Dragon Age - DLC for April 1st (and No Joke Either)

Yesterday was April's 1st. A day where you try to fool people. Bioware wanted to join in the fun and released the Feastday Prank and Feastday Pack DLC for Dragon Age:
Origins. Apparently, people in Ferelden like to play jokes on each other, too. As Victor Wactor writes:

Satinalia, a day of wild celebration and sumptuous holiday feasts celebrated across Thedas, has arrived! In Ferelden tradition, gifts and pranks are exchanged on Feastday among friends, family and lovers. Now you'll be able to join the festivities and surprise your companions with gifts that may touch their hearts or offend their sensibilities.

Feastday gifts and pranks offer the player a chance to explore the approval system in Dragon Age: Origins at greater depth by making your companions despise or adore you. These packs are available for purchase individually or as a combo back containing both the Gifts and Pranks.

Feastday Prank Pack
A collection of mostly humorous prank items that will significantly decrease your followers' affections for you. Some of these items have additional special uses once given to your followers. Bodahn stocks the pranks in his store at the party camp year-round.

Includes:

• Ten unique Feastday pranks that your party members will love to hate. Each prank is specific to one potential companion.
• Two types of gifts to let you apologize afterward.
  
  
  Example Prank:
  Protective Cone — Give to Dog to decrease his approval.
• Additional Functionality: After giving the gift, Dog can equip the item as a collar.
  
  Feastday Gift Pack
  A collection of mostly humorous gift items that will significantly increase your followers' affections for you. Many of these items have additional special uses once given to your followers. Bodahn stocks the gifts in his store at the party camp year-round.
  
  Includes:
• Ten unique Feastday gifts that your party members are sure to love. Each gift is specific to one potential companion.
• Two types of lousy gifts to let your companions know you weren't completely serious.
  
  
  Example Gift:
  Grey Warden Hand Puppet — Give to Alistair to increase his approval.
• Additional Functionality: After giving the gift, activate the item to make Alistair put on a puppet show.
  
  
  Feastday Combo Pack
  A combo pack that includes all the items from the Feastday gift and prank packs. You will also incur a savings when the feastday items are purchased as a combo pack.
  
  Feastday Gift and Prank DLC items are now available for purchase on the PlayStation Network Store for $1.99, XBox Live Marketplace for 160 points and for PC for 160 BioWare Points, except for PS3 owners in Europe, where an error occurred resulting in the items being released for free earlier this month – so these items will remain free in that region. A bundle with both packs is also available at a discount. For more details visit the Dragon Age Add-On page: http://www.dragonage.com/addon

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The DLC itself is not a prank, it is very real. Buck at Gamebanshee has updated their database with both the Feastday Prank Pack items as well as the Feastday Gift Pack items. Now anyone want to watch Alistair's puppet show?
More information.

Another ripoff DLC and this is probably one of the worst ones yet to be released. If it was $2 for the whole thing maybe it would be worthwhile but only for a couple of minutes of amusement so I still wouldn't buy.

PS. Why do they even put this for sale when better stuff then this is released for free.

I know it's only $2 and nobody is twisting my arm to buy this, but I find it insulting.

guenthar said:

Another ripoff DLC and this is probably one of the worst ones yet to be released. If it was $2 for the whole thing maybe it would be worthwhile but only for a couple of minutes of amusement so I still wouldn't buy.

PS. Why do they even put this for sale when better stuff then this is released for free.

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They do it solely to annoy guys like you.

god, you people are turning into a bunch of cranky little old RPG ladies right before our very eyes.....

Insulted? That's a strange point of view in my view. When someone offers something I don't want I just don't purchase it, there are millions of products in the world I don't want and if I were insulted at each one then I guess I'd walk around just being insulted all of the time.

Now when can I buy some horse armor?

Fer Pete's sake.
Side A: you're right, this is a ridiculous thing to ask money for and it seems odd to cash in on April Fool's like that.
Side B: you're right, the wording of side A is poorly chosen. Are you really going to deny the sketchiness here, though?

Is this really something you want to fly at each other's throats over? I'd think it both unnecessary to overstate how annoyed you are at this considering, well, it's pretty obviously a rip-off, but I find it equally unnecessary to defend companies that release DLCs like this. They don't really need defending, if nothing else the piles of cash from the thousands who will buy this DLC can be used to buy earplugs.

