Gaming trends that irk you

[danzibr]

This is sort of general, but...

The 'well, making things up to X quality is a lot harder than making them up to the Y quality of yesteryear!' as an excuse for why (for instance) games from 2009 may have far more features than games in 2019. If that's the case...was it really worth upgrading what's used to create them? Or is it just a convenient excuse?

My general go-to examples of this being combining the two different versions of Star Wars Battlefront, or comparing City of Heroes to more modern MMOs.

Ehhhh I think this more depends on the game. I can think of a few newer games with zounds of features.

[GloatingSwine]

Speed-based RTS games. I feel like actions-per-second is often more important than strategy. Or maybe I'm just looking for slower RTS's. It does seem wrong to me that having technical mastery of the UI is an important part of a strategy game, but maybe that's just me trying to justify my own hubris.

It's kind of inevitable that this develops, because the player who can control their army's positioning and activating their abilities as well as developing their economy and continuing to build units will always have an advantage over the player that can't do all of that at once.

In any reasonably complex game there's always going to be one other thing you could be doing at the same time in order to have an advantage.

[Beleriphon]

Also, everything that forces me to do a google search to understand what people are talking about. I mean, not as part of the game: as part of the market superstructure. I have no idea of what loot boxes are, or what steam cards do, and I must have made more than one search about those.

Lootbox: Pay money, maybe get something useful for the game. Its basically a slot machine.

Steam Cards: stupid free collectible stuff. Get all full set, convert to something related to the game. Emoji in Steam Chat, desktop backgrounds, stuff like that.

On features in games, particular MMOs. Lets remember that games for 2009 are not the same as games now. People's tastes have changed in terms of what they want and are looking for. Developers have looked a how the games are actually played and updated games to reflect those changes.

[Man_Over_Game]

It's kind of inevitable that this develops, because the player who can control their army's positioning and activating their abilities as well as developing their economy and continuing to build units will always have an advantage over the player that can't do all of that at once.

In any reasonably complex game there's always going to be one other thing you could be doing at the same time in order to have an advantage.

Sure, but you could always make speed the limiting factor.

Using something like StarCraft, it takes such a high level of speed for it to become a limiting factor that it's become a foundation for the gameplay.

It's no longer about just "Strategy" but now it's "Move Fast, and Strategy". If you can't Move Fast, you're bad at the game, just the same as if you can't Strategy.



Not sure if you're familiar or not, but a good example of what I'm talking about ("good" meaning "how it should be done") is with the old Dissidia games.
They're real-time fighting games that are....slow? Reaction time and quickly inputting commands is hardly a factor in the game, since every attack takes 0.5-3.0 seconds long. Everything is played like the slowest game of Rock-Paper-Scissors in your life, and it's more about making quick judgments in a few seconds than it is to make quick actions in milliseconds. Everything from the direction you dodge in, the attack that you used to counter your enemy's own movement/attacks, any obstacles in the arena, all play a part in a slo-mo Dragonball fighting game. Combos aren't really a thing, and you might go through a minute or two where no attacks connect because both players are experienced at understanding how blocking/dodging projectiles works. It's more about making good choices than it is about making fast choices or muscle memory. And it's glorious.

I guess that's what I'm looking for. Or maybe it's just better to stick with turn-based strategy for a "purist" strategy feel.

[Velaryon]

I can think of quite a few trends in gaming that I'm not fond of.

1) Loot boxes. As someone elaborated in an earlier post, they're basically gambling. That holds no appeal to me so I have no problem resisting the temptation to spend, but I don't like it when games have a pay-to-win element, especially in games that aren't free to play.

The only game that does loot boxes right IMO is Overwatch, because A) they only have cosmetic items so they don't provide any advantage in gameplay, and B) they subsidize the real real content, meaning new maps and characters are added to the game for free.


2) Anything that makes gaming feel like an obligation. Limited-time events, raids that have to be coordinated with large numbers of people, etc. I prefer to be able to game when I want to, without feeling like I'm missing out because I don't play for 8 hours, or play at a specific time, or whatever.


3) Esports. This might be controversial, but I don't think they add anything positive to gaming. I'd be perfectly happy to live and let live, but unfortunately games that have a significant esports presence tend to cater more to that than they do to casual players when it comes to game balancing. I'm of the opinion that competitive games should be balanced for the middle of the bell curve, rather than for the pros.

