ISI's marketing duty to subscribers

Discussion in 'General Discussion' started by Nand Gate, Sep 25, 2013.

  1. 88mphTim

    88mphTim racesimcentral.net

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    You probably missed the big red box at the top of the post. :)
     
  2. Nibo

    Nibo Registered

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    I read somewhere Tim said something like "rFactor not in Beta, its ready if you think its ready for you". Of course, people see low FPS, bad user friendliness, new bugs introduced with new builds, incomplete features and that scares them away. I can tolerate this, most people can`t. There is no stability.

    We had 18 drivers in june starting F3.5 championship, by the end of august we had 8. Now we lucky if for weekly test/fun races we have 5. I`m forced to remove our usual password to "catch" some random people from lobby.

    But actually I don`t think ISI must market rF2. Best marketing would be eradicating problems and finishing core of the sim.
     
  3. Domi

    Domi Registered

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    I haven't compared directly rF2 with iRacing, someone mentioned it, and I made a more fair comparison. But now that you talk about it, iRacing has been marketing his product much more than ISI, especially with the superfail of iRacing 2.0 (when the NTM had to come), even knowing that they were going to release a very incomplete build. But that agressive marketing gave them a big boost of new users.... and probably most of them are still here nowadays. Here is more like the opposite, there is barely any online activity, and the development in that area (well, and in general) in the last 1.5 years has been very weak. And obviously people starts to loose interest.
     
  4. 88mphTim

    88mphTim racesimcentral.net

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    Yes, you mentioned it and made a comparison, I replied to your comment, that's how this works. :) They also had someone with quite a lot of money bankrolling them, and (last time it was mentioned to members in 2009) were still digging into a $25M hole. If you expect the same marketing position or strategy from ISI, I can tell you easily that your expectation is not possible. And again, the first 1.5 years of iRacing are obviously something you either were not present for, or have forgotten. Feel free to edit your post when rF2 has been out for over five years, and talk about how busy rF2 online activity is compared to someone else's new product that won't have got going yet.
     
  5. Guimengo

    Guimengo Guest

    A lot of people seem to forget the incredible amount of animosity towards F1rst/iRacing due to their approach regarding NR 2003 modding and the Redline GTP mod. Of course, a ton of people who swore never to play also forgot about it 1-2 years later.
     
  6. Jamie Shorting

    Jamie Shorting Registered

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    This is why racing sims aren't popular. For whatever reason the average person wants easy to drive and avoid cars that require counter steer.
     
  7. Galaga

    Galaga Banned

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    I can't comment on pick-up racing as I only do scheduled races. One thing individuals can do is help seed servers. It's remarkable how much having just 2 or 3 people can attract other racers and before you know it you have 5-10 people racing. As silly as it sounds, you have to join a server for people to be on the server :p. Jump on a server, say hello, do a couple of laps, maybe you will draw others, stay if you want or wish the admin good luck and then pat yourself on the back and move on to help seed another server.
     
    Last edited by a moderator: Sep 25, 2013
  8. 1959nikos

    1959nikos Registered

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    +1, this really works 9 times out of ten.
     
  9. Johannes Rojola

    Johannes Rojola Registered

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    There are many reasons. I have noticed that I have started to lose interest for racing sims over the past years. As I started with the genre in early 90's I've seen the constant huge development of the genre that has kept me interested. That is until now, as I feel that development is slower and slower and many of the features been waited since 90's have never realized. Even the simarcade/arcade genre does not excel in physics department, they have content to play with. Good examples are Driver San Fransisco, Test Drive Unlimited (horrible physics btw), GTA V, Euro Truck Simulator, FlatOut, Codemaster F1 series, etc etc... More and more I play with those titles, and less with these simulators. I hope true simulators will eventually catch on, but that might still take many years.
     
  10. Steve Serpant

    Steve Serpant Registered

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    hi all, I had a fun server it was mainly 1960's F3 at Monaco, fun and easy to drive stuff but I can not make a vmod for the life of trying so I can no longer have my server, if ISI could put some vmods on the download page just for a couple of cars on tracks that suit all just ISI content (like the old packages but just vmods content downloaded separately) so as people who can not make vmods can still run a server from there pc to race on.
     
  11. costamesa

    costamesa Registered

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    I think this is like 100th post about the lack of online players and i think you are getting it all wrong, again. I dont know anything about iRacing, never tried the game, probably wouldnt have heard of it if you guys didnt talk about it here. number of online players in iracing may have increased gradually in years, thats ok. It is going to be nearly two years in a couple of months since I have bought this game, and the number of online players dont gradualy or non-gradually increase, which is the problem that frustrates people here! we understand it is going to take time but I really want to see a change. Private leagues are not an option as most of the complainers here, including me, are casual players.
     
  12. 88mphTim

    88mphTim racesimcentral.net

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    I was responding to his (and others) opinion and comparisons. I didn't state anything about mine other than what related to what I was responding to.
     
  13. costamesa

    costamesa Registered

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    you were explaining why rf2 has less online players than iracing? and i said your explanation doesnt make much sense to me..
     
  14. 88mphTim

    88mphTim racesimcentral.net

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    My explanation was based on experience at iRacing during their early years, and explained that there is a growth period that both sims need(ed) to go through. It doesn't matter whether it makes sense to you, the comparisons with us now and them now, are what don't make sense.
     
  15. costamesa

    costamesa Registered

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    ok then we are exactly where we were in previous discussions about this problem. (assuming this is a problem for you :) )
     
  16. 88mphTim

    88mphTim racesimcentral.net

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    Yes.

    Our main issue, as I said above, is that we are competing primarily with our own product. Regardless of what we do with rF2, rF1 is very strong.
     
  17. costamesa

    costamesa Registered

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    Ok, most of us here agree on that, rf1 is still very strong. but what do you plan to do about it? we cant say stop selling rf1, but either this or that way, there is a situtation in hand that a considerable amount of your customers see as a problem: lack of online players. be it a sim or an arcade, online players are not that much for a 2 year product. We knew it was beta when we first bought it, but what would you think or expect or hope as a customer when you were buying this game 2 years ago, being an rf1 player for some time?

    I wasnt expecting this.

    (anyone: please dont say stop playing it!)
     
  18. 88mphTim

    88mphTim racesimcentral.net

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    We're going to do what we can. Badgering people (as the OP comes across) isn't going to get information on that. I'd expect things to increase if I were a customer, and they are. Probably not as fast as you would want, I understand that.
     
  19. costamesa

    costamesa Registered

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    That's the kind of answer I hoped to see. People are "pushing" the developers because they didn't get any "constructive" responds to their problem. At least I didn't come across to this kind of reply up to now.
     
  20. Domi

    Domi Registered

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    Your main issue is that rF2 makes rF1 very strong.
     

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