Necroing threads again, I see. There's a Mass Effect 3 thread on the first page that you just posted in.

This one is titled more aptly though.

Virtually all life may be vaporised in the Mass Effect universe, but the Biodrones seem to be getting around.

Here's my very own opinion: EA and Bioware are terrible companies with terrible business practices, who shit on their customers every single chance they get

Before starting: I don't dislike the idea of DLC, but I think it is, in general rather poorly handled.

In regards to ME3 and its Day 1 DLC: they really should have spent that time on bugfixing the darn thing instead. Having seen ~1h of live gameplay, I can tell you that this is not a bug free game. Seeing the main characters head spin at ~100rpm might be funny, having to reload because of it is not. Seeing Garrus's legs sticking through a wall while he speaks might also have been funny, but it totally ruined a dramatic scene. Time spent on Day 1 DLC should be spent on actually finalizing the game and making sure that it is released in the best state possible.

Sorry Fenixp, but I have to disagree with you on this. The idea that developers get to spend 3 - 6 months twiddling their thumbs prior to a release is simply not true. I've worked on 'shrink-wrapped' released products (not games I admit), and the developers are fixing bugs and addressing issues right up to the time it goes to get pressed onto a disk (hopefully very minor issues by then).

I think what you mean is that the project becomes 'feature complete' at some point, and they then go through the hardening phase to actually ensure the features work (I don't know about games, but very few project managers would allow a 3 - 6 month hardening period, they simply don't understand what it is).

I suspect in this case the situation is more simple. The 'core' team would have at some point internally published a set of integration points. This would then have given the DLC team time to start writing the add ons while the game development was being completed. The DLC team probably has an entirely separate test team, and operates as a totally isolated team, viewing the core product as a black box.

So I'm afraid I have to agree with Roman, it would not have been the testing that stopped the product having the DLC included. It would have been separately tested in parallel to the core testing, and could easily have made it into the boxed product. I think there would be reasons such as accounting (the DLC team would not be producing any revenue if their addons were bundled), or simply greed, but not testing or development processes.

shame it's not you get a very basic beta version, half the audio is missing and the char model doesn't clip properly, shockingly From ashes is a 650mb download even for the CE and yes I did check the game files before and after install and on the disc every single file has changes sorry to burst your petty little bubble.
::edit::
Oh and the entire mission etc is missing the edit just lets you have him in your party and is missing all his interactions off ship or out of missions.
Your actually quite wrong. When feature complete hits half the main team is useless of the 20ish artists and level designers you only need about 5 for the hardening phase, your sound department is pretty much done too yes your coders and some artists etc are needed but only about half the team 90% of the time (you do occasionally need everyone for game stoppers)

The Darkness II is better :D

Fair point, I forget about extras like artists, they aren't so relevant to business software. I was thinking about the core coders, who are most likely all retained for the duration. However it doesn't change the main thrust of the argument that by running the teams in parallel (as I assume they would), the testing overhead is not an impediment to releasing the additional content with the boxed product.

As much as I hate to feed Roman5, if the DLC really is on disk already then I do think that's going too far. I prefer DLC to be something you have to download, like the micro expansion packs they're supposed to be.

From what's been said earlier in the thread, and what's been shown, I really doubt it's fully on the disc. There would be no point in spending money for the bandwidth used up by thousands of DLC downloads if it was the case anyway. But part of it is definitely there, so that character had been planned for a while and from what I heard he seems to be more fleshed out and have more interaction with other npcs than Zaeed or Kasumi.

I understand the idea behind DLC. Gives your artists and designers something to do, without the bigger commitment that a full-fledged expansion pack requires. Less risk, because it doesn't feel like you've wasted as much resources if the reception to the game is too poor to warrant an expansion.

As a consumer however, I don't like it one bit. They always feel overpriced, are always DRMed and are just plain annoying. Most of them are easily ignored, but when it feels like it should have been part of the game, like a party member that has plenty of interactions with the rest of the cast, it's not quite as easy to just shrug it off. Wasn't so bad when it came with every new purchase, like Shale, but they keep taking it further and further each time. Now it's limited to the collector's edition, next time it probably won't come bundled with any edition whatsoever.

As far as this particular npc is concerned however, I find the idea of having a Prothean in your squad ludicrous, so personally I'd probably prefer ME3 without it. Basically, I don't like the principle of it, but don't really care much about this particular instance.

More in line with Kasumi. You do a one level mission to acquire him, fighting against basic cerberus mobs and an atlas mini boss... just like you do everywhere else in this game.

He's not in the least bit plot critical, his powers are akin to a weak version of Samara, and he comes with a green ray gun.

He never gets to interact with a Reaper, never gets to visit a devastated ruin of his civilization. He's even a disappointment to Liara (which is the best bit about the DLC, she shines in it),

I honestly think the DLC bomb to end all bombs is yet to come when EA/Bioware announce end game DLC that has you paying for the 'real' ending given that the one that ships with the game is a dream sequence.

This is crap. Go die in a fire Bioware and EA so I can piss on the ashes.

Yes it is since it's not.

ONCE AGAIN FOR THOSE THAT CAN'T READ THE ONLY THING ON DISC IS A BADLY CLIPPING CHARACTER MODEL AND HIS IN MISSION BANTER

got that now? You don't get his mission (any vid showing his mission is a fake btw since I tested it myself by reinstalling ME3 without from ashes and went through the discs files)
With the DLC you get his mission, views of a world you won't see otherwise, a very nice AR, some extra scenes on citadel and some other nice features that AREN'T ESSENTIAL TO THE GAME.

::edit:: this is basicly like adding the beta version of kasumi back into ME2 (which you could do) you get her but not what actually made the DLC any good...

Strange thing is that Fallout 3 did it first with Broken Steel and most players loved it (it helped that they added a lot of content to the game). Sometimes EA and Bioware hatred can be rather irrational (I don'like like many EA decisions, but nowadays, it's really getting overboard).
Exactly. Javik was supposed to be part of the main game, but they couldn,t finish what they planned in time. Most of his stuff was cut, but they left the art assets in the disk to avoid possible glitches (and to lighten the download. Those DLC nowadays are quite heavy on my boardband).

Any developper who's planning to make an expansion (DLC or otherwise) will leave traces in the code so that it can be installed without having to replace the whole game data.