Steam Summer Sale 2020!

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@hitm4k3r it's not always good for everyone in life. This time new customers are getting taking care of. Who says S397 won't return to previous combos after this summer sale is over? Maybe they will, maybe they won't. Who knows? Thats why as a true supporter you should never gamble on discounts/sales and just buy the content when it's released. I understand why you are upset, but maybe your expectations were set too high for this sale.
 
I have to somewhat rescind my previous comment. I didn't realise some existing packs were removed, thought these were additional packs.

I can handle missing a discount or someone getting a better discount than I had afterwards, but if I have to spend more than the original full pack price to complete a set (haven't done the math yet) that would kind of suck.

There is obviously a lot of confusion about pack content and reducing the number of packs will assist there, and I'm not sure how you would best reconcile that, but I don't think this is it.
 
I should point out, that rFactor2 itself is on sale for 15bucks. Cue the wailing and lamentations. Great price to entice new users onto the platform, specially when ACC was near 50$$. One bit of advice if you are going to recommend it to a friend, please please please, make sure they have a fairly new and stout computer first. Granny's ol 386SX just won't do rF2!
 
Been reasonably quiet and come back to my second favourite topic. Content package system.... I don't know how you have managed to turn a confusing and fragmented system into a more confusing system, but you have. Removal of previous packs??? An endurance car not part of the Endurance pack just because it's new???

For a new user all well and good right now, but the fragmentation will come again when the Ferrari GT3 and the postponed unknown car is released(my money is still on Toyota Hypercar). Will another pack get hastily thrown together then???
For an existing user that is away from the game and misses this sale(work, life etc), this is an absolute sh#tshow to come back to.

I've said it since the talk of paid content was first announced, without a one car, one circuit entry to servers; playerbase fragmentation and frustration with the package system will continue and increase with every new release. A quick glance at Discord this morning and it is even being discussed there...

At this stage, the only sensible option is to remove all packs and just have one button in Item store saying "How much this time to keep up to date" (Sarcasm of course). But removing packs and applying sale to single items makes more sense than what you are trying to do here.

Seriously though, with the current packaging system I can't see player base increase for any meaningful time even with whatever competition system comes along.

And just for my own personal wishes....still no dev tools, documentation etc ????

We really need to hear some official word on the direction of all of this.
 
I'm just glad that they have discounts during the summer and winter, so I get a chance to decide if these other cars/tracks that I usually do not care about are worth buying at a lower price.

While I can understand the irritation for duplicate buys, I just imagine it the same way I handle buying collectors' edition of movies. I have multiple copies of the newer James Bond, Jurrasic Park, Mission Impossible, and so on, simply because I bought a standalone BD/download and when they repackage to include an entire set (at a much lower per movie price), I end up buying that new set, wasting my earlier copy which I bought at a higher price. My choice would have been to wait for the eventual packaged set, but as a consumer, I do not know when that would happen, and wanted to enjoy the standalone movie early. The studios can probably check that I already own the standalone movies, but they just charge the full price anyway. So it is similar here.
 
Like some others here have already mentioned, I was waiting for the sale to round out my content, only to find that it's been blended in with content I already own which comes at a higher price.

The new packages are great for newcomers which is a good thing, but in my case I'll have to pass on buying anything this time around which is a shame.

I'd like to support this great sim but I can't afford to throw money away on double purchases :(
 
I think S397 have dropped the ball in two areas in particular, the unannounced removal of the Too-Strong pack and not including the Ferrari in the GTE pack.

From the comfort of my chair I can say (with full confidence) that it may have been better for S397 to announce that the Too-Strong pack would be discontinued when the Summer Sale started; thus allowing everyone to purchase the (soon to be) black-flagged DLC in advance of the sale. Peace and harmony would, in turn, have continued to flourish on this forum.

Lazily looking out over the fields as the rain begins to fall, I can say without any shadow of a doubt, that S397 'ought/should' have included the Ferraira in the GTE pack, and increased the price of the pack by the cost of the Ferarria; now the GTE pack is a fully functional GTE pack, leaving us all ready to race when ready.

