Vertigo72

When at least part of your revenue depends on keeping customers happy, you risk losing revenue when you do not manage to keep them happy enough to keep paying the sub. Thats not only a truism, thats the whole point: ensuring ED's interests are fully aligned with their customers desire. The current situation is far more dangerous, as sooner or later it puts ED in a situation where it can not afford to do the things its customers want (like fixing and improving the free base layer), and are instead forced to do the exact opposite (create more and more new content at the expense of performance and stability of that base layer, and at the expense of resources to improve that base layer). Their interests can get diametrically opposed to ours, and that simply can not have a happy ending. BTW that things take time is not the main problem. The current model of EA modules already requires users be patient and pay for stuff that it is far from finished and often isnt even really useable yet, and that by itself does not appear to be a huge problem. As long as progress is made, most of us have no problem buying modules that arent finished yet and can take years to complete. As long as that module is something we wanted, as long as we see progress, that is not a major issue and I dont see why subs would change that. The issue is when you can not buy the things you want, and are even asked to pay for the exact opposite.

That is precisely the problem. Everyone wants more improvements in the core, I bet even ED want nothing more, but no one pays for it. No one even CAN pay for it; so to pay for it ED needs (new) module sales, so especially whenever users start getting upset and sales start drying up, the only thing ED can do is bloat the game further by releasing more and more content, more EA modules no one ever asked for and that will only grow the long list of known bugs and missing features and angry impatient users demanding fixes and instead of improving the game for everyone, they tend to result in the exact opposite, with everyone suffering more bugs lower performance and more 10 FPS warpfests. And realistically, those new modules and urgent patches result in ED having even fewer developer time to improve the base layer. And as if that is not bad enough those devs who keep working on the core will have a MUCH tougher job reworking a base layer that at the same time constantly needs new features to support those new modules. Ive done my share of IT project management, this is the stuff that gives me nightmares. You can not win. Its like digging your own grave or being trapped in quicksand. The harder you try to solve it, the worse the outcome. It doesnt matter what the ratio's are. The problem is the fundamental misalignment of incentives. EDs financial interest (especially short/medium term) require them to do the exact opposite of what most users want them to do now. Its simply an unstable construct. They may balance that ball for a long time, but the moment something starts going wrong and it starts leaning in one direction, it falls apart. At some point that 50% working on an zero revenue core has got to become 30% even if "temporarily" which will make their problem bigger and customers angrier and less likely to buy new modules and then it goes to 10% until core development stalls completely and the project eventually dies. I would like to see a solution before it comes to that.

readyboost is pointless nowadays. Your ssd is faster than that USB stick. Readyboost had some marginal use then we still used rotating harddrives with very high seek times. Then a USB stick could be helpful as cache because those had low seek times. But if you have an ssd, microsoft is wise to disallow readyboost as no usb stick will be faster than a half decent ssd. I just googled how impossible it is to upgrade that machine. And yeah, kinda impossible. You can replace the ssd if you are a brave man: https://liliputing.com/2015/03/upgrade-a-surface-pro-3-with-a-power-drill.html And if you are more than brave, i suspect you can replace the ram modules with higher capacity ones if you first you manage to open the damn thing: And then have a hot air station to desolder the ram modules, and you manage to buy the exact right higher capacity chips somewhere. And even then I wouldnt bet more than even odds that it will actually work. But it may.

If you have a 3d printer or know someone with a 3d printer, and have some basic soldering skills, there are several designs on thingiverse, like this: https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:3470378 Also simpeler ones using aa or C batteries https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:477494 https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:3481830 If you dont have a 3d printer you can be creative with stuff lying around. Here is one I made years ago before I had a printer:

Clearly Jester cant find his buttons because your gamma is off the scale.

More or less confirmed; I had the delay on zoom and external views again. I unplugged my FFB2 stick and the problem instantly went away. After plugging the stick back in, the issue didnt return (at least not immediately) but there is also no more force on the joystick until you restart the flight, so its not something I can test for long periods. BTW, has that always been the case, if you unplug a force feedback stick and plug it back in, that DCS recognises the stick has been plugged in and it works but there is no force applied to it? Tested this in F14 and TF-51.

