Pricing By Amount Of Content Included

Discussion in 'Suggestions' started by HopesAnchor131, Aug 16, 2019.

  1. HopesAnchor131

    HopesAnchor131 Active Member

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    Not really a feature suggestion but I've seen a lot about how people aren't happy with the prices, so how about pricing future content by the amount included in the DLC?

    Lets break it down.

    Loco's priced by the amount in a pack (standalone)

    1 single loco - £4.99
    2+ loco's - £7.99

    Routes priced by length

    10 - 20 mile route - £9.99
    20 - 40 mile route - £14.99
    50+ mile route - £19.99

    If consoles aren't going to be getting mods or an editor, then maybe they can get the best steam workshop routes or loco's every month ported and added as a free pack.

    Opinions?
     
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  2. lDanny Holand

    lDanny Holand Active Member

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    I agree the pricing structure is I bit stupid, the fact a single loco is the same price as the BR Heavy Freight Pack is greedy and simarly to the German locos that can be used on multiple routes vs the Class 33 which can only be used on WSR
     
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  3. MetrolinkF125#916

    MetrolinkF125#916 Well-Known Member

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    Yes I totally agree, even with sales I can’t afford that much dlc to buy (I’m really behind), so depending on the length of a route or the number of trains included I would be able to afford more dlc, and I’m pretty sure this goes for many other ppl here in the forums:)
     
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  4. LastTrainToClarksville

    LastTrainToClarksville Well-Known Member

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    Unfortunately for you folks, the company that makes a product sets its price, not the customers who buy it. This is the way the world works and always has, even in economies based on barter.
     
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  5. KingOfCunard

    KingOfCunard Member

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    I do think that consoles should be allowed things like the free content aforementioned. It's almost as if PCs take priority over consoles. I also agree with the pricing, maybe they should make some routes cheaper if for example, they are shorter than most routes of have less rolling stock.
     
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  6. stujoy

    stujoy Well-Known Member

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    All the route and loco prices you have suggested are lower than the current prices so that is not going to happen. The current pricing wasn’t just plucked out of the air on a whim, it will be based on the production costs and expected sales. They are not going to drop the price of one loco from £12 to £5.

    If you look at the length of track included in each route they all contain about the same length. Some routes have nearly all the track in a single stretch with no branch lines. Some routes have one or more branch lines. Two of the German routes have two separate routings between the two end points. Some routes have more tracks included in yards. One route that had less track was WSR which was less expensive than the standard price. Taking the longest end to end distance in a route and setting the price on that would not reflect the time taken to make the entirety of the track length included.

    As for porting content to consoles, I’m not sure if they would port people’s creations over for free because there would be a cost involved in porting the content. I could be wrong on that.

    The best way to avoid the high prices is to not buy DLC when it is first released but wait for a sale. The longer you wait the more of a bargain you can get. You also have the advantage that some of the bugs that are in all DLC may have been fixed by then.
     
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  7. Olaf the Snowman

    Olaf the Snowman Well-Known Member

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    The issue with more mileage is that it doesn’t necessarily mean better. I remember this discussion some time ago and Matt P replied saying that would you rather see 50+ miles of straight, flat and boring route or 30 miles, for example, of a much more interesting and scenic route which takes much more development time. And let’s not forget things like yards and depots.

    I managed to find the post:
    Edit: I just realised that someone has revived this thread from August 2019.
     
    Last edited: May 19, 2020
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  8. stujoy

    stujoy Well-Known Member

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    I hadn’t noticed that. I was replying to history.
     
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  9. Plastic Pal

    Plastic Pal Well-Known Member

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    There is another value issue when it comes to PC vs consoles.... On PC, your content can be accessed in perpetuity, as Windows 10 is essentially the last ever version of Windows. If you change your PC five times over the next thirty years - no problem.

    But consoles (and everything on them) is potentially more transient. That said, it is looking like both XBox Series X and PS5 will run previous XBox and PS4 titles - this time around.

    Normally, the transient nature of the software doesn't really matter. But when you invest say £10,000 in DLC for TS1 and TSW,.... knowing that it won't suddenly become obsolete is possibly a small comfort.
     