[sleepy hedgehog]

It's kind of inevitable that this develops, because the player who can control their army's positioning and activating their abilities as well as developing their economy and continuing to build units will always have an advantage over the player that can't do all of that at once.

In any reasonably complex game there's always going to be one other thing you could be doing at the same time in order to have an advantage.

I've always had an idea for an Age of Empires style/themed game.
Where the further away the units are from your capital, the slower the response time of your units.
And the more autonomous they end up behaving.
Since your messengers need take your message, travel there, and deliver the order.
But I've never been able to design an idea that would also be fun to play.


After playing a lot of Path of Exile and Warframe recently;
My current complaint is polynomial scaling doesn't make for interesting encounters.
Technically, everything is linear scaling, but each of those linear scaling get multiplied together.
And all of the sudden, small to moderate differences are translating into huge total changes.
And encounter design becomes impossible when someone has 10x more damage or durability than someone else.

[Man_Over_Game]

After playing a lot of Path of Exile and Warframe recently;
My current complaint is polynomial scaling doesn't make for interesting encounters.
Technically, everything is linear scaling, but each of those linear scaling get multiplied together.
And all of the sudden, small to moderate differences are translating into huge total changes.
And encounter design becomes impossible when someone has 10x more damage or durability than someone else.

Would be an interesting concept, stealing the type of scaling from something like 5e DnD, where you grow in versatility and adaptability rather than straight HP and damage. 5e DOES scale in HP and damage, but it's a fairly slow creep (A max level character has about x20 more HP than a level 1 character).

[Aotrs Commander]

5e DOES scale in HP and damage, but it's a fairly slow creep (A max level character has about x20 more HP than a level 1 character).

Isn't... That the same as 3.x and 4E...? Or do you mean, like, relative to some computer games...?

[Tvtyrant]

Isn't... That the same as 3.x and 4E...? Or do you mean, like, relative to some computer games...?

5e has very low to hit and armor scaling, so a level 20 fighter only hits twice as accurately as a level 1 character.

[Man_Over_Game]

5e has very low to hit and armor scaling, so a level 20 fighter only hits twice as accurately as a level 1 character.

Right. I meant that relative to video games (which dramatically scale with level).

5E puts a little more pressure on that level of scaling through other means, by limiting how much hit rates vs. dodge rates scale (so that a level 1 can always participate against a max level character), as well as limiting how effective late game powers are.

In 3.5, you might have x20 more HP, but that doesn't mean you're only x20 stronger. Closer to about x100 stronger, depending on the class you're playing. So there's not much point in referring to 3.5 or 4e when it comes to HP scaling, because that's not an accurate gauge of how powerful your character is.

40 level 1s could almost definitely take on a single level 20 in 5th edition. I doubt the same thing could be said about 3.5 or 4e.

[Traab]

I can think of quite a few trends in gaming that I'm not fond of.

1) Loot boxes. As someone elaborated in an earlier post, they're basically gambling. That holds no appeal to me so I have no problem resisting the temptation to spend, but I don't like it when games have a pay-to-win element, especially in games that aren't free to play.

The only game that does loot boxes right IMO is Overwatch, because A) they only have cosmetic items so they don't provide any advantage in gameplay, and B) they subsidize the real real content, meaning new maps and characters are added to the game for free.


2) Anything that makes gaming feel like an obligation. Limited-time events, raids that have to be coordinated with large numbers of people, etc. I prefer to be able to game when I want to, without feeling like I'm missing out because I don't play for 8 hours, or play at a specific time, or whatever.


3) Esports. This might be controversial, but I don't think they add anything positive to gaming. I'd be perfectly happy to live and let live, but unfortunately games that have a significant esports presence tend to cater more to that than they do to casual players when it comes to game balancing. I'm of the opinion that competitive games should be balanced for the middle of the bell curve, rather than for the pros.

#2 is an old bugbear of mine. If you wanted to raid in old school everquest, better be prepared for some potentially absurd time spent online in a massive army of players. Dark Age of Camelot, one of the earlier popular mmorpgs based primarily on pvp had relic raids. Think about this. There are three factions playing the game, Each faction has like a dozen castles that can be assaulted in pvp for various bonuses, there are also relics you can take that are the most heavily defended naturally and if you grab them all for your faction you get some really nice benefits. The only way to do it successfully is to manage to get a vast army, im talking well over 100 people, on your side, arrange to attack in secret so you can hit all the castles at once and deny the enemy time to react, and make sure nobody on the other side finds out before it happens or else you wont win. God what an annoyance. That game is the reason I rarely ever do any pvp anymore. I burnt out on it from all that stuff.

