The price of mb-339 is too high, it is recommended to adjust ( in my opinion )

[cfrag]

On 11/1/2022 at 11:54 PM, Rudel_chw said:

I fail to see how that should be a developer's concern, having prices vary on a per country basis is kind of discriminatory as some customers would be paying more than others.

Well, it's the vendor's concern in their obligation to maximize revenue. It's also quite common: some (even life-saving) medication in the US (where it's produced) can cost 10x - 100(!) times more than in other markets (like more regulated Europe). It's not discrimination per se, it's just trying to maximize profitability. Other, less extreme examples: here in Switzerland many milk-based products (like our famous Chocolate and Cheese): Although produced here they costs 50% less across the border - a mere 50km away. Why? Maximizing Profits, the lawful obligation of a company. No discrimination intended nor needed. Ethical? Good one. That's not what companies exist for.

 

On 11/2/2022 at 11:30 AM, Rudel_chw said:

I still fail to understand how a us$ 60 module is unreachable for some users, yet at the same time they can afford a PC able to run DCS?

Well, we all know that one. It's the whiny excuse of every entitled being. Many of them would complain that any price is too high. As I mentioned before: the price for non-essential luxury goods like computer games is purely fictitious and is based on reaching a common understanding between vendor and customer. The vendor will perennially claim that they have wives and kids to support, and the customer will complain that they could get something almost as good someplace else, for half the asked price. At some point they will come to an agreement and a sale is made, or not. Everything in-between is merely (entertaining) histrionics - so get some pop-corn  

I got the MB, b*tched about the price to myself somewhat (nobody likes to spend money, and entitled I too love to complain), then donned my HMD (which alone costs more than 20 times the asking for the module) and was impressed by (and immediately fell in love with) the glass reflections on the round instruments. It's a great, fun model to fly, and I get to whine and complain about the lingering bugs. How much more fun can a guy like me ask for? IMHO totally worth it.

Edited November 3, 2022 by cfrag

[cfrag]

On 11/1/2022 at 8:55 PM, Rudel_chw said:

My view is that the price should be based only on the development costs divided by an estimate of how many units will be sold, plus a reasonable profit

While I agree that in a fair market that's how it should work, it's not how it works today. Before you start a project like this, you first make an estimate how much revenue you can create (which can involve some very elaborate revenue/market maximization models because prices have different elasiticity in different countries). That will already give you the target price for the markets, as it's the base line for your business case and the amount of revenue most likely to receive. Only then will you make a best guess at how much it will cost you to finance (including interest) and develop and market the product. If the margin is big and likely enough, development is green-lit and funds are secured. The reason it's done that way is simple: basing the price for an intangible product like software on development is a sure way into bankruptcy - when they overrun, the price rises, and sales numbers can fluctuate with price; there's too little predictability involved. Nobody in their right mind would risk their funds to finance such a venture; such a module would never attract enough funding and dies pre-development.  

[Beirut]

9 hours ago, cfrag said:

 

 

Well, we all know that one. It's the whiny excuse of every entitled being. Many of them would complain that any price is too high.

 

 

I don't think that's fair. First off, the statement "many of them would complain that any price is too high" has no basis in truth. That is something you thought up, but that no one has said.

 

As long as the person is not being ridiculous about the price - far too low or far too high -  then the discussion is perfectly reasonable. As stated, the cost of DCS planes runs about $50 to $100Cdn. Say a Yak-52 up to a Tomcat. If the discussion about price is within those parameters then it's certainly fair for someone to voice an opinion and not simply be dismissed as "whiny" or "entitled".

 

As stated, this is an expensive pastime, and the budgets of our fellow flyers are as diverse as the flyers themselves. Begrudging someone for not having a particularly free flow of cash and taking note of the price of things, is not exactly showing good grace.

[cfrag]

3 hours ago, Beirut said:

If the discussion about price is within those parameters then it's certainly fair for someone to voice an opinion and not simply be dismissed as "whiny" or "entitled".