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  10. MetrolinkF125#916

    MetrolinkF125#916 Well-Known Member

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    I’m not trying to drive this thread off topic, but do I remember you here? You seem so familiar to members I’ve seen in previous threads, hmm.
     
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  11. smash_cze

    smash_cze Member

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    The customer should not dictate the price to the manufacturer! And this is valid twice with software development...

    But they should stop selling unfinished and bugged content, stop promising unfulfillable things, do better customer support, repair glitches.

    I will be okay with their prices then. And i am prepared pay more for almost perfect and interesting DLC.
     
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  12. UnlimitedMagic

    UnlimitedMagic Well-Known Member

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    Why did you revive this thread?
     
  13. ARuscoe

    ARuscoe Well-Known Member

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    Probably because the main feed is arranged by last response rather than date posted, and if someone new to the forum is trawling old posts, people may not notice they're answering something months old.
    Either way, even if the OP isn't about we can still dicuss
     
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  14. UnlimitedMagic

    UnlimitedMagic Well-Known Member

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    Yes but this thread had no replies and then he replied to it
     
  15. ARuscoe

    ARuscoe Well-Known Member

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    Indeed, and he might fall into the new member trawling category
     
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  16. djhawtin1

    djhawtin1 Well-Known Member

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  17. djhawtin1

    djhawtin1 Well-Known Member

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    Yes that is fine but it takes about a year to complete one map and it is a lot of hard work to make the locos, route and programming

    Sorry to burst your bubble
     
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  18. Plastic Pal

    Plastic Pal Well-Known Member

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    Actually, they will probably drop the price of routes from £24.99 to under £5, and the locos will start coming in under £3... if this is anything to go by:

    https://uk.gamersgate.com/games?prio=discount&q=Train Simulator&pg=1

    Even on console (PS4) you can now get a decent number of routes in a pack at a fair price, as £32 now gets you eight routes (NEC, RT, GWE, NTP, MSB, LIRR, RSN and PC) - which is £4 each. This is an absolute perfectly fair deal for a new player on console, in my opinion - just about right.
     
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  19. stujoy

    stujoy Well-Known Member

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    The bargains are out there as long as you don’t want the new when it’s new. The longer you wait the cheaper they get. I think I’ve bought enough full price DLC now and the only things I’m likely to buy on release are British routes, as long as they look interesting enough. Everything else can wait until it’s at least 40% off and some things can wait longer, based on how much I have spent in total in a given time period, and what I think will be different to play.

    The game bundles and one or two older routes are very good value if all bought together in a sale, as you say. I think a lot of people compare the content they got in the first bundle they bought and the release price of DLC and get a bit of a shock. As you’ve pointed out the prices of older DLC can drop very low. After your initial purchase of TSW you have the choice never to pay full price for any DLC, if you are willing to wait.

    I also think in terms of value rather than price. In the latest sale I got RSN and the 155 for less than £20 combined and as far as value goes, I think I hit the jackpot. Much better value than ECW which I bought at full £25 release price. I’m getting great use out of all the German stuff and have only ever bought them in sales. The 155 and RSN are becoming firm favourites, and I’m sure I’ll get HRR and the 182 in sales in the future, long before I’d consider buying the M3 or OSD. I think the German releases have more inherent value because of the interchangeability of the content. The M3 has less value because it just subs in for existing content on the one route and probably isn’t worth paying full price for unless it’s your favourite train and you must have it.

    You have to consider the value for you as a player as well as the price and wait for the two to equate when a sale comes along. If there’s enough value at full price then go for it! If not, wait for the price to drop.
     
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  20. Plastic Pal

    Plastic Pal Well-Known Member

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    Yeah - I think you are spot on with this analysis. But you only get to that understanding after a fair bit of experience, and understanding of what you like. The DB BR 155 on RSN - isn't she a beauty....? ;-)

    By the way - I am not necessarily saying that £24.99 isn't value for some people, in some cases. But I would shudder if TSW 2020 Collector's Edition was ever sold for £200 for PS4 for eight routes. I absolutely would not buy ECW for £25, even with the "tour" function - that will have to come down to well under £10 to get a sniff of my wallet. South London Network (on TS1), however, at £5 is an utter bargain - I think that this was originally a standalone at £15 - which I still think is an utter bargain. Easily worth £40 to me....

