They're paying it cause there is no free demo, so they're basicaly paying to see is it good or not...
I'm glad you see that as a good thing, cause i definately don't..
They're paying it cause there is no free demo, so they're basicaly paying to see is it good or not...
I'm glad you see that as a good thing, cause i definately don't..
Personally I think the pricing should be adjusted.
1. Buy a licence - this costs $20, and gives you the most basic package, which you can use offline only, although you still need to start it in the same way, and you still need to be 'online' to use to enable all the crack protections that may or may not exist. Yes people will still complain they can't play without an internet connection, but these days always-on internet connections are probably the majority by a long way.
2. Buy your addons - £xx depending on what it is, be it tracks, cars or other stuff in the future, like advanced plugins.
3. Buy a subscription to use it online, using similar pricing models. You can only play online with other humans if you pay this fee. The fee has a fixed base rate, but can be increased depending on what addons you have - the Formula Mazda might only be an extra dollar per month, whilst an F1 car might be an extra $10 per month. Obviously you should only pay for the most expensive addon you have in this section, otherwise people will end up paying too much.
4. There should also be a single vehicle, single track demo (perhaps you can even choose which car/track it is from a number of possibilities, so a tin-top lover doesn't get a single seater to try, and vice versa
This way people can try it for free, and pay a fair rate depending on their usage. IF you only ever want to hotlap offline I think it should be a free option. But if you want to have every addon and subscribe forever it should cost a bit more. The pricing would be scaled to fit the user, and makes things fair.
It's not the subscription that people are upset by, it's the fact that to enjoy the game on your own, with no AI and very basic cars still bleeds your wallet dry. I would still prefer to have a blast for 10 minutes after work on my own for a one-off fee than have to pay to be able to have the choice.
And WoW isn't a fair example, as there isn't much to do offline, but in a car sim there is.
I still want to try it, but I expect I'll only ever buy a single months subscription. If it's REALLY GOOD I still doubt I'll pay more, but at least I'll know if it's any good or not...
1. Buy a licence - this costs $20, and gives you the most basic package, which you can use offline only, although you still need to start it in the same way, and you still need to be 'online' to use to enable all the crack protections that may or may not exist. Yes people will still complain they can't play without an internet connection, but these days always-on internet connections are probably the majority by a long way.
2. Buy your addons - £xx depending on what it is, be it tracks, cars or other stuff in the future, like advanced plugins.
3. Buy a subscription to use it online, using similar pricing models. You can only play online with other humans if you pay this fee. The fee has a fixed base rate, but can be increased depending on what addons you have - the Formula Mazda might only be an extra dollar per month, whilst an F1 car might be an extra $10 per month. Obviously you should only pay for the most expensive addon you have in this section, otherwise people will end up paying too much.
4. There should also be a single vehicle, single track demo (perhaps you can even choose which car/track it is from a number of possibilities, so a tin-top lover doesn't get a single seater to try, and vice versa
This way people can try it for free, and pay a fair rate depending on their usage. IF you only ever want to hotlap offline I think it should be a free option. But if you want to have every addon and subscribe forever it should cost a bit more. The pricing would be scaled to fit the user, and makes things fair.
It's not the subscription that people are upset by, it's the fact that to enjoy the game on your own, with no AI and very basic cars still bleeds your wallet dry. I would still prefer to have a blast for 10 minutes after work on my own for a one-off fee than have to pay to be able to have the choice.
And WoW isn't a fair example, as there isn't much to do offline, but in a car sim there is.
I still want to try it, but I expect I'll only ever buy a single months subscription. If it's REALLY GOOD I still doubt I'll pay more, but at least I'll know if it's any good or not...
Doesn't really matter if I see it as a good or bad thing, they have set out their stall, so it's up to them what they charge, simple really
Tristan nailed it..
I tried, pretty hard infact, to tell them the errors of their ways about the lack of free demo during the beta period, but they were adamant they don't want/need to offer a free demo
Yeah, same here.
Seems so far that they were somehow right. :P
Seems so far that they were somehow right. :P
No. Not so simple. That they have set out their stall & that you have decided to pay, does not make it wrong, meaningless, or futile for others to voice their dissent. Things that are 'choices' have a nasty habit of becoming 'the norm' when markets are left to their own devices.
What will you think when it becomes difficult to find a word processor that isn't rented to you (via monthly debited fees that you have to cancel)? It may seem an unlikely prospect, but a shrugging emoticon is the least likely way of guaranteeing that the choices we have remain diverse.
Personally I'd much rather pay by the race or time in the sim, personally I'm not going to subscribe to it on a routine basis because apart from the cost of it and having to race things I don't want to race or pay for to get to the cars and tracks I'm interested in I simply don't have enough free time and there are times when I won't touch racing sims.
You're voicing your protest by not paying.
That's how the market has always worked.
Although it seems quite common today to blame pirates for bad selling products...
