About possible DLC monetization plans

[bbbt]

Free-to-play games need paid cosmetics stay afloat, and live service multiplayer games need dedicated servers that cost astronomical amount of money to maintain, so in those cases paid cosmetics are the necessary reality.

Paid cosmetics in singleplayer games, especially in games that can have mods available to essentially get them for free, however, does not look like a healthy practice at all. In fact, I actually saw other games restricting cosmetic-related modding to remove competition for their paid cosmetic dlcs, so Firaxis suppressing modding scene in this aspect is not at all implausible scenario.

"Cosmetic" dlc is actually necessary in some regard for single player games if you are using income steams as your argument. Essentially, programming/game engine development takes a lot longer than art. Cosmetics dlc allow an income stream justification for the art department, allowing them to stay employed as full time resources, rather than temporary resources that get hired near the end of development and then let go after release, as used to be the practice.

Having said that, for Civ, leaders (and civs) are essentially already 'cosmetic' DLC for that purpose - something like a leader is probably 95% art department, 5% programming. We saw that in the New Frontier Pass for Civ 6 - something to keep the art department busy/employed while the programmers were working on the Civ 7 engine.

Same dealy with modding - both Civ 5 and Civ 6 had enormous amount of modded Civs competing with the paid DLC Civs, and Firaxis did zero to suppress those. If anything frankly, Firaxis seems to be pushing modding in the direction of mainly cosmetic, leaders, civs, etc. with the lack of source code.

So I don't honestly see this as a big issue, because to me Leader/Civ DLC is basically a step away from cosmetic DLC. But by that same argument, purely cosmetic DLC seems like a bit of a waste of time for Firaxis as they could probably get a lot more bang for their buck adding that extra 5% of dev time to make a leader/civ. So I don't know if we'll see much of these beyond launch.

 

[UWHabs]

My only problem with cosmetic DLC is if by including them, they somehow lock out modders from being able to do similar changes. Like if they sell a DLC unit upgrade, but remove the ability for modders to upgrade unit art at all, that's an issue. Otherwise, I love them, because it's easy to just not buy them. We don't know if they will or not. In general, the art team is already set up to understand the system, so they get a much better economy of scale to be able to make the update than a modder, and usually the art comes out nicer. If people are willing to pay for that, fantastic.

 

[King of Prussia]

I expect in the long term, there are 4 different DLC paths i expect they will follow. DLCs with a Civ + a leader. For a larger DLC; a leader +3 civs, one for each era that are closely related to each other.

Of course, you could go a bit more outside the box, and do a bundle of leaders that have a similar theme. Similar for civs, that have a similar theme or region.

Who knows if they will continue to expansions, and what all that might include.

I personally never cared that much for cosmetics; unless they make me laugh. With that said, people love them. Every game i know that makes them well, and chargers a fair price for it, sells a ton of them. They keep the art department busy and employed. I probably would not buy them unless they are included in some bundle that i would like to get, in which case they are more of a bonus.

 

[AntSou]

Anno 1800 has a ton of cosmetic DLC and it is an awesome game. Diablo IV has a ton of expensive cosmetics on a game with an already expensive price tag and this has arguably contributed to degrading the franchise (along with immortal) as gameplay improvements become secondary.

The Civ franchise already has cosmetics... it's the new leaders and civs, which are introduced along with new gameplay.

"Cosmetic DLC" isn't a neat category, it's a catchall term. In regards to the Civ franchise, I really see no reason to be worried.

 

[Siptah]

There is one line to be crossed that would make me worried: unit and building variations for regions/ethnicities being paid extra content. E.g., base game Russia uses the same assets as the French Empire, but you can either buy a Russian assets pack or own another DLC (e.g., Lithuania) that unlocks Eastern European assets. So far, there is no indication for this and I don‘t think it will happen in 7, but it‘s also not inconceivable (and might be part of 8‘s monetization strategy).

 

[AntSou]

There is one line to be crossed that would make me worried: unit and building variations for regions/ethnicities being paid extra content. E.g., base game Russia uses the same assets as the French Empire, but you can either buy a Russian assets pack or own another DLC (e.g., Lithuania) that unlocks Eastern European assets.

I don't mind that, though I don't mind it in EUIV and HOI4 either.

Mainly because generic units have always been the norm, so paying extra for variation is fine by me.

 

[chaosprophet]

Mainly because generic units have always been the norm, so paying extra for variation is fine by me.

I think it depends on what is the norm for the game. The norm for civ 7, from what we saw, is that we have many variation for cultures and in some cases for each civ. So you would expect new civs to also have those assets and not be worse than base game ones with cosmetics separately.

