So its gonna keep the Creation Kit name? I kinda liked the GECK, thought it was a clever reference.

So either two large $20 DLCs like TES or four smaller $10 DLCs like the Fallout games (well, FO3 had five with Broken Steel, but you get what I mean). That's the way I see it at least. Hopefully its the first one. As much as I like some of FO3 and NV's DLC, the content doesn't last very long.

GECK stands for The Garden of Eden Creation Kit

Aka, the Creation Kit for short.

I like Creation Kit, it just sounds nicer. The reference is still kind of there, too; before Bethesda did Fallout, their editor was called the Construction Set. Now that they've got the Creation Engine as an in-house thing, the name fits pretty well I think.

I asked Pete on Twitter and he said it is confirmed! Atleast thats what it sounds like.

https://mobile.twitter.com/DCDeacon/status/641666441486446592

Season pass is a con, don't buy it. It's basically signing a contract without knowing the fine print. Plus this studio has a bad history of bugs. Let's look at Skyrim's DLCs as an example.

Dawnguard

Bug could possibly occur where Dexion will still Aggro you and prevent you from finishing the quest (Vampire Side) this was not patched

Bug where The Scrolls could not be given to Dexion (Vampire Side) This was not patched

Sorine's inventory gold being screwed up (Dawnguard Side) This was not patched

Hearthfire

Never got it but I've heard the bug reports where you lose wings of your house, the place in Falkreath has some freeze issues, etc

Dragonborn

Bug where if you cause too much damage in the Mirrak fight he goes Ethereal and doesn't come back out of it, This was not patched.

Various Freezing issues on the island, this is random but it does happen. It's not super often but it does happen, this was not patched.

See the pattern, Beth has had a history of bug issues and we want to entrust them with money upfront instead of waiting. It's a very bad deal, I would advise anybody reading this message not to buy the season pass. Will the DLC be good, probably but then again do you really want to take the risk, past history says it will be buggy and it won't be patched. Now with Modding being a thing for the consoles that could change but again would Beth approve of an unofficial patch mod for the consoles, which is basically a big middle finger towards the company, No I don't think they will.

To summarize, avoid the season pass, don't buy it and I'm pretty disappointed that Beth went this route because we've seen what happens with Season Passes, they don't work at all. Pretty disappointing IMO.

I'm with Benji on this one, will likely pick up the SP.

Huh. Never thought that Bethesda would do the Season Pass thing.

I mean so long as we don't get pre order stuff or weapons packs im pretty okay with the DLC structure. More Honest Hearts or Point Lookout, less Gun Runners Arsenal or Courier's Stash.

Just to highlight this: Bethesda would never be so openly spiteful as to ban the unofficial patches from any platform. Bugfixing isn't a competition, and Bethesda isn't staffed by a bunch of petty children. Most anyone who spends the time and effort on an unofficial patch isn't petty either, for that matter, and if the folks working on the unofficial patches for Fallout 4 are half as good as the Unofficial Skyrim Patch team they'll make as many of their fixes available to consoles as possible.

You're right that Bethesda didn't patch their Skyrim DLC, too, and that's a perfectly justified reason for avoiding a season pass. To my understanding (AwesomePossum kinda touched on this earlier), it's actually somewhat convoluted and expensive for Bethesda to organize DLC-specific patches within the console infrastructure, which might have been why Skyrim's DLC went unpatched; I remember one random bug introduced by Dawnguard prevented the Breezehome alchemy lab from ever being enabled, and the salt in the wound is that it was a trivial thing to fix (and utterly perplexing how it got broken in the first place). Hopefully if they've got the infrastructure for the community to upload mods to consoles, it's a lot easier for Bethesda themselves to put out content and patches for that content.

I'll get the base game when it goes live, but I'm usually not in a hurry to get DLC. Eventually I get them all because the best mods will require them, but I'm usually content to wait until DLC goes on sale. Can't see myself getting the season pass.

You are quite correct that buying a season pass for something unknown let alone unseen is logically a bit bonkers.

And addressing your disappointment, well this is a choice.

There is no need at all to partake, just buy each DLC or not, post-release, as you prefer.

Certainly not a 'con', I know the content is unknown, I know there is more than the season pass ticket price, I know it is a purchase of faith. That's not a 'con', I am not being told anything dishonest here even if I (and Bethesda) don't yet know what I have paid for.

Bethesda have done well so far, the game offering is straight-forward, the Collector's Edition was desirable with no gated game content,

and pre-orders are not divisive or, er, augmented.

In some respects the nice additional features with patches are kind of what the Witcher 3 have been doing, but without making a song and dance about it.

And as for the season pass, well I'm in...

I do have my fingers crossed that with it being on current gen consoles and also 64 bit that there will be less bugs. We'll see I'm cautiously optimistic that it will be different.