Building on this, I think (and I can't be alone in this) I think that one of the main issues caused by the packs is not so much the way the costing is broken down now (though I recognise that is an issue for some), but the fact you cannot race online unless you have all of the content; this is a major failing, I can buy the new GTE pack but cannot race on your server because you have the Ferrari.

In this instance, I can find agreement with the sentiment that players are 'forced' to buy content. Yes it can be argued that the Ferrari is less than the cost of a cup of artisanal-coffee in Shoreditch, and yes it can be argued that 'as a supporter of the game' you should be willing to buy that content...but supporting a game is hard when the game is effectively forcing you to buy content, and with money that you may have chosen to spend on a cup of over-priced coffee.

You may have no interest in buying the Ferrari, but because you have to own it to run on a server that is running it you have to buy; and yes, if you want to race with friends or in leagues you do have to buy it; it's an arbitrary restriction and it needs to be removed. I think it's this 'necessity' to own content that is a point of friction during this sale.

Allowing players to race against content they don't own is (imo) a glaring omission/fault and it is maybe time (with COVID/The Race/24-L
M etc) for that omission to be addressed.
 
I understand why they can't discount packs for users who own some of the content, because of the way they 'abuse' Steam's item store which is basically designed for consumable items and not for DLC cars. But removing existing bundles (GT3 Challengers pack) only to offer a worse deal for those who already owned the original GT3 pack, that's on S397. Sucks they won't see my money this time around - RaceRoom, it is.
 
Gasper Zupan said:
@hitm4k3r it's not always good for everyone in life. This time new customers are getting taking care of. Who says S397 won't return to previous combos after this summer sale is over? Maybe they will, maybe they won't. Who knows? Thats why as a true supporter you should never gamble on discounts/sales and just buy the content when it's released. I understand why you are upset, but maybe your expectations were set too high for this sale.
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Again, I have no issues if people get content cheaper than I have. Also read Lazza's comment if you don't understand the issue. This happens on a regular base, especialy if you buy content instantly at release. You can offer a system that doesn't offer any gain or loss for early buyers, you can have a system that offers gain for newcomers and earlier buyers, but what you shouldn't ever do is penalizing people who have bought your content earlier. And this is what has happened here. I have allways supported the pricing and item distribution and recommended people to wait on a sale if they aren't sure, because the content isn't that cheap initialy and it gave me the option to build the game to my liking (I bought stuff that really interested me early like the Cup Car and avoided stuff like the FE content). So now I should give the advice to people not to wait on sales? This makes zero sense.

And it's even more frustrating as people who allready owned content before might buy nothing at all during this sale and with the current situation and where the sim is S397 can't afford to penalize those people as it is basicly lost money. As said, with the removal of the Two Strong pack I am on the lucky end because I would have to pay only one Euro more. But what happens to someone who missed one of the packs that were 15 Euro before. Now add to that the astronomical exchange rates for some parts of this world and you get a system that get's even more frustrating. I can only hope that S397 brings back the old packs asap (normal or discount price doesn't matter) so that the confusion and frustration get's resolved as fast as possible, because this is how you shoot yourself in the foot. I have never seen Kunos reshuffling their DLCs and selling stuff more expensive at the end. Hell, they are offering a Ultimate Edition for 25 bucks (laughable 8,99 now with 88% discount) wich sells like sliced bread. Why not sell a Le Mans Edition/Endurance edition of rF2 for 25 with every piece of content that was shown in the stream so that people can relate to it and leave everything esle as is? Making this an attractive sale for everyone could have been so easy and especialy with the success of Le Mans this once again feels like a lost opportunity. :(

@rafnix Consider that you can add skins from the community afterwards and that there will most likely tons of skins in the future before refunding the car.
 
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@likes_simracing I've said the same in the past regarding single cars that then get merged into packs. You pay a bit more to have it immediately.

To carry your film example forward, you've bought your James Bond set (let's say 5 movies) a while back and are just missing the 2 newest ones, there's a 2-pack with those which you're thinking of getting but haven't pulled the trigger yet, and there's a sale coming (the pack is less than half what you paid for the set, normal price). Today you wake up and the 2-pack no longer exists, you can either buy those 2 full price (which totals 2/3 as much as the set you already bought) or buy the entire pack, while it's on sale for 2/3 the price of the set you own. You could wait and see what happens after the sale but that full pack then jumps in price so buying the 2 new ones in full might be your only option. Or just don't bother.

