A lot of video games these days come out with expansions to the original program in order to maintain interest and keep a player base. While they are often well hyped, the first edition of these expansions is often rushed for a deadline and can come out with many bugs and other issues. I tend to want to get on with the new content, but I get annoyed that it can't be played when there are glitches in the programming. If you play one of these games, do you feel the urge to buy the expansion to have it ready for day one? Can you be patient and wait until the first patch has been implemented and be less frustrated with the glitches? Should video game makers delay the release or test their patches better before launching the new software?
It depends. Some DLC I can very much do without, the character skins, weapon skins, that sort of thing. I've never heard of buying a patch though. I'll play as long as possible usually, and if I come up against a game breaking glitch that stops me from continuing, I'll just swap to a new game for a while.
I don't think I've ever bought an expansion right away. Mostly, I would just want the expansions for the Sims series and lord knows they are buggy. I really can't think of anything else that I play that has an expansion.
It used to be that an expansion was almost a new game in and of itself. The Sims is actually a decent example of this, although it isn't the best. You'd get a whole new game almost with each different Sims expansion, although some were very, very simplistic, more akin to the DLC of today. But back in the day, an expansion meant something. It wasn't just a few extra missions, it was like you got a whole new game set in the same universe.
Usually, I'll wait a little bit before buying an expansion and see what the reviews say about it. Also, there's usually bugs that need to be worked out with patches and I prefer to wait those out a bit before buying an expansion or DLC. I don't think developers should wait to release expansions because the only way they know what bugs to fix is when the game goes live.
Depends how big and important it is and how much I like the base game. If it's an expansion for something like Starcraft 2 I'll get it the first day but I can't think of any games now that I would immediately buy an expansion for. I usually see them improve performance and fix bugs though.
I absolutely love when video game developers do this. It is always good to get new content for a game that i love. The more the better. I love the timing of when this extra content is released. They usually release extra content deep in to the life span of the game. As soon as the game is getting boring, they release more content. That gives gamers something else to do within the game, and that generally increases the lifespan of that game a little longer. I am all for it.
I don't normally "NEED" them, by any means and I rarely game at all these days. That being said, back when I played WoW and was a guild leader, raid leader, regular player, etc.... then yes, I was the type that preordered the expansion and downloaded it as soon as it arrived. It was a big part of my life and to wait to get it wouldn't have fit in with my personality at the time.
If it's a game that I really like and if I've really played the existing parts to the point of memorization, then I'd probably be a lot less willing to wait for the bugs to get fixed, but for the most part, I'm not really all that excited for expansion packs enough to rush to downloading them. I usually just wait until I see comments pop up online on whether or not it's good enough to download and only if there are good enough reviews will I consider downloading the expansion packs.
