Assessing Yearly Season Passes for AMS2 DLCs

Once I experienced a full fledged Single player and Multiplayer mode, then I'll let you know if I'll buy the Season Pass lol. For now, releasing packs and bundles will do just fine. Who knows, by then Straight8 might come out with their GTRevival and blew every sims out of the water.

 

I was gutted to miss out on the Paddock club, Life and bad timing saw to that sadly so I'm gutted it's unlikely to be opened up, I can say I'm grateful to those doing all the testing and helping out because we get the benefits of their input, i,e, an ever improving game with properly working updates (mostly) and the teams bug fix record when it's hit issues in the past. Always outstanding!
Seem to remember a bugfix rolling out overnight on a Sunday and inside 14 hours from update to the hotfix, only devs faster in my experience is Digital Extremes doing a 10 hour borked update to hotfix time. So Kudos to the team for all their hard work!

I'd like to see a new season pass and yearly makes more sense than another MAHOOSIVE bundle.
Pricing is critical (but you guys gotta pay the bills so we must be realistic in our hopes), yet I don't think the DLC's are overpriced people have the choice to either buy the bits they DO want and skip those they don't, or opt for the saving of the season pass.
IMO and in an ideal world if Reiza could do an adjustable pricing scheme that'd be a big help allowing people to pick n mix the individual DLC's, packs n tracks they ACTUALLY want e.g. a few percent per item they opt for? (but this might not be a workable solution though)..

Whatever way you go, I'll most likely buy any season pass but it'd be nice to know about it sooner rather than later as I'm planning the endurance pack when it launches and historic track pack pt 2 (Hi tech isn't so interesting for me hence my suggestion of "pick n mix" as I'll likely never race them).

Keep up the great work guys, the team has routinely made some of the bigger devs look silly by comparison, I'd rather live with delays than some of the dogs dinners we get served up as gamers..

 

I don't really mind, so didn't vote

I tend to prefer paying as I go, rather than 'pre-paying' upfront, but I have occasionally bought a pass (usually on a sale).

 

I feel pretty strongly the best thing for Reiza to do, both in terms of fairness to the players, and ease of mind for the developers is to charge for the DLCs as they are finished, and don't do a season pass any more.

Too much of a hassle for Reiza to be trying to meet people's expectations and have to justify delays and switch dates/deliveries around to maintain a sense of fairness to those who bought a season pass. If the worst nuisance is having to bust out the wallet to purchase a new DLC, when Steam saves that info already for you, the no, it's no nuisance at all.

There's too many people out there who will try to claim Reiza is doing something shady if/when things gets delayed. Word of mouth I feel carries a lot of weight in our community, and if people are claiming "Reiza's sus with their delays - I paid for it and now I'm getting nothing!" - it'll hurt Reiza, the potential of AMS2, and us the players, too.

Unfortunately, there are indeed too many shady video game devs who will take advantage of players with shady Season Pass and other monetary practices - so the accusation easily sticks to honest devs like Reiza when things come up. Yeah, much better to charge people as the new cars and tracks are ready.

Straight forward, fair, easy to understand.

 

IMO the dlc structure is too complicated, it’s very hard for players to know what dlc they need to buy for the content they want. It could do with some simplification.

 

But can't the existing pass/DLC descriptions be enhanced also retrospectively? Or does Steam not allow changes to be easily made?

I see Barcelona still says "The track currently is offered with two layouts - with and without the chicane at the end of the lap."

Racin USA Part 1 still says: "Daytona International Speedway (featuring two road courses, with oval expected to be added later)"

Adrenaline Pack Pt1 is just one sentence: "Adrenaline Pack brings dirt track racing to Automobilista 2, with rallycross, kartcross, the formula dirt and a selection of dirt / RX track layouts."

The season pass still says: "At least two more Track DLCs in the same mould of the ones above ( US$ 9.99 / €8.99 each)"

Premium track pack still does not list Barcelona.