The overwhelming majority of DCS players want ED to spend more resources on fixing performance and the base game, rather than constantly putting out new modules no one ever asked for. Especially new modules that achieve the exact opposite of what we want, like causing more performance issues and new bugs in the base layer that affect everyone. The problem is, ED have developers and mouths to feed, and they pretty much only make money from selling (new) modules so stopping all new content creation and asking them to focus on the game base for a year, is not very different from asking them to work a year for free. Its a cool idea, but its just not realistic. The irony is that many people would be quite willing to chip in for fixes rather than new content, but the only way to "chip in" is buying new content and thus giving ED the wrong signal and the incentive to do exactly the opposite of what you wanted. We risk getting in a death spiral where a lack of funding or resources leads to a push to release ever more content, which inevitably leads to more bugs and issues that need urgent fixing, diverting even more resources away from working on the game core and possibly angering more customers which may cause a decline in sales, which, well they can only counter with more content! until you get to a point where you can basically not afford to maintain or upgrade the game core. The thing we all sorely want to see fixed, but that no one pays for. Or even can pay for. ED seriously needs to come up with a solution, find a revenue source or tweak the business model in a way that ensures their revenue is not solely dependent on ever more, new (game breaking) content, -which most of us arent really asking for at the point anyway- but that also allows them to profit financially from the things we are asking for, and even willing to pay for, like reworking the base layer, graphics / VR engine, weather model, campaigns, fixing old bugs and all the things that are not saleable as modules. There are many ways to achieve that, but they all have significant drawbacks. Mention the word "subscription" and 2/3 of the forum light their pitch forks, even if no one is forced and the model is offered as an optional alternative to buying modules. Other solutions like charging a fee for DCSW V3 are only slightly less controversial but has nasty side effects like fragmenting the user base, the need for ED and third party developers to support multiple platforms. They can not NOT fix the viper or F18 or super carrier in v2.5 if v3 is a paying upgrade. It also means giving up the free on ramp. This thread is not right place to discus how this can be solved best, I have my ideas, you will have yours, and none will be universally liked, in fact, all of them will be widely disliked, but I really hope someone sends a signal upstairs and ED come up with something. And even if we will dislike their solution, Im hopeful we will all love the long term outcome.

This may not be particularly useful, as I dont have this problem with my FFB2. I do have something similar; zooming and changing views sometimes take many seconds. I have zoom on a slider on my hotas, and at times, this responds extremely late, even though the rest of the game remains fluid,including head tracking. The same happens when switching between internal and external views (F1/F2). That may take several seconds. The game isnt frozen, framerates are ok and I have full control, it just takes "forever" to switch views. Im not sure I have identified a pattern yet, but it seems to get worse the longer I fly. Ive really only started seeing this on the latest open beta version, and I have only tried the F14 so far; it may be a completely different issue, but it sounds similar enough (and I also happen to have a FFB stick) that I thought it worth mentioning.

Indeed. But thanks for providing further evidence you actually want to see DCS remain a niche product that appeals only to its current narrow customer base. You dont want to broaden its appeal and have a gazillion new paying customers help fund platform improvements to DCSW.

I ran a poll in a home owner association forum. I asked if they would be willing to pay rent on their homes. 98% voted no, so clearly, renting homes is not a viable business model.

