DCS Module Trial.... A Possible Improvement To The Trial Period Format??

[sirrah]

38 minutes ago, Dragon1-1 said:

This would be particularly nice for those who can only fly on weekends. For them, 14 days collapses to just four at best. Enough to do the training missions, assuming you do a lot of ground school, but not really to get a feel for the aircraft.

 

I am such a person (pretty much only have a few hours of DCS time in the weekends) 

If ED did this, that would mean I could fly each module for 7 weekends, for free. Given I could do this every 26 weeks (trial resets after 6 months), that would mean with only 4 modules I could play the entire year, for free 

 

I don't think the trial is meant for that  

 

[Dragon1-1]

No, but you're not getting a whole lot out of each module either way. Most people would balk at an $80 purchase that they can only use for a few hours each weekend, I'd imagine. I suppose if they were worried about that, they could add a rule that you have to use up those 14 days within one month, but IMO that's a fringe case. As I said, perhaps having a fixed number of flying hours would be a better solution (obviously not 14 days of them, but some sensible number). You could still stretch them out for a year if you wished (or if your flying time is that limited), but that way time wouldn't be wasted for when it's just sitting around.

Also note, AFAIK you can't buy campaigns for a module you don't own, and some servers don't welcome free trial users. So, the content you can access will be limited either way. 

[SharpeXB]

50 minutes ago, Dragon1-1 said:

it's vital to get to know the aircraft before you buy it. Few hours is not enough.

The point of the trial period is not for you to learn the entire aircraft. It’s a trial. It’s seems like people just want to freeload, that’s not reasonable. 

30 minutes ago, Dragon1-1 said:

Most people would balk at an $80 purchase that they can only use for a few hours each weekend,

Welcome to PC gaming. We only play games on the weekend because we have jobs that give us the $80 to spend on games. It seems you have life’s priorities mixed up. 

[Hawk_UK]

23 hours ago, SharpeXB said:

An $80 module is not expensive. Many games today can cost between $60-$70 or more. The trial period isn’t so you can just joyride the game, it’s merely to give you an introduction or to test whether it runs well on you system etc. If you like it, buy it. 

Thank you very much for the advice , buddy, but I know full well what the trial is for. In fact I did suggest the trial format to ED as it is now back before it was even implemented, and I don't like blowing my own trumpet but who knows, I may have been the one who convinced ED to put the current trial format into place except my suggestion was for a months trial period but the 14 days implemented was very reasonable too, so yeah I do know what the trial is all about and what for, Mr SharpXB....

You like others here obviously don't understand what I'm trying to express in wanting a slight adjustment to the way the current trial format is delivered... the difference between "Runtime" and "Real World Time"... it would make a welcome difference in the trial to many, I believe, but in effect gives you the same amount of time(14 Days) that we currently get using the trial now....... so there is no disadvantage for ED not to make this slight change to the way the trial is delivered.

And $80 for a module is a lot of money for some people, you simply need to get things into perspective.... and yes many other types of games do cost around the same amount but they too are relatively expensive for many people.... $80 is not something most people can simply throw around on a whim and yes the current trial is a godsend for that reason so people can definitely know that the large amount of money proposed being spent on a module is the correct module for them.....

This slight adjustment in the way the current trial is implemented would simply allow those who can't play DCS 24/7, those with other family commitments to get to know whether that particular module is the one their hard earned $80 would be well spent on purchasing..... for those that do like to make sure they are spending their money responsibly & wisely and don't simply purchase items on a whim hoping they will be good.

So this is nothing to do with wanting to, "joyriding the game", as you accused me of trying to do at all, sunshine... It's about making DCS World and it's modules a more attractive proposition than it already is.... attracting those potential buyers that otherwise may never buy into DCS world at all.

 

[Hawk_UK]

10 hours ago, Mars Exulte said:

Because the point is not for you to have enough time to ''learn'' it. It's to see if it's something you're interested in investing in to learn. It's a demo. You remember how demos used to be? Like ''first three levels'' or ''two hours or the end whichever is first''? It's that kind of demo.

