Incentive for all players to increase their ratings

Hey go easy on me. I did read your post and I might no get a chance to reply for a while cause I’m going for a bike ride now.
But the way I read what you wrote is that people want iRacing for free and I say: yeah.
Not me, I am paying for iRacing therefore I would be happy to pay twice the subscription for ACC.
But the expectation of properly organised online play is really the market that sets it. We might argue it’s not a realistic expectation for these genre of game because of the rather limited user base, but then I don’t think Kunos would really get to the point of having to close business because of winning the popularity contest.

Plus look at the iRacing Porsche World Cup prize: 100,000 US dollars.. from sponsors!

 

And how many years did iRacing need to reach this?

In the end, we agree on my main point: it is unrealistic to think that Kunos can provide an iRacing like service without any kind of monthly subscription.

And before people say "but GT Sport!!!"... you need a PS Plus subscription to access the online aspect of the game. And that's not free.

 

What next? Are you also gonna say that ACC needs to charge 12 dollars per car and 15 dollars per circuit to have a profit? Because based on your logic that you need to charge like iracing to provide the service they provide, you could also make this argument.

 

You are still unable to properly read english. Keep practicing.

 

How much does Iracing cost to purchase, say at least basic content to match ACC. Enough road circuits and gt cars to match the content of ACC? then how much do you pay per year above this just for a service?

Sure it would be great if ACC could do this but what was the early EA price, maybe $40 or something. No way can anyone provide the same monthly service indefinitely with just a one off fee per user and a very low one at that, there will likely be DLC's but there is no monthly access fee. How could they cover all the server costs plus hiring a few staff full time just to run it all?

 

Just ask yourselves how much does it cost to maintain the ratings service backend. I don't know how much is it, but I can tell you its not free. And when ACC goes out of EA, I guess it will need to be scaled up.

 

This is ridiculous.

Let's be honest the ACC audience will thin out significantly a couple of months after launch. AC across single and multiplayer has about 1000 people playing at a time (average). Let's assume ACC gets the same, half of those might play single player, that's you down to 500 players in multiplayer. Half of those are in community owned lobbies, that's down to 250 players. So in the scheduled races you might have 250 players on a good day at popular times. That's a maximum of 10 servers. Kunos is already running nearly that many in the early access phase!!!!

The money argument is a load of rubbish. It has nothing to do with money!

 

Iracing charges what they do because people are paying for it. Like I said before, if you follow the logic that they need to charge as much as iracing, then with almost 20 cars and 11 circuits, ACC would need to cost pretty much 400 dollars. Licensing circuits and cars, paying salaries to your employees and paying the bills also cost a ****load of money for Kunos(wayy more than severs I guarantee), that doesn't mean it's impossible to do just because people only pay once for the game. And like I said a million times already: Kunos already has several servers, all I'm suggesting is to organize the races that happen on them properly.
And as I also said before, nobody would benefit more from this than the developers themselves, but perhaps I'm not the one that needs to learn to interpret.

 

You are the one that needs to know that in the real world, things cost money. Nothing is for free, and if you get something for free, is because someone else is paying for it.

And no, I didn't say at any point that ACC should charge for cars and tracks like iRacing does. What iRacing does is abusive. But for structured online services, some kind of subscription would be needed.

 

Why. You need a few servers (which kunos is already running and paying for) and someone to update the schedule every week. We know kunos is going to continue to develop the game post launch (they have said this) so the team will still be in place to do this maintenance.

It's not about money! We should expect more from a competitive game in 2019.

 

OK, next time you meet your boss, tell him you want to work for free, because, sure, its not about money!

If you do have a job, something I'm starting to have doubts about

 

Ok. So other than the servers which they already have and the team that they already have what other costs are there?

These are costs which they will be incurring whether or not there is scheduled racing. We are just suggesting that they prioritise their spending on something that might attract a much larger audience and make them more money!

 

You're still unaware that Kunos already runs their own servers, aren't you?

 

Really??? How can I have been so blind? Thanks for opening my eyes!

 

Well, that is what is happening with lapped cars, the think they have all the rights to wreck you when you start overtaking them. So, how would you propose to solve this problem? And, you are suggesting that all fast drivers are pricks who will just ram because he can't overtake lapped car?

So far, i see less fast drivers ramming lapped cars, than vice versa. A lot less.

 

I only see disappointment in all of you on 29/05.

 

First of all, the best way to mitigate this issue is to not let players join mid race. Usually the ones who will ruin other people's races are the ones that join 15 minutes into the race and start lapping without even practicing. Apart from this there isn't much to do, people can be jerks wether they're a lap down or not, the best you can do is join servers with a good safety rating and expect people to behave accordingly. Minolin has already said back when he was still making Minorating that when you try to assign blame to one player or another with an automated system, it becomes pretty much impossible to be accurate.

I won't be disappointed because I don't expect anything from Kunos in this regard, I'm just saying everyone would benefit if they did a proper online system.
If only they make a system where servers can start races at a given time rather than just have practice, qualy, race and back to practice again it would already help a lot, and it wouldn't cost a dime.
I don't buy the argument that "As long as we're not paying a subscription, we should be happy with crap multiplayer".

Aren't you the one saying it's impossible for Kunos to host their own servers without going bankrupt?

 

Just to put some numbers into this discussion:
At steamcharts the all time peak amount of players on ACC is 2106. At rackservice.org, hosting a server for 24 players costs 5,50 euros a month. We all know that not all players that are on ACC are playing online, but let's say all hell breaks lose and 2106 players actually decide to open ACC and join an official server, this would require 88 servers, which would end up costing 484 dollars a month for Kunos. 484 euros is less than they pay an an employee, and I think they hired quite a few over the last few years, and don't forget the numbers I showed are worst case scenario.

So instead of going for arguments like "Iracing does this, GT Sport does that", can someone actually tell me why this wouldn't be doable?
Perhaps I'm being completely naive about this, but I think that just the amount of players that would want to join ACC for this feature alone would easily make up for the cost.

 

I don't get all the bickering. Why does it have to be an either/or? If an organized championship is too costly to run charge a fee per month or per season for that portion of the game. Tons of ppl would pay, myself included, and it would attract people to the game. The rest of it can remain as is. The people who like single player can do that. The private league guys can do that. And the people who are content with 10 minute races at open Spa server can do that.

 

It will be a disappointment for Kunos unless they are fine in repeating what every other simracing game have as multiplayer and decided to advertise it as something "advanced" just to bait, which would be a shame.

There are MMO's, mobas, shooters that are f2p or b2p. GTS may have a subscription because of playstation plus, but Forza doesn't. Also Forza is still launching content every month.

The thing with subscription is, only those that CAN will charge, it's not entirely a necessity. World of Warcraft, iRacing, Final Fantasy, people will pay to have access because these games offer good content and have a large community.