Thanks to Dajmin (and offers from others) I now have a code, and iRacing is currently downloading after given them $20... When I get a chance to give it a whirl (probably on Tuesday) I'll do so, and see what I think... No preconceptions, other than those real life has given me 
Looking forward to the review 
Dumb question, but what is a debit card? Here in Austria at least the most commonly used card type are ATM cards. Online stuff is generally paid for via bank transfer.
Dumb question, but what is a debit card? Here in Austria at least the most commonly used card type are ATM cards. Online stuff is generally paid for via bank transfer.
You speak as if 'the market' is a organism devoid of individual components... uh, sorry... that should read individual 'people'. Markets depend on various levels of communication: that's how people have always worked.
Credit card - you pay using money you don't have, and then pay it back later. A lot of people have them. All stupid/poor people have them.
Debit card - you pay using money from your bank account directly, essentially by bank transfer.
Except I haven't paid, I didn't think it was worth me spending the money on something I couldn't give my full attention.
Voice your dissent, it makes no difference, they have decided to charge what they charge, and it's seems that the take up so far has exceeded their expectations
@ Tristan, would be very interested to hear what you think, it's gonna go one of two ways
I do tend to be a love or hate guy, but I'll try and be fair, unbiased and reasonable. Honest.
LMAO, I am sure you will 
There've been monthly-fee online games for years, the consoles are doing it too, if there's some element of service involved then people will try to charge it as a service.
I don't like the pricing, particularly. The monthly fee I can deal with because the US dollar is like monopoly money right now, but paying extra for cars and tracks seems a bit rich (no pun intended). But as has already been pointed out, I can simply not buy them, or cancel my subscription if I think I'm not getting value for money. Wish I could do that with the Inland Revenue.
If the product succeeds, the price is right. If the market says no then it isn't. It's not like anyone's life depends on an affordable online racing sim anyway - hardly scandalous if they price it beyond the reach of some gamers.
Exactly, with the way we Brits are being bent over and shafted willy and indeed nilly with overpriced food, fuel, taxes, housing blah blah blah, it's seem a bit mental to get all upty over the pricing of a racing sim
Well, I haven't been able to do a proper race yet, but from what I've driven, it feels very awesome. The solstice is loads of fun around Lime Rock, and the legends car is a blast (try using the advanced one in a test drive, change setup to be symetrical (36 PSI all around, reduce stagger to .000)) and then take it to a road course. Laguna Seca with legends car is fun.
Here is the moan I promised:
Well, I just did my first race with the solstice and came 2nd. (I could have won it but I managed to epic-fail the start). Anyways, it looks now that there is no point (literally) for me to do another race on this week because the results are averaged. So I'd need to win or be 2nd to make the race worthwhile for points. And that's very unlikely because I'm most probably going to be pitted against much faster guys on the next race.
No reason to do it for the irating and ttrating, you can get those from time trialing without any risk of losing points. Great intentive iracing, keep people away from racing so they can keep their points!
But then again I don't even know what good those points do for me. Cool, I winnared teh a championship, what do I get? Uhm...? Some text in my résume? "every race is a league race"
(having another road course combo to drive than just the solstice on lime rock would be healthy too)
Not that I'll be racing anytime soon anyways. The races seem to be every two hours and I have no idea why it is like that. On my race there was about 70 people "registered" for the event. Even if that was halved to 36 it would still be 6 full grids with the iracing system. And I'm sure there would be actually more people online if there were more races. And from what I've read this is the result of the evolution of four years of development...
The bestest epic fail of the system is you need to wait for a normal public practise too. Just few minutes, but still that's just stupid. Why not let people start instantly some public practises where you can actually drive online with other cars? (Private practise sessions start instantly simply by pressing a button but you'll be driving alone.)
The online interface looks very pretty and all but so far it feels like it's been designed just to do that, look pretty. If I want to switch from the solstice to the legend and look for races with that I need to do way too many disambigous click all around the menus to get the car changed. And I still haven't found a way to see how many laps there is in the race without registering for the event. And it isn't even clear to me yet what happens if I accidentally register for an event not does it really say clearly anywhere if I have registered for a series.
The person who designed the ui must have been some kind of byrocrat. Only a government official can create so many links and a strange mix of buttons that really do nothing you'd expect. The way the ui is done (the ui being handled by a new browser) is just fine, it works well period. But there is nothing in the system that makes it easy or quick to use.
As to positive points, everything has been working flawlessly so far. No discos, no anomalies with cars jumping on track, disappearing, crashes or oddities of any kind. The loading times are quick and the sim looks and plays ok on my low-end machine (3500AMD64, 7800GT, 2gigs ram). There is small amount of steering lag but it's not really an issue with the solstice. (Must be some epic fail on my end as I seem to be getting more steering lag than anyone else in all sims though. )The cars and the tracks are very nice to drive, there is a lot of character in them and finding the good line through a corner is so much more than just braking at point a and getting back on power at b like in LFS. The character richness of the tracks is not because of laser scanning, they just have good bumps, cambers and other small details which is something too rarely seen done well in any sim, or at all. It has been enjoyable for the first day (:tilt but I'm thinking how quickly the freshness and neweness wears off as there isn't much to do most of the time...
