As long as it does the following... 1. Allows them to keep the doors open 2. Allows for development of new content/features (give me a break with "BETA" tag) I'd rather have a BM i'm not super happy with, but new content all the time, than a great business model (for consumer), but no more R3E content - dead game. It's like Eurotruck - they keep updating it, so I keep getting pulled back in - love it. Plus i'm old, don't always like learning new games, so if my current faves can keep getting better, that's just awesome.
What im think about the pricing model: You can choose each car, track or pack fair prize for good work (Spa is a wonderful virtual World) You dont want GTR2 Cars? No problem sir, then don`t buy it You don`t know how feel the DTM92 cars? NO problem, click "Testdrive" and test every car how long you want one track is one package cigarettes (5€), Sector3 prevent you to get a cancer. Thanks S3 ! tons of licensed Liveries, no custom shit (thats pro and contra at the same time) All tracks and cars not modded or integrated from other games I think s3 done a good job...
Fair shout, I concur entirely, line drawn, normality resumed, now let's move along people there's racing to be done!!
I bought a lot of RRE content. Nearly all tracks, most cars some packs/experiences (WTC 13,14,GT DTM 2014). I love the classic cars ! But for the DTM2015 again 12 Euro ? I like the new physics, but with every update you get only something updated. After driving the new thing , the old one feeling very strange Their a big difference in old and new tracks. ISI makes a good job in updating existing stuff. I really like the gfx , ffb and the sound is amazing, but multiplayer is a ghost town. Its hard to find players how bought the same stuff and are online at the same time. Maybe a monthly subscription can help to avoid this. Right now, I stop buying new stuff. Main reason, outdated stuff, having a bad feeling buying something without future. Maybe S3 is a big fan of releasing every year a DTM 2xxx or WTCC 2xxx, but for me having ONE DTM 2014 is enough. To pay every year 10-15 Euro for an update is to much. My suggestion to S3: Make a clear commitment that all existing stuff will be updated in time. Right now I wait for updates of my fav content: Classic cars.
The M1 Procar just got updated in this patch.. And how much do you have to pay for F1 2015 even if you had 10-11-12-13-14?.. Edit: By the way. If you don't want the whole experience, why not just buy the 2015 cars?
You still need to pay around 10€ for 3 cars. And you will not get skins. There should be higher discount for those who own older cars, which are pretty much the same as new released (GTR3/ADAC, DTM - with exception of BMW M4, which was new for 2014, WTCC had new cars for 2014, but 2015 there will be new LADA Vesta only). Imagine if they would release same track every year with updated environment and some bumps.
I don't really think the price is bad to be honest. I buy Football Manager every year which is largely a few new features and a roster update for $40, I buy either FIFA or PES each year which is $50-60 for a roster update and updated kits. To get all the cars and skins for 2015 for $12 or so is a pretty good deal to me when compared to other yearly ventures. I agree there needs to be a discount for folks who purchase a lot of content, but in the grand scheme of things, I'm fine with this price. I expected it to be more to be honest.
They do, but we don't need to pay for that. What I hope for is a bit of track rotation in the existing real series! And to get the STCC, BTCC and some US series to get more wanted tracks to the game.
Its swings and roundabouts, theres good points and bad, for me the positives are: You can buy what you want and leave out things you dont. You can pick up some great savings if you bulk buy. Discounts on content packs if you already own certain items like tracks The continual money flow means new can content always has funding A couple of the bad points though: Having to buy individual liveries seperately - If you buy a car you should get all liveries included. vRP system is confusing, wish they would just display a monetary price for each item ie £2.99 for X car Overall though I quite like this method, the discounts and new constant stream of new content make it worth it for me.
I really think this piecemeal approach is a bad idea for a racer. I agree that at the very least, all liveries should be bundled with the car. At least this time, it looks like you get all the liveries with DTM 15. I know I'm dragging the discussion back to the pricing model and some people are tired of it, but I've spent about $200 - or more - to join this party, and I still don't have every single thing RR offers. And I'm betting that the $200 club isn't that large. Not everyone is that rich - I'm not that rich! I'm just a sucker for a good racer, and this is a great racer. But at some point, you realize that you're spending $9 for cars and liveries here, $12 there, for slightly updated content, and it adds up quickly. This is why I mention periodically that S3 needs to broaden the racing on offer. I'm so desperate for a variety of next gen racing that I bought P CARS, and spent $900 to get Forza 6, and Forza has been a truly frustrating experience with a game Microsoft managed to hose up in the FFB department, but I digress. I'm going to make myself a nuisance begging for more "tintop" racing disciplines, because I'm just not that big a fan of WTCC and DTM, as cool as those are. And spending $12 each time for some liveries and a game adjustment here and there doesn't thrill me. I seriously want some other toys to play with like FIA GT4, ALMS, USTC, V8 Supercars etc. Eh, might get it tonight, might this weekend, but I really hope someone takes this subject seriously because this matters to me quite a bit. Again, love the team, love the game, but it has punched a pretty big hole in my wallet, especially for a game in perpetual alpha state. Crap, gotta run.
