Other paid vehicle mods?

Don't buy it then? Vote with your wallet. Lucas spends immense amounts of time handcrafting his modifications. If he wants some Euro's for his work I have zero problems with it.

 

Although I'm not fully agree with you. At least I believe that the Cherrier Picnic is cost-efficient.

That's the reason I despise overpriced flight simulator mods. Keep in mind that FS2020/FSX/P3D/XP11 are amateur flight simulator/flight simulation game, more like simcade driving games like Wreckfest or Forza Horizon, and I have zero guilty of downloading flight meshslaps from third-party websites. These $100+ mods have incorrect turbo normalization, wonky air-fuel mixture, arcade-y stall characteristics, arbitrary flap-induced lift&drag and fake oil pressure/temperature gauges. Those don't even deserve $1, not to mention that they often packed with malicious payloads.
If you are a flight sim enthusiast, mod developer or flight related researcher, I highly recommend you to read Performance, Stability, Dynamics and Control of Airplanes written by Bandu N. Pamadi(link here), this book will get you an in-depth technical knowledge about flight(and how crappy these mods are). At the end of the day, if you have $139.95 spare money and want to spend it on flight. Why not buy yourself a radio-controlled scale model aircraft and touch some grass? This is much healthier than sitting in front of a computer 20+ hours for a transatlantic "flight".

 

honestly all me and my friends ever used to use flight simulator for was landing on our own houses and seeing who could fall the fastest straight down without crashing into the ground, cant imagine spending a dime more on mods for it.

and if i am being honest, thats all I use beamng for too, just doing wonky weird BS with cars i would never normally get to do, like driving on two wheels and Evel Knievel style jumps over busses and basic freeway chases, i dont buy paid mods because honestly, why would i? the game comes with more than enough vehicles already to do enough stuff that in my eyes i barely need to use modded vehicles at all so i dont feel robbed not getting a paid mod for free, since i never had much of a need for it in the first place

 

Wait... you mean to say that piracy exists? No way! I cannot possibly fathom anyone ever doing such a thing [/s] <- To be clear, this sentence is intended with a light hearted tone

But on a serious note, that is simply life. It doesn't really matter what you do; run a shop, people steal stuff; make music, people pirate it; Design boiled egg cups, someone in china will clone it and undercut you; operate a taxi, people will bum their fare; sell food, people will leave without paying. If that is your metric for something "going badly" then I guess we might as well all do nothing. That was one of the reasons I picked VRchat, their platform provides 0 security and is frankly a mess, yet some people still make their livings from it.

I would like to think that anyone making paid mods is aware that piracy exists, and understands that should people want to, they will pirate the things that are made. At the end of the day, people who pirate stuff were just after a free ride off of the backs of someone else either way.

 

In your old message you started off with saying that "paid mods is everything wrong with beamNG" or something like that. Something I totally disagree with.
However, in this message you make it clear that you're simply not target audience for paid mods. Which is totally fine.
No one is saying people are forced to buy paid mods. You buy it if you want it and if you think the price is fair. I think this should be pretty obvious. Especially if the price is quite low like under 4 dollars.
It's like anything else in the world where intellectual property is sold for what it's worth. If it's overpriced, less people will buy it.

What people fail to recognize is that free mods is actually a huge privilege. Especially in beam where mods can get very complex and time consuming fast.

 

mfw ever since the picnic made the landmark case of a fully paid mod so many imitators have popped up making paid stuff

 

unfortunately alot of people got a very 'anti paid mod' vibe from my first message, which is probably my fault for not entirely explaining it.

paid mods, done in ways that just don't make any real sense, are what is entirely wrong with beamng modding, that might have made a much better opening.

i dont actually use the picnic as an example within that original post because its a good example of paid mods in beamng, while i must admit the delayed announcement for it being paid was likely not the greatest move in terms of marketing, everything else about it is perfectly done in my opinion, it has a one time payment, promised to be supported through updates with no additional charges, and has LBE's signature quality.

