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Mass Effect: Andromeda Should Mark the Death of Season Passes - Mass Effect: Andromeda Columns
SBFord
Former Associate EditorMember LegendaryPosts: 33,129
Mass Effect: Andromeda Should Mark the Death of Season Passes - Mass Effect: Andromeda Columns
This week, we learned that Mass Effect: Andromeda will not feature a season pass. The news made the rounds on all of the major websites. This is interesting since none of the Mass Effect games have featured season passes, the fourth game doing the same should be anything but remarkable. And yet it is, because the industry has gotten so used to double-charging its biggest supporters that simply not trying to fleece them is somehow noteworthy.
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I've said this a couple times around the forums. The relationship between producer and consumer is inherently adversarial. And we gamers are all too often caught up in the hype ourselves that we forget that and perform mental gymnastics to justify to ourselves whatever fleecing is included with the game we like because hey, if they make things that bring us such joy, there's no way they could also be trying to screw us outta every last dime they can, right?? /sarcasm
I like the article, though I'm skeptical that Andromeda's example will be well followed.
The brand is strong enough to sell everything at full price...
More like EA marketing trying to generate some good will with customers after messes like Battlefront season pass with players hardly ever able to play that content and make some good headliners. "We've been selling you seasons passes for years... now we'll market NO season pass as a feature to sell our games on!".
Meanwhile you have Ubisoft moving onto "Year TWO!" season passes for their titles.... "Mark the Death of Season Passes", good one
MAGA
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That's not the same thing as a season pass to a single game's DLC.
Mass Effect 4 will be sold outside of Origin. Also, Origin does provide the option to outright purchase the game as well, last I checked. Actually, I wouldn't be surprised if the title was not included in the games you get for the access sub... It's a high-profile and new release, so I doubt EA lets us have it for so little.
There is no chance that this will be on EA's Origin subscription bundle, well not for the first six months at least. I actually like the Origin Access sub anyway, as I see it as a cheap way to play a great selection of big titles. Granted the selection isn't bang up to date, but for the price of a new game I can play over a dozen decent ones for a year, which is pretty fair in my book.
The reality is that the 5$ you save is sacrificing the ability to make a choice. That choice being which DLC you want to purchase. Not all DLC is created equal and some examples of Season Passes are better then others, but most Season Passes are purchased without any prior knowledge of what is going to be in the actual package. Unlike pre-ordering a game where you at least gain some knowledge prior to it coming out.
I think the most egregious thing is bundling it with pre-orders for bonuses / special editions / ect. The way I see it is that the season pass should only exist once all the DLC exists that will be in it to give consumers the choice back. That way if you see a season pass that has one thing in it that you don't want; you don't buy it.
that probably the reason, they will charge for each new dlc... full price
season pass was actualy cheaper for many games that paying each new dlc separate
ea : we are good guys we dont charge a season pass anymore !! love us !!
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If it's a game I'm unsure of or first time trying among the series, I like having the option to pick and choose which expansions I want individually.
It's completely optional and I'm not really a big fan of now not having that option, and having to pay full price for each seperate expansion. If Season Passes were mandatory things or the ONLY way to get expansions, I'd get the sentiment but considering you could have always made the type of consumer choices you talk about, I'd say we're just more limited now.
- BRING ON THE SKY
- PINNACLE STATION
Mass Effect 2
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- LAIR OF THE SHADOW BROKER
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- KASUMI - STOLEN MEMORY
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Mass Effect 3
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And of season pass? Never, cause Bioware have exclusive on DLC's. They don't have season pass cause dont worth do discount, they charge fullprice... brace youself for more than 10 dlc's at full price and no discount cause almost never bioware points have discount.
EA: We understand, It doesn't matter we do a small percentage of gamers will bitch and complain no matter what...to be fair nobody cares about all the bitching they do.
"Aaryn Flynn confirmed that Mass Effect: Andromeda will not have a Season Pass option and that Bioware is not ready to speak about paid DLC coming to the game at a later date."
EA's season passes typically offer a "free" DLC - pay for 4 upfront get 5; or pay for 5 get 6 sort of thing. with DLC being planned out for the year or 18 months ahead. If they had announced a season pass but no DLC the story would have been "WTF a season pass for no DLC".
The story here is that - currently - there is no DLC mapped out. So there has been no second team (as there was with BF4 say) working on post-launch content in parallel with the main team. Basically this is going to be more of a Destiny launch than a SW:BF.
This isn't about sticking it to developers. It's about not supporting *publishers* continuing to exploit their studio's biggest fans (and erode those developer's goodwill in the process) with unexplained then half baked DLCs that they somehow continue to charge more for. If you're comfortable with a continuing effort to take your money and underdeliver once it's in their pockets, I struggle to understand that view. Why settle? And yes, this isn't every game, but it spans our entire industry and is a big issue that happens to go right alongside the incessant nickel and diming of virtually every major game coming to market.
Activision and Blizzard are the very definition of greed. Activision with it's CoD franchise, and Blizzard with all of their overpriced mediocre games.
I'm glad that CoD is selling less and less every year, people must be getting annoyed already for getting almost the same game every year and paying full price on them (and on top of that even a ton of useless DLCs that require season pass).
While Blizzard just refuses to drop that Sub, so I'm also very glad that they lost the majority of it's playerbase. Would have nothing against the Sub if Blizzard was putting out content monthly, or even every 3 months. But no, each expansion ends with 12 months of no content in between and you paying 180$ in return for that. Not to mention that 50-60$ expansions are also ridiculously overpriced for what they are bringing. They should be free for subscribers. And the other games? Filled with cash shop garbage, that is nearly mandatory if you want to compete. Oh and not allowing offline play in some of their games (especially Diablo 3) is the dumbest thing I've ever came across. I can imagine only because they don't want their games to be torrented, because I guarantee you, that they'd have more than 50% less sales.Their games sell purely on marketing, not quality.
If things go well they may begin working on other DLC and have one or two ready to go. If it's not received well, they may just scrap the DLC altogether expect for maybe one or two that push the game where they wanted ME: A to end. Not having a season pass will give them more options and not tie them down.
I'm not an IT Specialist, Game Developer, or Clairvoyant in real life, but like others on here, I play one on the internet.
So in reality we'll just pay more for the same crap DLC we usually get.
I won't buy the game when it launches then and wait I know that will be monumentally hard to do but it is the best way to get information on which DLCs to get and not waste my money on the euphoria of playing Andromeda and saying to hell with the price which is a very natural reaction to enjoying something . I MUST RESIST!!
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