All this bitching is completely retarded. The price is fine. Hell it’s even lower than most new AAA games that run about the same length.
And don’t forget the co-op story is about the same size as the SP’s.
Insignificantly cheaper. And he suggested that the game should be like half as expensive or something really silly like that. He’s trolling.
Which is too bad because it gives him some credit for intelligence, which previous articles have proved he doesn’t have. But yeah, I have to say that some former Valve fans are starting to idealize what Valve stands for way to much.
Pathetic little bitch who is still butthurt. And fairly irrelevant, too. The main purpose of digital is to reduce cost for publisher, then to provide comfort to the user.
Portal two is still overpriced. 25 euros is fine for any steam standalone. I can wait
Butthurt about what???
Maybe you’re not a troll and just an idiot.
It always make me chuckle. Every time you call me out on trolling I do actually mean it.
The funniest part is that you call me an idiot.
I’m copy-pasting this from my reply on the escapist, so I apologize if one or two things are off…
Well, my take on the topic…
I will first state I think the people trolling Metacritic to lower the game’s review score are being really immature. The game is obviously not THAT bad. However, I think people do need to seriously consider the arguments made about how this sort of “unlocked costume” happened inside the gameplay originally.
The funny thing is, I have seen cosmetic DLC that hasn’t bothered me at all. I ended up concluding that the differences I saw in Portal 2 are that…
A. Portal 2 is a full $50 game
B. The DLC was available release-day.
Killing Floor had cosmetic items (character skins) for a cheap amount, but I found that it didn’t rile me because the game itself was pretty cheap - $20. If you decide you must have all character skins for the complete experience, that’s about $30 in total.
Some free to play games make their money through cosmetics. Obviously, the low boundary for entry is $0. Then, if you are really obsessed about character customization, it may go up to $40…or even higher if it’s the type of game with “time limit items” that you must pay for again. To some people, it’s worth it to pay hundreds of dollars. To others, it’s only worth it to pay $10. You get a wide boundary.
For Portal 2, the cost starts at $50 and only goes upwards, I think totalling $130 for everything they made. From an economic standpoint, that tells me Valve believes they’ve made a product that, in total, is worth $130. What I’m annoyed about is how they don’t have that “lower boundary” the previous scenarios have, when people think it isn’t worth quite as much.
Finally, there’s the point of exactly what “cosmetic” means. I’m a choreographer for Black Mesa. What if we released the whole game with purple-black checkerboard textures, no voice acting, no music, no NPC scenes, but perfectly functional gameplay…technically? You’d be able to play the game start to finish, no problem, but it would look like shit. You would obviously want it to be spiced up. We then of course introduce the Black Mesa Gift Shop, where you can pay up to $100 to get the full experience.
I’m sure the above scenario sounds ridiculous and cheap to you. You now know what the situation looks like to someone who DOES care about extra cosmetics. If they were “worthless to everyone” or “not worth fussing over” as so many claim, then there wouldn’t be anyone paying money for them.
I believe in DLC in theory, but there is proper execution to it. I certainly don’t agree with the execution present in Dragon Age or other games. Either have it as part of the business model from the beginning (meaning you release for less than $50, unless you hold your work in very, very high regard) or you develop it as an expansion once you’ve finished (like Fallout DLC)
This isn’t really directed at anyone here, just at a number of idiots’ comments I read on a few sites.
Here’s the basic idea behind all of this: The store exists because it can be used to make money, meaning that Valve is not loosing money from it. As long as that is the case, they don’t care what you think, since they are keeping the vast majority of fans happy (assuming a minority of people buy from the store and even then minimal amounts), and that is the way it should be. If you are so obnoxiously idealist that you cannot allow for an entirely optional store with no gameplay significance to be allowed in game, you deserve to be left behind.
Good points, but I think your analogy with Black Mesa is greatly exaggerated. There is a huge difference between quality and customization. If Portal 2 had been released sans DLC, would people have stopped and said, “Hey, there’s no hats for the co-op robots, I don’t want to play this anymore”, and then not bought it? And yet because they have the option to have those hats, they complain. If people didn’t want to buy a game because it was half finished, as you described Black Mesa, there is good reason. No normal person would enjoy something incomplete like that. But Portal 2 is not incomplete, and the only content you can’t have when you buy the game is cosmetics. Do they matter to some people? Sure. But additional content doesn’t somehow make it less of a game.
And here’s what really gets my goat: Since it’s first person, 90% of the time you’re playing, you won’t even see the stuff you’ve equipped. So it’s even less about aesthetics and more about showing off to other people what you have. If it was a 3rd person game like Mass Effect, it would be easier to claim customization since you see yourself constantly, but in Source games the excuse is pretty weak.
I recall an interview with Gabe where he said they want to try letting the people set the price for their products themselves because different people value the games differently. I believe the micro-transactions are just that - the humble bundle model with a higher minimum price. So as long as they don’t withhold vital content (which they won’t) I have no problem with it.