I appreciate your replies very much. I did have some inkling of the vRP as MP prize thing, but I'm someone who personally has little interest in MP (for its various technical and social/behavioural issues).
the mp prizes are for leader board competitions witch is single player and incredibly addicting. I recommend you try them ive spent hours just lapping trying to improve by one for tenth and get in that 10,100,1000 ect
I generally warm up with a bit of hot lapping in the comps, chance to win vrp just for entering in the draw, so win, win, get up to speed and maybe win some spendies!
My 2 cents, the business model is not expensiv. I don't know why people talk about R3E as being expensiv. I paid 17 euros for a GT pack, far from the 65 euros of project cars.
How many cars/tracks did you get compared to what you get for PCars 65 euros? To get the same number of cars/tracks in R3E that you get in PCars you'd probably spend at least double that 65 euros. There's no argument, R3E is a bit more expensive than the other sims when you're comparing like to like. But I don't think the real cost is as much of an issue as the confusing structure of the R3E store and how at a glance it appears to be far more expensive than it actually is. It's still a bargain compared to iRacing, but compared to the likes of AC or PCars or rF2 it looks rather expensive (especially if you don't understand how the discounts and VRP's work). I think that's the point a lot of us are trying to get across, not so much that it's expensive (sim racers spend small fortunes on racing sims and equipment) but that it's very confusing to someone who doesn't understand the system, and in these days a lot of people can't be arsed to do a little research so they will just shrug it off and go to the next sim that has a more familiar pricing structure. Combine that with the (previously) weird feeling free cars and it's easy to understand why people don't want to throw money at it. This theory is supported by the low number of players using R3E on a monthly basis (according to the Steam charts, and since everyone who races R3E is online those numbers are pretty accurate).
I paid $50 for project cars with over 70 cars and 20+ tracks with a good variety of cars and tracks out of the box. The same amount I paid for R3E doesnt even give me half as many content. Likewise for DLCs, $5 in pcars dlc will get be 5 cars or 3 with 1 track or $10 for 7 cars and 1 track in AC. In R3E, it is either one to two cars or just one track for $3 or a pack of 7 cars with no track would cost me $16. No doubt I could buy individual cars with one skin but that isnt much cheaper than a pack. Also, why would I confine myself to 1-2 cars? There are ways to make the initial purchase into R3E cheaper like getting the ADAC/DTM Experience on a sale but most people wont know. The whole business model is confusing which at the end, I rather see R3E offering a $60 starter pack for bundle of content to entice people with expansion style model than microtrasaction style model. I put in about $100 in R3E, I dont really feel like I am getting a comparable value that other games are giving me. The game's good with amazing physics and content but the business model and always online is the game's biggest issue for me as I am getting really tired of being kicked out of races when my internet goes nuts. To make things worse, most other racing games I bought are way under the $60 price tag which made the $100 feels even more pricey in R3E. Lastly, the same $100 in other games, other than iracing and simraceway, I probably could buy all the DLCs with the core game. And even some money left if it's on sale as other games goes on sale with fairly large discounts. Put this perspective in a new player, you wont be surprised why they went to pcars/AC/GSCE/rfactor instead of R3E. And being greeted with a microtrasaction style store, inability to buy vRP value packs with Steam wallet and lack of links to the vRP store from the in game store, it is hard to keep new players interested to buy more content.
yepp - might be right... but from 70 cars I'm only interessted in maybe 30% of the cars - same with the tracks... It's the Same with the DLC in pCars and AC. The packs are totaly mixed-up combination of cars and tracks. If I don't want a Track but only one or two Cars I have to buy the hole DLC-Pack. The Prices in pCars are just as low as they are because they have over million sold copys in background and so much much more potential customers of the DLC than any other PC-Racing-Sim - and a lower Price (as you know) attracts even more to buy it.
Exactly. I think many of us are not complaining about the actual cost of the content (although I do see that is an issue for some), so much as the way it's sold. It is confusing, requires research (to get the best deal, anyway), and even requires a few "tricks": You should only buy one pack on Steam (if on a good sale), before getting the rest of the content on the RaceRoom store. Also, you should only buy content one piece at a time to ensure you get the appropriate "owned content" discount).