I know, and I commend them for it. That changes absolutely nothing about my point. I do not have a problem with ED. I have a problem with a business model that forces them to do these updates almost as charity and against their own narrow financial interest. And that applies much much more to the base DCSW layer than to modules; in theory, their work on the black shark module may spur sales. I for one, just bought it, if for no other reason as to "thank" them for spending resources on old modules, rather than offer presales on new and broken content. But i can not do the same for an improved graphics engine, or new weather, or a dedicated server, or dynamic campaigns or anything in the base layer. And I want their financial interest to be aligned with my and your wishes. I keep hearing that, "we are a tiny niche". And while its true, it very much sounds like you want to keep it that way, and oppose any idea's that might help make DCS more mainstream. Maybe it makes you feel special or something? Look at me, I fly DCS. Its so only for elites. Its so hard and so realistic it takes me 20 minutes to take off. You play microsoft flighsimulator a game played by millions. HAHAHAHA. But the reality is that the flight sim market is not insignificant. Microsoft flight simulator sold in the tens of millions. The military flight sim market is not that small either, the original IL2 sold over 2 million copies. God knows how many they sold of the follow up franchises. DCS is more realistic and harder than FS or IL2. But that should not limit its appeal to just a tiny fraction of a percent of its users. Users of those sims generally crave more realism, not less. And if that where to backfire, and pilots get more than they bargained for, compared to improving realism, its pretty trivial to dial down realism and provide simplified start procedures or helping hands where needed or even simplified flight models (which even il2 pilots probably wouldnt want). Some of that is already in DCS. Done right, DCS should be able to appeal to a majority of IL2 fighter pilots, plus everyone who is looking for more realism than IL2. And of course, anyone wanting more modern stuff. And yet, something is stopping them. For some reason Il2 is at least an order of magnitude more popular. Can you tell me what it is? Because I do have a few hunches. I know what held me back for almost 20 years. And Ill give you a hint; its not the 20 minutes you spend doing a cold start. Not sure what DCS plane takes more than ~12 for INS alignment worst case and most players will spend less than 5. But if IL2 players would object to how long it takes to get airborne, thats a trivial easy fix: pre align the INS or enable hot starts. Done. 2 million extra potential customers. So thats not it. BTW, 20 minutes also will not impress many P3D or x-plane players. It takes longer to start a 747. And that is also a pretty big "niche" (even though I cant for my life understand why anyone sees more fun in starting or flying a 747 than a fighter) Ok. At the risk of getting myself banned. **** you. **** YOU. That is not even close to what I want to achieve.

It can not be at the same time a money grab that people here are revolting against, and too cheap so it would reduce EDs revenue. It cant be both too expensive and too cheap. Prices can be increased or decreased almost arbitrarily and be adapted to what ED sees happening. They can create endless complexity and logic in to subscription fees; if they dont want people renting only occasionally to suit their needs, they can do minimum durations. Or probably a better idea, start with a higher monthly fee so you get some meaningful revenue from occasional or seasonal players (who are unlikely to buy many 70 dollar modules anyhow) and decrease the fees with time so that 12 months costs only a little more than 6. You can even make longer term rents accumulate towards module purchases, allowing long term renters at some point to lock in their investment in to a module, albe it of course at a higher overall price than straight up buying it. That could be 20% above module price or 5x above, I dont know what the right answer is there, I dont have the stats that ED has, but the concept is not too different from leasing cars or other stuff. However, if people stop playing the game and stop being willing to pay subscriptions, if they "cancel their lease", that is exactly what they should do and be allowed to do, and the signal ED would need to change course and improve whatever it is people want; rather than being forced to push new modules and content via pre-ordering (that may not be the thing people want ), or worse, what you seem to suggest, rely on people getting suckered in to buying a module that on hindsight, they think wasnt worth their money. That can not seriously be the business model you are advocating for? I just looked it up; simracing subscription is $6 per month or $50 per year. Less than one high fidelity DCS module. Did you think that was too much, or the many $100s if not $1000 you would need (or want) to spend on "modules", ie cars and tracks? Im guessing its more the latter.

