Lets talk DLC.

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So i have been very positive about Planet Coaster for a long time but i have always been excited with a healthy dose of caution because sometimes hype makes you drunk in a sense that you buy it just because you think its the new mecca of theme park management games.

Anyways! I wanted to see the opinion of what you guys think of how DLC will be handles, what it will contain and to what extend it will be in the game.
The reason for this is because as of now a developer has avoided the question "Can we add our own flatrides/rollercoasters/scenery" pretty hard in the QA thread which can be found here.
Here is the response of one of the developers on the question regarding the inclusion of custom content.
With Planet Coaster, we're offering user-generated content in the box. We'll be providing you with hundreds of individual decorative components that you can use in the modular building system to create some truly spectacular and unique things. By doing this, we'll provide you with creative options that you've never had before to create your perfect park.

We’re going to provide you with the ability to share your creations from inside Planet Coaster with other members of the community.

Later on someone asked kinda the same question, check answer at B:

A) Our coaster system will be piece by piece rather than spline based to allow you to have a high level of fidelity on your coaster creations.
B) As mentioned before, we’ll be providing the ability for you to share your creations in-game with the rest of the Planet Coaster community. We’re offering hundreds of artist authored wall pieces, windows, sculptures, fountains and animated decorative items for you to combine in any way you can imagine. The quality and consistency we believe offers the perfect toolset for building perfect parks.
C) We’re offering a large number of varied coaster types but I’m not able to say how many at this point.
D) You’ll see more about how you’ll be able to use shops and facilities in conjunction with scenery to suit your needs
E) Currently it’s the path and landscape sculpting tools, they’re really powerful and allow me to make some really cool things.
F) It’s a great idea but right now, it’s not on the plan for the initial release.


Now i am not sure you people are up to date about Elite Dangerous which is also created by Frontier Developments but that game made me really sad because of its approach of DLC because they basically went for my worst case scenario in DLC. By adding core gameplay elements on a later stage for money, something that should be in the game from the start to begin with or if its added as a feature creep it should be added as free DLC.
Take a look at this image of Elite Dangerous, this is a official DLC chart.
Let me repeat that core gameplay mechanics and elements are locked behind away behind DLC and this is a big concern. These are not expansion packs like RCT3: Wild! or RCT3: Soaked! which added something big to the existing mechanics plus added loads of rides, coasters, shops and scenarios.

I'm not accusing the developers of Planet Coaster that they are doing the same thing and i still strongly believe that the game will have proper workshop support for at least custom scenery but it would break me if this game had something like microtransactions where you can purchase rides for 3 euro a piece.
So what is your take on this? How do you want to see DLC appearing? Because there is a chance it is going to be included but it can be included in a proper way.

tl;dr:
Elite Dangerous, made by Frontier as well (albeit different team) has a big scheme of DLC which basically states you need to pay 120 euro to play all the core features of the game. Here i am just hoping that Planet Coaster won't start dealing with micro transactions or locking core gameplay behind a DLC pack.
 
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I know "TL;DR" mostly because I do not play Elite but my eyes caught on the micro-transactions bit. I hope there's not too much of these. I prefer expansion packs and free downloads in between. But not buy one tiny piece of a stall, buy a ride, buy buy.
 
I know "TL;DR" mostly because I do not play Elite but my eyes caught on the micro-transactions bit. I hope there's not too much of these. I prefer expansion packs and free downloads in between. But not buy one tiny piece of a stall, buy a ride, buy buy.

it is indeed a wall of text! I added a TL;DR [up]
 
it is indeed a wall of text! I added a TL;DR [up]

Thank you. 120€ is indeed quite a lot if it is just for the start of the game. But if it is the total sum of expansion packs released over the years (let's say basegame and maybe 3 exp packs or 2.. it depends on how big these are), I am more OK with it.

I do not mind pay to Frontier for their good work but I just dislike the microtransactions as a principle.
 
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120 euros for the core features of Elite? I don't know where you've been looking, but I paid £30 for the game and it has everything (except Horizons which i bought for £40, but that basically doubles the game's functionality so it's worth it). All microtransactions in Elite are cosmetic as far as I'm aware. Quite hard to compare that to a theme park management game.

RCT3 had the two expansion packs, and in my opinion they were completely worth it. They weren't overly expensive and added lots of features - then again, that was many years ago, so who knows what'd happen with that kind of thing now.
 
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All microtransactions in Elite are cosmetic as far as I'm aware.

But even if these microtransactions were purely cosmetic and not core-features of the game ; there is still the concern that they lock the custom content created by the the community, to prevent it from being a competition to their microtransactions content.

That would really tick me off if they did that, even EA didn't go that far with the Sims. But I think community custom content is also what kept RCT3 alive for so long, so they may recognize that, and let the creators do their stuff... I hope.
 
But even if these microtransactions were purely cosmetic and not core-features of the game ; there is still the concern that they lock the custom content created by the the community, to prevent it from being a competition to their microtransactions content.

That's not fun!
 
But even if these microtransactions were purely cosmetic and not core-features of the game ; there is still the concern that they lock the custom content created by the the community, to prevent it from being a competition to their microtransactions content.
oh, NO NO NO!
please dont do that frontier!
sadcat2kb9.gif
 
Micro-transactions are the worst. I hope they release expansions or mini-expansion- just not solo rides- different skins- scenery - etc.
 

Harbinger

Volunteer Moderator
@DrVagax: Your case regarding Elite: Dangerous isn't entirely accurate.