My apologies for being obtuse - I included myself in that "whiny and entitled" category at my attempt of levity. 

For the entire existence of humanity there has never been, and never will be, an objective price. Take a cup of coffee. I might think it reasonable to pay USD 5 for a cup at some Caffee at Bahnhofstrasse, much like someone else might at a Starbucks in NYC. Ask a Nepalese worker who earns $200 a month if they would pay that price for what's essentially a beverage made from hot water and caffeine plant (in Nepal, probably Tea), and you'll get a blank stare. In Venezuela, the price for a cup of coffee went from 450 Bolivars in 2016 to over 1'00'000 (one million!) bolivars within little over a year. At which point was the price objective?

All prices therefore are purely subjective, a negotiation between vendor and customer. It's even worse with intangibles like software that cost the same to produce 1 unit or 1'00'000. So if you think something is too expensive, that is because you are right. It is. For you. That is regardless of how much is asked. Heck, even when people try hand out something for free, there will be some to whom that's still too much. Don't believe me? Head over to the User Files section and look at the free offerings. Some author lovingly crafted a mod. Invariably, you'll find someone who deems that free offering as 'not worth your time to download'. 

No price can ever be objectively fair, adequate, or reasonable. Any discussion along those lines is futile. If you agree to the price, purchase. Maybe try to haggle (in which case entitled me will whine about the price to the vendor in an attempt to have it lowered). If you come to an agreement, fine - a purchase is made. But one thing is absolute: there is no objectively fair price. Never was, never will be. There's only agreement between seller and buyer that they individually feel the amount paid is sufficient for what is offered.

Any opinion I may have on what has moved me to agree to that price may not sway you; so engaging in a discussion about what may or may not constitute a 'fair' price for a module is so intrinsically personal that it becomes pointless. I wasn't attacking you (nor am I now), I'm trying to point out that everyone has their own understanding of what they think is a good price, and all 'discussions' to get a vendor to lower the price is engaging in 'whiny, entitled behavior' to get it lowered. "Histrionics" as I called them before. Entertaining, and who knows, sometimes successful. But in no way ever fact-based, because there is no objective price for anything.  

[Beirut]

4 hours ago, cfrag said:

My apologies for being obtuse - I included myself in that "whiny and entitled" category at my attempt of levity. 

 

 

Apologies if I came off as too harsh.

 

4 hours ago, cfrag said:

Any opinion I may have on what has moved me to agree to that price may not sway you; so engaging in a discussion about what may or may not constitute a 'fair' price for a module is so intrinsically personal that it becomes pointless. I wasn't attacking you (nor am I now), I'm trying to point out that everyone has their own understanding of what they think is a good price, and all 'discussions' to get a vendor to lower the price is engaging in 'whiny, entitled behavior' to get it lowered. "Histrionics" as I called them before. Entertaining, and who knows, sometimes successful. But in no way ever fact-based, because there is no objective price for anything.  

 

I understand, and I agree. That's why I used the existing parameters of DCS pricing for what would constitute a reasonable discussion. I just have a soft spot for people struggling with the cash flow. Not everyone has enough, and many don't have nearly enough. That's a grain of sand in my brain.

[spacemishka]

i was also a little bit sad, that it went commercial,...but you had years of free use....so that counts more or less as free trial. Now it is your decision to support further development with buying it

[tacts.zeagle]

Well I don't think anyone is whining. It IS too expensive. The sounds aren't as good as they should be for a "full module" in my opinion. And the flight director is inop. For $70 I expect working instruments. 

That being said, I love the MB339. Please fix the sounds and the flight director.

Edited January 10, 2023 by tacts.zeagle

[ThorBrasil]

2 hours ago, tacts.zeagle said:

Well I don't think anyone is whining. It IS too expensive. The sounds aren't as good as they should be for a "full module" in my opinion. And the flight director is inop. For $70 bucks I expect working instruments. 

That being said, I love the MB339. Please fix the sounds and the flight director.

The MB339 does not have the recorded sounds of the real aircraft.

