Why Cost is Not a Reason Not to Play R3E

[Paul Jeffrey]

I have recently been made aware of an interesting post from one of our members here on RaceDepartment which I thought would be interesting to share with all of you loyal readers. The post in question addresses RaceRoom Racing Experience and its potentially prohibitive pricing structure for those new to the simulation.

Speaking from first hand experience and as someone who used to run the R3E Racing Club here on RD, I personally think this sim is one of the most impressive overall packages available today for fans of virtual racing cars to enjoy, with wonderfully reproduced sounds and car / track models accompanied by a number of extremely interesting licences for various real world series, which is exclusive to the game.

Arguably one of the most complete all round 'packages' available on the market today, it always jars me somewhat to constantly see the same sort of comments on forums across the internet questioning the pricing model and costs of becoming involved in this sim as a newcomer to the game. Yes, the pricing model isn't ideal and yes it can be annoying, confusing or awkward to navigate to the best deals but this should not be something that puts off those new to the simulation. Having seen this excellent post by RD member Alx^ I wanted to take this opportunity to share with you his findings, in the hope that you too can find a suitable financial solution that helps you join in with one of the most underrated and enjoyable simulations available today.

edited post below:

".... if anyone's on the fence about it because of the way the store works etc, here is what I did... maybe someone could use it as a loose guide, obviously accounting for their own tastes when purchasing I don't know if it's the most optimal way, but it worked well for me. Bare in mind I only ever bought 1 pack at a time, and completed the purchase. That way, the system sees that you already own that content, and applies the relevant discounts to other packs it affects thereafter, as has been covered already at the start of this thread.

I got the 10k vRP voucher from the Raceroom shop. This is €64.99 which is a touch under £46 UKGBP (virtually the same as the AC+DLC 1+2 bundle on steam, fyi). You can find out your own currency conversion by searching in google with "€64.99 in GBP" or whatever your currency happens to be.

Then I bought, in roughly this order:

• ADAC GT Masters Experience 2014 (contains several tracks which discount other packs below)
• ADAC GT Masters 2013 (wanted the cars and liveries, cheaper as you already have the tracks)
• European Track Pack (cheaper than buying the missing tracks separately, cheaper due to ^
• DTM Experience 2015 (cheaper because you have the tracks ^)
• Hillclimb
• Group 5 (cheaper because you own a car already from Hillclimb)
• 1x car from WTCC 2014
• American Track Pack (already had 2 of these from a sale the first time I tried this, but it's cheap anyway)

And I have some vRP left. Buying the Hillclimb pack means you get the track, and also 2 of the cars which are included in the Touring Classics Pack, which I believe is often run alongside DTM 1992, so therefore you would have a choice of 2 cars to race in that. When it comes to completing a pack that you own part of, for example, I have 2 of the cars from the Touring Classics Pack now, it is slightly cheaper to get those missing cars on their own, with only 1 livery each, than it is to buy the now-discounted Pack which you already own part of. The extra cost of the pack seems to be in the multiple liveries you get with it. But it depends on whether you want a choice of livery or not.

I hope that's of use to someone somewhere. Not as expensive as I had thought it was in the past to be honest. It feels better than it did when I first tried it. Maybe that's just me, or maybe their patches have changed things for the better! Have to say, if and when the devs get a rating system into this, and maybe scheduling/calendar of some kind for events... in my opinion it really does have the potential to be an iRacing beater for online stuff. The online-ness of it, web integration, leaderboards and competitions, highlighting the pro's times on the competitions, it's very compelling, and the sound and ffb makes it very immersive..."

Once you have this substantial amount of content you are also more than likely to be able to pick up the missing items you may fancy on one of the many sales offered by RaceRoom, and of course you also have the opportunity to test any of the vehicles available in game for free to help you decide what additional content you may wish to pickup down the line.

To compliment your new purchase(s) RaceDepartment runs a popular online racing club for Premium members to enjoy, featuring various cars and tracks in a friendly environment for you to get your racing kicks alongside your offline play.

I hope this little article helps those of you who are still sat on the fence with R3E, it really is an outstanding sim and deserves to achieve the numbers of users of other more mainstream titles available on the market.

Please let us know in the comments section below if you found this information useful and share your experiences with R3E purchasing and of course enjoying the driving!

 

[James Cook]

Partially agree on points 1 & 6.

FFB is still a little lacking in my opinion. Front tyre feel really isn't there apart from loss of wheel weight when experiencing understeer. It's nowhere near nuanced enough.