    But there are several ways of looking at the value proposition:

    1. As far as addictions go, in the long run.... Train Simulation is far cheaper and far less hazardous than cigarettes, alcohol, gambling and lawn bowls at any decent Bowling Club.

    2. For a one off purchase to occupy an evening with your kids, £30 to play on a new TSW route with pasta for dinner competes very well with a pizza delivery and a re-run of Friends Season 3 on a DVD you found for £1. You can also use the TSW route another night... but the pizza gets eaten, and the DVD will become a coaster.

    3. In terms of time enjoyed "operating toy railways", the £/$ per hour is considerably less than the cost per hour for any reasonably developed collection of model trains - although the models permanently retain their value (and software discounts to zero).... in terms of cost per hour, TSW and TS1 easily win out on this metric.... by a very very large margin.
     
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  21. Olaf the Snowman

    Olaf the Snowman Well-Known Member

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    I’ve thought about this in the past. I know it’s difficult to compare but TSW, for a game, is pretty expensive. When a route is discounted, I normally buy it but even for £12, it’s not really cheap when you think about it because how often/much will I play?Probably a dozen hours over a few days or weeks, do some of the scenarios and won’t touch it again. Compare that to GTA V, for example, where I paid £50ish (I can’t even remember) all those years ago and how much I’ve played it... I’d hate to look but I imagine it would run into weeks (I.e. hundreds of hours) and to be honest, that probably isn’t even much compared to a lot of other people where game time would run into months (I.e. thousands of hours). GTA V, and I’m only using just one example because I could list loads of other games, has been excellent value of money relative to amount of time I’ve spent playing the game.

    As I said, I know it’s difficult to compare and is unfair comparison because TSW is a niche but it’s still an interesting statistic. I’m sure there’s some of you here that do play TSW lots more than I do but I suspect a lot of people don’t. There’s only so many times you can run up and down Brighton to Lewis, for example, because it gets boring. Having said that, I do find TSW worth it particularly when discounted not in the sense of the time I’m going to play on the purchased route/traction but the quality of it and because it is a simulation after all not just any regular game. I bought the Peninsula Corridor a few months ago when discounted and really enjoyed and completed all the journey mode. Having said that, and what was I talking about earlier on, I’ve not touched it since.
     
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  22. stujoy

    stujoy Well-Known Member

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    That’s exactly it with the value. If, like me, it is the only ‘game’ you have, and you use it a lot and actually love driving the same route over and over, the value you get out of it is high. For a lot of other people, it may be one game out of many, and they only drive each scenario and a couple of timetable services once, then for them each DLC really isn’t going to be good value for money compared to some other games. I get where they are coming from with their complaints about the high cost.

    I watch my partner play other games on the PS4 and some of them look truly amazing but the gameplay would have no value for me. I’m not interested at all in firing guns at people or trying to defeat the baddies in Gotham City. I would get bored of those types of game very quickly. I may one day get a car racing game but even then, I’m much more interested in trains than cars, and I’ve not been tempted yet. I’d certainly have to look at older games or sales for me to get value for money for racing cars, as I know I wouldn’t use them nearly as often as TSW. My partner thinks I’m weird for playing such a boring game. She is amazed that as a non-gamer, I have spent more money on a silly train game than she has on all her games put together. She just doesn’t get it.

    The value may be easy to see for yourself but hard to perceive for others, and for people who do not have much money to spend on all games, TSW may fall down the wish list because it’s not a cheap product.
     