[Mr_sukebe]

3 hours ago, tacts.zeagle said:

Well I don't think anyone is whining. It IS too expensive. The sounds aren't as good as they should be for a "full module" in my opinion. And the flight director is inop. For $70 bucks I expect working instruments. 

That being said, I love the MB339. Please fix the sounds and the flight director.

If you want to see expensive, checkout how much Arcade Thunder charge for say their new F16A

[Schmidtfire]

Depends on point of view I guess. If you are just looking to add another module into your collection... Yes, it is on the expensive side.  There are other modules with much more features and content. But if you really love MB339 the price is fair and you get a quality simulation of your favourite aircraft. 

I can only speak for myself but I would be more intrigued to get it at a lower pricepoint. On the other hand, developers needs to get paid for their work. It's not only getting a product out of the door, there are years of upkeep attached when new bugs emerge or graphics that needs to be updated as the DCS engine evolves. 

[Rudel_chw]

On 1/10/2023 at 12:22 PM, tacts.zeagle said:

Well I don't think anyone is whining. It IS too expensive.

 

Well, today I finally found the Sale price of the MB339 more tempting and so I purchased it for myself before the current sale ends.

I'm a bit ashamed of waiting almost 1.5 years to buy, but that is the buyers prerogative  ... I'm happy with the purchase and I'm currently enjoying its training missions, I'm tempted to convert them for training on the South Atlantic map, but I'm still finishing my Viggen projects.

Cheers.

[6S.Duke]

 
Well, today I finally found the Sale price of the MB339 more tempting and so I purchased it for myself before the current sale ends.
I'm a bit ashamed of waiting almost 1.5 years to buy, but that is the buyers prerogative  ... I'm happy with the purchase and I'm currently enjoying its training missions, I'm tempted to convert them for training on the South Atlantic map, but I'm still finishing my Viggen projects.
Cheers.

Glad you are enjoying the module :)
Thanks for your feedback.
Don't hesitate to report us any issue

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[Rudel_chw]

On 3/21/2024 at 5:23 PM, Rudel_chw said:

I'm happy with the purchase and I'm currently enjoying its training missions, I'm tempted to convert them for training on the South Atlantic map, but I'm still finishing my Viggen projects.

 

Well, what can I say, I tempted myself into checking how long it would take to port a mission to another map, so I did a trial edit, and found that it took a couple hours of work ... not that long, but of course I didn't redo the voiceovers, so they dont quite match the map change, but the mission is still playable, like this:

 

 

Edit: In case anyone wants to try this mission himself, here is a download link:

(needs both the MB339 and the South Atlantic Map)

 

MB339-Cold-and-Dark-Start-Training-Falklands.miz

 

If you place it on the training menu of the MB.339, then paste the attached lessons.lua file, overwriting the stock one.

lessons.lua

Edited March 23 by Rudel_chw
Added the mission file

[6S.Duke]

 
Well, what can I say, I tempted myself into checking how long it would take to port a mission to another map, so I did a trial edit, and found that it took a couple hours of work ... not that long, but of course I didn't redo the voiceovers, so they dont quite match the map change, but the mission is still playable, like this:
 
 

Good job!

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[ThorBrasil]

1 hour ago, Rudel_chw said:

 

Well, what can I say, I tempted myself into checking how long it would take to port a mission to another map, so I did a trial edit, and found that it took a couple hours of work ... not that long, but of course I didn't redo the voiceovers, so they dont quite match the map change, but the mission is still playable, like this:

 

 

I didn't even know it was possible to transfer a mission to another map. Do you have a link to a tutorial or where I can find something about it? Thanks!

[PawlaczGMD]

Regional pricing makes sense from a profit maximization perspective. Because the cost of giving a costumer a license is zero, if by decreasing the price in a poor country, you can increase the number of people willing to buy it by more than the lost income per copy, then it makes sense to do. You just need to prevent people exploiting this pricing, which may be impossible. Ultimately it is the dev's choice, and life isn't fair, and discriminates at every step.

