Personally, I think it's too expensive as it is and they need more payment
plans. I don't mind paying for the content but i think the monthly sub is
too high, especially if you don't get much time a month to race.

A pay-as-you-race scheme would capture a whole swath of new people, imo.

Any thoughts?

dfg.myass@aol (David Fisher's Left Testicle) wrote:

If we could buy just the content we want, and race it when and in whatever
combination we want, with whoever we want, I would happily pay the existing costs.
Heck, I might even pay more!

What still hurts is paying good money to be forced into combinations I'd prefer not
to race on/in. (Well, obviously nobody's forcing anyone, but you know what I mean).
Often I join races I don't really want to just because I'd prefer to race with a
full(er) field in a race which splits rather than a half empty field in one which
doesn't.

If iRacing was about half the cost I'd buy everything, sign up forever and just get
on with it even with the restrictions and frustrations. The trick is justifying
that 100% extra cost beyond what I'm comfortable paying for this kind of hobby,
racing against random names.

Comparing the cost to real world hobbies & activities is fine. But the real
comparison will always be with products which are most similar... that's the way
real world hobbies work too.

At the moment iRacing seems just about (ish!) justifiable to me because it feels
like such a more satisfying driving experience than the other sims I have. But I
don't expect that situation to stay static. I'm not so attached to online racing
against strangers that I won't be lured away by an offline sim which can give me
the same driving kick.

Andrew McP

That's called rFactor or GTR.

If what you want is online racing, then Live For Speed is probably the
best bet, as they still reach a peak of 1000 players online at a time.
The tracks are fantasy tracks, and only a few of the cars
resemble real cars, but you're not stuck with the boring Soltice
for months while waiting to advance to the next level.

After this many years of racing, the realism factor has gone beyond
the point of no return as what the various game makers consider
"realistic". The SRF's lift throttle oversteer seems exaggerated.
The Legend's power induces oversteer also exaggerated. The Radical
is fun, but how much time and money do you spend with the boring
cars until you can use the Radical?

hoover wrote:

Funny enough that is why I support the iRacing model. I would have
gladly paid ISI for major updates to rFactor. Even more so I felt denied
the opportunity to pay Papyrus for developments to GPL due to what I saw
as constraints by publishers and eventual marketing decision that
Papyrus didn't fit into their strategy.

Watching these products fail to develop due to the publishing model
limiting funding has been a source of frustration to me. With the one
exception of NR2003 sim racing titles have had little or no resale
value, they just become obsolete titles to the majority.

Having a major developer without the constraints of a publisher with the
initial funding to aim big is massive for sim racing in my view. I hope
it can break the mould of sim racing distribution and we can look
forward to an accelerated development path which we can invest in rather
than the relatively poor overall gain we have made this decade.

Cheers
Tony

"Tony R" <tony.rickardno (AT) spam (DOT) blueyonder.co.uk> wrote


Well, yeah. But what have we seen so far? Basically, one, so far, fucked up
opportunity, imo.