The discounted price of about 10€ for the complete DTM15 package is a little bit high, but for me it's still okay. Nevertheless what bothers me is that the calculation in the R3E store is kinda weird. The price for the DTM15 pack is 2499VRP and it tells me that i already own 54,1% of the content, which leads to a final amount of 1148VRP (for me). But why only 54,1%? I have DTM13 & DTM14 and all the tracks. So where this 54,1% come from?
Not gonna bother to write comment #89, nobody will scroll down that far anyway. But maybe the author has a looksee in here as well, in which case I'd like to congratulate him on living up to their motto "The worst site you could possibly visit for Sim Racing news." Yet another self-proclaimed marketing/business expert who knows exactly what's the problem and how to fix it. Makes me wonder, do all the business geniuses gather in the sim racing community, hiding their knowledge from the world? Cause if there were as many business wizkids everywhere as there are in this community, I'd be flabbergasted to see the world's economy fail every couple years. There's so much drivel I can't comment on everything, but some of those statements are just ludicrous and give the impression of the author not really being as smart as he thinks he is. "It's time for S3S to move on [...] Stop with the R3E shit. No, it doesn't need to boot through R3E." Obviously the author fails to realise that it is not S3S making these decisions but Raceroom, the main stakeholder and financial backer of R3E. Even if S3S found a new investor willing to cough up a few million in advance, I'm pretty sure there are long term contracts making it impossible to just walk away from R3E. "Currently, there are 123 people running R3E on their PC’s" I understand that not everybody's taken statistics 101, but this kind of misinterpreting of statistical data makes me think the author does it on purpose rather than just being too uneducated to correctly read and interpret statistical data. "R3E has $120 worth of expansion packs alone [...] total cost of the game around $220" The fact that steam calls the "Experiences" DLC's, just because that's how they call every add-on, may confuse some people and I agree that it hasn't been marketed smartly, but to me it was pretty clear that everything that has the word "Experience" in it is really meant to be a game in itself, sold at a standalone game's price. F1 does it year after year and people accept that fact, but if DTM or GTM do it it isn't. Again, putting everything under one hood obviously makes it hard for some people to distinguish. It was nice having games like Race or GTR2 with all those licensed series at a single games cost, but things have changed and so have the licensors. They demand much more nowadays than just having a more or less accurate reproduction of their series hidden among loads of other content, especially if you're not a bigshot like Polyphony and their likes. "Serious simracers are not stupid kids and see through a scam like R3E." (Gist of several statements) Yet the ones claiming they are the most serious ones are spending hundreds of dollars on iracing. If everyone's that clever, then why doesn't everyone discern that simply adding the single prices of what's in store doesn't represent the actual total cost of buying all that content? Here's where I came to realise that apparently many people can't be bothered investing five minutes of their precious time into thinking about how this system works and how to get their moneys worth. It's sad but that's how it seems to be and that eventually is where the producer is to blame, for using a system that is to complicated for the majority of people.
PRC is, by its own admission, filled with the drivel submitted by random keyboard warriors with their various bees in bonnets and axes to grind. They're usually quite positive about Raceroom. At least, they're a lot less angry with it than they are with PCars, AC and iRacing. It's clearly a load of horsesh!t as you quite rightly point out, and misses the obvious irony that the author is too dim to understand the pricing model and how to get decent value for money. But he's entitled to his opinion and, as per PRC's standard approach with these things, free to share his verbal diarrhoea with anyone who can be bothered with PRC any more. Perhaps he's only this cantankerous about it because he loves the R3E content and game play and wants to have more of it, and is frustrated at the fact that he has to pay some money.
Another one of these, okay. Just mentioning the most important thing about it all: the business model and pricing model is the number one argument mentioned by people not being "owners" of R3E already and now testing it. I have seen it time and again. It does not really help to make S3/RE new friends and seems to be no incentive for potentially interested new customers, to put it this way. Most people checking it out decide against R3E, even when the sim itself interests them - due to the price level, and the business model they reject it. That is a fact, period. What existing customers think about the price model, is not relevant for this. It simple is easily the top number one criticism set up against the sim. I personally only tolerate it. I do not like it, but just condone it, because I happen to like the sim. And yes, it is an expensive game.
