Absolutely yes! I would understand if they would give us some benefits from diving it server side only like in iRacing. But driving even SP by the server is simply pathetic. They always say they have a focus on different things when we ask for something but I have learned so far that their only interest is in pushing as much content as they can to grab our money. People will start to realize that and things won't go well (if they even go if we judge by the number of players on MP servers). Just keep in mind S3 that people are supporting you and giving you some funds. But once you start to ignore them I believe you know what will happen. I am not saying you are ignoring because you are doing a great job so far but giving us a new content isn't always a good thing. You should start to polish few other things because we have a plenty of content to have fun with it.
i've been trying the whole day to play the game and keep getting backend server problem, so yes, this sim needs and offline mode.
Yep, have been unable to get on all morning. Maybe S3S read these posts, I'm sure Raceroom just ignores them. But I'll say it again : people play this game despite its business model and online requirement, not because of it.
I think an off line mode is required with content based on the last time you logged on - maybe a requirement to log-on every 3 days or so to stop any fraudulent activities!!
While I understand why it's in place (DRM), it's still inexcusable in my opinion to lose access to the very expensive content when you don't even plan on playing multiplayer. An offline mode, or at least a reduced dependency on the R3E servers, is a must.
With the much higher price tag than other games, I think offline mode is needed because other "cheaper" and "lesser" games had little to no issues playing without active internet connection. Why am I paying more for content then get locked out from the content i had paid for when the server has issues or I have issues connecting to the servers? It just doesn't make sense. And where is the GTR3 pack?
I think if online continues to be a requirement to play this game then the occurrence of server problems needs to be much less frequent and the speed at which they are subsequently resolved needs to be faster. As it stands it is beginning to remind me of the Sim City 5 launch - i bought the game then could not play it for a number of days due to EA's insistence up on the player being able to connect to their servers. The whole episode left a very bad taste in my mouth and, lesson learnt - i don't buy EA games anymore. At the end of the day Sector 3 are in the business of making money and the market perception of their product is damaged by problems like this and constant talk about the business model. Iracing have the right idea with online only, they have made it relevant to the product and the downtime is kept to an absolute minimum. Sure they charge for it but at least they deliver the service their members rightly expect.
Why are some things more expensive than others? Some just are. Some are worth it, some are not....it is how it is. They know its not ideal or even acceptable. A gtr3 pack has never officially been talked about.
but raceroom hasn't been launched yet so they get these issues over with now instead of when the game goes 1.0.
Oh - seems you get me wrong on my post. I've just replied to your side-note that there were posts about Servers down...
hm - by the way... has someone noticed the Note from Sonat to the 503-Problems at the moment? Here an interesting quote from it for this discussion:
Sorry, that's a total cop out. R3E was launched the day it was put on Steam and players were able to purchase content. I don't care for the 'alpha' or 'beta' tag, or what version number it is. Sector3 is a small team with many aspects of this game beyond their control - I sympathise - but when you launch an always online game you really need to make sure you've got your shit together. When people pay a not insignificant sum for content and then cannot play because of frequent server issues, well, you lose new players right off the bat.
So paying more content that is always online is worth it? Then, the game gets plagued with 503 error preventing me from accessing my content for the last week or so. Will this issue persist in coming weeks or it will be solved permanently? Or my internet connections has connection issues to the server momentarily that kicked me out from the middle of an AI only race. Lastly, the fear that one day S3 folds and all my content is gone because the server are permanently shut down. Maybe this is worth it for you, for me, it isnt. It is like paying a high premium with much higher risk and not much benefits in return. Right, almost every old content(GTR2, Touring Classics and so on) updates gets a pack, why GTR3 is the exception? Or S3 decides to go greedy now by abolishing packs to force everyone pay for each pieces of content separately? There is a reason why this game has like 300-500 players daily. The business model, always online and now, server issues with all these 503 are putting people off. I wont be paying for more content with these issues in the game recently as it is ridiculous so pay more than other game, then, cant play the game due to some developer side issues. If you are going to do always online, you better make sure the servers up 24/7 especially you are price gouging your content with higher price tag than most competitors.
Exactly, James. I get that the game is supposedly in a "beta" state -- I hear it on these forums all the time. But really, where is that made clear? Maybe I'm just not very observant, but I don't see anything about it being beta on Steam. If you pay attention, you can catch the version number on the splash screen and that it's not yet 1.x. Oh, and if you look at these forums, you can see "RaceRoom Beta". But really, claiming the beta status as an excuse for trouble is really, very weak. I'm pretty sure most potential customers have no idea -- I know I didn't. Also, some have said "It's a weekend", so maybe they're not working. I really hope that's not true, because this is of course troubling to S3's current customers, but even worse, it looks really bad to potential customers. If you want to feel down about the future, just read through some of the latest Steam discussions: one or two interested folks being completely turned off, a guy urging people to post bad reviews because of this problem, and one even wondering if Sector3 has gone bankrupt. It's really not surprising. I know I, at least, appreciate Sonat giving us a bit of an update on the issues, but I do fear this is only hurting the RRRE reputation and that is not what we want. (Aside from the fact that many of us haven't been able to drive here all weekend.) I've been itching to get more content (the new DTM 15 pack, the three tracks I don't have, and maybe some more cars), especially with the announced Black Friday sale, but now what? I'm not so sure. Sector3: Please get this working again (of course), but also do something to reassure us that we aren't wasting our money.