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  23. Plastic Pal

    Plastic Pal Well-Known Member

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    Oh yes - if you compare TSW and TS1 to something like GTA V, or Red Dead Redemption, or Elite Dangerous.... or racing games like GT Sport, which you can buy for £12 and happily spend 1000 hours on (and some have spent 10,000 hours on it), then TSW and TS1 look like really bad value..... if you only intend to put in a dozen hours on the train simulators. A lot of people that are into car racing games will exclusively play only one title, whether that is GT Sport, F1 (Codemasters), rFactor, Automobilista (AMS), etc... because it's near impossible to practice enough on more than one and become really fast... so £12, £20, £30 or even £70, divided by a large number of hours is trivial in the long run.

    Another car-racing example, which is more comparable to TSW/TS1 is iRacing - a subscription based racing simulator. Your outlay for this service, if you participate in what is available at a very basic level, would be about £5 per week, spread over two years. You would need to buy a range of tracks and cars over 24 months, in order to do this basic level of participation. So, about £500 in total, or £250 per year. And that is the minimum to pay, only if you have fully exploited every single discount/sale period, and know what you need to buy and when. For subsequent years, the cost falls to a minimum of £100 a year just to use what you have already purchased... If you quit your subscription, then you immediately lose the ability to use any of the digital content that you have purchased. But you'd probably be spending £200 per year in perpetuity, as new cars/tracks come out. But people who do this really do put the hours in.
     
    Last edited: May 21, 2020
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  24. Captaintraincrash

    Captaintraincrash Active Member

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    same
     
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  25. SHINO BAZ

    SHINO BAZ Well-Known Member

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    Ok if DT wants to set the price fine!So if thats the way it's going to be THEN STOP RELEASING BROKEN,BUGGY,GLITCHED add ons that they want are hard earn money for.You DT defenders sicken me you defend DT and expect us to accept add on content in whatever condition they release it in.I only wish DT cared as much about it's player base as it does about are money,if they did they have more of are money sooner then later when theres a sale.
     
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  26. stujoy

    stujoy Well-Known Member

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    That’s generally how all commerce works. I’m glad you agree now.
    I’m glad you are sickened by me and my insistence that you buy all the products against your will, knowing that they don’t live up to your standards.

    Of course you could go and find a product that meets your standards and get the makers of that product to accept what you think the price should be.
    * it’s OUR money, not ARE money.
     
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  27. Plastic Pal

    Plastic Pal Well-Known Member

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    I think that customers can have a reasonable expectation for "fitness for purpose". And this is a perfectly well-understood legal concept. And it applies to digital products. You are right, however, that customers can choose to not buy future products. But if the product they have already bought is defective, they should be entitled to a refund (within reason).

    Personally I wouldn't trash someone for their English grammar/spelling on an international Forum, for two reasons:

    1. I don't expect non-English speakers (or anyone, generally) to have perfect English grammar, but I do want to hear their views
    2. If you pick on other people's grammar, then you set a potentially impossible standard that you must always adhere to yourself, and your own English must then become publication standard. If you can do that, on a Forum, then I'd be surprised - and you are a better person than I..... I am a writer that often writes (elsewhere) to a meticulous publication standard.... but I can't be sure that everything that I write here is always absolutely perfect.
     
    Last edited: May 24, 2020
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  28. SHINO BAZ

    SHINO BAZ Well-Known Member

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    After seeing this response i didn't know what to say,but a fellow tsw fan whos a friend told me it's got to be a troll,he said no person could be that daft in real life.(He said a few other things about this person statements but i'll let him post his imput when he's ready)...
     
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  29. stujoy

    stujoy Well-Known Member

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    This person said they were “sickened” by anyone that defends DTG on any point, including setting prices, which is what I might defend them on. This is very strong language. My response was justified and a little education on using the correct word is just extra help from myself. People who tell me they find the likes of me sickening are going to get told it’s not on, and the way I did that is with sarcasm, the funniest form of wit. They may not have to like me or my input here but to say my adding a little balance to the tirade of abuse levelled at DTG is a sickening thing to do is going too far. My response wasn’t as strong as the statement I was responding to.

    I await their personal character assassination.
     