Of course it can be a money grab and can be used to hide price hikes, especially by quasi monopolists. Even more offensive IMO is forcing users to pay for services they dont need or want. Have a ring doorbell by any chance? But selling a perpetual license can be just as much a money grab, especially for software with built-in obsolesce. What good does it do that your windows 95 license is still valid today? A subscription model definitely solves a number of important issues. Upfront cost is an obvious one, dramatically reducing switching or canceling cost, there is no more issue of version envy, you always have the latest version and there is no issue with version compatibility. If renting office360 upsets you, imagine how bad it was when we needed to spend 500 to upgrade office just to be able to open documents created in newer versions. That pretty much was microsofts trick to force you buy a new version. In general though, a perpetual license model IMO is not compatible with a desire of getting constant updates. Sometimes you dont need that. Ever since office 2003 or something, Ive never had any desire to upgrade. It did everything I needed and then some. Thats probably also why microsoft switched to subs (and I switched to libreoffice and google docs). Otherwise hardly anyone would keep buying office upgrades, there is only so much most people need from a word processor or spreadsheet. But is there anyone using DCS now that is not craving improvements? I highly doubt it. And you can not expect, just because you bought a module 10 years ago, that ED continue to develop and improve your product for another 10 years. Versioning doesnt really work here either. If they EOL 2.5 and release V3 tomorrow, paying or subscription based, how are F16, F18 and super carrier buyers gonna feel about never getting the fully functional modules they paid for? At the same time, you want everyone who flies DCS to be on the same version. Because otherwise MP doesnt work. And it would cause terrible headaches for third party developers having to support users on DCS 2.5, 3, 3.5,... Subscription model by itself wont make DCS any better, but aside from the incentive thing I explained 2 dozen times now, it also solves those things. And may also widen the appeal and bring in more players if modules can be rented rather then only sold. It may bring in sales from existing users; I would gladly pay for a few months of ww2 planes and maps. I might keep paying for that, I might not, depending on how I like it. I might buy the modules, or not, but I wouldnt have to be worried about spending 200 upfront to find out its not really my thing or I like that other sim better. Ask any new player how he felt about buying his first high fidelity module. Chances are he spent days watching youtube and reading forums to figure out if he would like it, or should buy the viggen or the F5. The tomcat or something easier. The F18 or something more mature. The truth is he cant really know. And buying 20 modules to find out is not really an option either. Paying 15 euro to test them all for a month, or 7 euro to try the F16 for a month, why not ? Its a dramatically lower barrier to entry. And Im just putting numbers there, I havent given it any thought what a reasonable price would be.

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.

Thats your choice. And I dont want to take that away. But you better get used to the idea, because the world is moving to SaaS. Good luck using fusion360 or pretty much any autodesk program. Or adobe program. And increasingly Microsoft programs. Google doesnt even sell any apps, its all SaaS. btw, how old is your antivirus program? You mean like a recurring monthly maintenance fee? In practice that is almost same, but its not the worst idea I heard. Problem there is that you could hardly offer it as an option or in parallel to the current pricing model. It would be mandatory for everyone - at the very least for anyone flying online and be an extra cost, even for anyone who purchased all the current modules. It would also mark the end of the free version of DCSW, and I dont think thats a good idea. But if the anti sub crowd for some reasons prefers to pay basically mandatory monthly maintenance fees instead of giving other people the option to rent their modules, I wouldnt be against that. But Ill let you explain to them why they should pay for bug fixes in the modules they paid full price for.

Eve Online is the first one that comes to my mind. I bet there are countless others. I also believe FS2020 will be at least partially subscription based, and if you think it will not be successful because that, Im taking bets. On a more general note; xbox gamepass, geforce now, google stadia, everything is moving towards a netflix model for games. How many DVDs did you buy this year?

what? AFAIK you dont need even need to pay a sub for star citizen. They sell modules and ships. Some for $2000. If you buy all the ships in the game, its a cool $36000. Im not surprised they spend more time developing ever more ships than fixing bugs! I mean look at it: https://starcitizen.tools/List_of_Ship_and_Vehicle_Prices Thats EDs business model on steroids. But yeah, good point I guess?

It does that, regardless of what ED actually charges the subscription fee for. They could charge a monthly fee for DCSW or module packs or online playing or having customised 3d pilot models that look like you. Money is money. But what changes is the fact that periodic subscriptions shift revenue away from selling new modules, meaning ED do not HAVE to release new module after new module to pay their salaries. Instead their revenue will depend at least partially on maintaining happy customer willing to renew their subscription every month. Customer who right now may not care for yet another new plane or another ship, but do care about performance or clouds or bugs in old modules or whatever. That is the real change.

If you prefer paying fixed amounts upfront for stuff that doesnt work yet, and may never get fixed, Ill give you mine. What do you want, a B17? No problem, Just send me the money and Ill give you a serial. No promises when Ill release it. Be patient. And I may have to break your entire game to enable it. Payment via Western union of course, I dont want you to be able to do a charge back if I dont deliver this decade, or decide to start selling B52s instead. Anyone want a B52? Ah screw the B52. lets do a WW2 carrier. No one ever asked for it, but its the only thing I can think off. Who wants a serial for a WW2 carrier? What do you say? You want new clouds? Bug fixes? Dynamic campaigns ? Performance upgrades? Sorry, no can do. I dont sell those. Ask nVidia. You want Vulkan ? I can do the Avro Vulcan if you want. Just send me the money!

