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midrange on 11 February 2016
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ZyroXZ2 said:
midrange said:

Sorry, but as an avid zombies player, saying that this dlc does not add much bang for your buck grossly undervalues the new zombies map. Go onto any zombies community and the consensus is clear, Der Eisendrache is one of the best zombie maps Treyarch has released. Your video acknowledges that the map is good, but that the overall content value of the awakening DLC is not worth $15, to which I disagree. Let's say the zombies portion is 1/4 of the black ops 3 experience. Der Eisendrache basically doubles this experience and adds in 4 multiplayer maps for similar value ((1/4) * $60 = $15).

I see the way you're looking at it purely as quantitative perspective, but that's not the only factor for value.

The basis for DLC is the use of existing formats: in other words, if Shadows of Evil is worth $15 of the original game, a follow up DLC zombies map that uses the same basis with different models/narratives will not be worth $15 if sold as such.  It lacks the development cost/time in creating the original, as most DLC does.  When generating DLC, it's usually a "what works? let's take that and make more of it" approach.

Having said that, as mentioned, the zombies mode is almost the sole thing of value in this DLC, since I felt the new maps introduced the very factor that made AW such a pain to play: people coming from everywhere at any time.  The loss of strategic focus on the battlefield dramatically reduces what makes BO3's vanilla maps (most of them: a handful of them are also the same clusterf**k) often better.  While you might have happily paid $15 just for the new zombies map, I'd have felt that would have been a bit of a ripoff.

Lots of stuff doesn't necessarily equate to value, especially when some of that stuff is worse than the original.  So I paid $15 for essentially a good zombies map which lead me to my consensus.

I see your point about "what works? let's take that and make more of it" but at the same time, there is only so much you can change about a game without displeasing the fanbase. In other words, you seem to suggest that they should make massive changes to justify your desire for more "bang for your buck," but in this case, taking the best of your previous maps is better than making revolutionary changes that turn out to be awful. Also, yes they did spend less development time to make der eisendrache over shadows, but as a consumer I don't care about their development process, I care about their final product. From a consumer standpoint, der eisendrache has just as much if not more value than shadows.

Likewise, I also understand that zombies does not define the call of duty experience (without a doubt multiplayer does). Your analysis of the multiplayer maps was well done. I'm also not disagreeing with the score.

I just thought the review ignored some of the great components of the new zombies map and greatly simplified it down: "it's a good add on." Doing this made most of the review/value judgements centered around just the mutiplayer maps while greatly ignoring the zombies portion (In my opinion).