My predictions for what Beth will add with Patches.

hardcoe Mode

A Car

An object that will let you change your face

New materials/colors to build your town with

Brahmin Horse Armor

*cough* Shenmue *cough* *cough*

It's probably just going to be on the same level of free stuff they added in Skyrim's patches. Which I think only amounted to prettier underwater effects, mounted combat, projectile kill-cams, legendary difficulty, and legendary skills; not that those weren't great little additions, though.

As I understand it, a big part of the reason for Season Passes is that the more time passes from the release of a game, the higher odds that the players have moved on to new games and/or sold the game to Gamestop/etc. Less players playing = lower potential DLC sales for later DLC.

Pre-selling the DLC as a bundle via the Pass means that 1. even if a player has moved on, they've still bought the DLC you just released, and 2. knowing that they've got already-purchased DLC coming can increase player retention (keep playing longer, keep them from selling used copies).

In return for this, we the purchasers get a discount on the full DLC price. Basically a fair deal, but there's the risk of ending up with crap DLC (Borderlands:TPS )

It's just odd to keep selling the Pass when all (or almost all) of the DLC have come out, since the above no longer really applies. (Although I suppose it might help with gaining some late purchasers. Obviously the economics work out, or they wouldn't be doing it that way. )

A con? lol. There's no con in buying something you'll want to get eventually anyway. There's no reason not to buy the Season Pass if you intend on playing the full Fallout 4 experience and adding mods. Eventually most major mods will require all the DLC to be installed. Any bugs that the DLC may contain (and there will be some, just like with any other game ever released) will be stamped out by either Beth updates or the mod community. I have absolutely no hesitation buying the DLC in advance. I've enjoyed all Beth DLC so far and I'm sure I'll enjoy this. Knowing Beth, you're gonna get more than you pay for. Besides, the more people who pre-order, the more time (=money) they can invest in developing DLC. In fact, you'll be doing yourself, and the rest of us, a favor by ensuring Beth that they have a sale before they even start making the DLC.

I'm confused about the song and dance thing. Who is singing and who isn't dancing? Because Bethesda is definitely doing both. A post saying that they'll add new features via patches well before those features are decided upon or the game is even out is definitely "making a song and dance about it."

Not necessarily. It may be that lots of people will only buy a few DLC at a discount in a sale. If enough of them decide instead to just get a season pass so they can get all the DLC at a reduced price, then they may end up paying more than if they'd held out for the bargains. In which case it makes sense to keep selling season passes for as long as there are DLC that still may appear.

It isn't logical, from the customer's point of view, to buy a season pass unless you know you'd buy them all anyway, but people aren't always logical. I mean, it isn't logical to buy any single-player game at full price on first release either

They approved of the script extenders, which basically were (by your logic) a big middle finger towards the company for not producing good enough scripting. In fact, they approved of them so confidently that Valve were happy to actually modify Steam to check for and load the Skyrim script extender if present (in a late patch).

Lots of developers knowingly leave many bugs unfixed, simply because it's not cost effective for them to fix them. They're not hurting sales or company reputation enough to fix, test, test for breaking other stuff, package and distribute. But the unofficial patches are made by a bunch of volunteers, who are doing these in their spare time and don't have to have a cost/benefit justification. So the fixes get done and distributed for free.

How could Bethesda not approve?

Broken Steel was anything but 'top-quality', it butchered the ending of the game, implemented vexatious bullet sponges and rendered the original ending slides as nugatory.

Bethesda still has to prove that the base game is good enough to warrant the purchase of this subsidiary content, this is before we consider just how inconsistent the DLC was for Fallout 3. Mothership Zeta and Broken Steel were beyond egregious...

Eh, they haven't really "approved" any specific PC mods (there's all kinds of absurd and/or copyright-breaking stuff out there). As opposed to on consoles, where there will presumably be someone (either from Beth or from MS/Sony) specifically approving mods. So it's not entirely the same thing.

(That said, I can't see them having any issues with other people providing extra "hey, this fixes stuff!" mods)

Would that make Lonesome Road and Honest Hearts irredeemably bad then?

Would that make dawnguard lamentably poor?

Now feel free to impugn my claims directly, rather than trying to equivocate around them.

No.

-Dawnguard, across all three platforms, has an average rating of 72.6.

-Zeta has one of 66.5.

-HH has one of 65.3

-LR has one of 60.6.

I assumed you were trying to make an actual argument based on the closest thing to objective evidence is one can get, so. that's why I was curious.

If MZ was "beyond egregious" then LR and HH must be worse.

coming back to the original post, they normal make good DLC, so i will pick up the season pass.

i know some ppl didnt like MZ but i like it it was a good small DLC, but at the same time on that game they give me "the pitt" and "point Lockout" both where exelent DLC, and the Broken stell one was a good one too.

for Skyrim i love Dragonborm, and Dawnguard i know Dawnguard was a small one but i like it alot of lore about vampires.