Jesus. Give people something free and they complain it's not free ENOUGH @@

Yet another who simply cannot grasp what I'm suggesting.....

Didn't you understand, that in effect, the slight change I'm suggesting doesn't give anyone extra time from ED to get to know the module on trial at all, it gives the very same time of 14 days, so what's your problem with the suggestion?? Maybe you should read through my suggestion again and actually read it this time instead of allowing all your negative presumptions to dominate your mind, eh? :)))

And like I've just told Mr SharpeXB, I do know full well what the trial is about.... I even suggested the trail format to ED as is today before it was even implemented by ED... go figure.

[SharpeXB]

9 minutes ago, Hawk_UK said:

I know full well what the trial is for

Apparently you seem to have your own idea about this. Nobody needs to “trial” a game for two weeks in order to make a decision on it. You’re just looking for a free handout

[Hawk_UK]

9 hours ago, draconus said:

It was super clear until you started to negate any logic deducted from your OP.

No, I don't like this wish, because it'd simply take the dev of my fav game out of business.

And just what, if any, logical negation was it that you think you understood from what I've suggested?

[SharpeXB]

10 minutes ago, Hawk_UK said:

And An $80 for a module is a lot of money for some people

If that’s a lot of money for someone then I think they should re-examine their priorities. Maybe put your focus on getting an education, a career etc. instead of computer games. Then $80 won’t seem like so much. You’re painting a picture to me of people who spend their life’s time and effort on video games which they then can’t afford because all they do is play video games. 

[Dragon1-1]

Humbug. Not everyone has a job that takes up 100% of each of their weekdays, although admittedly, kids and other commitments are quite effective as sucking up the rest. I prefer to get more bang for my buck, though, and if that was the case, and I had to decide blindly, or with inadequate time, I'd probably give DCS a pass. At most, if I didn't have much time to spend, I'd get one aircraft. And I'd sure as death want to try them out, learn the basics and capabilities to figure out which one would that be. I'd imagine that's the situation of many DCS players, particularly in less affluent countries. Even a full time job doesn't guarantee you'll have $80 to throw around if you happen to be born in the wrong country, or in the wrong place in the US.

In fact, that's exactly what happened for a long time. DCS got a hard pass for me because it seemed too expensive for what it was (didn't help that for most of the time it was just the A-10C, I'm a fighter guy at heart). If the pandemic didn't coincide with me coming into some money and getting into VR, I'd have stayed off DCS, or more specifically ended my adventure at Black Shark 1 (which my dad bought me one day, very cheap, when BS2 was already out) and Su-25T.

FYI, professional software usually lets you try it out for a month, precisely so that you can learn its workflow and figure out if it works for you. By that standard, DCS trial period is rather short. So yes, I'd argue people do need two weeks to get comfortable with a new aircraft, especially considering the complexity of the modern ones. That you can spend $80 without knowing 100% that it'll be right for you says more about you than anyone else.

14 minutes ago, SharpeXB said:

If that’s a lot of money for someone then I think they should re-examine their priorities. Maybe put your focus on getting an education, a career etc. instead of computer games. Then $80 won’t seem like so much. You’re painting a picture to me of people who spend their life’s time and effort on video games which they then can’t afford because all they do is play video games. 

And you would be served really well by spending a year or two in a low income country, on your own, trying to, with all your education, to find a job that will make $80 look like not a whole lot. It's harder than you think. FYI, where I live it's about a quarter of a PHD's student's stipend, according to the current exchange rate. You should re-examine your perspective and consider how ridiculously lucky you are to have your job and live in a country in which it pays enough to get a 4090. 90% of the people in the world aren't. And yet, they still love aviation, and they're willing to save up to get their favorite aircraft module one day, on a sale.

And for the really poor ones, ones who can't even do that, 14 days in their life, every six months, is the closest they'll ever get. So I'd say, don't blame them for "freeloading". The people who say "just get a career" are usually ones who got theirs handed to them on a silver platter. I'm not saying I'm not one of those people, but I appreciate it that most don't have it that good. 