Not always true, because when you buy multiple pieces at one time you get some kind of "bulk discount" on everything in your cart (the more you buy at once, the bigger the discount on all pieces). Not exactly sure what the exact amount of the bulk discount is, and it doesn't seem to be all that much of a discount, but it's a discount none-the-less (and just adds to the confusion of how best to purchase content). To my understanding, you only get the "owned discount" when, for example, you buy an Experience pack that comes with tracks or cars that you already own some of (if you already own two of the tracks in the pack you will not be charged for them but you don't get a discount on the tracks you don't own). So, if you already own two of the cars in a class and then buy a third car from that class, I don't think you get the "owned discount" on that car. But if you were to buy a car pack and already owned two of the cars in that pack, the "owned discount" would kick in as you would not get charged for the two cars you already own. Or, if you already own DTM '14 you'll get a discount on DTM '15 (in big part because you already own all the tracks). At least that's how I understand it, but I could be completely wrong as I still don't fully grasp all the nuances of the discounts.
Yes, you're right, but only if you're not using already owned vrp to buy your content (I think). When I first tried to figure all this out (before the beginning of my pack purchase spree during the Summer Sale), I knew of the discount on vrp packs, the owned content discount, and the bulk discount in your cart (based on how much vrp was needed for the purchase). I also knew of the store bug that wouldn't give an owned content discount when some packs in your cart contained overlapping content. That was troubling, since some folks said that I could actually use vrp I already had (bought in a discounted 10k pack) and then also get the bulk discount in my cart (essentially, a double-dip discount). If that were the case, it would have been even more confusing to figure out how to get the best deal. However, at least in my experience, since I already had the vrp needed for the purchase, the bulk discount was never shown in my cart. So, in the end I decided it was best to buy vrp in the 10k pack (largest discount for that), and then buy content one at a time to ensure I got the proper owned content discounts (and since I would not get the bulk discount, since I already had the vrp). Whew! And this is exactly the problem with the business model. It would be so funny, if it weren't real money that was lost when people don't fully devote themselves to figuring it out. Also, of course such a confusing and cryptic sales system keeps people from ever bothering and we want people to bother and join us!
Then you have those of us that bought pCars and were entirely disappointed. Although cheaper than R3E, I've spent less than 5 hours on pCars and feel that it was a complete waste of money(for me).
My brain hurts, I need to go have a beer and a laydown......... I don't disagree with that. I gave it a fair shake and liked most of it but the FFB is just too weird feeling even after dozens and dozens of hours tinkering with the dozens of FFB settings. It had/has the potential to be great, but it fell a bit too short on a few too many areas and really suffered as a result. At this point I consider it wasted money too, but with a few improvements it could be worthwhile.
project cars tracks are very poor quality and a lot of the assets are reused from older games (even the dlc assets) which made it very easy to sell way cheaper than the competitors.
It's not cheaper than most competitors though, I think I got AC (~$20) and GSCE (~$30) combined for less than what I paid for PCars (~$60). So I guess that just makes it more of a rip-off.
While Raceroom dumps on it in lots of ways, pcars really isn't that bad when you get properly stuck into it
That's about how i'm feeling about it. I'm enjoying taking some laps around nordschleife in multiplater practice. The weather and night/day cycle is especially fun to drive in. Agree the force feedback is not all that - kinda generic feeling really, but it works. There's no doubt r3E feels more like a well oiled machine from a driving standpoint.
I wont comment on the quality of pcars or any other game because that isnt a point of discussion on R3E business model but in terms of value, R3E is terrible. No point having the best physics, FFB and so on when the pricing model is awful. And other games do not kick me out or refuse to let me play because my internet connection isnt working fine. Or charges much higher cost for content than other games in the market.
This is something that I don't think gets talked about enough. It is unacceptable for the singleplayer of a game to be locked away because it has trouble logging into the RaceRoom servers. While I understand why this is the case (DRM), that doesn't make it any better. It's an absolute killjoy when I set my wheel up and get ready for racing but am greeted with a login error.
Also, it is really really silly to tether my 3G to my PC to play R3E when my internet connection had slowed down during peak period. Put that in the shoes of a free player or a new player who bought a pack. I wont be surprised to see them playing other games instead because I also find myself playing other games when I am greeted with the 503 error or endless login screens. It is a kill joy when I had setup everything nicely and happily anticipating some good racing in R3E, then, I found out I cant login to play the content I paid a lot more than other games in single player. I understand the purpose of DRM but this is just way too far.