They could be. I wouldnt mind renting all the WW2 stuff for a while. See if I like it.Check performance on channel map. See how online goes. But Im not considering going all in and spending 200 euro upfront. Also if there is a subscription model that gives me access to all the planes, and all the maps, I would definately consider it. Price of that subscription should be dependent on how many modules I dont own yet. edit: misread. Thought you said existing customers. But the same is very much true for completely new customers, who may not know what plane suits them. And fear getting buyers remorse if it turns out the F14 is too difficult, or the viggen isnt really their thing, and they would have preferred an F18 or FW190 instead. I guess you are talking about a subscription version of DCSW then? Which indeed would pose that problem, as many users would stick to 2.5. Same problem if you charge a fixed fee for DCSW 3.0. Its why I dont think its a good idea. My suggestion is to offer subscriptions (or because people are allergic to that word, maybe "renting" ) of modules instead.

What is more important; finding an incentive to onboard existing customers to a scheme they dont want and piss them off with paywalls, or having a scheme that is attractive to new customers or existing customers with a limited number of modules who are currently unwilling/unable to pay full module price upfront for the ones they dont have? (or ED doesnt really have :D) Which is one of many reasons I really would not like to see different versions. That will be a nightmare to maintain, it will split the community, and its of no benefit to anyone to have a user base that is split between various versions.

I understand these are challenges, but they dont seem particularly hard to overcome to me? you could fairly easily maintain attitude control by putting control vanes behind the rocket exhaust. The exhaust velocity is far far higher than the airspeed of the plane that launches it, so even if the rocket as a whole is flying backwards, those controls still work as they do flying forward and with plenty of authority. As mentioned earlier, even the V2 did that (well, usually not for flying backwards, but the idea is the same). Alternatively, you could have some disposable fins at the front of the rocket, a bit like Falcon 9 grid fins, that stabilize the rocket while flying negative airspeeds, but are ditched the moment it achieves positive airspeed. That should be super easy to do, even just mechanically have air pressure release them. Heck, maybe even a drag chute would work. And even if that flight phase is too violent and thus challenging to maintain a steady attitude and target lock, how much difference does it make if you where to lose lock for like half a second, in a stage of flight where you barely have any airspeed yet? A $2 accelerometer is all it takes for my drones to be able to return to a previous attitude after having been flipped upside down.

No no no no. I paid over 40K for my car, its completely unfair if my neighbor gets to lease that car for 600 per month. And doesnt have to pay maintenance. And he can regularly switch cars. Its unfair to me and it will bankrupt car manufacturers, I also expect them to keep improving my car instead of developing new cars for my neighbor. And they will because otherwise I will write angry posts on fora and point to polls that prove that car owners do not want to pay lease fees.

Lets be clear, are they saying "no, I dont want to pay for a subscription" (because I already paid enough) or are they saying "you should not be allowed to have a subscription" ? If its the latter, Im really curious how you motivate that or even why you think you should have any say on the matter. No one is saying (or at least I am not saying) people who already own modules should lose access to them. Subscriptions would therefore be optional and target primarily new users who do not yet have a large investment in DCS modules, or dont want to commit to a large investment, or can not afford it up front. Or want to test modules before they buy. If you object to that, its as ridiculous as objecting to the free trial or that I would take a loan from the bank to buy all the DCS modules in one go and pay it off over 5 years. How is that your business? If its the former, then who cares? Do not use the option if you dont like it. Ask the people who currently have not paid a dime to ED if they would pay if there is a subscription model. Its their vote that matters, not yours.

You mean they like having new unfinished buggy modules, while there is an endless and increasing list of known bugs and missing features in the older ones, while we suffer unplayable VR performance, have been waiting for years and years for vulkan or new clouds or new dynamic campaigns? No, I actually think they dont like that. But they do not seem to understand that is a logical consequence of the current model that they "like". That shouting on the forums wont change that, but a different business model might.