the paid mods i disagree with are ones that simply feature meshslaps and other low quality models, thrown together in 20 dollar a month patreons with little support and designed simply to rope in kids who will use their parents credit card and never cancel it. One example i use is the addon packs for the Raven R20, which adds content that should have already come with the mod (with already questionable modelling and details, but the interactive screen on it is actually pretty cool in my opinion). Now im no expert in why this is, im guessing this works to give a sort of free demo on the mod, and allow users to buy the rest if they so desire, but it just doesnt fit with how much is given in each half.

the addon for it adds 4wd configs and other parts, while some parts arent even modelled on the original mod (one of the engine options is nonexistant with the transmission being modelled as a simple sphere). in my opinion its only real redeeming features are the interactive screen and the interesting vehicle design (although the overall model could be heavily improved upon, it doesnt even feature PBR). this is what i would call a paid mod done incorrectly, although not by much, as it still does alot of things right, like continued support and the creator has said they are continually working on making the model much higher quality, which is good.

An example of paid mods done very wrong are all too common, all of them feature a model obtained from some third party source, sometimes not legally, and then hacked together to fit a jbeam of a vehicle closest to its size, slightly tweaked for a month or so before being shelved for another mod to keep the fresh mod hype driving customers to an overpriced patreon filled with unfinished dissapointments, these ones are the ones we need to direct criticism towards, not the Raven R20 and not LBE.

 

Pretty much tbh. I still wanted people who did not have the means to pay to have something substantial to play with. But also wanted to provide something meaningful extra for people who like it. So the free version means everyone gets something, then the supporter tier adds some more for those who really like it. To be clear, I don't expect everyone to like that and I knew that full well going into it.

Equally I fully support the other methods that other premium modders have chosen, I don't wish to make it sound like I think the above is the one true superior method of doing things. Its just the route I felt like taking given the options that I had at the time.

In hindsight I would have probably been better served by using a platform like itch.io for sales/distribution. But equally I wouldn't have learnt as much about payments and payment processors if I had of taken that route. So I am glad I did just for that experience.

 

honestly i think its alright, while not being perfect, its not a cashgrab model designed to lure people in, it has real good intentions on it, and to be honest i still left the free portion of the raven installed simply because i think it has one of my favourite front end designs ever, i cant wait to see how it gets improved!

 

Oh boy, where do I even begin with the latest discussion of paid mods, when the current state of the forums have caused a divide between two different sides right now? Yes, I have previously stated that I wouldn't mind paying for mods when other communities do the same (even when such mods are also frowned upon in said communities), since it supports the creators and I have the means of paying for them. But it seems like more and more people despise paid mods in BeamNG ever since that Cherrier Picnic incident, not only from kids (that shouldn't even be here mind you), but also from some well-known and respected users. And since this spiraled out of control over the past several days, I feel like I have to drop my two cents into this topic once again.

Look, I can understand why some people are against the idea of paid mods. Such mods would limit the number of people using them when not everybody can pay for them. Instead, they would want mods to remain free for all to enjoy. But making a mod requires time, effort, and dedication; at least some users have attempted to create some sort of compromise down the middle, one of which involves a free version of a mod for the public to enjoy (albeit with limited content) and a paid version that adds some extra bells and whistles if one decides to support the modder. Yet another approach is the paid early access route, but make the final product free of charge. In that case, you support the creator and get early access as a perk in order to provide some feedback, prior to a full public release. Those who do end up making their full products paid have promised to provide free updates, hence why they allow one-time payments (much like digital goods like video games and other general computer software). But alas, all things must come to an end, so mods will eventually become obsolete and unsupported one day in the future.

However, the biggest downside with paid mods that I have previously pointed out is that some individuals will have an incentive to leak them to the public, and it seems like that has been the case for the Picnic unfortunately. Outside of the forums, there exists a Russian mesh-slapper on a particular social media platform who is notorious for making several of his mesh-slap mods paid. Unsurprisingly, some of those have been leaked, proving that even the most deplorable people on the internet can have their works leaked if they become infamous for charging money on them. The same could be said for those truck mesh-slappers on Patreon, when they charge even more money for their low-quality creations, but I haven't seen any of those out in the wild yet; I wouldn't be too surprised if someone decides to leak those as well though. The point I'm trying to make is that pirates have been around for a long time now - pirating paid digital goods in general for others to enjoy - and they will continue to stick around unfortunately. That's just the hard truth we have to deal with today.

