So wait for it? Not that hard to understand.

I think it's definitely better they announced this now. In this they made the right choice for their customers, and people are moaning about it? Please...

1. People who hate it can cancel their pre-order (or decide against pre-order if they didn't already). If they would announce this after the release then these people would be pissed!!! And rightly so. It would have been very dishonest.

2. People who like it will get more hyped. Yay! Give more monies to CDPR!!!

No, i mean: They could have delayed the announcement of extra stuff till after the release. I really don't think this is the kind of DLC EAbisoft sells: pointless, cheap produced stuff to rip money out of the customers.

But nontheless it feels a little like "you are missing stuff if you don't give us more money". Before the actual game is released.

I will wait and decide whether this DLC is worth the money, but IMHO this kind of announcement ist "bad style".

Any you can find, really. It's all about "the more you know"...

That said, certain genres of gaming have always had such content - and typically they are in the licensed sports genre (which includes the licensed racing genre).

But we are talking about an RPG here. As stated, Bethesda coined (and ruined) the phrase with their Horse Armour. This wasn't standard for this genre of gaming (at least in my experience).

In my experience, an expansion pack does one significant thing over anything else - it adds to the gaming experience, typically by including new mechanics and options. If it doesn't do this, then it can't truly be called an expansion pack.

The problem is very complex, because of various issues. Horse Armour is notorious, simply because it is paid content that was little more than a modder could provide, for free. What we "expect" is that a company will provide more than what you can get for free from the community.

Maybe, just maybe, this is more about the growing capabilities of the modding community within gaming. They keep pushing the bar higher and higher.

You only have to see this in effect with the likes of Civilization V - they released a bunch of DLCs that were basically paid-for mods. Often, members of the community would go out and make their own versions of these DLCs, because the content that they added was so negligible.

But you also got the expansion packs - great big gameplay changing products that introduced new mechanics, which were above and beyond what a standard accomplished modder could make. They included lots of additional content which worked with such key game-changing mechanics.

Ultimately, what the so-called Expansion Pass offers is theoretical content that appears to fall between these two extremes. Gone are the days when "more of the same" is perceived as being of value. More hours of gameplay isn't as important as new gameplay, especially in a genre where games can be artificially inflated through grinding and exploration.

How do we know that the new quests aren't just a load of additional fetch quests? We don't.

How do we know that the new area isn't just a field for randomly spawning monsters? We don't.

We haven't seen the gameplay of TW3 yet, so how can we know if we want the additional content, and that it is worth another $25? We don't.

It's asking too much, and puts CDPR in a negative light. The only people who would react positively to an expansion pass are those who have already committed themselves to buying the game without having seen it.

If TW3 was a F2P (P2W) game, this expansion pass is squarely targeted at the "whales" in the community - those that support the game by buying everything for it, regardless of quality or content.

For everyone else, this is more of an entry barrier - what such people perceive is not $50 for a game and $25 for expansion(s), but $75 for a "complete" game. This is because if they enjoy the game, chances are that they will pay the extra for the expansions. The main reason that they wouldn't spend this extra $25 is if they don't like the game. In this case, they won't see that they have saved wasting $25 on expansions, but that they have wasted $50 on a game that they don't like.

The timing is all wrong, since it implies that either CDPR are desperate for cash, or greedy for cash - neither of which are ideal choices to inspire confidence in the game. These are not assertions, just implications based on the simple question of "Why do this now?" CDPR had nothing to gain and a lot to lose by their timing this before the actual release of TW3, since this does look like they are trying to ride the hype of the game, rather than it's actual quality.

Saving this for even a week after release would have made all the difference, simply because a lot of the questions would already have been answered by the game itself.

Add in that the disclaimers by iWi that players can "just wait" hints at copious amounts of reverse psychology. After all, if the players could "just wait", why didn't CDPR "just wait" to release this announcement?

If I was a true cynic, I would probably think that the increased tension over the release of TW3 is actually just a cunning marketing ploy to enhance our collective feelings of relief when it works out okay. A good "so CDPR didn't turn out to complete bastards after all" tactic that makes us feel grateful to get a mediocre game, rather than a true catastrophe...

Exactly my thoughts/fears ...

And that's why galaxy will prevail in the end

You are a minority and on the grand scale they gain not lose. That's the reality,

Thats exactly the case and they are doing it.

