What's your least favorite parts of previous Igavania games?

I was unaware of that.

That nothing happens when you collect all the furniture in Harmony of Dissonance.

I can't think of many/any game that didn't have "cut content". That is to say stuff the developers wanted to include but decided they didn't have the time or resources to include it or that it wasn't working out or wasn't fun and needed to be nixed. Why something gets cut will vary and depending on the circumstances it can result in an awkward product (looking at MGS-V as you brought up). However, even if you have a big budget and a lenient release schedule,  games need to be shipped eventually. Not every idea is going to make it in, that's just life (for any creative product).


Why? Some content is cheaper/easier to create than others and can be done in a reasonably quick timeframe. Why not prolong the life of a product and give gamers more of what they want? Like if you can make something like costumes or extra weapons or whatever in a "short" period of time, why put it off until 2-4 years for the sequel? Granted all this content should be started AFTER the main game is finished and shipped out. I hate significant Day 1 Paid DLC (cosmetic stuff I usually don't care about but more substantial stuff really bothers me) - the sort stuff that was clearly finished in time to ship with the main product but is sectioned off to sell separately. However, if its quality content that clearly made after the fact and not ready for ship time, why would I turn that down?

I'm not really sure I follow this line of thought. As you say, games eventually have to be shipped. But its not like there can't ever be more content created. They can't push things off indefinitely and a game that's on sale can actually make money for a developer/publisher (and may help fund DLC). For example the Shovel Knight devs had to launch their product with the base game but its sales have helped fund the DLC expansions. It's not a matter of poor planning and just a function that you can't leave a game "in the cooker" so to speak forever - there would never be an end to whatever "everything that should be included". The definition of an "ENTIRE GAME" became variable the minute patching became a frequent and expected industry practice. Nobody is forcing you to come back to a game if you don't want to. However some people who enjoy a game may like to get more out of it and are willing to pay to do so. If the developers are in a position to deliver and can make quality content for a fair price, everybody ends up winning. Plus the presence of DLC has no predictive value on how feature rich or light a base product maybe. You mention games like Smash, Hyrule Warrior and Mario Kart but those games were packed with content already. The DLC just made them even better. Why wait 2-4 years for than additional content when I can have it within one year?

One of the things that may be skewing my view of DLC is that I am from an older generation of gamers where DLC didn't exist because game systems had not online capabilities.  (Yes, I'm old.  Probably older than most on this forum.)  I've just always felt that with DLC, the devs are saying here is some stuff we intentionally held back so we could release it to you later and charge you more.  And I've always thought, why didn't you just finish the game before you released it?  They either had too much content (which would warrant a second game), they were too lazy to finish what they started in time, or they are just trying to get more money out of the game.  With Bloodstained and the stretch goal promises, IGA and IntiCreates don't really have a choice of making a second game to include the content.  They have to include everything as part of the first game, be it main game or DLC.  I'm not sure which way they are going to go, but it is a different situation for them.

For the most part, a developer having DLC for a game is an automatic red mark on their record for me; however, there are exceptions--as is the case for Bloodstained.  This kickstarted project with stretch goals and everything really is a whole other ball of yarn.  I really want all of the content to be in the main game with no DLC, but it may not work out that way.

And thinking about it a little more, I guess games have evolved to the point where one game with DLC added as time goes on is more popular/more feasible than releasing two games.  Unless it a Call of Duty/EA Sports kind of deal where they release a new game in the series about once a year.

Believe me, I'm from back in the day, too, but not all dlc is stuff you can describe as 'cut content'. Yeah, there's definitely egregious examples but there's also a lot of examples of it being stuff that was worked on after the game was done.

Making games has become *really* expensive. Like more expensive than people realize. And yet game prices have remained pretty stagnant. DLC when done right is a way to keep current customers playing and maybe draw in new people to give a game long legs.

But why not keep pushing back to put it in the main game? Time and money. Generally when you have a time frame to put stuff out there's a lot of factors behind that: marketting, PR, customer viability, etc. Yeah, delays happen but that's a lot of peoplease that have to work harder to get it out in a reasonable time frame after the date you set and while it might be easy to do once doing it more than that erodes goodwill.

I know some game devs that have worked on dlc for very little pay just so a game has more after it came out so just up and deciding that they're lazy is pretty unfair. These people a lot of times work super crazy hours to make sure a game is done on time and that's not even factoring delays.

I've been hunting down a source for that, so you wouldn't think I'm just full of lies and doughnuts, and amusingly enough it's quoted off to the side right on the SotN wiki page.

My first gaming console was a NES is 86', so I was definitely around the gaming scene awahile myself, but I don't know.......I see dlc the same exact way I see video games period, there will be crappy ones, there will be great ones, its as simple as that.

Crap dlc is things where you automatically can just tell the devs was just being grimey.....capcom their-selves is a pretty good example for crap dlc practices from like, 2008ish till' like, 2015. (I feel they have started to ease up on their dlc shenanigans lately, what with all the extreme negative criticism they got for the past few years that damn near tarnished their reputation). The vast majority of capcom's stuff for the past generation was disc-locked content. Content that was perfectly playable mind you, since hackers managed to go through the data for most of their games and actually enabled the locked content to play with it. (street fighter x tekken's characters come to mind). Also crap from other devs like horse armor, lol. Overpriced costumes in jrpgs (as much as a love the tales of series, it is guilty for having overpriced costumes per character. Graces F prices were especially awful)., etc.

Great dlc is things like borderlands dlc....each time gearbox added something to a borderlands game, it tended to be an extremely long experience with added rare weapons to find, level caps raised etc. etc. (borderland 1's zombie island may not seem like much these days, but back when borderlands 1 first released in 2009 and during a time when companies was still getting the hang of the dlc thing on consoles, it was amazing/a trendsetter for how to do dlc right). Left 4 dead extra levels were nice for their price. (for the 360 anyway. This stuff was free on the PC. Was microsoft's fault for the dlc charge since valve was willing to give it away for free for 360 users). The already mentioned mario kart 8 and super smash bros 3DS/Wii U dlc. Witcher 3's dlc (they made it perfectly clear that nothing they worked on was started until the game released. Also, the game is by far a complete experience on it's own, etc.).

I feel as if crap dlc and great dlc should not be lumped together, and should be treated just like crap video game and great (or decent/above average, lol) video game releases.

My LEAST favourite part of any Igavania? The lack of a menu in "extra character" modes. I tried playing Julius mode in Dawn of Sorrow. Can't. Wrong controls and I can't rebind them. I tried playing Axe Armor mode in Portrait of Ruin. Can't. Wrong controls and I can't rebind them.

That's pretty much the WORST part, as it doesn't come down to any stylistic or design decision, but is pretty much just a huge oversight. So none of that, please.