I personally think the model is great. For a game that is finished! As was pointed out if you had bought F1 2010, 2011, 2012 etc you'd have paid a lot more. This way once you have the content you want you only have to purchase what's shiney and new. So when Project CARS 2 comes out you'll have to fork out for a lot of money for the same content you already had. BUT you will be getting a complete game. Single Player, Multi Player, Dynamic Weather and time of day etc. If these things can be added incrementally in R3E without the need to reinvent the wheel every time then we should end up in front.
I put the PRC.net link up to get some reaction and discussion. Not saying I agree with it in full, but the general point is: R3E is a great racing sim but the sales/pricing model is stopping it from gaining a bigger market share and fulfilling its potential. We can continue with our heads buried in the sand about this if we are happy with the way things are. I'm not because I want to see more people playing and appreciating this fantastic sim and prosperity for Sector3 to continue working long into the future.
Maybe, just maybe, on one of the future dev streams or at least in an interview they could convince someone from Raceroom, not S3S, to talk about some of these issues. After all it's their brand, their product and - I guess - marketing/business scheme, and they should have some kind of PR person. I'd like that very much as it could be an opportunity to shed some light on why certain decisions were made and if maybe they are planning to make correcting changes to the business side of things. EDIT: Oh and as a request, could we please have a direct button to the FAQ on the start page of this forum? Maybe in the upper menu bar, right next to "Members", with a big red arrow highlighting it. Cause many things people seem to struggle with are actually covered there, but my assumption is that they don't even find that thread.
That would hugely appreciated if it were to happen. Just looking from the outside in, I don't see how they balance the books. This game presumably has considerable overheads for licensing all these cars, tracks and series. I know Sector3 is a small team but I don't see how the numbers add-up with such a small player base. I'd love more insight.
I still think a big part of it is the discrepancy in the car physics and the "floatiness" that some of us feel when driving. This is what turned me off from it the first time, and the second time, and the third time.... I loved the sounds, the graphics, the structure, even the flag waving muppets, but the cars felt like driving on water and that negated all the positives for me. The fact that the "free" cars were some of the worst feeling of the bunch meant that people who tried the free sample got the worst possible impression of what the sim offers. Why would they want to invest in it or try to figure out the pricing structure if they thought that's what all the cars felt like? I know I didn't, it wasn't until some months after I first tried R3E that I went back (the audio lured me back) and decided to buy some stuff. The pricing never bothered me (even before I understood it) but the way the cars feel/felt really put me off (and still does for a lot of the cars). It's really good that they updated a couple of the free cars' physics, and by most reports they feel great (I haven't had a chance to try them yet). So now when people try the free stuff they might think "hey, these are great!" and stick with it, maybe even buy some stuff. I do believe that if all the cars felt great and consistent to each other then a lot of people could overlook some of the pricing issues.
To start with, they need to make a link to the forums somewhere very obvious. The only reason I even found these forums is because I know Sector 3 Studios is the developer and I searched for that instead. On neither the RaceRoom portal or website is there any mention of forums anywhere. I wasn't even sure this forum was the official forum for R3E until I lurked for a bit.
I actually think you get to the forum if you press one of the buttons in the upper right corner inside the game.
Perhaps make it more clear. Put a 'come join the discussion on the forums' (etc) on one of the loading screens.