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  30. Plastic Pal

    Plastic Pal Well-Known Member

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    Well - I can see both sides. And I think one of my posts might have been taken as a "DT Defender" post - I am not sure..... Anyway... I do think that you very slightly twisted the points that SHINO BAZ made. I got the impression that the original point was something like:

    "Okay, if you are going to charge a high price, please make sure that your products are high quality. If you can't make it high quality from the start, then you will get less money from me, because I will wait for a sale - I will still buy it at the reduced price, but you will get less money from me"

    And you twisted the post by:

    - extracting tiny parts and responding to the bits you extracted in an out of context way;
    - suggesting that a compulsion to purchase against will existed... that didn't exist, as the poster was clear about being willing to buy DLC, but that the choice was to buy it at a lower price, given the poor quality at release;
    - assuming that you were aware of the standards that the poster expected; and,
    - undermining the post by being abusive about the poster's capability to write English.

    But not everyone has perfect English. No doubt, your own English will be absolutely impeccable from now on. Perfect. Without any errors at all.

    I also agree with SHINO BAZ that it is actually sickening to see some Forum members ("the usual suspects"....) attack other Forum members that express less than perfect satisfaction with the very expensive and often highly defective product that is frequently over-hyped and mis-marketed. The really sickening bit is when Forum Members "play the man, and not the ball" - i.e. attack the person, and promise to carry out a "character assassination" of any dissenters, rather than simply discussing the pros and cons of expressed opinions.
     
    Last edited: May 24, 2020
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  31. stujoy

    stujoy Well-Known Member

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    If he’d put it like this
    ...and not said he was sickened by people like me then I wouldn’t have replied. That’s not how he said it though. He said that it was us, the ones who sometimes defend DTG and sicken him who want him to purchase the bad content for too much money, not DTG. Anyway, now that we’ve both said something and you’ve added your view on the exchange, we can all carry on with our lives. I’m not going to apologise for my sarcastic response to an unfair shouty post and I’m also not bothered if he or his friend with views about me like my posts.
     
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  32. SHINO BAZ

    SHINO BAZ Well-Known Member

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    One thing i want to make clear is i don't hate Train Sim World,all fans want new great content and many are willing to pay DT prices,but because of a history of sometimes lackluster releases as well as worry about new content condition upon release you have lost the normal excitement that comes with a tsw dlc add on,leaving many unexcited and unwilling to pay full content price.plus the long talked about editor mode which is highly wanted has yet to ever become a real thing,
     
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  33. LimitedEdiition

    LimitedEdiition Well-Known Member

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    I think the pricing for SOME of the routes is fair, but there are definitely DLCs that have a questionable price tag. Peninsula Corridor is my opinion, the best DLC in the game, and well worth the 30 dollars USD base price for it's rich service mode, it's impressive length (relative to the other routes), and well re-created scenery and station details. Great Western Express as well, despite the fact that more could be done in terms of its service mode. However, for other routes, it is a travesty for the price they are offered. Long Island Railroad only comes with 1 piece of rolling stock with a barren system timetable, and that is for sure not worth the full asking price. It's hard to say that a standard fixed price for all of the routes is fair, when there are such inconsistencies between each DLC.

    I think the more pressing concern is the value we are getting has been steadily decreasing since release. Take into account the switcher DLCs. Not much in terms of service mode timetables, but the amount of content we have gotten has been very concerning. The first loco DLC switcher, the Amtrak one, came with the switcher AND a Metroliner cab car which also included additional services that you can drive with not only the switcher, but the cab car as well. The latest American switcher, the Caltrain one comes with a whopping 2 engines. I quite enjoy the services it came with it, but more content could have been added such as a Union Pacific reskin (they share the same engine model too by the way), or some of the MOV cars or a Caltrain caboose. Not to mention the M3 didn't even come with any improvements to the original route or service mode, and that is super disappointing to see. It just doesn't make sense how two products both worth 20 dollars can have such a huge discrepancy in terms of what you get in return.
     
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  34. TrainSim_Fan

    TrainSim_Fan Well-Known Member

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    This will never happen and you know it. DTG seems to like overpriced dlc's. Very overpriced dlc's. Still £5 for a loco wont happen.
     
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