[Erloas]

Having something like 50% damage reduction would effectively double your hit points, and if you're 1/3 as likely to be hit then you've effectively tripled, and combined you're then at 6x20, or 120 times more survivable. Not counting the increase in expected damage from enemies, but your 1d8+3 longsword hit isn't a 120d8 longsword, nor probably 1d8+360.

To-hit is really never very linear, because having 95% chance to hit all the time doesn't leave much room for variability at the high levels and no one wants to start a game with a 5% chance to hit either, so most games tend to start with hitting being in the 30-60% range and go up to the 80-95% range. And of course there are many computer games where the hitting is pretty much a given and they vary damage based on level instead, especially in anything approaching real-time/action design.

edit:

#2 is an old bugbear of mine. If you wanted to raid in old school everquest, better be prepared for some potentially absurd time spent online in a massive army of players. Dark Age of Camelot, one of the earlier popular mmorpgs based primarily on pvp had relic raids. Think about this. There are three factions playing the game, Each faction has like a dozen castles that can be assaulted in pvp for various bonuses, there are also relics you can take that are the most heavily defended naturally and if you grab them all for your faction you get some really nice benefits. The only way to do it successfully is to manage to get a vast army, im talking well over 100 people, on your side, arrange to attack in secret so you can hit all the castles at once and deny the enemy time to react, and make sure nobody on the other side finds out before it happens or else you wont win. God what an annoyance. That game is the reason I rarely ever do any pvp anymore. I burnt out on it from all that stuff.

I loved DAoC. I haven't been able to find any MMO that really does anything for me after playing that. From my perspective WoW took all of the worst parts of DAoC and doubled down on them and ignored all the best parts of DAoC, probably why I never even bothered to get to end-level in WoW, I saw the writing on the wall much earlier because of that. (not to say WoW was bad, but it 100% isn't what *I* want in an MMO). Since pretty much everyone copied WoW since then, that's why really hasn't been any MMOs I've had any interest in.
Relic Raids in particular where rare enough that I never felt a big obligation to do them. They were also fun, but missing one wasn't going to hurt you, and it wasn't like raids in WoW where guilds would kick you out if you missed them, and they had no real impact on character progression so it isn't like you had to grind them day after day to get a few pieces so you could go on to grinding out the next raid.
Relic raids always led to a lot of good PvP, both in terms of large scale conflicts as well as knowing you could find other small groups roaming around and go solo trying to pick off stranglers heading into or away from the keeps.

[Draconi Redfir]

it's more for just any kind of story rather then exclusively to games, for me it's got to be the "everything is connected" trope.

The killer can't just be some random serial killer. it HAS to be the protagonist's brother / father/ cousin / work buddy.

the mysterious stranger can't just be some mysterious stranger it HAS to be you from the future / alternate dimension / your sister in disguise / your father / your mother/ etc

that old man you passed on the street? CLEARLY this is your character's long lost cousin who got trapped in a time vortex and traveled forwards into the future only to drink an aging potion to appear old and tell you all the secrets of your past.


nobody lets people just be random strangers anymore, it's honestly kinda boring.

[Velaryon]

it's more for just any kind of story rather then exclusively to games, for me it's got to be the "everything is connected" trope.

The killer can't just be some random serial killer. it HAS to be the protagonist's brother / father/ cousin / work buddy.

the mysterious stranger can't just be some mysterious stranger it HAS to be you from the future / alternate dimension / your sister in disguise / your father / your mother/ etc

that old man you passed on the street? CLEARLY this is your character's long lost cousin who got trapped in a time vortex and traveled forwards into the future only to drink an aging potion to appear old and tell you all the secrets of your past.


nobody lets people just be random strangers anymore, it's honestly kinda boring.

I agree with this 100%. though for me the most egregious examples aren't from gaming.

My single favorite thing about Star Wars: The Last Jedi was Kylo Ren revealing that Rey's parents were nobody important. All the fan speculation was that she was a Skywalker or a Solo (or a Kenobi, or Palpatine, or whoever), and I didn't want any of that to be true. I'm really hoping they don't retcon that in the next film.

Ditto for a particular Dresden Files fan theory I've seen a lot (that Cowl is Harry from the future, which is extraordinarily dumb and would really lessen my enjoyment of the series if true).

