unpopular idea: make Open Beta a subscription based early access program

It kinda is their fault too, when they sell modules that require OB and are faster at hotfixing beta channel bugs than stable release.

Clear misunderstanding of BETA right there

Yeah, stop all new modules, which today is basically their only source of income. So they have to fire 2/3 of their staff, and that will ensure we finally get vulkan and new clouds and fixes for all existing modules. Maybe not.

 

 

 

What requires more trust? Buying full price early access modules and pray they will eventually work, or pay a tiny monthly subscription for them and each month be free to assess it its worth continuing to pay?

1. It is not my problem that ED can't properly estimate the cost to produce and maintain these modules. If $50-70 USD isn't enough to do that, they need to charge more for the modules. People may not like it, but if they prove that with proper funding they can do it, I bet most wouldn't stay unhappy. You don't fix mismanagement by throwing money at it. You streamline your processes, get rid of problems and work to be as efficient as possible.

2. You're asking people who may have already spent $50-$1000 dollars to enjoy these modules, to now pay more each month just to use them. Naw fam, I'm good. You want to move new modules to a subscription base, that's their choice. We were told they needed this much money to give us this much product, 1+1 ain't equaling 2 at the moment, they ain't getting more money for already purchased work. Not to mention that most of the problems we have been seeing recently are related to crap core code and failure to properly manage module devs, testers and patch releases. Again, throwing more money at the problem doesn't fix it, it just keeps the cycle going. If people have to lose their jobs because they couldn't perform as required, well bud that is life.

@Bonzo, those are a lot of great points. Don't get me wrong, if ED laid bare details of how it was to work and all that stuff, more people might agree, myself included. Right now, it just doesn't feel genuine for that move happen.

I think it's a false assumption that improving the core game doesn't bring in additional sales.

Its a simplification. You are correct that obviously they cant sell modules if their core doesnt work or is woefully out of date. But the incentive to invest in significant improvements in the free core is pretty low, its a long term indirect immeasurable kind of ROI, and thats a difficult sell in any company, and the first thing that gets sacrificed if there is any kind of problem or financial pressure or when there are more urgent bugs that need fixes and when users on forums raise their pitchforks. Or of all them combined.

And then you risk getting in a feedback loop, where sales are down, money gets tight and pressure is on releasing new content to spur sales, which creates more urgent problems that need fixing, and more angry customers, risking more sales, making you even less likely to devote resources on reworking the core, because its payoff, if it exists, is 5 years in the future at best. Google can invest significant resources to reap rewards 5 years in the future, I doubt ED can.

Thinking about this, there's something they could sell based on a subscription : Official DCS servers with all kinds of content for various user interests. From airquake over WW2 to coop campaigns going down.

No, thats a bad idea. Running DCS servers is expensive and costs a lot of time. Good luck making money on that. You would also be competing with your customers who run their own servers, and who dedicate endless free time to making missions and MP content. There is no point in competing with that, leverage it instead.

I dont think thats fair to old customers, who paid for modules but werent told they would stop working or stop being supported without a subscription for the DCSW layer.

They can add DCSW subscription starting with v3.0. All current modules will continue to work in earlier versions, but no new content and features for you unless subscribed.

Compared to other flight sims and some games, this won't be unfair or expensive at all.

P3Dv3 or P3Dv4 comes out, and many developers start charging for upgrades, and then discontinue support for the older versions. P3Dv4.5 comes out (not even a full release) - upgrade charges again. Same story with P3Dv5 and X-Plane.

Each major P3D release is a full-price product. Without any discount. First you are paying for the core game. Then you are either paying for upgrades, or repurchasing dozens of your expensive add-ons (if there is a compatible version at all). Rinse and repeat in a couple years.

But having a small monthly fee for the constantly improving DCS core, that has been free for many years, is somehow unfair?

And how many times you've paid for upgrading any of your DCS modules? Only BS and FC comes to mind - and those were old. Like, really old. Like, essentially from another game old.

But we are getting to a point where realistically, they should freeze new content for quite a long time to be able to work through a backlog of issues and sorely needed rewrites. IMO that is just not financially viable with their current business model which relies so heavily on new content. And new content means new issues.

