Potential release plan?

But if me for example, buy the game, I won't have to pay for DLC's? Or will it be Battlefield 3 style: Buy the premium edition and gain access to all upcoming expansion packs for a one time fee?

 

Just got this at the live stream

 

Nice find!

 

The next months is like saying anytime in the future.

 

Wait, you're still here? I figured you would have gotten banned

 

11

 

I think he just got banned. (like literally within the last 1/2 hr)
Can't see any of his posts, none of the links to his posts work, & searching for his username turns up a "Invalid User".
So, yep, he got banned. (No more discussion about this or him, I hope)

 

Aw, people wondered where I was. :3
XD

 

A release on steam with later dlc would be awesome...and possibly in the near future? Cant wait!!!

 

Is this like Forza ? you could buy a land rover pack for example....

 

So how exactly will DLC work?

As far as i can see, anything you produce content wise, be it maps, tracks, cars or other vehicles may very well be rendered moot by community content, and any 'solution' to that like limiting community tools over what the devs have or even just limiting the amount of community content one is allowed to download or install might very well kill the community which a game like this nearly depends on.

Is the plan to just release ultra high quality content? Because again, in comparison to the community content, which is free and more importantly, more convenient, i can't see that selling to well.

The 10 dollar game for promised content model will only really work if you sell large numbers like minecraft, garry's mod or TF2, which given the pretty unique niche this product has, is certainly possible, but as far as i can see, not guaranteed or even really feasible without a distribution service like steam behind it, as well as a large reputation for good community content to keep a constant flow of new and interesting things.

Another way i could see would be to do stuff like modes, demo derbies, online racing, online/offline rally time trials, so on so forth, along with accompanying content packs, but the content packs would have to be pretty substantial to justify paid DLC in the public's eye, and you'd run the risk of segregating the community, which time and again has proven to kill games like this. To counter that there could be short timed demos, ala those mail in demo discs for the PS2 and such, but iunno, i never thought that worked.

You could also do features, like new and improved tires or new node features, but then again, that'd be splitting up the content base, which might be confusing for new players, driving them off.

so yeah, anything i can think of is riddled with problems. In a game that both relies on community content to keep it alive and give it a major selling point, content based DLC is just an especially bad idea

or am i an idiot and i've overlooked something really obvious?

 

TAKE MY MONEY!

 

Ok, pay for content will deliver largely what the community will. great. You're forgetting one factor in this. The time it takes for anyone to develop content for this is quite considerable. It takes Gabester a while to pull cars together, they're not formulated in his ass. JLFHutch is much the same, it takes time. What this should do is allow BeamNG to release a 'base game' with base content and come around in time and bulk up the content later with nice little themes and specialties. Personally I'd prefer to see NG come out sooner with some base content and not in 5 years no matter how much content they put in. I'd rather see the content arrive in pieces, each piece well polished and well managed.

It makes no sense to do these packages for free, because I think what LJFHutch is on about and how Gabester describes it, is that they're going to be substantial content packs. I wouldn't be surprised to see the expansions as games in of themselves. So why not put in a price for these packs and make a little cash from it? Sure the modders could do it for free... but the developer's content is often the stuff I tend to like the best in any game. I like to keep things 'stock'.

 

and for those very reasons above, that's why i say that car and terrain based DLC is a bad idea. glad we agree.

I mean yeah, ultra high quality content DLC could work, but in a way that can't really be quantified, i suspect that it'll be viewed as nickle and diming, rather than substantial 'warrented' DLC. That's a very real problem when it comes to this sort of thing, a consumer will sometimes be affronted by DLC they see as tacked on for the sake of money, even if it's done with the best of intents. Will DLC kill BeamNG? probably not, but at the same time, how would you personally react to having to pay for GMOD addons? or having to pay for downloads in the Steam Workshop?

Now yeah, for things like GTA, the DLC is prime rockstar created content, while community mods exist alongside on the PC version, but you have to keep in mind, what is the consumer coming for?

In GTA, content based DLC makes sense because their main selling point is story, characters and locations, whereas the mods are usually cars or skins. Those are two fundamentally two different services being provided, not to mention that you're also paying for the experience of the open world sandbox game that is GTA, whereas in BeamNG, presumably there's no structure, it's just a physics simulator with some Knex wheels and googly eyes glued on.