[Draconi Redfir]

for me it was the FNAF fandom that really hit it home. everyone insisting the protagonist in FNAF 4 is purple guy's kid, the phone guy is purple guy, the protagonist in 1 2 and 3 are all purple guy, etc. like purple guy wasn't allowed to just be purple guy.

pretty sure at least that first one was proven to be true, but still.

[OutOfThyme]

After playing a lot of Path of Exile and Warframe recently;
My current complaint is polynomial scaling doesn't make for interesting encounters.
Technically, everything is linear scaling, but each of those linear scaling get multiplied together.
And all of the sudden, small to moderate differences are translating into huge total changes.
And encounter design becomes impossible when someone has 10x more damage or durability than someone else.

This is literally my biggest gripe with Warframe. I understand why the scaling exists, but it ceases being fun and becomes a nightmare and chore once enemies hit something like 120+. The worst example of this has to be the Wolf, since he was immune to Frame abilities. Making a random field boss like the Stalker scale with the mission level is fine and all, but the Wolf changes the entire dynamic of the mission.

[Aeson]

My single favorite thing about Star Wars: The Last Jedi was Kylo Ren revealing that Rey's parents were nobody important.

I would point out that there is no reason to consider Kylo Ren a credible source on Rey's parentage and that the 'reveal,' as you put it, is basically part of a "you're a nobody - but I can make you somebody" pitch.

[Velaryon]

I would point out that there is no reason to consider Kylo Ren a credible source on Rey's parentage and that the 'reveal,' as you put it, is basically part of a "you're a nobody - but I can make you somebody" pitch.

I know, but I REALLY want it to be true, and until/unless Episode 9 or another source contradicts it, it's still the best information we have about Rey's parentage.

[Keltest]

I know, but I REALLY want it to be true, and until/unless Episode 9 or another source contradicts it, it's still the best information we have about Rey's parentage.

From my understanding about the writing and directing process, it was intended, at least at the time, that the audience should take it at face value. Abrams could of course change that again in 9.

[Vinyadan]

I loved that whole "girl, you're a nobody" part. I generally liked the whole trippy interaction. I think it would have been a great film, if it hadn't been for the bizarre quest to Montecarlo (which ultimately didn't make any difference, I believe?), the contorted way* in which Captain Pinkhair's plan was made a secret, and Rose's moment of dissonance compared to Pinkhair.

*Poe may not know --> he must be demoted from command -> he has to do something idiotic at the start

[Zalabim]

My personal peeve is click to move, particularly that whole diablo-clone style of click to move with click to use abilities and of course using your abilities locks you in place since they've gotta copy diablo exactly. Secondary peeve, though it's long-past being a trend, is WASD movement forcing me to redo the keybindings of basically every game ever.

It's kind of inevitable that this develops, because the player who can control their army's positioning and activating their abilities as well as developing their economy and continuing to build units will always have an advantage over the player that can't do all of that at once.

In any reasonably complex game there's always going to be one other thing you could be doing at the same time in order to have an advantage.

It's not really inevitable. It's a result of the entire "faction" you're representing sharing only a single brain, instead of having some practical, fun, or realistic AI that supplements your orders. Imagine if your economy could, or had to, develop naturally, if factories were like real factories and didn't just shut down every few relative minutes and wait for the order to come down from on high to build one tank, and if soldiers in the field had reactions more useful, or at least more believable, than "stand in the open and do nothing," or even had field commanders with their own styles and traits to influence their reactions to enemies and your own orders.

I've always had an idea for an Age of Empires style/themed game.
Where the further away the units are from your capital, the slower the response time of your units.
And the more autonomous they end up behaving.
Since your messengers need take your message, travel there, and deliver the order.
But I've never been able to design an idea that would also be fun to play.

Yes, basically this but expanded until something fun emerges. I could easily start with factories (or the equivalent unit-producers) being toggled to either economic or military production, and they can keep doing that.

After playing a lot of Path of Exile and Warframe recently;
My current complaint is polynomial scaling doesn't make for interesting encounters.
Technically, everything is linear scaling, but each of those linear scaling get multiplied together.
And all of the sudden, small to moderate differences are translating into huge total changes.
And encounter design becomes impossible when someone has 10x more damage or durability than someone else.

Trying to play PoE, if that explains my current peeve, and playing Warframe, and number scaling is a thing that goes horribly wrong.

Isn't... That the same as 3.x and 4E...? Or do you mean, like, relative to some computer games...?

