I just purchased the Endurance pack. I had some of the items included in this DLC from previous DLCs that I bought previously so... why I have to pay again for paid items that I own on my steam inventory? Regards.
It is a technical limitation of how the game was originally coded by ISI long before DLC was a thing. Meant as an Anti-cheat function that would ensure all the users were using the same cars.(memory hacks were common back then). But now, your can't turn any of them back in, Don't bother arguing, this is a topic that is years and years old. The package prices are discounted to make up for that, especially during sale periods that end tomorrow at 75% off.
Dave you're thinking of how the game requires you to own all the cars if you want to race on a server that is running those cars. But because of that requirement, S397 wanted to make cars that were likely to be raced together to be available in packs at a discount. Then as new cars were released, some individually, some in packs, people complained that all the cars were not together in one pack. So S397 started adding the cars to the packs. For example, they combined 2 of the GT3 packs into one and then started adding newly released GT3 cars into that pack. Inevitably, people bought individual items or packs before they were combined or added to and now are in a situation like the OP where they buy a pack and already own some of the items in that pack and buy the item twice with no discount for already owning it. Apparently that is a limitation of the Steam item store, which is what Steam recommended to S397 when they were setting up to sell DLC and having it compatible with the workshop. The new in-game store helps to some degree, but it still requires purchasers to check what they own, what they want to buy and what is the best deal. But if Steam can't give discounts on items in packs that are already owned, then I think it is in S397s interest to convert items to DLC, which Steam can discount.
Unfortunately that is a limitation of the Steam item store. You'll need to decide if it's worth it to get the discount on the items you didn't already own taking into account that you bought the pack with a 50% discount which is about as good as it gets. Otherwise you can request a refund from Steam. If you do it right away and mention that you already own some of the items and didn't get a discount for owning them, you should be able to get the refund.
Yes I was thinking online because that is the only area that REQUIRES you have content that matches the server. If you want to race offline then it doesn't matter if you have all the cars or not. The cost reduction of the packages, at regular prices is usually worth about 3 or 4 cars, when on sale it is much more, that should make up for duplicates. I will admit though, it rewards those who purchase new content when it's released. They don't have to worry about duplicate purchases.
The problem is that I can only get a refund for the new DLC pack, not specific items, so if I get the refund, I lose all the items in it... including the ones I don't own...
Packs are packs, you want them or not. You can buy the items individually. If you don't want to pay twice for something then buy the individual items. It's easy.
If you refund the pack, you should still have the individual cars that you previously purchased that were also in the pack. I don't know if that's the case because I haven't done it or heard about anyone who has. It's possible that you would since your inventory won't show the duplicate purchases but your purchase history will. I don't know how many cars were a duplicate purchase for you. It may have been cheaper to buy the pack at 50% off or to buy the individual cars that you were missing at full price.
Your steam inventory will show multiple 'copies' of the items you've effectively bought twice. Refunding the pack should still leave you with a single copy of those items. (the game won't have done anything with that item when you bought it again, and it won't do anything when you remove the extra copy)