You have to view this sort of thing as not "what's been done before" but "what makes sense for this game and will this DLC as a product/service clash or contradict a core part of the experience the consumer is already paying for."

Now 100% free content works in GMOD, because you're coming just for the content, and the 10 dollar price tag is the price of admission to the fairground of ripped halo models and naked alyx mods. The mods are the main attraction. And skyrim, the main attraction is the game as an entity, with a directed experience, with mods being an ancillary side show, a service aside from the main game, provided by the community. You could say Bethesda 'allows' mods to exist to supplement the main game and make it more of a product, and that's probably what's happening, but as soon as you get into that argument it turns into a consumer rights fight, and that's a bit of a mess.

Basically i suppose what i'm failing to articulate is that BeamNG is in a really particular spot that i don't think has ever been seen before. A game/sim/toy/whatever based around the promise of community content, as the entirety of the content. You could argue that GMOD did that first, and in a way you'd be right, but the main game itself already had half life 2 to piggy back as a selling point, and i know a lot of people who didn't know about modding it for a long time, and would just play half life 2 with the ability to weld combine to striders mid gameplay.

So in the end, BeamNG is a game who's entire premise and core selling point is community content, and in my mind paid vehicle/terrain based DLC would contradict that by nature, saying "yes, you could have those big piles of community content, or this slightly higher quality but finite content for some money", and either it sells poorly because it's a less convenient means to deliver essentially the same product, or suddenly we're bottlenecking community stuff to make sure that the official stuff does well.

Mabye there's a solution to make the whole ordeal work brilliantly, but if there is, i can't think of one.

i'm also an idiot, so take that for what it's worth

 

so you're against them creating extra content down the line? or are you against charging for it? why? because modders will make things or because we will offend overly sensitive 6 year olds who think everything should be free? There are right and wrong ways to handle extra content, agreed. but saying it shouldn't happen because we will have an avid modding community is dumb. Based on your post alone I think BeamNG should allow modders to charge for their content. We aren?t in agreement, sorry. Stop discussing the issue like a child. The reasons stated above are probable causes to release DLC, not reasons against it. If it cuts down the waiting time then I?m all for it. There's alot of effort going into vehicles in particular with BeamNG. Its more skill than you realize to create good vehicles here, and map making to any degree always requires a good level of artistic ability. The BeamNG team are free to release content and they're fine to charge for it. There's alot of work involved. This isn't like modding for any other car game, trust me on this. Out of the probable hundreds of modders, I guarantee you'll follow about 5 of them because they are the only ones who make worthwhile things.

Because of the scale and scope of making content, they're justified in maybe asking for compensation in return for sharing. You're arguing on a non-issue. I know I like many others WILL be buying extra content on-top of the base game. You don't need the extra content, you will be buying literally because you want it. You aren?t being nickel and dimed, you?re being offered a new product. It?s a free market, you don?t have to buy. But because it?s a free market, they?re allowed to offer. Problem solved, they're free to go and I hope they do release official content packs after NG comes out regardless of their modding community. They even said they would.

 

So if i can understand you want free dlc because gmod has free addons/mods and gta has dlc's made by rockstar so its ok to pay for it?
Can you compile it into 3-4 sentences so we can see your point?

 

Ok is nobody actually reading what i'm saying?

what i am saying is, car/track based DLC, in a game kept afloat by already free cars and tracks is a bad idea, because you're directly competing with the one of the main hooks of your game, which is a vast array of community created content. and if if gabe and friends want to make money on the DLC, they'd going to have to charge a decent amount, since the install base probably isn't going to be too big, and a good amount of people don't buy DLC full stop, that narrows the base even more.

As Gabe Newell said so eloquently, games and DLC are best viewed as a service, and as any good buisnessman will tell you, when put between two competing services, the consumer will almost always side with the more convenient product or service. And what's more convenient than free and plentiful content?

And no, i dare you to show me where i said DLC is a bad idea full stop. And i dare you to find where i say free DLC is what should be done, ESPECIALLY when the community already does that.

What i am saying is traditional DLC won't work in BeamNG, and the devs will have to get creative if they want viable DLC that doesn't hurt or insult the community, but still sells well.

Off the top of my head, things like exclusive modes, features, or, and what i think would be best, plentiful but extremely cheap stuff, like UI skins, new and interesting huds, like maybe with a drag racing or vintage themes, that sort of thing.

