Except we already have a pile of free tracks and ton of free cars with tons more on the way that we can use even if the internet goes down . Also S397 have made it very clear that plenty of free content will still be produced. I'm guessing only licensed stuff will sometimes cost a pizza ..add to all that no yearly subscription
I'm going to quote a post I made on our league's website. "I am curious about the 5 Euros for the car. Is that for the single car or is it for the larger "GT Pack". Frankly, I see the web based UI being part of a bigger iRacing Style competition setup. For me at least this is a step in the right direction, so long as they don't make the same mistakes that iRacing has with its subscription model. What do most people say about iRacing? It is a great service and typically a driver can find a race in the most popular classes they want to drive whenever they want. What turns most drivers off and keeps them from continuing to use the service? It's not the safety system. It is not the license system. Its not even the generally immature voice comms screaming vulgarities into your ears. No folks, while all those things have their annoying parts, by far the number one reason people stop playing iRacing is having to pay for both content AND a subscription. rF2 proved beyond a doubt that rF2 users are not willing to pay a subscription model for sub par online activity. Lets face it, unless you were in a league the online racing in rF2 was spotty at best. This was a major criticism of rF2 from the beginning. People were simply not interested in paying a miserly yearly fee of $12.00 to continue to race online. I don't blame rF2 users for this attitude, especially when AC offered pretty good online activity included in the initial purchase. Another thing AC proved is that people are willing to purchase DLC. I will admit though that I am super frugal with my gaming money and I did not purchase any of the DLC. As the DLC packs came out they did not offer me a compelling reason to buy them. They included way too many road cars I didn't care about. They offered tracks I didn't care about. Also I could not race on any server that had ANY DLC I didn't own. This was another turn off for me. By the time AC was offering decent race cars in their DLC and the ability to race on servers with unowned content I had already stopped playing AC. If rF2 offers DLC that is compelling I will buy it. Obviously I will buy DLC that the league will be using for the server, but above that, if S397 puts together DLC packs that make sense like F1 packs, GT3 Packs, Supercar V8 Packs, Etc I will be much more likely to buy it. In short, S397 could hit a home run if they offered the iRacing experience with the rF2 physics, FFB, and high quality drivers, but then did in in a way that doesn't break the bank. Charging a fee for content, inexpensive series based packs, series based track packs, Etc, and then allowing for online play without the subscription would be the best of both worlds. Selling only content would both help pay the bills and allow for the user base to not be locked out of the content they purchase because they dont want to continue to pay the additional costs of a sub. I think S397 is on the road to this exact scenario and I for one am wholly on board. I wish them nothing but the best of success. To have a truly affordable version of iRacing would be amazing. The end users of both games would benefit when iRacing has to drop their subs or the cost of their content from their currently sky high rates. rF2 users would benefit from a large influx of new users when people start to realize rF2 is the new affordable iRacing. In short, Bring it on. I am willing to spend money on this service."
Well spoken great video. If you want to race with some Aussie here is a link. http://www.hardcoreonlinegaming.com/index.php/en/
The fact of the matter is that S397 has to make money somehow. This seems to be the best way for them to provide their customers the best services and game possible and still be able to make some profit. Many of us celebrating it are simply the ones who understand the necessity. You may not feel it is necessary.
Next Thread to lock. How high was the yearly online fee? How many DLCs can you buy for that? Do you have stock content and mods? Do you want ongoing development for this game? This is getting utterly ridiculous.
I only race as a social player like old dog so organised comps for whole seasons are not my interest. So long as I still have the choice to race with friends on my own server or theirs for free, I will be happy.
I pay 50-60 USD for a single plane or helicopter for DCS world. therefore i often feel guilty for playing rf2 for "free". 5 USD sounds about right amount for a single car. as someone said they need to get paid somehow. i say that with reservation tough. there hasn't been 1 car made by 397 that i would have paid for that amount so far. therefore if there would be a "test for free" for 2 days, i would accept even higher price, say 10-15 USD. because if i like it i'll drive it enough that the price for hours playd is going to be ridiculousy low anyway. but paying 5 USD every time a new car comes out, just to find that it's not your cup of tea, is not for me, i dont have that much extra money laying around. With DCS world modules i know what im getting beforehand. knowing that just learning to operate a new plane fully is going to take me months. learning to master it is going to take years. and the modelling...just the variety of ways to be able to brake your aircraft is in itself allmost worth the money so that 50 USD doesnt sound that bad after all. with games in general, for me, the price for hours playd is where the value is, not the price that you pay for to get it. that's why i never had a problem with the annual online subscription. If i would get what I want for this sim, i mean the car modelling (the list is looong) i'd pay the same 50 USD for a car, but that is not happening anywhere in the near future, so i dont even dare to dream about it. I restrict my dreams for a transmission model for now...
$10-15 would be too much for a single car. I used to race over at Simraceway. Seems like forever ago now, but they initially had a pricing model that had people buying cars for over $10 for a road car. the most expensive car I recall was the McLaren MP4 F1 car. $27.00. Outrageous. Especially for a car you could not ever actually race because of how poorly organized the race servers were. See anyone racing there now? (The service is still up, but being held together by a fanatically insane moderator and a small handful of diehard supporters.) For rF2 to succeed in the pay for content game they need to find the sweet spot of price for value. $5.00 for the McLaren seems reasonable for the first piece of content.
I personally wouldn't have a problem if they charged several times more than $5 for a vintage F1 car from the sixties, like the Brabham. By choosing a modern GT car they are largely targeting a younger audience. The GT races were always the most popular in iRacing, so I understand their decision, although it's questionable whether it was the correct decision. By targeting a younger audience they are targeting a client base which typically has less disposable income than older users. As we age, the price of games becomes ever less expensive compared to other expences. A single night out in London for example would pretty much pay for rFactor several times over. This is why I feel development on classic F1 cars would not just fill a gap in the sim market, but also would attract older buyers who would gladly pay for a historically accurate F1 car which would not just result in higher revenue for the developers but also result in fewer childish complaints regarding the pricing that we've seen (both on this forum and on the recent Steam reviews) which come with developing and selling modern GT cars.