Board Thread:Game Discussion/@comment-33625305-20190806010353/@comment-31526827-20190807204433

not "just for middle-aged guys anymore."

Do you believe that young kids will pay more real $ to play a game than "middle-aged guys"? Who do you think are the vast majority of currency cheats? Young kids who just don't have the money, even if they were willing to spend it. Fortnite has cheap things to buy and the kids eat it up to the tune of billion$ - if it was expensive to play do you think it would be anywhere near the world-wide sensation it is today?

Please, lets end this silly attempt by anyone, not just one person, to justify the constantly increasing prices (I used to use the word greed but that just earned me the equivilent of downvotes here; I still feel "greed" is more accurate). EA/FM are, I believe, making a mistake but they aren't sweating it. I'll give you my educated opinion on why. You can ignore me, but that doesn't mean that it isn't what is happening.

Their income is derived from ads and IAPs. The income from ads is trivial compared to IAPs. Ad companies are not stupid and undersatnd that 99% of ads are not really watched, just ignored as they play - and that ad limits are bypassed by simple tricks, so the payout for ads that don't result in clickthroughs is trivial indeed. For ads that results in a clickthrough slightly higher.

Truly, EA's income is derived from the 70% of IAPs they get (30% goes to the store hosts; Google or Apple). The game is free to download and free to play (I didn't say win). Once it's downloaded, they don't get hardly any income - unless someone makes an IAP.

Examine public figure for downloads and as suprising as it may appear the game is download fresh (not upgrades) steadily month to month. A quick check at a few sites reveals that in June 2019 RR3 was downloaded approximately 200,000 times and generated a net revenue of approximately US$300,000 on iOS alone. And we all know that the game is played by far more Android users. (Yes, estimates; let's not waste time debating their accuracy).

The game is currently rated 4.5 stars by over 700,000 people (combined platforms) and shows no serious downward trend. It remains a game that is high quality, has great replay appeal and plays on almost any device (including AppleTV - it's only competition is the abandoned Asphalt 8, which is arcade action).

We know that EA has pulled the plug on RR4 so no serius amount of money drain in new development. Their only costs are keeping servers running (and costs are even lower, as those servers are shared), and paying licensing and employee costs to produce new content. This is their largest and almost only expense. They hardly advertise nor pay celebs to participate, the other high costs other games may incure. With all due respect, they don't even need the most expensive of programming talent if they are in maintanence mode instead of new development mode. Reading that some employees are being shared between apps tell us this. Star talent on an A list game are exclusive to that content until it hits maintanence mode.

So - to summarize the above: The game is doing fine, from EA/FMs point of view. It's generating income month to month that is very likely exceeding any production costs. There is no need to produce a new version, the old one is working fine.

To address cheating and hacking: First, you can't elminate all of it. As long as APKs can be edited and replaced, folks will do so and gain all cars/tracks. Once you have the needed cars, FUed, off you go to play online with TC, WTT and OMP with an appropriately lowered bank so not to get flagged. The ones being busted are the ones not careful. Forgetting and having 99,000 GC then going online is your fault dummy. Forgetting to slowdown enough before crossing the finish line in a TT and coming in 30 seconds faster is your fault dummy. Cheaters are getting their GC offline, upgrading all cars to FU, dropping GC to <2000 and then playing and instant servicing as much as they'd like. That's not going to stop.

Are there ways to stop this? Let's say that there are. Why or why not do it? Why? Make current players happier. Why not? If you were to eliminate hacking, hackers would leave. You think it's hard to matchmake in OMP now? haha... what happens when 300,000 monthly active players drops to 30,000. Downloads drop, app visibility in the store drops. Lowered numbers of players leads to ... even less players. And your game eventually dies off. There is no long term monitary incentive to remove hacking from the game. Hacking will remain in RR3.

Cheating - as in cutting courses or using various exploits - will also remain. Why? Because it's fun for some. Fun = keep playing. Some folks think they are so cool when they can do something that others don't know about (or won't use). Some might think, "Ewww, that's silly or childish" - that's your opinion. Johnny 13 years old doesn't care. He loves winning and if he can do it while yelling "woohoo slow poke" he's gonna love doing it again and again. And he'll keep playing because he's winning. And the number of players stays up and EA/FMs goal is met.

whew
I'm not done yet because now we get to address rising costs

This is a mistake. I can say with a degree of certainty that raising costs will not generate more net revenue for EA/FM and I cannot fathom why they are making this mistake. I have said this before and I'll say it again (and, yes, I've some real world experience in this category):

Want to generate more net revenue? Lower your prices.

Let's examine our nice forum and it's users shall we? Some of you will never ever pay a penny to play. We won't discuss you any further and, trust me, FM isn't listening to you in any way, shape or changing form. Some of you (myself included) have paid some handsome sums to FM and I suspect if they could tell who those people were they'd listen, a bit. What I have read here most often is that some people have been (or are at least willing to be) paying a small IAP here and there. I've read so many time, "I would buy that 1019 GC bundle if it was $20) or similar. I read more often people admiting that they've made the <$20 purchases. People, even those in this forum, ARE willing to spend a LITTLE money. And that's what EA/FM lives on today. They are surviving on the 100s of thounds who download the game, play for free a while, then finally see something they really want and really want to keep going so they make a small purchase or two. -- and this is where the disconnect occurs -- If prices were reasonable and the Return On Investment was good people would keep buying (Fortnight again). Instead, confusingly, EA keeps raising the prices but not delivering a good ROI so these people say, "Well, it was a fun ride, didn't spend too much but I'm not getting enough to keep going, so, time to find the next free game and off I go (with my money)." 90%+ of players never see this forum, learn about farming (or be willing to spend that kind of time for a tiny return) and stick around. Sadly, most people who won't/can't pay but wanna play turn to Google and type "How to play RR3 free" and a download later they are in Group C because they've got a FU car and can keep serving and racing over and over and over. Instead of spending hours farming, they are spending their time reracing.

I'm sorry this is such a long post especially because I'm having to end it with a shrug and confusion. I cannot understand the move with this Porsche. I don't believe it's an error. I also don't believe anyone will pay $100 to buy this car. Who'd want to give up dozens of hours of farming for it? It's a decent car but it's not outrageous in it's appeal. My post was mostly to air my thoughts on the topics I covered; sadly I can't lend any insight into this bad car choice. Why create a new car that few will legit buy. Especially so close on the heels of the EVO; anyone you somehow convinced into buying that car is likely too drained to do this one too.

I think, in the end, all we can do is skip it if you can't afford it, play other content, get whatever enjoyment you can out of the game. A boycott or a handful of lower reviews won't overcome what people who don't read forums/subs do. Have a great day.