I myself am not really interested in the training aircraft, as they are not very performant/useful in MP, and SP content is chronically lacking in DCS. I would need a really long and detailed qualification campaign to be tempted. But I am sure other people like them for their reasons.

Edited March 22 by PawlaczGMD

[Rudel_chw]

19 minutes ago, ThorBrasil said:

I didn't even know it was possible to transfer a mission to another map. Do you have a link to a tutorial or where I can find something about it? Thanks!

 

no, sorry I have not seen a tutorial on this subject, I found about this on the forum.

if you open the miz file with a tool like winrar, you will find a file named "mission", it has no extension but it is a text file. 

open this mission file with notepad++ and search for "theatre" ... it contains the name of the map used by the mission.

change the map name from "caucasus" to "falklands" and the next time you open the mission on the ME it will use this map.

ofcourse, the location of every unit and trigger zone will be wrong, for this mission every item was  on the bottom of the sea, you will have to manually move each one.

 

[ThorBrasil]

2 hours ago, Rudel_chw said:

 

no, sorry I have not seen a tutorial on this subject, I found about this on the forum.

if you open the miz file with a tool like winrar, you will find a file named "mission", it has no extension but it is a text file. 

open this mission file with notepad++ and search for "theatre" ... it contains the name of the map used by the mission.

change the map name from "caucasus" to "falklands" and the next time you open the mission on the ME it will use this map.

ofcourse, the location of every unit and trigger zone will be wrong, for this mission every item was  on the bottom of the sea, you will have to manually move each one.

 

Thank You! 

[6S.Duke]

Regional pricing makes sense from a profit maximization perspective. Because the cost of giving a costumer a license is zero, if by decreasing the price in a poor country, you can increase the number of people willing to buy it by more than the lost income per copy, then it makes sense to do. You just need to prevent people exploiting this pricing, which may be impossible. Ultimately it is the dev's choice, and life isn't fair, and discriminates at every step.
I myself am not really interested in the training aircraft, as they are not very performant/useful in MP, and SP content is chronically lacking in DCS. I would need a really long and detailed qualification campaign to be tempted. But I am sure other people like them for their reasons.

Unfortunately we cannot select the price based on the country

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[Raisuli]

I decided to ask for a refund on the F-4E for reasons that had nothing to do with the delay, and added up everything I've spent on DCS since I started.  I have all the modules other than the F-4 (I'll assume the refund will go through) and a few campaigns.  If you add it all up it comes to just under a week of a professional developer's take home pay (at least our developers); that doesn't include payroll taxes or benefits.

So I've successfully bought about twenty-four hours of development time, and got pretty much 95% of what you can buy in DCS for it.  Seems like the pricing is just fine on the display of my old school HP calculator.

Actually, that number is so ridiculously low I'm sorely tempted to cancel the refund.  Feels a bit like larceny.

[6S.Duke]

I decided to ask for a refund on the F-4E for reasons that had nothing to do with the delay, and added up everything I've spent on DCS since I started.  I have all the modules other than the F-4 (I'll assume the refund will go through) and a few campaigns.  If you add it all up it comes to just under a week of a professional developer's take home pay (at least our developers); that doesn't include payroll taxes or benefits.
So I've successfully bought about twenty-four hours of development time, and got pretty much 95% of what you can buy in DCS for it.  Seems like the pricing is just fine on the display of my old school HP calculator.
Actually, that number is so ridiculously low I'm sorely tempted to cancel the refund.  Feels a bit like larceny.

I don't understand the connection between the F-4E and our team.

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[Raisuli]

23 minutes ago, 6S.Duke said:

I don't understand the connection between the F-4E and our team.

Inviato dal mio SM-F731B utilizzando Tapatalk
 

And I don't speak Italian, which is unfortunate given I'll be wandering around Italy in just over a month.

The F-4E has nothing to do with your team, however it does, indirectly, have to do with the OP's contention that the price of your product is too high. 