 

The idea of the annual season pass is good, because I believe that this way we can organize ourselves financially and buy the package. With the individual Dlcs it's kind of annoying to buy, because sometimes that month is tighter making it impossible to buy and thus not being able to play the content (or we squeeze even more and buy the XD content). Since there is the possibility of buying the DLC individually and the Season pass, I think it's the best option, so that it would appeal to the player who is looking for a more personalized experience to their liking or that player who an financially predictable and wants to have fun in any race or track mode

 

How about the other way around? Instead of creating a "2023 Pass" for upcoming, not yet known DLCs, why not creating a "2023 DLC" at the end of the cycle? Users can either choice to buy separate DLCs or a big pack with everything that was released in a certain time frame.

Automobilista 2 DLCs are already confusing as they are. I've been playing this game since launch, I read the forums every week. And even I am confused. I bought Barcelona expecting the historic version to drop later only to discover that I'd have to buy it on another DLC, since Barcelona was kind of a bonus track in the Premium Tracks DLC - despite having the same price as every other premium track.

On the other hand, it would be nice to have cash on advance, like an alternative for the Paddock Club. Usually you need money before starting a project. The other way around doesn't work very well.
And AMS2 is a way bigger game now than when it was initially launched. I bet many clients of your present player base - myself included - would gladly buy this DLC, knowing already that you fulfill all your promises and that your work is always neat.

So yea, if you wanna do a new Season Pass I'll support you, I'll buy it. But please, do things in a less confusing way. Write a bigger, more detailed description of what players will get for buying a certain pack.

 

As a backer I am still receiving all the DLCs for free and I am very glad about it but I agree with the others when they say it is confusing.
Season Pass as the name says, suggest something to buy before the DLC are released. This means the content can change during development cycle and create some "confusion".

So, I would suggest to change from Season Pass to Season Packs. This would give you guys the option to fix the already released content too.

Basically the idea is to release a Pack at the end of every dev cycle (numbered based on year?) so users can buy it before moving to next batch of DLC/Updates.

Hope it makes sense

 

i don't think a 2023 season pass with only 4 dlc's of which 2 have already been bought by a lot of people is the best unless the 2 dlc's already bought are removed from the price; but a season pass for next year is always welcome and as someone else suggested removing the date and numbering them would be the best choice so as to take all the pressure (and complaints) off releasing the content on time

 

Or release the pass at the end of the year

 

That's what I would recommend also as it does not put a pressure to release DLCs at a certain date and allows for moving plans and the yearly pack can be priced accordingly to what has been effectively released. The question is if would harm sales of individual DLCs at their time of release, some people preferring to wait for the end of the year to buy the yearly pack. I think rF2 does this, selling all released content as a single pack at the end of the year.

 

Well, I've voted "yes" because I'm not sure but I thought why not, all AMS2 additional content is far more reachable price-wise than any other currently developed game (idk what rF2 marketing team are smoking, they're not even best simulation anymore, man those prices; ACC doesnt have that much content anyway, AC is not developed anymore, iRacing - no comment).
Although that might be because on top of all, AMS2 has super generous regional pricing it seems (thank you for that!), but I'll still buy any content Reiza releases, doesn't mean much to me in what form)
What's funny - 2020-2022 season pass is the only item in my DLC list that is not marked "In library", as I have all other items checked through the combo of Premium track pack + premium expansion packs (and newly released ones), and sometimes I debate buying the Season pass just "to have them all"

 

How about a „donation DLC“ where we early purchasers who have only been able to profit for three years can send money back to Reiza. This additional money could be invested in the further development of the multiplayer or other features.

 

I would prefer Reiza to crowdfund to get a car or track license.
Imagine Renato saying: "Sebring is a bit expensive, if we get this amount of participation we can close the deal."
I took the example of Sebring at random, I would prefer Detroit or Surfers Paradise.

 

I think that's a nice sentiment, but unpractical one and not necessarily worth holding to. Offering that convenience is IMO not worth all the complications from offering a season pack up-front.

Especially since you've already offered another avenue of gaining such convenience in form of Paddock Club, so many people interested in it already took that road when they had an opportunity. So the market for such convenience has already shrunk by all those people. Even more reason to abandon that approach.

And it's not like you would deny that convenience altogether, it would just be delayed until the end of the year.

I don't see that here. And it seems weird for people to ask for something you were already offering. This is a weird statement. "Some" people asking for it for no conceivable reason, which allows to conveniently rebute an argument. Maybe I won't go further with my conclusions and allow you to elaborate on where this feedback came from.