Actually, the base game costs 50 bucks and offers 200 hours of gameplay (according to devs) -> $0.25/hour
and the expansion pass costs 25 bucks and offers 30 hours of gameplay (according to devs). -> $0.83/hour
that's a price hike of 333% :)

You have to know the past in order to understand the relation between gog and it's (initial) customers.
Throughout its history gog advertised itself in a way that is the opposite of what they are doing now.
So you have to understand that when you grow a customers base preaching some values and after some years you start stepping on those original values and even embrace some of the things you were fighting against then the backlash is totally justifiable.

Cancelled my preorder on Steam. Expansion pass? I'll pass. :)

I don't get why everyone is so upset about this... some content costs a lot of money to make.
Over 30 hours of gameplay only for 25$... you do realize some entirely fully released games don' t have that length...
But I do understand why people are scared to be screwed in the future by accepting this cause many companies abused the DLC system....

I think people are more upset cause of this:

Base game 60$ (at the moment discounted to 48$) - 200 hours of gameplay

Expansion 25$ - 30 hours of gameplay

I don't care when they release it, or if they do early access for that matter. I'll only consider playing it when it's "complete", that's my own personal choice. Other people can do whatever they want.

Plus, I game on laptops, I won't be able to play it until 2020 or so anyway.

Really what's the problem. I pre-ordered the game. Won't be getting the expansion until I've seen how good the game is and I have a graphics card to buy anyway. So I can wait, so can anyone else who is complaining.

If they are truthful then there is a lot of hours of content to come (wait for a special and reviews). No it shouldn't be part of the game unless we all want to wait another year for release.

Seems all fair to me. No pre-order bonuses. Just buy after release at a price you feel comfortable (wait for sale etc). Problem solved.

If this were a lot of tiny DLC for big bucks then that would be another story.

I'm upset that they start selling storyline expansions before the main game is released. This whole "season pass" thing. And what you've paid for ends up being incomplete.

It is inconceivable to me why anyone ever buys anything of consequential value without having researched reviews and whatnot.

I have no problems with DLC, expansion packs, episodic content etc... because I never buy blind and I make deliberate and rational purchasing decisions, so any such alleged "cut-out content" does not affect me, because I always know exactly what I am buying and I expect no more and no less.

People who pre-order have no publicly-available way of knowing what exactly they are buying; and if they delude themselves into thinking they do, they have no one to blame except themselves. Pre-ordering is always a gamble, and you will sometimes win and sometimes loose, as is with gambling. If you bet on sports and loose your money, it is not the bookmaker's or the sports team's fault, it is your fault. Any one who pre-orders and get burned, either by buggy release, alleged "cut-out content" or whatever have noone to blame but themselves. People should take responsibility for their own decisions, and if you decide to gamble and you loose and get upset, take a look in the mirror first before directing your angst against others.

Always assess the risks before doing anything. If you pre-order, realize and accept the risk you will loose all your $ and get nothing you want in return (you might get a piece of garbage in return). If that is an unacceptable risk to you then don't make the bet.

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It does buy you a full game. Expansion packs are not part of Witcher 3 game. BG2:SOA is full game isn't it. TOB as expansion is not part of SOA. is SOA incomplete because of TOB? HL2 is incomplete as a game because of Episodes?
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bg2soa is indeed a full blown game, i also have it on retail cd/dvd

As for adding the extras in the complete witcher game, that would logically increase the listprice, and thats a normal thing to increase the list price if it has extra missions.

Usually they release these things to extend the games life cause why should a game start to collect dust after you finished the main game ?

Ofcourse the extra content that can be bought should always be an extra and not just to make a game full
because its incomplete, prices should be accordingly.

Its understandable that nobody pays lets say 30 bucks for the extras if the main game is 30 bucks,setting prices for extra content is always hard.


Furthermore, expansions add to the life of a game, jagged alliance and fallout (classics)were my favorites
too bad they did not have more missions ,nowadays they only make 3d versions of jagged and fallout and thats not my game, i liked the classics ones, you just cant turn every classic 2d game into a FPS game.

I have read the many replies and i still believe there is nothing wrong about the witcher 3 release, the only problem might be that the amount of information regarding the games and packs might have caused confusion.

If however you read it carefully and compare things (price) to games like pillars (price) its no differnt.

Well, going by the front page, their plan worked, the only thing selling better is the hero version of Pillars of Eternity