If the whole game had generics art for almost all building and units and then later they sell dlcs to give more variation, that may be justified. But then you would expect them to do that extra effort considering civ is one of the closest to "AAA" for the strategy genre, and they price their games accordingly.

 

[Pistol90]

Your post contradicts itself.

Civ has had zombies, vampires, sci-fi, steampunk, Elvis, and probably more I don't know about or am forgetting.

So, letting Civ remain what it is would include zombies, vampires, aliens, sci-fi, steampunk, etc.

I dont agree.

Civ 6 had 3 expansions lets say, 2.5 of those were history based, while Secret society and zombies were included at the end of life-cycle as options.

Adding zombies and vampires when you still had unfinished game-mechanics in game (like free-cities, diplomacy, alliances, world congress, religion) is priorities went wrong if you ask me. I see many games chasing trends and adding things no-one asked for, and failing as a result.

Rise of Nations is my best example, no one asked for fantasy game (there are many others already on market) ... and they ruined franchize.

There are enough turn-based sci-fi and fantasy games (some from Firaxis itself) ... no need to turn Civ into another one.

 

[Vandlys]

I dont agree.

Civ 6 had 3 expansions lets say, 2.5 of those were history based, while Secret society and zombies were included at the end of life-cycle as options.

Adding zombies and vampires when you still had unfinished game-mechanics in game (like free-cities, diplomacy, alliances, world congress, religion) is priorities went wrong if you ask me. I see many games chasing trends and adding things no-one asked for, and failing as a result.

Rise of Nations is my best example, no one asked for fantasy game (there are many others already on market) ... and they ruined franchize.

There are enough turn-based sci-fi and fantasy games (some from Firaxis itself) ... no need to turn Civ into another one.

You still miss the mark I think, but I understand where you are coming from I don't have anything against your opinion, and you are right that Civ for the most part has always been a alternate history game more than a fantasy game. But saying "no need to turn into" implies that it was not so to begin with.

At no point has there been any indication of Civ VII turning into a fantasy game; that is, a game that can be considered "fantasy", instead of as is currently "alternate history".

What I am inferring from your post, is that you would want to leave away any sci-fi, zombies, vampires, aliens, etc. But your statement is not that. Your statement is that they should not "change" it. And that is the position I am arguing against. "Keeping it as is" would eventually include some type of fantasy element, be it steampunk, zombie, sci-fi, alien, elvis, or otherwise. If they leave all these things out and do nothing of the sort, that would be considered a change of pace.

As for your "priorities gone wrong" argument, I agree. There were many issues with Civ VI that could and should have been addressed before adding more content that, in my limited scope of perception, seemed to have gotten very little attention (zombies, for example). Personally, I also wouldn't mind not seeing them back. I would, however, like more sci-fi in a future era. I would love a new final era being a version of Beyond Earth. That would make the game a huge success for me, but maybe not for you. There is no pleasing everyone unfortunately.

As for your worries about ruining a franchise. I don't know if that's true. I don't know if RoN would have fared differently had they released a different game. I don't know if Civ VII will be a success because of the changes they are making, or despite the changes they are making. For that, we'd need to take a look in our alternate history machine

 

[Pistol90]

I could potentially live with some limited sci-fi era ... we had it in Civ 6 future era.

But we agree mostly, I think with zombies and Vampires Civ 6 went wrong direction for 2 DLCs lets say. What I am worried is having (for example) entire expansion in Civ 7 with zombies, and then in Civ 8 reveal trailer starting narrator lines to be something like --- "Civ is not just alternative history, it alternative reallity now, with Gandalf fighting Zombies in Middle ages, how cool is that".

So, i dont say Civ 6 is fantasy or sci-fi, but surelly it made one small step towards it ... and i dont want to see it continues.

 

[CivKirk64]

Correct me if I'm wrong but it seemed the pre-order edition for 6 included the first few in betweener packs for leaders/civs, until the first expansion. That seems to mirror what they've done this time.
Then we had the Expansion 1, then 2 (were there tweeners I forgot?)
What I loved was they made the post expansion content free for anyone that owned everything to date. Let's hope they mirror this the next few years. Seems already we are spending $200CND before the first expansion, the price is inflated naturally as expected, but lets hope this doesn't end up being $500 when all is said and done. I might need to show restraint and wait on the last expansion ,for a sale or a humble bundle that includes everything for $37 in 2030.

My next worry is there are no expansions and everything is like a yearly expansion pass with a trickle of updates instead of the Big Game changing Expansion.