Status Quo... the closest thing to objective evidence.

If I or anyone else, used metacritic as an objective and empirical metric, they wouldn't be playing Fallout; but rather only and exclusively the highest rated game on metacritc (presumably some overrated Grand Theft Auto game).

This is before we even discuss potential bias, financial incentives to "endorse" games and/or consoles and fugacious moments of hype (GTA IV has a 98 metacritic, seriously?).

Also the closest thing to objective evidence is still not objective; but solely subjective.In the same way that gliese 581c was the closest thing to an earth like planet; without being so to any extent.In the same way that the Cuban missile crisis was the closest event to a fully furnished nuclear war; without being so in any shape, form or degree.

http://umbraco.com/media/434140/close-but-no-cigar.jpg

Edit:

I've still yet to see an argument directly impugning my claim and not deferring the responsibility to someone or something else.

People can make their own choices about whether to partake in a season pass.

For some, the quality of unseen material remains to be proved, for others such proof is unnecessary.

Whether such choices are logical is fairly irrelevant.

It's this blind fanaticism that leads to the suffering of the collective in the form of day one dlc, borderline mandatory season passes and pre-order exclusives.

I'm not going to enjoin people to do as I think they should, but we are deluding ourselves if we think this behavior isn't directly leading to exploitative and deleterious marketing practices.

Jesus, Honest Hearts got that bad of a review? I guess it holds true that DLC just gets rated worse overall. My only complaint about it is that it was too short, otherwise its a little microcosm of everything I love about Bethesda and Fallout.

The people complaining about not knowing what the DLC entails probably preordered the game under the same condition. We know very little and it could be plagued with bugs, but most of us pre ordered right?

If we're talking about DLC being bad, I think it's important to consider value in that process. Plenty of people thought Hearthfire wasn't that great... but for only costing $5 on release, no one really put up a huge stink about it. Horse Armor only got so much flak because it wasn't worth what Bethesda originally valued it at (although in retrospect, Horse Armor should have just been free).

What were Fallout 3's DLCs when they were put out, $10 a pop? I would certainly value them at that, just in terms of the amount of stuff they add. But you can't really put an objective price on things like story and setting; so if you're not into what Bethesda does in those areas, then it's fine to not throw down for a season pass. Myself, I thought all of Fallout 3's DLC was fine, although I still prefer fewer and larger expansions like what they do for TES. We certainly don't have to fight over how much we hated or didn't care about Mothership Zeta.

Heh, yeah, I meant 'approved' in the colloquial rather than legal sense

As we don't know whether mods on Xbox One or PS4 will be curated or moderated (i.e, will they actively screen them or just erase the ones that are spotted as inappropriate after the fact) then it's hard to tell what the chances are that a bug-fixing mod would be allowed. From what Todd Howard said in a video interview about being happy for people to break their games, I'm guessing they'd be fine with it, but if Microsoft or Sony are actively curating then they might get a bit uneasy about a mod that could get very large and touches so many quests and scripts.

I pre-ordered the CE, so one might think that anyone that drops that much on a game they've never even played would probably be okay with paying for the DLCs that haven't even been thought up yet, but unlike the CE the season pass is not in limited supply and will always be available, so I see no reason not to wait for a trailer on whatever the DLC will be and see if I want to purchase it. If it looks good I'll probably take it on faith that the other DLCs will be too, and buy the Pass.

That's how I foresee it going to me, personally.

I wouldn't do this for any other developers, but Bethesda have earned my faith. Whatever they come up with will be easily worth my $30.

Why would that make them uneasy, though? There's nothing in the Creation Kit's functionality (at least accessible to the modding community) that poses any risks to the console itself, other than creating bugs that ruin the performance of the game.

I just don't see how unofficial patches would be unwelcome on consoles.

I think that generally speaking, pre-ordering and season passes do indeed pose a concern about selling sub-standard content,

and in general games such as Deux Ex (and others) are doing much to discredit such offerings.

Personally I have never had an issue with a piece of Bethesda DLC and so a Season Pass is an easy choice, for me.

That should not mean that such a stance equates to 'blind fanaticism', each to their own choices.

Or two or four pointless 5€ Hearthfire type ones

But i'm glad they're doing a season pass, if they do have those pointless 5€ ones i won't feel as dirty buying them as part of the season pass

Of course that'll have to wait until they are all released. Pre-selling DLC, all of which may not have even been planned yet? The [censored] us gamers put up with

Well, that's generally on the gaming industry. Not counting Oblivion *cough*horsearmor*cough* and Hearthfire, BGS has been one of the best when it comes to substantial DLCs But i still won't "buy a pig in a sack" as the local saying goes

Will buy season pass but I hope I get at least $50 worth of DLCs

It depends how paranoid you are. I can see an executive at a Microsoft or Sony thinking "Hang on, this isn't just adding a gun or a new outfit. This mod messes around with 40 or 50 quests, NPC settings, scripts all over... of course it's going to wreck our customers games! That's bad publicity just waiting to happen. Don't let that through."

