An interesting 'debate' is sort of raging over at TA. I say sort of raging because it seems that there are only two people on the same side of the fence as myself while everyone else has the opposing view, ha ha!
Anyway, the problem (as I see it) is that for the purposes of TA they count DLC as basically another game entirely. So the calculations say that DLC only counts if you have earned one DLC achievement rather than if you have played the original game. It means that the vast majority of DLC is practically worthless and that DLC is generally ignored in terms of completion percentage and number of games complete.
I'll come clean and say that I don't count DLC in terms of my completions, though there are a number of games I've done all of the DLC on too, but that is mainly down to my own laziness at not wanting to purchase and play DLC. I still agree that DLC is part of the game no matter what other people say.
At the end of the day MS makes the rules. They have said that DLC counts towards completing a game and also that ANY game could have up to 1750 in points. So just ignoring DLC is akin to saying those 1750 points never existed.
The arguments for leaving the ratios as they are now:
1) It is the fairest system as less people are penalised for not having DLC.
2) People don't want to buy DLC.
3) Changing the system would mean that seemingly easy achievements would have unfairly high ratios.
Now, for me, the first and last arguments are fruitless. The TA system states that the ratio (or difficulty) of an achievement is measured by the number of people who have attained it. The system is not perfect as a tough and time consuming achievement like Seriously has a lower ratio than far easier achievements on something like Supreme Commander - but less people have played SupCom so it shows up as being harder, which is madness. Now DLC is available to everyone who jas played the game it is tied to, so if people wanted to get those achievements and make them fall in line and have lower ratios they can, conversely if they don't want to shell out and play the DLC then the ratios will remain high. The same as with any game - as if more people bought and played SupCom then the ratio would be lower. What is unfair about that?
So the only real argument is the second one - that they don't want to shell out. I agree that DLC is a rip off but can you really base a fair system on whether or not people have the finances to support it. That's like saying people who can afford to buy less games should be able to shoot up the leaderboards just so it is fair. If you can't afford DLC then that sucks - but the achievements are still a part of that game so why should you demand your score be improved just because you can't don't want to buy DLC.
What has also been suggested is a system that lets people display their stats with or without DLC (which they can sort of do already) but that really doesn't solve the issue, as all that will accomplish is splitting the community. As if people have different ways of working out the preferred scores then surely that would lead to seperate leaderboards, comparison tables and the like. A pointless exercise.
Now maybe I'm thinking too much into this and DLC is truly the creation of Satan to be shunned and ignored, but it would be nice to hear some thoughts on the matter.
In other, less rant worthy news, I've completed Batman: Arkham Asylum. The last Predator mission that I had to do fell before me in about ten minutes which was a nice way to end the game really. I then decided to get started on grinding out some wins for my Be a Pro career on NHL 09 - I need 150 in total, plus two trophies, to snag my Legend card. So I'll be working on that for a few weeks no doubt. I'm only at 10 wins so far, though I can zip through games in a couple of minutes so it shouldn't be too much effort.
The next game I have near to completion is L4D so that will be the next target, plus I plan on tackling the Resident Evil 5 DLC in the near future too as a second copy is on its way to me from Lovefilm as we speak. I'll be able to do pretty much all the solo Versus stuff and everything barring the Pro difficulties on the extra chapters. After that I'll be needing some assistance no doubt. Bring on the pain.
1 comment:
This is a fantastic post as you've made me make my decision on my viewpoint. I am someone that doesn't like knowing that DLC adds gamerscore to a game and as a result my completion percentage changes. I now realise though that this is the way it is and TA is not to blame. You made a great point about Microsoft making it so that every game has up to 1750 points for it, that's their rule. This needs to be abided by even if I don't like it, tough.
Really I think it would have been better if Microsoft made a new slot available on your gamertag for the DLC of a game. So for example your last 5 played games list could look like Halo 3, Oblivion, Gears of War 2 DLC, Mass Effect, Gears of War 2. This would stop people getting frustrated with having 1000/1750 however I can't foresee that ever happening as Microsoft are probably aware that they sell more DLC thanks to those type of people shelling out just to keep 100% completion on the game.
Ultimately I'd like to see a big revamp of the way achievements are displayed, not just a minor change like we saw last year. I've played over 200 games on my tag and it takes forever to search through to find a game. I hope one day we'll see more things like Halo Waypoint which joins every game in a franchise together. For example you'll see FIFA on somebodies tag which indicates that they have played a FIFA game, once you click on this you then see all the FIFA games that person has played in a new list which doesn't display Halo or any other franchise.
I can imagine there is quite a debate on TA about all of this, I just try to stay out, get my gamerscore and have fun lol.
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