I don't understand why people compare track count with pcars the tracks in pcars are terrible, unlicensed to wide and too smooth. in my mind they have about 4 raceroom tracks based on effort they put in.
That wasnt really the point... lol The comparison on the amount of tracks relating to how they are handled in MP was. Although I agree with you about the quality in pCARS compared to other games. Bathurst in pCARS is terrible and completely unusable to me compared to R3E's version. There are atrocious bumps on that track. Same with Zolder, that is also terrible in pCARS compared to R3E, again, more bumps and odd elevation changes. And even the Nords, it's pretty poor compared to AC's scanned version. Perhaps Im just not a fan at all of pCARS...
The pricing isn't what bothers me, I think it's reasonable as the content is high quality imo. The thing that sticks in the back of my mind when buying content for Raceroom is, in say ten years time, will I still be able to play the content I paid for? Currently, as I understand it, Raceroom requires a constant connection to an external server, even for single player. What happens when the servers get taken down? It will inevitably happen at some point. Will an offline exe be supplied with all content or would I be left with a game I cannot play?
There's absolutely no way that should something happen to S3S that we'll lose our content. I have zero concerns about that happening. I'd imagine that should something happen, we'd be provided with a way to keep playing it.
As said, many good points here on both sides! When all old content are in packs as well, the pricing will be better. Yes, some content/packs feels a bit pricey, mostly because of the amount of liveries in them. Including them with the cars would probably be a smart move, would make the car packs cheaper and single cars more money worthy = selling more content, and easier to attract new buyers. It also wouldn't hurt to make it easier and a bit clearer for newcomers in the store. Taking back bundle vrp purchase in the store, and also putting the actual price in £, $ and € under the vrp price. Not everybody is comfortable with converting values and math. The F2P advertising is another problem. It drives some people away that won't even look twice at f2p games. And also attract the wrong kind of people that's not really in to sim racing, but just wants a new free game to play.. . (but it's not a real f2p, look at the steam reviews) And thats taking me to the next idea. If it's not possible to change name and wipe the old (not valid) reviews on steam. How about atleast generate steam keys for all the DLC for us hwo bought it in the R3E store? This way we can boost the reviews for the dlc on the steam page! The dlc reviews are good, but way too few.. And again. A loyalty bonus discount for the amount of owned content. This would encourage players to spend more, and also ease the money mountain for long lasting fans.
its is true it is not a traditional f2p and this is a problem. plus the name is pretty stupid it makes my friends laugh.
_____________________________ And what did you end up doing? Don't tell me you bought vRP, went to the store, and made use ot the bulk discount (plus some seasonal discount maybe)? Which makes it hard to discuss with you, cause you're obviously emotionally attached to your points. It sounds like, while not knowing the relevant facts and figures, you worry more about this than the people who make the game and have those informations.
So? How could you know that for sure? You cannot. When a company all of a sudden gets overrolled by events that race down a slippery hill, when it breaks down in an uncontrolled fashion, then it breaks down, and there you are left. That is the bad thing with the new digital economy models. You do not really own digital stuff with DRM externalised from your very own control. That'S why I am still extremely hesitant to comply with such deals, and avoid them. Same for ebook-readers, for example. Many people still have not realised in full what the digitalization of our culture really means. And by far not everything is good in that revolution. Not even mentioning the problem of technology standards dying that are needed to activate and replaying archived old digitized cultural heritage (libraries). With technical platforms and knowledge of how to repair them dying out, cultural heritage is at risk of getting lost, too. Its a problem that more and more experts are getting active about, public library archives for example. From the German Landeszentralbibliotheken I know that it is a really serious and growing problem already, since years. Digitization makes it more comfortable to access data, but it also increases the ammount of activity needed to actively maintain and service stored data to preserve it over time. The longevity of a digital data format does not compare to that of a well-manufactured written book, which can last for many centuries (the programming languages I once learned at school, are not even used, or even just known by the younger generation anymore. The long-term conservability of digital formats is in growing doubt, and it puts the control over more and more things into fewer and fewer hands only (=centralised power instances existing outside of valid counter-control).
Frankly I'm not worried. I've yet to see one digital company who has gone under thats not made arrangements for the content you've purchased to be available after they're gone. For goodness sakes, S3S is still supporting Race 07, so I have no worries or fears that they'll leave us "high and dry". Sector 3 Studios aren't EA who shuts down servers after they put out a new version of a program.