And how exactly you are going to prevent them from spending all your subscription money on more EA modules? Or on features for modules you don't care about? Instead of improving core, which is absolutely essential for the existence of DCS.

Just please don't say "I'll vote with my wallet". I've been hearing this for years, and yet the situation is only getting worse.

Restricting subscription to core only will guarantee us a core improvements.

If there's no core improvements, this would mean that devs are slacking, and the money went into a wrong place.

They won't be able to say "we think that SLAM-ER is more important, so no new clouds this year". Or "users have voted for the full-fidelity B-52, so we're putting the dynamic campaign on hold".

It's dead simple.

 

And shouldn't the "hardline base" be the most supportive group? Instead of simply abandoning the platform they heavily invested into?

They are but if your telling me I now have to pay again to use the modules I already bought I'm asking for a refund, for everything. It violates the EULA I agreed too and It's clearly a bait and switch.

And I guarantee, others who have been here since LOMAC and Black Shark feel the same way.

I agree with you that the current system has some major problems but I'm not sure what they can do at this point so far down the road except release modules in a more complete less buggy state. That would solve everything, it seems to me. But I do like what they did with the Super Carrier, having paid updates to the core game. I have zero problems supporting them that way. Same thing with the WW2 assets pack. Have a base level implementation of something like the Stennis and users can "upgrade" to the newer more comprehensive version like the SC. Problem with that is it has the potential to divide the community. But I think that that's really the best they can do right now, and so far those concerns that it would divide the MP landscape turned out to be mostly unfounded due to their implementation of the product. And common sense dictates that if your into things like this you'll likely be willing to make those purchases too. If your a fan of WW2 you probably want the asset pack, if your a fan of the hornet or tomcat you probably want the SC ect ect

Bottom line is they need to slow down and Finnish things before they take on MORE modules and MORE problems. Maybe MAC will help with their revenue and expanding the player base but we'll have to see. I really don't see any sort of paid subscription service flying with this crowd.

They can add DCSW subscription starting with v3.0.

Charging for the base game means no more free version, and without the existence of a free version, i would not have been lured (back) in to DCS. It would be a mistake IMO.

All current modules will continue to work in earlier versions, but no new content and features for you unless subscribed.

 

Compared to other flight sims and some games, this won't be unfair or expensive at all.

In all likelihood, the release of a V3 will just be an arbitrary cut off point, as the game is under constant development. And if they released V3 tomorrow, it would mean anyone who bought the falcon or super carrier would never get the fully functional module they paid for? And especially if ED do continue to fix all the missing features and bugs in V2.5 and its modules, the creation of subscription in V3 will just split the community, with one (large) part staying on 2.5 and only some upgrading to v3 which at least initially wouldnt be worth its money, and that is just bad for everyone.

P3Dv3

General aviation simulators are much more a single player thing. It doesnt matter nearly as much if you split the community there, which by glancing over the forums, it quite obviously is. Everyone seems to be on different versions. Understandable given the price of the core. Im also unsure how successful it is.

And how exactly you are going to prevent them from spending all your subscription money on more EA modules? Or on features for modules you don't care about? Instead of improving core, which is absolutely essential for the existence of DCS.

ive tried to explain that many times now. There is no business model where users take over development roadmap, and I wouldnt want them to. The point is how does ED make their money? If it is only from (pre)selling new modules (or creating new arbitrary version cut off points), then creating new modules is where their incentive lies, creating all the problems we see now. If they receive monthly subscription fees, their incentive is in growing their customer base and keeping those subscribers happy. Regardless if that is achieved by creating new content or improving the core or fixing old stuff.

Now that argument falls at least partially apart if they charge a subscription per module. Then again ED may have an incentive to create more modules in order to sell more subs, but they would risk losing subs in older neglected modules. And subs per module would be a bad idea for many other reasons too, it makes much more sense to me have "all you can eat" subscriptions at least as an option in a tiered system.

Restricting subscription to core only will guarantee us a core improvements.

Why? Why dont you follow your own logic here, there is no way to prevent ED from using the core subscription money to invest in B17s modules, especially if these modules are still their main source of income.