That's a fair kind of jump.

2 reasons this becomes an issue:
  • as mentioned above, you need all these to race (er... watch? :cool:) with others who have them all,
  • this sort of thing might go unnoticed if all the established players generally all got all the content when it came out, but we're still waiting for a competition system to come online to promote an active online environment and the promotional servers that go up with the release of new content tend to be best populated at times that don't suit some of us (hello Australia).
Hey, it is what it is. If it stays this way then that will have some effect on sales, but for new players it's a bit less confusing. I'm not that familiar with all the endurance cars so it takes me 10 mins comparing my previous purchase (thankfully just the one, so it's all in one place) with the current pack listings, one by one, to work out what I already have and what's 'missing'. I also bought the Endurance pack at 33% off I think so it's only a dollar either way (buying the 2-pack a day ago, or buying the cars separately now), but the reason I bought it on sale is because they're not really my type of cars and I didn't see myself racing anywhere with them (and I haven't). To now complete the set and effectively pay full price doesn't really seem to make sense. So I'll likely not, and therefore not race anywhere that's doing the whole pack.
 
@hitm4k3r
Nobody missed any GT3 packs man.. what are you talking about? Packs were always there to buy, people simply did not buy it - for various reasons I guess. Some of them probably gambled on sales and this time they lost. And now it's Studio 397's fault? How is that? People get fixed ideas into their head and predict things that are not on them to predict and then get all fired up when it doesn't play their way. And again.. Do you really consider yourself "a long time supporter" with waiting to get a discount on €8 two cars pack. Please tell me.. how much discount did you aim for? 50% (€4)? You can easily earn €4 in one hour of work. How much time did you spend reading/responding to this thread here? This is pathetic, really :)
 
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Gasper Zupan said:
@hitm4k3r
Nobody missed any GT3 packs man.. what are you talking about? Packs were always there to buy, people simple did not buy it - for various reasons I guess. Some of them probably gambled on sales and this time they lost. And now it's Studio 397's fault? How is that? People get fixed ideas into their head and predict things that are not on them to predict and then get all fired up when it doesn't play their way. And again.. Do you really consider yourself "a long time supporter" with waiting to get a discount on €8 two cars pack. Please tell me.. how much discount did you aim for? 50% (€4)? You can easily earn €4 in one hour of work. How much time did you spend reading/responding to this thread here? This is pathetic, really :)
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See, I think I have made my point pretty clear and I am sure reading the comments here - and I suspect Discord won't be any different - that I am not the only one facing this issue. Be glad that the article about this "Sale" isn't on RD yet because I predict a sh*tstorm. What is the point of a "SALE" if I have to buy stuff for more money as a result? Can you explain that to me? Are you sure that you have understood what the point of the summer sale is? Is it really the point to sell your content more expensive to a part of your userbase? And it's not how this affects me - because I can spend a few more bucks easily as I am on the lucky side of this world - but how it affects how people see the Studio and what damage it does to the image of the people who try to sell this product? Once the comp system comes I want to race with people and I suspect you too. So where are people gonna spend their money? On a sim that reshuffles their DLCs packs and penalizes customers and costs over 50 bucks in the sale or a sim that get's sold for 8,99 with tons of cars and tracks and a wide range of mod content? It's quite simply, isn't it?
 
Gasper Zupan said:
Then go and buy that product for €8,99 and stop crying :) but don't consider yourself a supporter when buying content on sale..
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I am not crying by any means, because I can afford it and I have bought enough content that was not on sale. I even would be fine if the Two Strong Pack was offered for it's normal price (See the Kartsim european track pack). I am just trying to point out that there is a severe issue and that S397 needs to fix it, simple as that. We aren't dealing with a wellfare organisation here and I don't understand the "supporter" phrase as you seem to understand it because I spend my hard earned money on content that I consider attractive with a nice quality/price ratio. It's a business that has to run and you can twist and turn it how you like, this won't help S397 to flood the servers with people because it actually damages them and the image of their product, and not you or me.
 
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