The business model? My feelings are well known on here and the official forums. It's a tangled mess, lots of double/triple-dipping on the same content and can be expensive if the buyer isn't diligent enough to research how to make his money go further. It's crazy. Buying a game should be simple and I believe this is the number one reason why R3E is often overlooked.

 

[bluey]

Any evidence to support this?

bathurst nothing like the real track ......to w i d e no dipper look at gsce osm track or iracing laser scanned .. 100% better

 

[TurcoMaldade_]

In my opinion, when you have to make a thread explaining why cost is not a reason not to play RRR, is because cost is a reason.

Otherwise this thread wouldnt even exist.

 

[Kjell Eilertsen]

In my opinion, when you have to make a thread explaining why cost is not a reason not to play RRR, is because cost is a reason.

Otherwise this thread wouldnt even exist.

I disagree, it's because;
1. The pricing model is confusing as hell, but that does not mean it's expensive
2. People are complaining about R3E costs, while AC are not much cheaper by comparison, just the fact that R3E lets you run whatever content you own against ALL the other content, while AC requires you to own ALL the content to join a server where someone is using something you don't own helps drive AC price up.
3. If you get R3E content at the prices you should be aiming at and then extrapolate the price out over pieces of content you get access to, I think you'll find it's quite reasonably priced.

Now R3E CAN be expensive, if you just go about shopping with no thought upfront, and this fact I think we all agree that it should change. But the point of the article still stands, cost MAY not be a reason to play R3E, it should just have been worded a bit more carefully to avoid trolls.

 

[Andy_J]

But the point of the article still stands, cost MAY not be a reason to play R3E, it should just have been worded a bit more carefully to avoid trolls.

Kjell, who do you regard as trolls? Anyone that thinks differently and has a different opinion?
I haven't really seen any troll behaviour on this thread other tan a few people who have stated they don't feel the game is as good as others. So who do you feel has acted in a trollistic manor?

 

[Kjell Eilertsen]

Kjell, who do you regard as trolls? Anyone that thinks differently and has a different opinion?
I haven't really seen any troll behaviour on this thread other tan a few people who have stated they don't feel the game is as good as others. So who do you feel has acted in a trollistic manor?

Not gonna go about naming or shaming anyone, partly because I haven't read all the comments in this thread for a long time now so I'd have to go back and reread it. It was merely the first thought that ran through my head when I saw the title of this newspost, "uh oh thats gonna stir up some trolls, I'd have put a "may" in there to soften the blow" ^^

 

[James Cook]

In absolute terms R3E is expensive, even when you take a smart approach with sales and buying vRP in bulk. The competition - SCE, AC, rF2 and pCARS - all offer a broad range of content in a 'complete', easy to understand package that offers better value than an equivalent amount of content in R3E. All of these competitors' products are on Steam and subject to sales too.

What is the potential customer going to be drawn to? The reasonably priced package or the free-to-play game that isn't really free-to-play with an esoteric sales model? The recent 'all content for €50' deal made it abundantly clear that customers want the former.

So in absolute terms R3E is expensive with an unapproachable sales model doing the game no favours either.

On a personal level I've spent around 3-4x the money on R3E compared to Assetto Corsa but have played R3E 10x more, so in terms of relative value I'm getting my money's worth from R3E. But by the same token, someone who gets hundreds of hours from Assetto Corsa can make the case that AC is exceptionally good value.

The sales model chosen by Raceroom inherently puts R3E on the back foot when trying to win over consumers. More expensive than the competition. More convoluted than the competition. Something has to give, in my opinion.

 

[tpw]

Agree with James Cook 110%. After playing R3E heavily for a couple of months, here's my Sergio Leone take on it:

Good: Fantastic immersive audiovisuals and presentation, great AI, great content, great FPS

Bad: Missing/incomplete/oversimplified basic features. Poor visual and mechanical damage modelling, no tyre flatspotting, no track rubbering or marbling, no day/night cycle or time progression, no weather, AI unaffected by grass/kerbs/penalties/crashes and can massively outbrake humans, extremely grippy and forgiving physics and spongy FFB, no caster or tyre pressure setup adjustment, very long loading times, completely unmoddable

Ugly: Business model, always online SP and flaky servers

I can and do get a lot of enjoyment throwing R3Es beautiful and awesome sounding cars around their detailed tracks against great AI, but I feel it has quite some way to go to from being an emulator to a simulator. I want to support the devs to enable them to do this, but every time I give in and engage the expensive and convoluted store I feel like I'm validating Raceroom's egregious business model and giving them a reason to keep it in place.