Also also, I wonder if DLC policies on consoles changed any. It used to be really hard if not impossible to release free DLC on the Live systems. As a non-console owner I don't really keep track of developments, so are free DLCs anymore common now?

Not flying at anyone's throat, and I'm not defending anyone either.

Just noting the wet blanket brigade turning into a bunch of cranky little old ladies here, Hell - i personally know little old ladies that arent half as cranky.

It's a dog w/ a cone on it's head, lighten up already!

I'm not against dlcs, but its just so fucking annoying when a professional developer releases crap like this instead of quality content that would be worth of money and time. Most user made mods are more complex and visionary than this.."thing".

How about a dlc that would

reshape the whole crappy shapeshifting ability tree.
continue warden's keep questline
add a new orgin storyline (like a human commoner or a dalish mage)
expand the denerim city. New districts or other locations would really spice up that place.
expand deep roads. Make them more dangerous and add more thaighs.
add more random encounters for the world map travel.


See its not that hard to think of quality content. Bioware isn't even trying.

Oh no! Gaming industry is being McDonaldified.

There already was an official expansion with new characters, locations, etc etc (some DLC have added new areas, quests, and a character too). This is just extra fun little bits that are thrown out there for people to mess around with and add to their game if they want to. It's not supposed to be "visionary" for crissake. It's a cone on a dog.

It's easy to say "just throw out a new area" or "just revamp the entire skill tree", but is it REALLY that easy to implement in game?? I'm not a developer, I have no clue. Just sayin… your looking down your nose pretty hard and expecting something awesome from something that I dont think is meant to be.

IRL ("in real life" in netspeak) do you generally like people who gripe about any little thing that they dont like? Do you find them annoying?

xSamhainx said:

There already was an official expansion with new characters, locations, etc etc (some DLC have added new areas, quests, and a character too). This is just extra fun little bits that are thrown out there for people to mess around with and add to their game if they want to. It's not supposed to be "visionary" for crissake. It's a cone on a dog.

It's easy to say "just throw out a new area" or "just revamp the entire skill tree", but is it REALLY that easy to implement in game?? I'm not a developer, I have no clue. Just sayin… your looking down your nose pretty hard and expecting something awesome from something that I dont think is meant to be.

IRL ("in real life" in netspeak) do you generally like people who gripe about any little thing that they dont like? Do you find them annoying?

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Firstly let me say that I don't usually gripe about any little thing I don't like. Most of the time I don't even bother voicing my opinion about this stuff because I know that I'm just an other anonymous customer . I just happen to enjoy dragon age a lot. In fact I happen to like most bioware games which is why I care if they don't live up to their standards. ME2 was already a big letdown and half of the dragon age dlcs have been quite lousy as well. (Warden's keep & stone prisoner were nice though).

Hmm but maybe yoo're right. I went a bit overboard with my ranting. Its sure their right to sell what they want. This whole addon just feels so meaningless. Why not just keep releasing mini dlcs like this in the future if they sell. They're certainly much more easier to produce than massive expansions or extra sidequests.

Most usermade mods can do stuff like this for free. There are already quite many mods that are trying to rebalance or improve gameplay. On the otherhand quality sidequests or new campaigns are darn hard to come by. Bioware has the knowledge and tools. They can record new dialog and mess up with code easier than modders can. It annoys me great deal that they have chosen the easy path.

Bioware isnt the only guilty party though. This whole trend began with Horse armour and I'm quite sure that it won't end up with Feastday Gifts and Pranks dlc.

No it's not "visionary" (well.. maybe it is in some way)
I see it as spam.

Edit. On second thought I think I'll elaborate a bit on that:
Bioware released a DLC that seems to offer less than a fairly simple user-made mod. At worst what they achieved is to keep the names 'Bioware' and 'Dragon Age' on the first page of RPGWatch's News section for a few more days. I'm sure that even Bioware couldn't convince the good people that keep track of these things to create a news thread saying "Bioware didn't do anything worth mentioning today" so they found a good way to oblige them into announcing the next best thing: "Bioware did something not worth mentioning today".

It keeps their name on top, it costs nothing and they can make some money on the way... it's spam.

I see no problem in releasing content like the infamous horse armour. Why not, if there's a market for it and people are stupid enough to buy.