They clearly outlined what the core version of the game would be in the Kickstarter and that was essentially a faithful reboot of Elite (1984) with multiplayer. The only feature that they specifically promised in the Kickstarter that wasn't delivered by the end of the first year was an offline mode for which they provided refunds to any aggrieved by this. People expecting the game to include planetary landings for no additional cost were making assumptions rather than actually researching what's been public knowledge since 2012.

Elite: Dangerous was officially launched on December 16th 2014 and Elite Dangerous: Horizons launched on December 15th 2015, just 1 day short of a year from the initial launch. That's an entire year of free updates for those who were there at the beginning.

Your prices are also elevated. In Euros (as you stated), Elite: Dangerous launched at €49.99 and as a prior owner of the base game the price of the expansion would have been €37.49 making an overall total of €87.48.

As to whether Planet Coaster will follow a similar model (Full priced expansion with discount for current owners) nobody besides Frontier can answer that but I'd certainly be expecting a paid expansion 1 year after release and wouldn't have a problem paying after having received 1 year of free updates.
 
Hello I am doing research on Elite Dangerous it is just a game of extenction with new things can be GamePlay .. it is more expensive but it brings new functionality and anyway you do not come to you today pleindre background sims exactly the same things with extenction ..
 
E:d is a vastly bigger game with a huge amount of backend server infrastructure that Frontier needs to maintain. All of this is substantially expensive even with the huge discounts I reckon they are getting off Amazon for being one of the first to use their infrastructure for a game.

Why I understand this game has some online features such as visiting each other theme parks, sharing content, I don't see it being anywhere near the scale that is required for Elite, where the infrastructure needs to support stella forge, thousands of players being involved in twitch game play, cheating, community goals, powerplay information, a huge database of exploration planets.

Also Frontier mention when they first announced the game that micro transactions destroy the Tycoon brand and that why they were calling Planet Coaster.
 
^ That's a good point.

Technically we don't know that they'll be online features yet though, and the only thing that they might need is online storage for sharing parks and stuff. Visiting parks could be done using the user's internet.
 
My biggest concern is the fact they still didn't confirm User-Generated Content, something like Steam Workshop. They are only saying you can save and share your creations with the tools and assets provided by Frontier.

This is really a big deal for me. It could make or break the game [mouth shut][ugh]
 
I quote myself here because it's totally in the subject of this thread :

[...] This is why I still hope about the "content library" (that could satisfy both the players and the shareholders).
Something like :

---- Community Content (everything is free in this category)

- Community Shared Content (like buildings, rides, blueprints, maps, scenarios, etc...)
- Community Created Content (like 3D models or "packs", animated objects, textures, music and sound, etc...)

---- Official Content

- Official Small DLC = Free
- Official Medium DLC = X,99 €
- Official Big DLC = X,99 €
- Official Expansion Pack = XX,99 €
- Official "Bundle" Pack = Depending the pack

With this system, everyone is happy.

And ... strategically, they do not really have a choice if they do not want to attract the wrath of the community.
Because if : 1) they sell the game, AND 2) they use an intern library with ONLY paying "official stuff" (which is, when we think about it, exactly like the "free-to-play store system" which exists because the initial game is free, and they have to find a source of income), then they will have very (very) bad comments.

But, if they are smart enough, they can use the two business models (the "free-to-play" model + the "classic" model) if they allow players to make and share free content.

This could change how people perceive, what is, in reality, "a shop" by transforming it, in the public eye into a "content sharing library, with some paying official stuff inside too" (and if, in addition, they provide tools making "import" and "configuration" simpler, users can be completely fooled)

But this is just my opinon [rolleyes]

Oh ... and :
Take a look at this image of Elite Dangerous, this is a official DLC chart.
When I said they were REALLY bad for managing their "packs" (in another topic), I thought it was just for Planet Coaster ... But when I see this picture, I'm terrified...

This is already beginning to be a mess in pricing of PlanetCoaster, but here !!! With Elite Dangerous, it's a real shame. Seriously !

The developers seem to be good, the communication team (and the community management) seem to be good too, but the marketing guy/team ... He/they have a gift for making things ... complicated.
uhh.gif
 
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If they're going to do paid DLC of any kind I hope it's only through the occasional expansion pack.

Patches, bug fixes or any changes to core gameplay/mechanics should come through frequent updates. Expansion packs can include things like new rides/levels etc. But I would hate to see individual rides sold on a store or something ridiculous like that.
 

Joël

Volunteer Moderator
I quote myself here because it's totally in the subject of this thread :



Oh ... and :
When I said they were REALLY bad for managing their "packs" (in another topic), I thought it was just for Planet Coaster ... But when I see this picture, I'm terrified...

This is already beginning to be a mess in pricing of PlanetCoaster, but here !!! With Elite Dangerous, it's a real shame. Seriously !

The developers seem to be good, the communication team (and the community management) seem to be good too, but the marketing guy/team ... He/they have a gift for making things ... complicated. https://forums-cdn.frontier.co.uk/images/smilies/uhh.gif

Angelis, your idea of a 'content library system' is great. I hope something like this gets into the game! With it, everyone can be happy. Frontier can sell expansion packs and paid and free DLC through such a library, and on the same time custom content can be managed/imported/viewed/enabled and so on.

One could download custom content from any resource, put it in a special folder in 'My documents' for example, so that the game recognizes the custom files and displays them in the content library, so that players can enable them whenever they choose to. Maybe even sort them into categories for easy finding in the object library / catalogue. [happy]
 
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^ I agree. Aside from the fact that DLC's usually cost more money alltogether, I don't want to have to look through such confusing charts to decide what to buy for a simple video game.
 
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