If only because that got me to look at my purchase history and do some math.  If nothing else it shows how insignificantly little a single user contributes to the overall DCS economy.

[cfrag]

On 3/23/2024 at 12:25 AM, Rudel_chw said:

change the map name from "caucasus" to "falklands" and the next time you open the mission on the ME it will use this map.

Some more hints/explanations of why this works and how:

DCS, being a creakingly ancient well-seasoned application, was originally designed for a single map (Caucasus) that was flat (currently, all DCS maps still are), and all locations on that map are expressed as offsets horizontally(W/E)/vertically(N/S) to the map's Origin (the point that has the location [0,0]. Warning: in DCS, the x coordinate is N/S, and z is W/E!). In Caucasus, that location is roughly the location of Simferopol/Aqmescit on the Crimean peninsula (this in itself a relic of the past when DCS's predecessor 'Lock On" was made and Crimea was part of the game map, changing to the current map around the release of "Lock On: Flaming Cliffs 2", circa 2003. Yupp, more than 20 years ago. DCS is old enough to drink in the US).

Unless you changed the default in DCS, this origin it is also the location for NEUTRAL's bullseye. All units, when you place them in ME are placed relative to the map's origin (0,0), with their coordinates given as offsets (in meters) to that point. If you go into ME, move the mouse cursor and look at the bottom, you can see changing numbers next to the "CCS" label. If you move it to the Crimean Peninsula, watch the numbers recede until they become (0,0). You are looking at the map's origin, the point that all units use to define their position relative to.

Why is this important? Because each map has it's own origin, and if you change the map, you also change the position of the map's origin. Since all your units are placed relative (in offsets) to the origin, a point that has the location (2000,9000) in Caucasus (i.e. was located 1000 meters North and 9000 meters East of Simferopol) is now displaced by that same amount from that map's origin. For the Syria map, that (0,0) location is roughly halfway between Banyas and Tartus.

So, if you took a map made for Caucasus, and changed the "Theatre" attribute of the mission to "Syria", all units and zones will come to rest in the exact same relation to each other as on the Caucasus map, but they will be placed in relation to the new origin, so all units and zones will be shifted across the map: they are now located in relation to the new origin (that coastal point between Banyas and Tartus) that they originally placed in relation to Crimea's Simferopol. 

Since for most mission designers, trigger zones and triggers take more time to develop than placing individual units, it can save you quite some time if you change the "theatre" entry to the map you your choice, and then merely re-position all zones and units. Some 3rd party map editors can use this fact to relocate your groups/zones from one map to another.

Now, if ME allowed us to band-select units, we would be in heaven, but that's probably something we will have to keep dreaming about...

I hope this helps you understanding how and why the units groups have been moved to these strange-seeming locations when you change the 'Theatre' attribute.

Note:
The name of a map to be filled into the "Theatre" attribute is inherently not guessable and case sensitive (as far as I know). You must know it before you can change it. For example, the Sinai map's Theatre is called "SinaiMap",  Syria is "Syria", and South America is "Falklands", and Marianas is "MarianaIslands" - so beware, and be sure that you know what you are doing. Anyway, you are working on a copy, right? Right???

 

[aaaaand I realize that this is entirely off-topic, except that I love the MB-339 and do not think it overpriced. Sorry to ramble]

Edited March 28 by cfrag

[Rudel_chw]

1 hour ago, cfrag said:

Note:
The name of a map to be filled into the "Theatre" attribute is inherently not guessable and case sensitive (as far as I know). You must know it before you can change it.

 

Hi,

Thanks a lot for adding more information about the Maps coordinates. I found the value of the Theatre attribute by looking into existing missions of the map i was interested in 

 

[exhausted]

Fixed price that fails to respond to market forces does not do justice to the people who worked so hard to create a module that will fade away from low sales. Dealmaking and negotiating is part of the territory, and if you want to make sales then you must do your part. To the silly notion that offering a lower price to newer customers is unfair to older customers: what makes this so different from everything else? There is nothing at all unfair about making price adjustments.