Do I really need to grind 2-5 hours in 2-4 games each week to "enjoy" them? No. But to get some content I want, I have to. Why? What happened to having stuff be given out for free and letting people have FUN with the product they paid for?
I mean, I get it: HAHA CAPITALISM GOES KA-CHING but come on developers?
Season passes and DLC don’t really bother me that much because the price of games has stayed stagnant for so long. (At least doesn’t bother me anymore than regular capitalism stuff). It gives people a way to choose what they’re willing to pay instead of charging $120 for every game with no extra content.
What I can’t stand is when it’s impossible to pay for the game once and get all of the content in it.
Obviously I’m a sucker for this, but I paid like $100 or $120 for the gold edition of Assassins Creed Origins, but I would have had to pay at least $120 more to get all of the skins, gear and horses from the store (I’m at least not enough of a sucker where I paid a dime to the store).
Prices of games raising this gen just means post-Cyberpunk 2077 I'm going to be highly selective of what I choose. Indies might lose out on that front, which sucks because Bar Devolver they've been a complete random good/bad for me. AAA is the one that gains there, but they only gain on -50% sales because I'm not spending $70 day-one for buggy sequels.
I don't necessarily think price is the major reason Season Passes were introduced. A lot of them seem to be held on "Player Retention" and keeping the game updated to keep eyeballs (and thus money) flowing. Most folks drop something after a week or two, Gwent has (had?) a notorious player-drop in casual players after the newness of an expansion/new set of cards comes out. Instead of addressing Casual players problems (balance or things to do) they try to give "things to do" in the sense of grinding for reward points (for the sake of getting "scrap"/wildcard parts and premium animation "dust" from those reward points being spent) instead. It's a bit of a mess, to be honest. Because Season Passes feel (to me) extremely lazy at trying to find the "fun" for players that keep people engaged.
I have spend concurrently 1,000+ hours across Battlefield: Bad Company, Bad Company 2, Battlefield 3, and 4. What kept me (and made me by Premium) was the core gameplay loop ("Battlefield moments") not the grind (which got a little worse as they went on, 4's gun part unlock system was pretty bad). The gameplay which is the problem that developers seem to have. They can't find a good "hook" now a days to keep people in, and with the flood of newer titles constantly coming out, it's hard to keep people/players "engaged" on a title that released a week ago.