Dragon Age - Return to Ostagar - New DLC Planned

The size of the investment reflects the size of the market - so that argument is pointless.

The thing about DLC is that once you have the engine and toolset in place, the cost and effort involved with producing content is TINY compared to the full game production.

However, to me, that's really not the point. I'll look at something and figure if it's worth paying for. I don't really consider the price as long as it's within reason. To me, 5-15$ is the same thing. But it must represent meaningful and considerable value - which a couple of hours don't - to me. ESPECIALLY not post-completion. It's not like a movie based on the hours alone, no. A movie is a fresh experience and basically a new world.

Some added levels with the same art assets and minor voice acting in the exact same world, is NOT a fresh experience to me.

I basically need a full game experience before I'll bother - and I get absolutely nothing out of a few hours of quests and combat. I need a larger setting to put it into perspective and for my actions to have meaning. In these games, I'm all about developing my character and roleplaying him - which is totally meaningless in small separate scenarios.

But that's me.

DArtagnan said:

The size of the investment reflects the size of the market - so that argument is pointless.

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Remember : There's also the budget market out there. Like Green Pepper, for example, or the "Sold-Out"-label.

This market fraction (so to say) is imho often overlooked, but might generate a small, but steady flow of revenues at the end of a product's life-cycle.

I'm not sure, but I tend to guess that it is rather casual gamers who worship the budget market; becuse it is so non-cost-intensive. I don't believe a casual gamer would invest 40 Euros into a full-blown game. I tend to rather assume that casual gamers are just content with a budget re-release.

So, this fraction would have to be added to the *overall* market as well ... Unfortunately I don't know any figures on how much this market (read: bedget re-releaes) *actually* generates.

I am guessing they are working on several DLC projects simultaneously. That might reduce the cost of voiceover if they can do voiceover for several planned DLC in one go rather than individually.

I think it will take a while to finish and release the longer DLC projects. So in the short term there may be more chance of the 1-2 hour DLC.

If they have two years of DLC planned. I think they will need the occasional longer compelling adventure to encourage people to replay the game a long time after release.

I think it helps if there is a regular release of good fan mods. Because there will be more people playing the game long after release and interested in new content.

The thing to remember, is that they've made it very difficult for themselves to integrate new story-related DLC into the original campaign. So, we can be pretty sure that all new stuff will be separate and most likely relatively small in scope - because they'd face the same issue with a large new scenario.

The Bioware MO is to tightly integrate NPCs in all aspects of the game, which means they'd have to re-hire the voice actors for everything - or be extremely good at planning ahead, which is not entirely unlikely - I guess. That, or cop-out completely and exclude all the original characters and give some excuse as to why.

However, it seems somewhat implausible - so I don't expect the DLC will have much in terms of story-related content that will interest me.

What MIGHT get my attention, would be introduction of new classes/talents - and that should be relatively easy to accomplish. They messed up bigtime by going the dullish MMO-route, if you ask me. The tank/healer/DPS approach is kinda too simple for a true CRPG - and they should have at least allowed some kind of multiclassing or talent synergy. But I expected as much, and I admit that what IS there works pretty well for the most part. Stupid rogue skill/talent issues aside.

But I'd love to replay the game at some point, with a new character class and I'm hoping they'll add something like that.

SeanM said:

If they have two years of DLC planned. I think they will need the occasional longer compelling adventure to encourage people to replay the game a long time after release.

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Okay, then I might buy this game in two years again ... After Drakensang 2 ...

I can do nothing but hhope that they'll release a "Gold"-Version containing the DLC as well one day ... But I fear that it might end up like mwith the NWN Diamond Edition ...