Hmm, there is a race in 15 minutes. If I spent an hour making long posts I'd cut down the waiting time a lot between the races
(sounds like a plan)
Well, I just did my first race with the solstice and came 2nd. (I could have won it but I managed to epic-fail the start). Anyways, it looks now that there is no point (literally) for me to do another race on this week because the results are averaged. So I'd need to win or be 2nd to make the race worthwhile for points. And that's very unlikely because I'm most probably going to be pitted against much faster guys on the next race.
No reason to do it for the irating and ttrating, you can get those from time trialing without any risk of losing points. Great intentive iracing, keep people away from racing so they can keep their points!
But then again I don't even know what good those points do for me. Cool, I winnared teh a championship, what do I get? Uhm...? Some text in my résume? "every race is a league race"
(having another road course combo to drive than just the solstice on lime rock would be healthy too)
Not that I'll be racing anytime soon anyways. The races seem to be every two hours and I have no idea why it is like that. On my race there was about 70 people "registered" for the event. Even if that was halved to 36 it would still be 6 full grids with the iracing system. And I'm sure there would be actually more people online if there were more races. And from what I've read this is the result of the evolution of four years of development...
The bestest epic fail of the system is you need to wait for a normal public practise too. Just few minutes, but still that's just stupid. Why not let people start instantly some public practises where you can actually drive online with other cars? (Private practise sessions start instantly simply by pressing a button but you'll be driving alone.)
The online interface looks very pretty and all but so far it feels like it's been designed just to do that, look pretty. If I want to switch from the solstice to the legend and look for races with that I need to do way too many disambigous click all around the menus to get the car changed. And I still haven't found a way to see how many laps there is in the race without registering for the event. And it isn't even clear to me yet what happens if I accidentally register for an event not does it really say clearly anywhere if I have registered for a series.
The person who designed the ui must have been some kind of byrocrat. Only a government official can create so many links and a strange mix of buttons that really do nothing you'd expect. The way the ui is done (the ui being handled by a new browser) is just fine, it works well period. But there is nothing in the system that makes it easy or quick to use.
As to positive points, everything has been working flawlessly so far. No discos, no anomalies with cars jumping on track, disappearing, crashes or oddities of any kind. The loading times are quick and the sim looks and plays ok on my low-end machine (3500AMD64, 7800GT, 2gigs ram). There is small amount of steering lag but it's not really an issue with the solstice. (Must be some epic fail on my end as I seem to be getting more steering lag than anyone else in all sims though. )The cars and the tracks are very nice to drive, there is a lot of character in them and finding the good line through a corner is so much more than just braking at point a and getting back on power at b like in LFS. The character richness of the tracks is not because of laser scanning, they just have good bumps, cambers and other small details which is something too rarely seen done well in any sim, or at all
. It has been enjoyable for the first day (:tilt but I'm thinking how quickly the freshness and neweness wears off as there isn't much to do most of the time...Hmm, there is a race in 15 minutes. If I spent an hour making long posts I'd cut down the waiting time a lot between the races
(sounds like a plan)I just need to stop being at GF's house and I'd race more.
First up: Is everybody driving the "Rookie" Solstice at Lime Rock? And if so, are you changing the setup at all? I can't get better than a 1:06.9 around there and the guys in my race last night were doing 1:04s. Is the "Other" Solstice a different car or do I just suck at this?
iRritating.
Last night I did have one car infront of me disappear, and when he reappeared his car was bouncing a bit, but apart from that it's all looked solid to me.
FTR my core 2 6600 / 2Gb / 8800GTS was auto-set at 1680x1050 with 4xAA, 8xAF and I haven't noticed any frame rate issues. Last night I was playing it with a mail client, Photoshop, a bunch of browsers and editors open in the background and it didn't seem to mind.
iRritating.
Last night I did have one car infront of me disappear, and when he reappeared his car was bouncing a bit, but apart from that it's all looked solid to me.
FTR my core 2 6600 / 2Gb / 8800GTS was auto-set at 1680x1050 with 4xAA, 8xAF and I haven't noticed any frame rate issues. Last night I was playing it with a mail client, Photoshop, a bunch of browsers and editors open in the background and it didn't seem to mind.
I've just missed the Solstice race so I'm going to qualify instead, stupidly the sessions are put at 10 past the hour so lots of people haven't qualified because they're racing instead.
My third race ended on the second lap at the first corner where my brakes jammed on and I went straight into the wall, I'm not sure whether this is an iRacing or controller issue, but I've never had them jamming on mid session in any other sim.
My third race ended on the second lap at the first corner where my brakes jammed on and I went straight into the wall, I'm not sure whether this is an iRacing or controller issue, but I've never had them jamming on mid session in any other sim.
When Laguna finishes downloading I'm going to have 5 or 10 minutes (hopefully) with the Solstice (masculinity means I can't click on things that say "rookie" (read: noob)). I know the track (from other sims and watching on TV), so it's a better comparison to reality for me than a strange track I've never seen.
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