I just want to start off by saying I really appreciate that kind of reply. The free to play monicker does a lot of indirect damage to the game. @heppsan already mentioned this so I don't have to speak too much about it. It both brings in an audience that is expecting one thing (World of Tanks or League of Legends style structure, which R3E is absolutely not) and puts off the audience that immediately sees F2P and thinks they want nothing to do with another World of Tanks style game. I'll freely admit, when I saw this on the Steam store and heard F2P, my first thought was that this was going to be a pseudo iRacing type game. Something where you could earn cars by doing well, presumably in online races, or you could just outright buy the content if that's what you wanted and race whatever you want, whenever you want. After all, that's what the term F2P implies these days. That's not at all what RaceRoom is, but it's what I wish RaceRoom was. Something with a strong online component to rival iRacing, and like I mentioned before, S3S is sitting on a game that could very easily be spun off to compete against iRacing if they were to focus on it. However, again, I'm getting off topic into something that deserves its own thread. At the very least, what you should take away from the above paragraph is that the F2P label (which I suspect is a Steam mandated labeling due to its pay structure) is grossly misleading and gives everybody involved the wrong impression. The thing you download off Steam would better be described as a demo, because that's really what it is. On the Assetto Corsa DLC, I think the big difference is that if you don't have the DLC you are missing only one track. In R3E, you can't even guess what tracks people are missing because everybody has their own combination of tracks. It's the difference between not being able to race on one track, versus not being able to race on most tracks. On the car front though, R3E has a slight advantage because at least you can race with anything in your own class, even if you don't specifically own it.
Project CARS has a good answer for that; if the host has something then anyone can use it for that session. I agree with a lot of what you're saying @Why485 but I will add that I hope it doesn't go chasing iRacing or focus on multiplayer; it's only since the single-player aspect has come in (and improved well) that I've had any interest in the title whatsoever. I also realise that what they are working with here is the legacy of many bad decisions about the direction of the title in the past, so I realise the changes that they are making and appreciate it greatly. More packs including many skins, classes with multiple cars, content being bought more in bulk, real content being made available in the 'demo', less F2P promotion, integrating experiences within the main game etc, but this effort to move that way means little to the newcomer or, worse, the person who wrote off the game 2 years ago (justifiably) and isn't prepared to give it another chance. I'm sure if they could bundle up the base content and sell it in a pack for a set price they would do, but very specific licensing agreements about content will prevent this. This may also be the case with the always-online part, which is a personal hatred of mine (currently connected via Wi-Fi which occasionally cuts me off). So I agree with a lot of your points but I don't think the solutions are simple and I do think they deserve credit for attempting to rectify the issues. Maybe there could be some of the fictional cars (prototypes, single seaters) thrown into the track packs, or a base pack with all of the fictionals, maybe the RUF GTs (presumably easier license-wise) and all of the circuits.
By the way, whilst we're taking promotion and business model, I notice Forza lists each separate livery as a new car when counting its totals; I wonder how many cars are in R3E if you use that counting logic?!
This guy in Inside sim racing made a comparison between sim/games. In number of real tracks R3E is second only after iRacing (not counting ovals the difference is 3 or 4 tracks). R3E also is number one in tracks that no one else has. I got a bunch of tracks and cars in GT6 but when 7th edition comes out all that will be useless, not to mention the console. I wonder if when pCars 2 is released all the content we already bought will be taken into acount, I think not. I only mention these as examples, actually I'm not interested in them anymore because of the main reason why I don't find R3E expensive, the quality.
This to me, is a really good way to look at it and makes a lot of sense. We know that S3S will continue to develop R3E. There's not going to be a sequel in six months that renders all our content useless. Thanks for posting it Gerbuho
Whatever happens, if anything happens, I don't want the singleplayer to be reduced or removed in any way. While I vastly prefer playing multiplayer, R3E is a very good SP racer and has some features that even rFactor 2 doesn't have like championships. As you mentioned, the licensing plus the fact that S3S basically inherited R3E and its structure is the unfortunate reality of the situation. They really are between a rock and a hard place when it comes to R3E. If this were purely a SP game, then it wouldn't matter as much because this kind of structure is fine, but it destroys any chance of the game growing in MP. With the recent additions such as dedicated servers and APIs to create cool spectator setups to view online races, I get the feeling that S3S does want to expand the MP, but they just don't have much in the way of options with R3E as it currently is. It's why I keep bringing up the idea of spinning off R3E into a small, but separate and self-contained, game that runs concurrently with R3E and its current model, but instead focuses purely on MP.
