those packs, I'm not paying for any development effort on the developer's part; it's, in essence, the developer saying, "Thanks for your $60! And if you're willing to pay me another $15, I'll flip this switch and make the game easier!". If the intent is to provide an option for "easy mode" for players who prefer story to combat, why are they charging extra for it when it involves no additional effort on their part?

A similar issue can be found in fighting games with customizable characters, where the developers will release additional customization options/skins for money (Soul Calibur with Create-A-Soul, Smash Bros. with the Mii Fighters, etc.). Now at least in this case there is some additional development time getting put in, so there's actually some work that I'm being asked to pay for, fair enough. The problem is, the development time that goes into a skin is fairly minimal and the costs... typically are not. Again, as an example, Soul Calibur charges half the full price of the game for all of the character creation packs (and that's not including the extra character DLC packs, which add up to another ~$40). The price being charged is wildly out of scale with what's being offered, which is particularly galling because, optional and cosmetic though it may be, Create-a-Soul has become a huge draw for the series in general (and on the non-customization additions, I'll just say that having a fighting game where a significant chunk of the roster is locked behind a sizable paywall always annoys the hell out of me; yes, they aren't explicitly necessary to have an enjoyable game, but that doesn't mean it isn't dirty pool to make customers pay close to $150 to have the game's complete roster).

This is why I get annoyed when I see, "It's not mandatory" or "It's just cosmetics", as though that justifies naked profiteering. Blatant greed is not something that should be celebrated or normalized.