Edited January 9, 2023 by Dragon1-1

[Hawk_UK]

5 hours ago, SharpeXB said:

If you did the math you realize you’re asking for 336 hours? I don’t think I have that many hours in modules I’ve owned for years. Effectively that would mean no reason to actually purchase the product. 

14 days "real world time" isn't 14 days actual use of the module to get to judge whether to buy or not UNLESS you can play DCS World 24/7 for 14 days.....

14 Days "Runtime" is STILL only 14 days possible use of the module to get to know whether you want to spend your $80 dollars on it, just that one can use that 14 days around other family priorities without losing valuable trail time in getting to judge whether the module is the one you want to spend your $80 on.

PS: I suspect like many others here that you are not actually reading what I'm saying but simply presuming what you think I'm saying and so coming to a completely incorrect understanding of what I'm actually saying..... understand??? :)))))

14 days trial is 336 hours.... Ed gave us that amount of time, so it's not something I'm asking for any extension on, is it!! :)))

 

Edited January 9, 2023 by Hawk_UK

[Hawk_UK]

4 hours ago, Dragon1-1 said:

Basically, what he's asking that every day you actually fly the module decrements the counter. Not necessarily every time (because if the sim crashes after 5 minutes, you shouldn't get dinged for a day again), but DCS is perfectly capable of knowing whether it was ran and what was flown on a given day. 

This would be particularly nice for those who can only fly on weekends. For them, 14 days collapses to just four at best. Enough to do the training missions, assuming you do a lot of ground school, but not really to get a feel for the aircraft.

It's not a separate issue. It's not in line with what other games cost anywhere but US, UK and Eurozone, because ED store only sells in USD, last time I checked. Yes, there are sales and stuff, but don't go around saying $80 is "cheap". It's not, even in some places in the US (read: most places outside California and New York) it's serious money. In fact, most places in the world get screwed over even worse than where I live. That you can afford to spend that much without worrying about it doesn't mean everyone can.

It's not unaffordable, but it's by no means cheap, and even on a 20% sale (for many modules, that's as low as they go, and you never get more than 50% off, unlike most other games, which routinely hit 75% on Steam after a year or so), DCS modules are on the expensive side. Concerns about pricing are perfectly valid, particularly for people in countries with a weak currency.

Thank you..... for actually understanding what I'm suggesting mate..... you are only the second one here that can understand what I've been talking about.... appreciated! 

[SharpeXB]

14 minutes ago, Dragon1-1 said:

And you would be served really well by spending a year or two in a low income country,

We aren’t going to solve all the world’s ills with DCS. This is just a computer game. It’s not medical care or food for starving people. You guys really make too much of this. 

[sirrah]

 

One last thing I want to add to this thread for any potential new players reading this: You see everyone talking about $80 modules in this thread...

Well, I've been playing DCS since day 1 and never, no never did I have to pay $80 for a module. There are sales like 5 times a year, with proper discounts. I think the most I ever paid was like $55, but with a bit of patience, most sale prices drop to the ~$35 range. If you really can't wait for a sale and are prepared to pay $80, you won't bother about the trial anyways...

Edited January 9, 2023 by sirrah

[Hawk_UK]

4 hours ago, Dragon1-1 said:

No, what he's asking is that it doesn't count days on which you're not flying. Perfectly reasonable, IMO, and given the expense of DCS modules, it's vital to get to know the aircraft before you buy it. Few hours is not enough. It was poorly worded, but as it happens, not everyone is a native English speaker, and many native speakers don't know how to express themselves, either. He's since clarified that the way you understood it is not the way he meant it. TBH, tracking actual flying time would likely be a better way of doing that, of course you wouldn't get 14 days then, just an appropriate number of hours. Either way, the point is to make it work in a way that doesn't discriminate against people who can't fly every day.