I'm glad to see discussion on the subject. @Alex @FunkyChicken I see you have disagreed with my OP, but no reason given as to why you disagree, or do you just like to run around the forum being negative when you disagree with an opinion. I still believe the pricing model is the biggest issue as many have stated. And it would seem the S3S are looking at that issue, if what Ive read is true. One solution s3s could consider, offer more content in the base game and charge $5.00, instead of what is offered in the F2p, which has been pointed out above as "misleading" in some aspects, also make it easier to buy vRP, a link to it from the store as has been mentioned prior, or go one better and drop the vRP attitude completely and just use standard currency models. I'm baffled to the vRP way of thinking, as it's easier to work out exchange rates in real currencies. Also the vRP could be seen as a "smoke screen" by interested gamer's who may see it as being a "ripp off", but if they see it in their currency as a figure they understand they may just purchase, we humans think in weird ways, especially if we don't have much info, to coin the phrase "We Jump The Gun" and make assumptions. Cheers.
@Why485 I certainly see what you mean with your comments about the F2P model and how it is rather different than other games that are F2P like LoL, TF2, Dota2, etc. I dont really disagree with that at all, but I think you have to look at it in context a bit. Those games are progression based games where you continually unlock 'stuff'. Be that cosmetic, game enhancing like better armor/weapons, or whatever else they may offer (I dont play those games, so I dont really know what you can buy besides cosmetic stuff). R3E though, is not progression based. You dont unlock anything as you go along. Everything can be bought up front. It's just the nature of sim-racing. The context here is entirely different. Just because there isnt any small dlc to buy that doesnt impact the game any, doesnt mean the game cant still be classified as F2P. I guess you could make the argument that liveries are as close to cosmetic dlc that this game has, so that would be fair. I think calling the base "free" portion of R3E a demo is the most apt name for it really. However, how would that work then? If the business model stays the same, everyone would have to have the "demo" before being able to do anything else, buying more content or playing the game. In that sense, calling it a demo would turn away people too because the connotation of a demo is that it's just a small preview that is limited. And the full portion is either separate or completely different. I do think calling the "free" portion a demo is the easiest way to describe it to someone new to R3E One more thing I would ask though, that Im not sure I got an answer on, or havent been able to think about from the other perspective... How does R3E's business model negatively affect MP like you mention? So far, all the arguments being made are mainly regarding the disdain for the specific pay model, either because of price, the lack of having all content in a single package, or something else. Nothing seems to have been described on how buying specific content that you want negatively affects # of players in MP. And to that point, I just dont see it. I dont see how buying 1 car in a class is negative, but buying all of the cars in 1 package for a much higher price is better. How is buying 1 car in a class and using that on any track you own a bad thing? I dont see it. All the arguments against this mainly come down, again, to not liking the pay model. Not liking that you dont own everything. Not liking that there may be a track you dont own so you see the red bars in the MP server browser. Am I making any sense here on what I would like to have some thoughts on? Overall though, this topic just shows how passionate people are and want to see R3E expand player wise and want to see it continually grow. The content is good, the racing is fun, and this is reflected with everyone's passion here. I think the vRP system is pretty easy to understand once you know where the idea comes from. This isnt anything I learned from the devs, just my assumptions made as a casual bystander who bought a lot of stuff months ago... Firstly, you have to remember that R3E is a European based game. The publisher is from Germany as far as I can gather, and Sector3 is in Sweden. Since it is based in Europe, it would made sense that the currency of choice is the Euro. Once you know that, look at the prices... 1vRP = 0.01 euro. 100vRP = 1.00 euro. 1000vRP = 10.00 euro. 1749vRP = 17.49 euro. From there, you can then figure out what the cost is in whatever currency you use. Sine this game is worldwide, and so many currencies could be used, why not make your own in-game currency that reflects the euro but can be bought through Steam and converted easily. Perhaps Im wrong on the choice of using vRP's, or why they have a virtual currency... but vRP's do reflect the euro, so just convert on your own if you need to, it's quite simple Cheers
My point is mainly that new players don't know that, and that the F2P label implies that it is. The term F2P is typically used to describe games where in addition to outright buying content, you can also earn them ingame by spending time instead of money. I think the pay model negatively affects MP for two reasons. One, is that it's a deterrent to new players in general, and two, that it causes very bad content fragmentation, especially when it comes to tracks. With very little common ground for players in terms of content, it forces an already small userbase to split up across many servers because they happen to be running specific combinations they own. Or worse, players can't join low population servers at all because they don't happen to own that class/track combination. It also puts server owners in a difficult position because if they want players, they need to figure out what's the most commonly owned combinations of content. Everybody loses with such a system. Even iRacing suffers from this problem, but they have a large enough playerbase to minimize its impact. There's too much locked out for players who don't own everything. I'm fortunate enough that I was able to buy all the tracks in the game, so this isn't as much of an issue to me, but I doubt most players own every track. I explained most of this in more detail in previous posts.