It must be hard to start again in business, dig yourself out of that deep hole, but S3E are doing it slowly and I am personally very satisfied with their effort so far, still a way to go though, but S3E are getting there...and the pairing up with 'Hermann Tilke the F1 Track Designer is definitely a good sound business decision....F1 track designer you say...hmmmmm...food for thought
I have no major issues with the business model. I would like to see a better implementation of car, track, packs all located at one place for an more user-friendly experience and elimination of the VRP stuff. I do not have any problem with the business model prices. However, it does appear that iRacing and RRRE are always attacked over price since they tend to be higher than a "normal" video racing game. I am not an enthusiast of car liveries, but I can understand how people see that charging for liveries as a negative. imho,ymmv
I've come to the conclusion that these business model threads, while interesting, are ultimately futile. They all follow the same basic pattern -- a few people describe their concerns, which generally focus more on the appeal of the sim (or lack thereof) to the larger sim-racer audience (i.e., why aren't more people on board with this sim), and then many posts follow saying that nothing is wrong and nothing needs to change. In my opinion, the people on this forum aren't really representative of the larger sim racing community, at least with regard to this issue. We are, almost by definition, people for whom the S3 business model is either seen as appealing or at worst is not problematic enough to keep us away in light of the other strengths of the sim. Very few people frequent forums for products or services they don't use. By and large, the people who aren't using this sim aren't on this forum to provide their input. It's a bit like discussions among lifelong members of a given political party about why more people don't aren't members of or vote for that party. It can be interesting and entertaining discussion, but its probably not going to ultimately be very informative or useful, b/c you aren't hearing from the people whose behavior you are trying to understand (b/c they aren't there to begin with, which is the essence of the problem). For that reason, I think it is much more informative when these discussions take place on broader forums that include both current and potential R3E customers. I think that provides much more meaningful information about why many sim racers choose not to spend their time and money on R3E. Many such discussions have occurred in other forums in the past, and I would argue that those discussions give much more insight into the problem (to the extent you see relatively low numbers of users as a problem, which I think most of us do). I guess my point is that, what the people on this forum think about the business model isn't very relevant to the broader issue of why there isn't a larger user base, and whether the business model is part of what is keeping them away.
That's true to an extent. Most people here are best case: happy with the sales model, worst case: tolerate it. However, that doesn't make our opinions irrelevant. I base my thoughts on what I read on other forums, in comment sections (VirtualR, bsim etc) and Steam reviews. It doesn't take a genius to deduce the common complaints.
Thank you very much for that fruitful insight. So whatever the reason would turn out to actually be, people shouldn't talk about it on this forum... Interesting. Could you highlight just one of those?
He didn't say we shouldn't talk, just that people here are biased in a positive way about R3E. Maybe it's that obvious, but still a valid point imo. I disagree about the people saying "nothing must change bit", it's rather "it works for me", which as James said isn't the same. People can argue from multiple angles. Although given this place the distribution is biased. I would think the main issue with R3E is that it somewhat blew its first chance impression. And the market is tougher, more quality choices, and it's hard to attract people back. Or people who are happy elsewhere / invested with certain titles. Agreeing about not all cars having the same polish/dev status, also enjoy some vastly more than others. So the experience with the title I assume can still be a hit or miss for some. And I must say if it wasn't for some guy discovering the wheel ffb settings for early dirt rally versions, my opinion about that game might have been very different for much longer.
Not at all I'd say. I hope Andi doesn't take this up the wrong nostril, but he is one of the most forthcoming critics of R3E I know, same goes for other testers and members of this forum. And as you pointed out there's nobody here who says everything is perfect as it is. The difference is that we don't express our criticism like a bunch of 8-year olds who just opened their christmas presents and didn't get what they were wishing for, but rather stick with the facts and have a realistic view of where we're at and what is possible. Just because I pointed out that one can buy everything in store for less than 100 bucks doesn't mean that I think this is how it should be, but if people claim that the price is more than double of that I feel I got the right to point out that that statement is wrong.
But you must admit that most of the users in this forum are already users of R3E. I think @Art_Vandelay just want to point out that new potential users doesn't recognize very much about that discussions and so there is not much input, what exactly hold them back.
Of course, I know. But honestly, saying people on here shouldn't talk about that - or any other topic - because it's pointless is a bit of a weird statement. Because another fact we have to acknoledge is that this forum is the most direct line to the developers so what's discussed here gets the most exposure/recognition by the people who need to know, wouldn't you agree? It's like saying I don't like the taste of the Big Mac but instead of going to McDonald's and telling them I rather wander about in the park and yell at random people that McDonald's are a bunch of idiots.
Exactly. The point of discussing the situation on this forum is so the devs can see the concerns some of us have as well as read some of our suggestions on how to maybe improve things. None of us know if it's within their power to change anything, but we still have to have the discussion because we love the sim and the team and we want it to be more successful than it currently is.