Good thing?
Cool that they listened. I didn't hear what this "augment your pre-order" was, but it sounds horrible lol
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The original video has been removed (of course it was), but luckily some people took the time to reupload it in all its glory :D
You can watch it here if you wanna know what it was about: Augment Your Preorder.
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The whole idea about different regions getting different pre-order DLC content is stupid anyways. Everyone should get the pre-order DLC content.
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+1. This is exactly my thought after reading the official comment. Give every region the same thing and no one would complain. What a bunch of idiots.
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The problem with this one wasn't region-specific DLC, they specifically avoided that. The problem with the program was that there was stuff locked away even if you pre-ordered the game, which meant you were supposed to nag others into pre-ordering too so you'd both get more stuff. It's basically like pre-orders and reflinks had a baby.
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AKA "The nagging friends to pre order had peaked, so now we are doing this to make us seem good, thanks for all the money! :D"
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I'm glad this has happened. I'm really glad.
They of course must have known very well that this wouldn't be what people want, but they probably thought the gamers would just shrug it off like they did with many other things.
I'm so glad that the mankind was pretty united on this matter \o/
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The augment your preorder was a very anti consumer way of having preorders, which still are a very anti consumer policy to begin with, with the exclusion of preorders for Early Access (which is another can of worms i wont get into) and Preorders that are simply "Put money down, we will make sure we have a physical copy ready for pickup on release day", which is a good idea, but consumers should only pre order, if they know for certain that they will like a game when released (such as a franchise following, simply interested in their design, ect.)
Although, part of me is curious as to what would happen if something like the augment your preorder actually succeeded? It would be interesting to see what other ways game designers could do to make a pre order more enticing, and may even be able to make it into a consumer friendly practice in time, although that is highly unlikely.
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I'm personally fine with pre-ordering existing, I see why a business might want/need them. Knowing before you ship your product how it does in the market is a lot better than just going by 'predictions', and might influence how much support you put behind it, how much effort will you put into post-launch DLC? If you start working on this stuff only after the product is shipped, you will miss the sweet spot for releasing DLC at all. It's not like one or two pre-orders matter, it's that the difference between 1 and 2 million matters. Because of that, I don't mind the occassional incentive to pre-order either. The information has value to the publisher, so a pre-order-at-a-discount is fine.
The way this worked (or didn't) was actually not just working anti-consumer, it was also anti-pre-order-consumer, which made no sense at all.
In this case, I'm just glad consumer-backlash worked. I was set on getting the game before they even anounced this whole thing (probably the franchise-following you mentioned) but was saddened it was falling prey to this level of Pre-order BS.
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+1 here
Just a minor addition. If the publisher would get to know your game is not doing well i assume the devs would increase their zealotry similiary trying to archieve the best they can. Your words might sound... if it doesn't seem to get oerceived well rush it to market and forget as quickly as can be. Btw i don't mind even to cancel projects if they don't seem to work. Thats unfortunate but totally a minor risk of development.
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Actually, I think it's the exact opposite. I think SE were trying to see how far they could push anti-consumer pre-orders and found that this was a step too far and so backpedaled. Had this worked, we'd have instead seen worse pre-order schemes in the future as publishers continued checking what they could and couldn't get away with.
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Geez.... who knew that closing your wallet has such effect and that it didn't needed yet another petition...
Now that sarcastic remark is left behind, on more important matter.... will gamers remember for the future to keep thinking with there wallet or will Goldfish memory routine kick in and it will be forgotten when some new game comes with similar scheme and different bow?
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OT: as for myselves i shun preordering. Cutting out content of the game presenting it as „bonus” doesn't increase my sympathies. I've been through that in guild wars already and it totally spoiled my experience.
on topic: I'm glad ppl came to similiar idea and dismissed the whole thing.
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Well, i think that a lot of people pre-ordered it because of that camapaign and only a fraction will cancel their pre-order. So Square Enix and Eidos got a lot of pre orders and dont have to give anything in return.... no matter how you look at it both things are utter d*** moves ... at least imho
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The only problem I personally have with their comment (Not the decision) is that they still seem to fail to see that the problem we've had with this model were 2 things:
1) It's not that we could chose from all pre-order incentives from the beginning. We needed to rely on "enough" people to pre-order to get more things... I don't really need to explain why that is bad when kids get their parents and friends to pre-order things and convince them....
2) The fact that you needed to choose an incentive meant automatically that you chose what you do not get.... Why would anyone be blocked of some content if it's already there?
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Oh I'm pretty sure they saw the problem allright... Publisher Square Enix is a big enough company to have a decent-sized legal department. So when reading statements from them, I consider every word to be heavily lawyerized (that is totally a word, shhh!)
Now if it were a small indie dev at play here, it would have been a different kind of story.
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So, originally, they had this whole tiered system where as soon as the pre-orders reached a (un)certain number, it would unlock a new tier of rewards for those who did pre-order. At every tier, pre-orderers (?) could make a choice of what reward at that level they wanted. The response to that system of nagging-your-friends-to-preorder-so-you-get-more-stuff has been . . . as some would say . . . slightly negative; or as I would say: the internet kindly responded stating that such a system would probably not be consider in a positive manner, which is nice-people-talk for: people were pissed.
Looks like someone was paying attention, from their website:
Now I personally hadn't pre-ordered (was considering getting the CE as soon as my local retailer had that listed so the program didn't affect me) but I must say I'm impressed they're willing to 180 this thing. I know this is a case of "doing a bad" thing followed by "not doing the bad thing you were gonna do" and then getting praise for that, so I'm definitely aware they shouldn't have needed all that feedback (backlash?) to not do this thing, but in the end I'm just happy it's being done the right way now.
Changelog:
Update 1.1: Added the description of the original program at the top.
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