Well, if you never increase your constitution modifier, then you'll see HP scaling ranging from barbarians with 14-15 HP at level 1 to 185-205 HP at level 20, and wizards with 7-9 HP going up to 102-142 HP, so it's kinda between 13 and 16 times more HP. 4E was even more gradual since level 1 had a big starting pool of HP (about 2.5 times their HP per level, then adding constitution score,) but the character's actual combat performance increased many times over compared to 5E characters despite that. The fighter's HP there might go from 29 to 211 (at level 30!), but their defense and attack bonuses probably also increased by +28-30 in that span.

This is literally my biggest gripe with Warframe. I understand why the scaling exists, but it ceases being fun and becomes a nightmare and chore once enemies hit something like 120+. The worst example of this has to be the Wolf, since he was immune to Frame abilities. Making a random field boss like the Stalker scale with the mission level is fine and all, but the Wolf changes the entire dynamic of the mission.

The problem with the Wolf was a combination of factors but the first is that he does not scale to the mission level. His level is based on the players in the squad, up to 60-75 now, when he can show up in any level of mission, and then he's immune to all abilities, and immune to status procs, and has alloy armor (aka boss armor) as both his armor and his health type, so you can basically square all his weaknesses and resistances. After reducing his tankiness several times, his level 75 version still has enough armor to give him about 8X the effective health pool (starting from 125,000), but on top of that he takes only 25% damage from slash, electric, or magnetic damage, and even where he's weak to puncture and cold, takes (counting the armor penetrating effects) only 54% more damage from puncture, 100% more damage from cold. Radiation does deal effectively +800% damage to him, which still means needing to deal ~110,000 raw radiation damage to kill him, after all his nerfs, or ~4,000,000 raw slashing damage.

[Archpaladin Zousha]

Here's something else that bugs me: just...post-launch DLC in general. It makes me feel like I have to wait nearly a year for all the game's DLC to be out before I can consider the game "finished" enough to actually start playing it, rather than enjoying right out of the metaphorical box! Pathfinder: Kingmaker came out in September of last year, but the last announced DLC, Beneath the Stolen Lands only came out a couple of weeks ago, so I'm only NOW gearing up to play it!

[Keltest]

Here's something else that bugs me: just...post-launch DLC in general. It makes me feel like I have to wait nearly a year for all the game's DLC to be out before I can consider the game "finished" enough to actually start playing it, rather than enjoying right out of the metaphorical box! Pathfinder: Kingmaker came out in September of last year, but the last announced DLC, Beneath the Stolen Lands only came out a couple of weeks ago, so I'm only NOW gearing up to play it!

No offense, but this sounds like a personal problem. Lots of DLC comes with the expectation of having actually played the game before you start it, so theres no reason to hold off on playing it unless its one of the day 1 DLC scams that basically just add 10-20 bucks to the price of the game by hiding important things behind an additional paywall.

[LibraryOgre]

Here's something else that bugs me: just...post-launch DLC in general. It makes me feel like I have to wait nearly a year for all the game's DLC to be out before I can consider the game "finished" enough to actually start playing it, rather than enjoying right out of the metaphorical box! Pathfinder: Kingmaker came out in September of last year, but the last announced DLC, Beneath the Stolen Lands only came out a couple of weeks ago, so I'm only NOW gearing up to play it!

I'm kind of the opposite. If you've got Day 1 DLC, then it should have been part of the game.

[Traab]

Having something like 50% damage reduction would effectively double your hit points, and if you're 1/3 as likely to be hit then you've effectively tripled, and combined you're then at 6x20, or 120 times more survivable. Not counting the increase in expected damage from enemies, but your 1d8+3 longsword hit isn't a 120d8 longsword, nor probably 1d8+360.