I've already stated that I have paid for a few mods on the forums this year. My reason is to support the content creators for their works, as I stated earlier. But I would never pay for low-effort content (particularly from those notorious mesh-slappers outside of the forums), and that is where my stance stands today. So in conclusion, the hate shouldn't be directed at the few forum users here who decided to make some of their works paid in one way or another, but rather the bad actors trying to make money with their low-quality content on external sites. Even if not everyone agrees with my statement, I hope that I made my perspective regarding paid mods more clear.

 

This worldview is incorrect

To make things clear, I'm not anti beamng paid mods. What I meant is if the "default" worldview is most mods should be paid, then beamng mods might head towards flight simulator

 

As a modder myself I don't see anything wrong with having a few paid mods here and there but I just don't wanna see beamng end up like iracing or something.

 

Nah it's not. Intellectual property have value in the real world. Free labor isn't unheard of but at that point it's charity, and thus a privilege for the consumer.
--- Post updated ---

Totally fair. I also think a paid mod needs to meet a high standard. This would probably sort itself out though. A crappy mesh slap for 20 bucks a month isn't a very lucurative deal, and thus less people will buy it.

 

If i may add my two cents that nobody asked for-

when one person starts making their mods paid, everyone will want to follow suit, sooner or later, meshslaps from 2FastRacing are now £8 etc..

And there are other problems, how do we know if the mod actually works since half the stuff on the repo is outdated or just straight up broken, how do know the author of a mod isn't just going to abandon it later.
I have Flight simulator 2020, there are some expensive yet atrocious mods on there that would barely be getting if they were free...

I'm not against paid addons at all but when money starts changing hands, it should be very high quality and be continually supported to warrant putting it behind a price tag

 

I mean there are some that have demo parts where you can sample it and see if you want to buy the rest, also im sure if you got into contact with a respected mod creator and said that the mod wasn't entirely what you where looking for, they would maybe have some sort of leniency towards that, they are human after all

 

Holy lord. Well fucking said

 

One thing that’s positive about paid mods, it definitely exposes who’s a “kid” and who’s not. Of course the 9 year olds would be crying the most over paid mods because they know that they can’t use their mom or dad’s credit cards to pay for them.

the negative thing about that though is that those same “kids” would do anything now to “leak” these mods just to spite the creator for putting it behind a paywall.

There’s nothing that says that mods for Beamng cannot be put behind a paywall. The world right now is the roughest it’s been in decades and there’s nothing wrong about helping people keep their lights on. If the mods are high quality, i’ll pay for them to support the creator.

 

Most BeamNG.drive mods are free, BeamNG modders are not free laborer. And the word "consumer" should mean a person who consume tangible things, destroying said object in the process ("consumer electronics" is an inappropriate phrase since it encourages planned obsolescence). As a modder myself, I can tell that modding is a form of entertainment. Take the example of my Updated Shiftlogic mod. I made this mod because I want to enjoy more realistic driving in BeamNG for myself since I have driving experience IRL. Sending mod to Beam Repo is because sharing is a virtue and there's no "consumer" that eats my car or something. Another example is the Ibishu 300BX mod. The modder's intention of making this mod is to share their 300ZX driving experience, and it has both free and paid version, the recent update adds more feature to the free version on repo.
Flight simulator modding community on the other hand is exactly the opposite, the main driving force of flight sim modder is greed. Most of the mods there are inferior to most of the mods in Beam Repo. And there are many of them with price tag several times more expensive than the very game they run on.

They often market themselves as <*insert company-ish name>software or <*insert company-ish name>flight, to make the player into thinking they are professional software manufacturers, while in fact, they are merely amateur flight simulation game modders.
If you broadcast "Beamng free mod maker are doing charity work and mod players are privileged consumers" propaganda. You are pushing Beam modding community towards greed-driven flight sim modding.

 

Bro wtf...
https://iamthelaw105.gumroad.com/l/gaqvhx $8.75
https://iamthelaw105.gumroad.com/l/bttrv $8.99
https://iamthelaw105.gumroad.com/l/qcqqr $7.95
https://iamthelaw105.gumroad.com/l/lqbxky $7.95

While LBE is selling the Picnic for $3.80