So, yeah, something like that might make some people anxious while Bethesda themselves wouldn't think twice about it.

Hopefully my suspicions are ill founded

I certainly didn't. I don't think you even could preorder Fallout 4 until a trailer had been released, which at least started converting things about the design choices of the world, its color pallet, its setting, and so on.

My point is that we got a taste of what Fallout 4 entails before we were asked to pony up the cash, This is asking for money for things that may not even exist, with part of the "value" being that you might get more than the ten dollar discount if they actually make more than the already nebulously decided forty dollars worth of DLC. Trying to implant customers with the thought process "I don't want to pay more if they end up making seventy dollars worth of DLC, so I'll buy the season pass," only to produce the bare minimum of content they said they would.

I have time to make a decision about the Season Pass. I want to play the game first. I am so excited about the game that my biggest fear is that it will fall flat. If that happens, I may not want to buy the DLC. On the other hand, if I am as blown away by the gameplay as the trailers make it out to be, I'll be ordering the Season Pass post haste.

And I gotta say that what makes a good DLC is entirely subjective. I, for instance, would take a thousand Mothership Zeta DLC packs over another Dead Money or (far worse) Old World Blues. I hated those two DLCs so much that they pretty much drove me to abandon two characters (one for each) rather than finish them. I know, Obsidian not Bethesda. Point still stands.

Still modding and playing Skyrim, FO3, and FONV. We're talking thousands of hours of play time over the years. $90 for base game + season pass is peanuts because I know will be modding and playing FO4 right up to TES VI release. I never buy season pass but I will in this case. Bethesda's open-world games with mods are the best entertainment for your money in my opinion.

Ahh I think I was a little misunderstood. I'm sure there were some that didn't even see the trailer and preordered, but that aside can't we use that same logic on preordering the main game to buy the season pass? You know what the main game looks like and feature wise we know a lot. Doesn't it stand that dlc will build off of that anyway? Besides, what season pass has ever shown anything from every dlc it included before launch anyway?

You sound like you're making it out to be like Destiny. /Opposite

Not really. New Vegas' trailers didn't give any indication of the tone, story, art direction, or setting of Dead Money, Honest Hearts, Old World Blues, or Lonesome Road. Skyrim's trailer doesn't inform you of the experience Dawnguard, Hearthfire, or Dragonborn provide. It would be like a trailer for Wreck-It Ralph 2 consisting only of clips from Wreck-It Ralph 1. There's no guarantee that the things you're seeing will be in the new thing you're being asked to buy. Minerva's Den is very far removed from the rest of Bioshock 2's world.

Also, I wouldn't use the fact that a bad business practice is used almost universally as justification for Bethesda also using a bad business practice. I have a problem with dangling season passes in front of customers faces without having at least a general idea of what they'll be getting, and I especially don't like it when the people doing the dangling don't even have an idea of what the customers will be getting. That said, while the season pass was hardly all encompassing, Evolve actually did outline what players would be getting if they opted into it, as did L.A. Noire if memory serves.

Don't really have enough context or knowledge about Destiny to rebut this statement. Bungie's Not-Halo Halo game didn't exactly grab my attention.

It's not halo. They cut massive amounts of content and reworked the "story" to give leasure for DLC. They showed content before release that didn't come out for nine months afterward (Wizards Court? I think it's called as an example.)

I might pick it up, but not before I play the game first. Not a fan of season passes, regardless of who is selling them. If I want the dlc at a discount, I'd much rather wait for a steam sale when I know what I'm getting.

If it's a $40 value then I guess we'll get 2 story DLC and minor ones like Hearthfire. If they are as good as Dragonborn and Dawnguard I'll be happy.

You make a good point for sure. I think a lot of people who are season pass customers are (possibly unjustly) assuming they will like all of the content. I would have often out of MZ if given the chance so I can understand that fear of a dlc falling short. The benefit is that, I would have been essentially getting it free. So I could have opted out of a season pass, bought them seperately and still paid the same, while not getting MZ.

Same here. Still modding and playing the same three. As far as safe bets go, I would choose Bethesda over any other developer to pre-order a game or even a season pass. They are the only developer I personally can say that about. Bioware? Pffft, you don't know what you're going to get from those clowns anymore. CDProjekt? Their games are...uninteresting and completely fail to hold my attention. Everyone else is pretty much in the same boat as the these. Bethesda has yet to let me down, and the only developer that provides what I want in an interactive entertainment experience...and best of all, they are predictable. You know what they are going to deliver. I've spent 1000s of hours in their worlds, and the relatively small amount they charge for their products, is the best bang for the buck (by far) for entertainment of any company I've come in contact with. Anything I might be upset about, or even harshly critical about in their games or approach, is always offset by something else introduced that is completely amazing...and unexpected.

$90 for daily entertainment for the next three to four years, provided by a proven producer? ... no brainer.