To-hit is really never very linear, because having 95% chance to hit all the time doesn't leave much room for variability at the high levels and no one wants to start a game with a 5% chance to hit either, so most games tend to start with hitting being in the 30-60% range and go up to the 80-95% range. And of course there are many computer games where the hitting is pretty much a given and they vary damage based on level instead, especially in anything approaching real-time/action design.

edit:

I loved DAoC. I haven't been able to find any MMO that really does anything for me after playing that. From my perspective WoW took all of the worst parts of DAoC and doubled down on them and ignored all the best parts of DAoC, probably why I never even bothered to get to end-level in WoW, I saw the writing on the wall much earlier because of that. (not to say WoW was bad, but it 100% isn't what *I* want in an MMO). Since pretty much everyone copied WoW since then, that's why really hasn't been any MMOs I've had any interest in.
Relic Raids in particular where rare enough that I never felt a big obligation to do them. They were also fun, but missing one wasn't going to hurt you, and it wasn't like raids in WoW where guilds would kick you out if you missed them, and they had no real impact on character progression so it isn't like you had to grind them day after day to get a few pieces so you could go on to grinding out the next raid.
Relic raids always led to a lot of good PvP, both in terms of large scale conflicts as well as knowing you could find other small groups roaming around and go solo trying to pick off stranglers heading into or away from the keeps.

The thing about daoc is, I actually enjoyed it for quite some time. I took my cabalist and I leveled him up nicely, then did the pvp stuff and worked from there like everyone else. But when the burnout hit, it hit hard. I just dont like pvp much anymore. The classic WoW pvp was at least sorta fun, with random attacks on southshore and tarren mill, or assaults on crossroads in the barrens, but they also had their downsides, like obnoxious high levels perma killing quest npcs when no high levels on your side were in the mood to chase them off. I actually liked it when they turned pvp into a sort of secondary game. You didnt have to pvp to win at pve (or vice versa) It was entirely optional, and if I felt like it I could join a quick game of capture the flag or whatever. Otherwise, it didnt impinge on my playing.

[Rodin]

No offense, but this sounds like a personal problem. Lots of DLC comes with the expectation of having actually played the game before you start it, so theres no reason to hold off on playing it unless its one of the day 1 DLC scams that basically just add 10-20 bucks to the price of the game by hiding important things behind an additional paywall.

I'm torn on this.

My first instinct is to be upset over story-heavy DLC, because if I've played through a game I don't want to be missing out on key parts of the story. This is doubly true if it's post-game content - I don't want to have to get my skills back up to the level I was at when I beat the game to get the conclusion of the story. In addition to that, I rarely pay attention to games I've beaten. Unless the DLC is well advertised, I may well not see that it even exists and thus miss out on key plot points going into the next game. At least a couple of the Dragon's Age games were like that - I missed out on Awakening and the Inquisition DLCs, which have very important ramifications for the plot going forward.

However, the rational part of my brain tells me that this practice is nothing new. A major DLC featuring new mechanics and new story was known in The Before Times as an expansion pack. And generally at significantly higher price points than most DLCs are today.

After thinking about it, the main difference is the lack of a brick and mortar store. It used to be really obvious when an expansion pack came out, because it would be plastered all over the store front and it was impossible to miss it. With digital stores there is such a massive stream of stuff that DLCs can get lost in the shuffle.

[Archpaladin Zousha]

I'm kind of the opposite. If you've got Day 1 DLC, then it should have been part of the game.

That's not an opposite, that annoys me too!

Maybe I should broaden the annoyance to DLC as a whole or something. I'm just tired of games getting extra stuff "tacked on" OR "cut out and hid behind a paywall" that's part of the main story.

At least with Pathfinder: Kingmaker's DLCs they're entire extra campaigns that are only tangentially tied to the main game or they were free updates like The Wildcards.

The DLCs Rodin mentioned for games like Dragon Age and Mass Effect, where their content branches off the main story and often is assumed to have been picked up by the time a sequel rolls around, THOSE are what really bug me. And I LIKE those two series!

[Anteros]

No offense, but this sounds like a personal problem. Lots of DLC comes with the expectation of having actually played the game before you start it, so theres no reason to hold off on playing it unless its one of the day 1 DLC scams that basically just add 10-20 bucks to the price of the game by hiding important things behind an additional paywall.

I dunno, I'm kinda with Zousha on this one. There's lots of games that I actively hold off on playing until the DLC comes out so I get the full experience. Even if they're designed with the expectation that you've already beaten the game, I'm not likely to go back to a game just for the DLC months after I stopped playing, even if it's something I would have played if it was out during my first run.

[The Glyphstone]

In contrast, I like DLCs that add new content or change the base game somehow, since I already go months between replaying games and adding something fresh into the mix makes it interesting. As an example, the Flashpoint DLC for Battletech added new missions and new maps, so when BT comes back up in my rotation of replays it'll have stuff I've never seen to look forward to.

[danzibr]

I seem to recall a game or two having day 1 DLC that was free. Like, they just didn’t quite finish the game in time. I have no problem with this.