FYI, I don't consider the default return policy of software sellers to be particularly fair, either. If "everyone else does it that way" was a valid argument, you could justify a whole lot of anti-customer practices that companies engage in. ED is better than most other companies, but it's really not a high bar.

Exactly correct.... Thank you for your understanding!

[SharpeXB]

16 minutes ago, Dragon1-1 said:

it's about a quarter of a PHD's student's stipend

When I was a starving college student I didn’t waste my time and what little money I had playing computer games. I studied. See again this is where you are just portraying people with their life’s priorities all out of order.

[Hawk_UK]

1 minute ago, SharpeXB said:

When I was a starving college student I didn’t waste my time and what little money I had playing computer games. I studied. See again this is where you are just portraying people with their life’s priorities all out of order.

Did I say I was talking about Starving College Students? NO!

I simply generalising about those people of whom $80 dollars is a substantial amount of money to be spending on a simulation or video game, people who have other priorities in life, a family for instance but would like to get into DCS in the little spare time they may have..... those people need to know that if they spend that $80 on a DCS module then they want to know that it's $80 dollars well spent for them and that they will not regret it afterwards.... it's a lot of money for them, if the module isn't what they wanted or expected then they might as well have simply thrown that $80 onto the fire and end up totally disillusioned with DCS altogether. 

Trying to come up with suggestions that will improve an already good trial offer for many is surely a good thing if it leads to more people buying into DCS World.... I don't understand some peoples  negativity here..... The more people who buy into DCS the more development, improvements, details that ED can implement for us all.
 

[Mars Exulte]

53 minutes ago, Hawk_UK said:

Yet another who simply cannot grasp what I'm suggesting.....

We understand you fine. We just think it's stupid.

[Dragon1-1]

5 minutes ago, SharpeXB said:

When I was a starving college student I didn’t waste my time and what little money I had playing computer games. I studied. See again this is where you are just portraying people with their life’s priorities all out of order.

It's your life priorities that are out of order, evidently. The world needs to stop being ran by people with no life outside their work/study. Regular people need a hobby, and guess what, aviation (and by extension, DCS) is a perfectly good one. Besides, I quoted that for comparison (and there are people over here who make even less), it's not about a computer game, it's about your attitude about everyone less fortunate than you, that it's somehow their fault, and they don't deserve nice things. If they want them anyway, they're "freeloaders". You can't imagine someone who'd be just as, if not more, deserving of being able to afford games as you are, despite not being able to do so in practice due to being screwed over on currency exchange rates. And no, working harder is not the answer, not if you're in a country where inflation vastly outpaces the USD and EUR (and there are many such countries).

My whole point, which you seem to be oblivious to, is that not everyone earns their money in USD, and in many places the amount of money that gives you a good standard of living will still look paltry when converted to USD, even before the bank takes a big fat cut for converting it for you. You can have a fulfilling career that still leaves you wary about spending $80, because it takes a ridiculous amount of local currency to come up with that. It might be incomprehensible to an American, but it's the reality for people in just about every other country on Earth.

[SharpeXB]

52 minutes ago, Hawk_UK said:

Did I say I was talking about Starving College Students? NO!

I simply generalising about those people of whom $80 dollars is a substantial amount of money to be spending on a simulation or video game, people who have other priorities in life, a family for instance but would like to get into DCS in the little spare time they may have..... those people need to know that if they spend that $80 on a DCS module then they want to know that it's $80 dollars well spent for them and that they will not regret it afterwards.... it's a lot of money for them, if the module isn't what they wanted or expected then they might as well have simply thrown that $80 onto the fire and end up totally disillusioned with DCS altogether. 

Trying to come up with suggestions that will improve an already good trial offer for many is surely a good thing if it leads to more people buying into DCS World.... I don't understand some peoples  negativity here..... The more people who buy into DCS the more development, improvements, details that ED can implement for us all.
 

Sorry but you fret about this so much you make yourself seem ridiculous. Acting like $80 is $8,000. 
DCS is like everything else. If you can’t afford it, don’t buy it. But stop crying already… jeesh. 