i think this subject has been beaten to death enough times , i really dont understand the logic behind the argument ... seriously i dont the game cost that , the business model is intelligent in so many ways , it guarantees that they can pay the wages , pay the licensing and continue development ; the only person who can screw you is yourself with the never ending human failure of mixing up want and need . technically all you need is 1 car from each class and the tracks ... thats its nothing more ... but which car ..; omg they allow you to test for free every car so you can decide .. so that little nugget is now buried After that if you buy from there vrp store it gets even cheaper as steam gets moved from the equation ; that plus never ending offers /reductions /pack prices etc ..... Is the game good value for money ; i dont know but do a quick bit of maths and you realise that it cost nothing ... price paid divided by hours played .... were talking about little brown coppery coins ...; If i do the same equation with drinking a beer in a bar and adding my love of playing that game it turns in to notes per hour not little coins ; and when i stop my glass is empty (and its not even my glass) I took a few months out this year from racing / testing and stopped being staff on Rd forums ... because i just got bored by the entire lack of any form of humanity and reality within so many posts on all forums ... i just got to saturation point ...; i love sim racing ; its a giggle ; its so hard to get it right ... and its good to get your ass handed to you on a plate sometimes This is a good game , the pricing is honest and the content is yours to use as many times as you wish ... The games not finished its ever evolving ; yes some features are a little slow coming forward but gradually they are So a little more humanity ; breath deep and accept that your putting food on the table for the guys at sector 3 ; your feeding Kodi aswell .... when you buy a skin ...; love and fluffy bunnies Andi
Totaly agree with that... The only missing thing is to transfer that in the minds of potential users... But I think all arguments mentioned in this Thread are usefull for tweaking the existent model.
If anybody thinks it's too complicated I accept that, while I personally don't really understand it. But claiming to know how to easily fix it and then making such statements as the ones I quoted is just beyond me. And saying it's too expensive, well, you can easily get every item (26 tracks, 72 cars, liveries excluded) for under 100 $/€ if you buy vRP in bulk and use it to buy packs. And again, if even that's expensive to you, this is not the cost of one game, it's five games (R3E, DTM 2013/14/15, ADAC 2014) that are published on one platform and that happen to share some tracks or even cars (R3E GT3 and ADAC f.e.). And you don't have to pay for the same tracks every time like in F1 f.e. Looking at it from this angle, it's a steal (20 bucks each for 5 games) that sadly has been published in a way that's too complicated for most people. Had they published every game on it's own, as a true standalone, would people have said that 20 bucks is too much for the official DTM or GTM game?
And how is someone unfamiliar with the game who's just having a look to see if they want to invest in it supposed to know that? Especially when you consider that other racing sims require you to purchase the entire DLC even if you only want to race one car or track. Again, how is someone unfamiliar with the game who's just having a look to see if they want to invest in it supposed to know that? I had been playing R3E for a couple months and bought several pieces of content before I even know the vrp store existed. Only if you're connected to the internet, another sore point that keeps some people from investing. All of your points are valid and I agree that with a little effort it's not hard to understand how the system works and to see that it's decent value for the money (not to mention supporting one of the best dev teams around). Problem is, we don't live in a world where the majority of people are willing to put in a little effort to get the most out of what they want. We live in an instant gratification world where there are so many choices for entertainment that most products have only a fleeting chance to get a customer's attention. Customers giving R3E that fleeting moment to impress them only see complication and expense, dismiss it, and move on to the next choice. I don't like or agree with that attitude but the fact is that a lot of consumers now-a-days have that attitude. You can see it in real motorsports, series all around the world (a few exceptions, of course) have been seeing declining attendance because people don't want to spend 3-4 hours in hot bleachers watching cars go around in circles because they could be watching Netflix or posting their lunch menu on Facebook or taking yet another selfie. I hate that the world has turned into this, but unfortunately you have to take these things into account if you're going to try to sell a product to these people. I think the business model could work fine if they just made some of these things a little less confusing and present it in a way that gets people's interest quickly. I don't think the price is the problem, it's the presentation. If price was the problem, iRacing would have even fewer numbers than R3E. As stated above, people buy a new version of FIFA and F1 and Madden ever year and R3E, using a similar model, R3E is a better value than any of those so it seems logical that it could work. But logic seems to be an endangered species anymore so we can't rely on that to help people make purchases. I'm not saying the business model is crap, or that the sky is falling, I'm saying a lot of consumers are lazy and easily distracted and aren't willing to put in the effort to understand how the business model works or how to get the best value for their money. You can't change people, so you have to change how you present things to them and take into account their short attention spans and abundant options for entertainment if you want to be successful. Just my opinion of course, and I'm not expert, but my minor in college was Business Management and Marketing and I've worked in the marketing industry for almost 15 years, so I'm not just talking out of my ass either.