They won't be able to say "we think that SLAM-ER is more important, so no new clouds this year". Or "users have voted for the full-fidelity B-52, so we're putting the dynamic campaign on hold".

Yeah, they will be able to say that. What would prevent them from saying it?

How about disabling multiplayer for openbeta and enabling it on stable only?

How about disabling multiplayer for openbeta and enabling it on stable only?

That would make testing completely inadequate. Possibly the worst suggestion I read so far.

This horse has been ground into such a fine dust, at this point, Al Pacino is looking to snort a line of it.

I woudl have no problem to pay a subscription. I'm spending a lot of time in this game and I understand how much money you need to keep wheels rolling. ED relies on one time payment income (as I know) so the managment have to think all time what to do to keep the finance coming - for us - long time players this is no good as what we want is - better testing, focus on fixing things - doing things with OUR priority list. All of this would be so much easier when doing on subscription level because than ED would be able to hire new guys and they can pay them from subscriptions focusing on things WE want.

The thing with OB is that its not really a beta in the sense that its used for testing. And the reason I suggest limiting access to it, is to prevent that everyone considers it the default version so that issues in the beta channel dont affect the majority of players. If 70% of online players use the beta, they are not testing, they are playing. You can do a lot more with a lot less people doing actual more methodological testing.

Playing is testing though. It's the literally definition of real world use. Given that some of the users might not be interested into doing thorough bug investigation, it's not necessarily going to solve issues, but it's very likely going to find them. When a major issue is found it can be passed to ED for deep investigation. I don't see how closing off the OB makes the remaining players do more methodological testing. You would just be left with the people that test thoroughly now and have a net decrease in testers unless you also hired more professional testers.

It kinda is their fault too, when they sell modules that require OB and are faster at hotfixing beta channel bugs than stable release.

But where would modules go if not OB? They are tested before stable release, so it only makes sense to send them to OB first. It keeps problems out of stable and reduces the need for constant stable updates (which is a plus for me).

I also think people expect too much to be done too quickly. ED have hired a bunch of new works to focus on the core, but it is still going to take time for them to update the base game. People cite the lack of a Dynamic Campaign as an example of something indicating that the core is abandoned because it won that poll a few years ago. However the DC is a pretty massive undertaking. I would guess it's similar to EDGE. EDGE took about 5 years to release. The DC poll isn't that old yet. Even if a sub model or something else could fix all of ED's problems it would probably take a few years to see the results. Going by what I see now, people would get upset waiting and probably start to shoot it down before anything came out of it.

Even if a sub model or something else could fix all of ED's problems it would probably take a few years to see the results.

Maybe. Here is the thing though; they keep adding new modules, that require new features that keep breaking the base app. If its hard rewriting or fixing the base layer, and Im sure it is, imagine how much harder it must be if that is a constantly moving target, constantly needing new functionality.

I, and I think many others, would not be against a feature / new content freeze until all non trivial known bugs are solved, missing functionality is added and some improvements in the game engine are done; particularly re performance - if that is realistic. Even if that takes a year. Right now, with a business model that relies so heavily on pushing new content, that would basically mean a year of no revenue for ED. That is the problem.

At the same time, a lot of people seem to be willing to pay a little more if that results in finishing what they started, more stability and improvements in the core layer. There is simply no method to make that happen. We can not create the incentives for that. Worse even, we could crowd fund an army of top developers to rework the base layer, but if ED keeps pushing out new modules even that wont help much. And then I see people who want to support ED, do so by buying new modules. Arguably the biggest cause of our problems.

A subscription model isnt going to magically fix DCSW. But at least it might help in not making the current situation worse, and provide ED with the incentives and means to pause new content and instead focus on the base layer and begin fixing all the known issues, and doing so on a codebase that doesnt at the same time need to be updated to support new content every month.

Hawking that getting your modules for (almost) free crap still??

Nice twist, subscription betas!

I thought going subscription would attract tons of new users to DCS to help pay for things, so how in the name of all that's holy will making the beta a subscription service bring in new users to carry the load (not that you ever answered that question about the stable version in your other thread on subscriptions either)??

Do you know what a grifter is? It's a person who gaslights others to get things for free...

Hmm, now why did THAT just come up, and why does it seem so relevant?