mopgoblin on 5/4/2006 at 22:02
Quote Posted by Myoldnamebroke
Do you guys have any conception of the amount of money you're talking about? Yes, I know it'd add up blah blah blah blah blah. But $2? You wouldn't even get a pint for that.
It's still a lot of money in the context of what's being provided. $2 in the US is more than $3 here. Why would I spend that on horse armour mods and the like, when for the price of two or three I could buy a half-decent game from a few years ago? They'd need to make a lot more content per dollar in order to compete. Speaking of which, the value of their content will decrease over time. When it reaches $10 it'd be unreasonable to expect $3 for anything but a very large mod, so presumably the price of the mods would drop too.
It seems like a rather stupid move, really. By charging (and especially overcharging) for things like this, you can lose a fair bit of the goodwill that's built up over the years. That's a valuable asset which has probably provided a lot of their revenue, and can be difficult to rebuild. Not the sort of thing you want to risk losing in order to get a few more dollars in the short term.
RarRar on 5/4/2006 at 22:22
Quote Posted by Teh-Builder
The armor isn't even keeping your horse alive. Maybe it takes 10% less damage or something, but if it was going to die before you got the armor, it'll still die.
Absolutely my thought as well. I figure it's all for appearances sake. I mean, with the armor you don't have to worry about seeing the horse's nasty buttholes anymore (and I'd love to have been a fly on the wall during some of the design meetings when THAT was debated).
Myoldnamebroke on 5/4/2006 at 22:33
Quote Posted by mopgoblin
It's still a lot of money in the context of what's being provided. $2 in the US is more than $3 here. Why would I spend that on horse armour mods and the like, when for the price of two or three I could buy a half-decent game from a few years ago? They'd need to make a lot more content per dollar in order to compete. Speaking of which, the value of their content will decrease over time. When it reaches $10 it'd be unreasonable to expect $3 for anything but a very large mod, so presumably the price of the mods would drop too.
It's a lot in the context of buying a game, but we're not talking about buying a game. They're banking on people not making comparisons like that when people buy it. $2 is in the right sort of ballpark for buying something dumb. It'd cost me that much to go get a couple of cups of coffee between lectures. It's also at the right kind of pricepoint when placed in the market it's going to purchased from: Xbox Live. Most of the marketplace stuff is trash, and people buy the points you spend in batches of over 2000. So it's likely you'd have a couple of hundred points sloshing around. What do you spend them on? Some theme to make your dashboard look like Kameo? Or some cool armour for your horse?
I agree the way this has been handled has been a mistake. But there's massive amounts of vitriol being spurted (not necessarily from TTLG, mind you) that I just can't understand. Well, I can understand where they're coming from, but I can't get in the mindset that'd get upset about it.
Martek on 5/4/2006 at 23:36
What gets me is that I feel certain that a lot of the folks complaining about this have no qualms about spending a few bucks here and there for lame-sounding "ring tones" for their obnoxious cell phones. Double standard.
Martek
PeeperStorm on 6/4/2006 at 01:24
Ya know, it would be stupidly easy to make a mod that buffs up horses, increases their health, gives them a Shield ability, whatever, as long as you don't care about not having visible armor.
And no, I will never spend money on a ringtone.
Edited to add: Boy the Horse Armor story just keeps getting better and better. Turns out that I couldn't use that add-on even if I wanted to. From the download page:
Quote:
ATTENTION: The secured installers for downloadable Oblivion content (currently the Horse Armor add-on) are not compatible with 64-bit editions of Microsoft Windows...
So, they release a game that will motivate many gamers to upgrade PCs to the latest & greatest, then make their added content installers incompatible with the latest and greatest. Smooooooth...
Tuco on 6/4/2006 at 01:31
Quote:
What gets me is that I feel certain that a lot of the folks complaining about this have no qualms about spending a few bucks here and there for lame-sounding "ring tones" for their obnoxious cell phones. Double standard.
Still doesn't change the fact that horse armor is insidiously stupid. I don't think ANYONE saw that coming.
Spitter on 6/4/2006 at 09:14
sup guys I hear Tuco hates horse armors itt confirm/deny?
davpod on 6/4/2006 at 10:02
Quote Posted by Malygris
Suppose some talented, enterprising modder decides to stick it to the man and comes up with his own horse armor mod, a
really good one, with dozens of unique and attractive suits of armor to fit all styles of characters, and then gives it away to the fans. How does Bethesda react? Do they start applying subtle pressure on the mod community to knock it off because they're treading on Bethesda's new territory?
As far as I can tell, they've sort of already answered that question in the 1up article:
"As for players believing they can beat the system by recreating Bethesda's in-house bonus content using PC modification tools, the company says they will not allow anyone to "straight copy" what they release, and mentioned again future content will be more than horse armor, so it will be easy to spot players acting suspect."
So I guess it depends on how they interpret "straight copy".
Thirith on 6/4/2006 at 10:43
What strikes me as really odd about this is that apparently (I haven't played it yet, but every review suggests it) Oblivion is amazing value for money. There are huge numbers of quests, you can play the game in vastly different ways, the world is enormous. Compared to a 15h shooter, there's simply more game per buck. Bethesda doesn't skimp on the content included in the game.
Whereas these official mods have precious little content. They seem to jump from "Here, have the world for tuppence, and we'll give you fifteen Victorian novels for free!" to "You want a paper clip? We'll sell it to ya for two dollars!"
Personally, I might be willing to pay if I think the content will add significantly to my game, but so far the official mods don't seem to be any better than what the community can (and eventually will) come up with.