The best DLC would be superficial things that doesn't split the player base, since if not enough people buy a new online mode, and nobody plays it, or it gets the reputation of for nobody playing it, it'll die. And that might create the reputation of bad DLC, and that's the worst thing that could possibly happen really.

The best comparison for superficial DLC would be TF2 and its hats. Superficial status symbols that do nothing to change gameplay, but are still valued by the playerbase enough that they'll pay to get them. The core of the game doesn't suffer one bit, and the players part with their money very willingly for the pleasure of visuals alone, allowing the game to be both free, and keep a steady supply of content for free, attracting more players, and therefore more money.

If you really think car and terrain based DLC is the only way to go because that's how forza works or something, the only way i see that flying is if it's a massive pile of content. Like 30 someodd cars and six terrains the size of nebraska, for maybe ten bucks or something along the lines, maybe even less, since that'd seem like a better value. And you could do themed packs, like vintage style cars, muscle cars, euro sports, with terrains being big sprawling places themed around those cars, like an old 30's town with a racetrack, american badlands/60's city and euro roads/alps respectively

Since the community will prodominantly be producing one off things, single cars, mabye with a variation or two, but mostly single one shot tidbits of content, so the way to avoid competing with that is to go with packs of high quality content, both to seperate from the community stuff and to give the community big piles of stuff that one can reasonably assume everyone else has, which would help kindle online play since everyone know what'll allow them to 'socialize' as it were. Even better would be if they went the Burnout Paradise route, with everyone seeing the DLC cars online, but paying to unlock them, which i think works really well.

That'll never happen. Say someone makes a Ford Falcon mod, suddenly he's charging for Ford's design, that's the very purest form of copyright infringement there is, and someone's probably going to get sued pretty badly. Plus, let's be honest here, most of the people buying and playing this game or ROR are pretty young, and don't really have much cash to sling around, so that'd castrate the game quite a bit, and further render car DLC even further into the realm of redundancy.

On the flipside that would create a really neat market, where the economy is goverened by price and quality, in that order. And it'd be really neat to see what surfaces at best selling and what flops miserebly, and we could all laugh at the inevitable idiot charging 500 dollars for his super awesome car brah, but that is simply never going to happen.

 

Personally, I'd would buy a vehicle or two if they are the kind of vehicles I want and they are very high quality, and of course not a ton of money. I don't think that at the very start of the game that the quality of vehicles made by modders will be up to par with the default content, but it will soon catch up as people get used to the slightly different physics system. I think I'd be way more pissed at them if they charged for gamemodes or physics features instead of vehicles and maps. Skins and whatever I wouldn't care about, but I think those would be fine to sell.

 

Yeah, I'm sure no website would ever allow sharing of models that are branded... I mean, surely those models would be sold for the design, not for the 3d-art aspect of the model... Ford would surely sue everyone who tries to sell a Ford Crown Vic online for 99 dolalrs! Right? Yeah... No way Ford would allow us to sell BeamNG vehicles for less than 5 dollars a car(probably less than 1 dollar, in fact). I mean, they need the money so badly, missing out on those couple of dollars could mean the end of their brand! And the lawsuit to take-down a model of a Toyota Prius would cost Toyota way less than those couple of dollars they'd make off of the model... It costs so little to pay someone to sit in an office to find car models being sold, that it would be entirely cost effective for them to go after all the authors that sell cars online, that's why you never see any models being sold on any website ever!

I mean come on, why would Mercedes, a brand that has so little money, ever allow people to make 99 dollars off of a 3d model that Mercedes themselves had nothing to do with, polygon-creation-wise, when they made the design for the car...



PS: Every word of the post above was entirely sarcasm. Car brands don't give a damn if you sell models online because it's only small-time money. The point where they start to care is if you set up an actual company and start including their cars in commercial games, which is the point where you start to make multiple thousands of dollars and are actively infringing copyright and harming the car brand itself(by allowing people to crash these cars etc.). That's why BeamNG won't include licensed vehicles... The other point where someone will start to care is when you take models from another commercial game and start distributing them freely around the web. A small forum with a couple thousand members selling a few cars for a dollar a piece is something so small, they'd rather not spend their precious resources on it. The cost of finding authors and charging costs them way too much compared to what they get out of it.