53 minutes ago, Dragon1-1 said:

Regular people need a hobby

And that’s all this is. A hobby. If you can’t afford it, find one that you can. 

[cfrag]

49 minutes ago, Hawk_UK said:

thank you..... for actually understanding what I'm suggesting mate..... you are only the second one here that can understand what I've been talking about

Not to be too pointed about this - my friends usually say "communication is the responsibility of the sender". If the majority appear to misunderstand you, you may want to rethink the message. 

Personally, I understand the desire to stretch the free time for a module, and the idea to differentiate between 'stick time' and 'elapsed time' from our (ED's customers) side is natural. It would indeed be great if ED were that generous and implemented such a scheme. To be blunt, I think they have little incentive to do so. For a simple reason: 

A customer wo can't make a purchase decision within 14 calendar days will not buy - they simply aren't sufficiently interested. 

Yes, it would be great if we had more time. But if you can't decide in two weeks, I submit that you won't in 6 weeks either. It's not about the stick time. It's about excitement. ED's goal is not to give you a number of hours to play a module for free. ED's goal is to get you hooked/excited enough to purchase that module outright. And they likely have studied the curve of diminishing returns and concluded: no added value after 14 days. You may have added value, or I. But ED's no longer interested to give us something for free - because in all likelihood, we won't buy.

Put differently: I believe that the percentage of those who didn't purchase a module only because they ran out of trial time to be vanishingly small. 

[Dragon1-1]

I don't know, if you only fly on weekends, it might go like that: play on one weekend, forget/be busy on the next, remember on the 3rd, drat, no more free trial time left, come back in six months. It would be nice to have some protection against that scenario. Also, people who don't buy might still buy in the future, when they have more money or time (yeah, fat chance of that in the current economy, but it has to bounce back someday). Given that a DCS module is a significant investment, and that people who get into it are likely to have plenty of other commitments, I think a scheme that gives people more control over when they spend their free trial time would be beneficial. 

One advantage of the current scheme is that it's relatively low effort on the store/launcher coding side. Counting down days of wall time is easy, counting down sim time, or even better, actual stick time, that's harder. The logbook tracks that, but it's not exactly secured against abuse, so there'd need to be some other way, and that means messing with the main executable. This whole part of code would be useless for Steam users, who might well make up a good chunk of the userbase. So it might not be worth implementing something more complex on that basis.

[SharpeXB]

13 minutes ago, Dragon1-1 said:

I don't know, if you only fly on weekends, it might go like that: play on one weekend, forget/be busy on the next, remember on the 3rd, drat, no more free trial time left, come back in six months.

What you’re asking for is a free game, not a trial. Which is funny because you are actually making a rationale for shortening the current trial time since apparently people are freeloading on it. 

[draconus]

17 hours ago, Hawk_UK said:

14 days trial is 336 hours.... Ed gave us that amount of time, so it's not something I'm asking for any extension on, is it!! :)))

That is true, I give you that. I don't think ED ever expected someone to actually use them all - unless you share it with someone that could be life threatening! But they do expect users to use the trial within the given period - how do you plan it is on your own though.

Great answers why it's not counted for runtime @cfrag and also why it won't @Dragon1-1

[Dragon1-1]

15 hours ago, SharpeXB said:

What you’re asking for is a free game, not a trial. 

No, I'm asking for a trial that is easier to manage for people with limited time. Again, Autodesk gives you one month of free access to their professional CAD tools. Many other companies do, as well. Yes, in theory it's once in a lifetime, but in practice, they don't verify it. Somehow, "freeloading" is not a major concern for them. 

Admit it, you're just one of those people who can't stand that other people might be able to do fun stuff without paying for it. You know, the sort of person who would shut off someone's running water if they forgot to pay for it (FYI: illegal in most civilized places, and in the UK).

[BIGNEWY]

Hi, 

lots of ideas here, but we have no plans to change how the free trial system works currently. 

thank you