Quote from Bob Smith :

It would delay progress from stopping but that must happen eventually.

I have a butt-feeling that "the day" might not be far after S3 will be released and the major bugs in it squished, I could be very wrong though. I only hope 3rd party dev tools will be released when that time comes.

Good thing it still seems to be quite a long way until it's the end.

id say if we all had to pay money i would say face to face to the devs try and get more of a team going so it will one day be a huge company and players have the ability to create cars themselves like dare i say it..... *sigh* rfactor

I've voted yes because of the fact that I get a lot of satisfaction out of LFS and despite paying £24 quid or whatever it was I paid to get S2, I want to show my support to the team.

I'm not looking at it as a bribe to the devs to get releases out quicker, updated art assets or anything like that, more a case of the guys actually seeing that their hard work is being appreciated via the £12 a year that each player would be contributing

And let's face it, we've got a lot of game for £24 as it is i.e. several tracks/variations, a shiteload of cars and when moderated properly, a corking multiplayer mode.

I believe one aspect that's often forgotten, when comparing LFS to iRacing (which this discussion does, sort of), is that much of LFS is actually community driven. The hosts, for a start, are ALL community hosts with the exception of, I think, 1 demo host that's used for testing various masterserver/LFSWorld thingies. I pay 40€/month for a dedicated machine to run several hosts on, I would mind having to pay a monthly fee to play AND pay for the hosting myself.

What about free voluntary donations instead? :-) I think that you can always send them money if you want that much ;-)

Quote from Michalxo :

What about free voluntary donations instead? :-) I think that you can always send them money if you want that much ;-)

I have some money on paypal saved for buying S3 so when S3 releases I am planning to pay for it and donate the rest of the money which will be left on my account... I could also donate now but I dont know how much money I will need for S3

Lets just make it that rich people must have monthly payment and poor people (like me) dont have to pay.

If I had no other option, I would gladly pay it that way. But I prefer the pay-once/play-forever option.

However, if I was paying monthly or yearly, I would probably want a little more that just being able to play the game. It's a psychological things I guess so I don't blame other people for thinking the same.

Quote from Bob Smith :

It would delay progress from stopping but that must happen eventually. I can't see it speeding anything up though.

This man speaks truth !!

+1

Yes, if I was a regular LFS player. I am not even near playing LFS regularly.
Anyway, I already suggested that somewhere: make all the cars and tracks open for all the players, and make tools to create cars and tracks, but don't modify the game to support loading the modified stuff. That will still insure the current quality control, while LFS players will be still able to fix "bugs" in tracks/cars, than submit the fix to Eric, and if he accepts it, it would get merged into the official game.

However, going online should be payed, maybe a bit more expensive than it currently is.

Quote from Ivo Georgiev :

However, going online should be payed, maybe a bit more expensive than it currently is.

Again, it's not Scavier hosting the gameservers
If anything, LFSW stats tracking should be paid for separately, but there is no way I'm paying to go online onto my own host that I'm already paying for.

No I wouldn't pay more.
There is only 3 man team and only one man do coding stuff (I read something like this).
It wouldn't make them work faster and if it would, then it would mean that slow development speed never was a result of not enough manpower or perfectionism but just laziness.

Anyway LFS just doesn't have enough content to be worth more than it worth now.
Even if they add one car new physics and one track it still be just game with nice physics but nothing more.
The tracks are plain and flat, there is no basic thing that suppose to be in real sim like damage system or different weather (To implement weather system some ppl say it need a total code rewriting so if they start rewriting code it will take another few years)

And the worst thing they didn't even make use of what they have now for example the graphics are good, cars look beautiful with lynce reflections and good skins, much better than "Gran Turismo 4" or "rFactor" but since no one spend enough effort to make use of it almost every track is boring when it comes to surrounding.
So even if it have better graphics than rFactor or GT4 its still look worse, boring and without immersion.
Wasted potential if you ask me.

The thing that makes me laugh is the fact that first driver on PSX have decent looking rain and night, now i wonder how much worse LFS engine that they cant make a rain or night, even if it only visual.
Also often a single modder release more stuff in 6 months than LFS devs in last few years.

Quote from morpha :

Again, it's not Scavier hosting the gameservers

I believe he is referring to the master server.

Quote from wheel4hummer :

I believe he is referring to the master server.

Like I said, having to pay for LFSW stats tracking (which I would imagine is by far the most expensive factor) I could live with. For actual gameplay, the masterserver doesn't even have to exist, people could join servers directly via IP:Port. It exists, though, and it's nothing out of the ordinary. The equivalent to the masterserver (that is, hostlist, basic tasks; not sure how much of LFSW is actually the masterserver) for pretty much all multiplayer games is always provided "for free".

Clear no, because i am playing it because its a one time payment and also the developers are rich enough and even more money won't solve the ongoing lazyness

Just a thought, weren't hi-res skins considered as getting something for extra donations? Or am I only putting it for myself that way? You pay extra - you get extra (hi-res skins). Discussion over, it was decided that way a long time ago ;-)

So, if you want to donate, "buy" hi-res skins. It was the main intention for devs to get extra money.. My guess.

Why would anyone choose to "rent" a license for that period when they could pay exactly the same amount for S1 content forever? That's ridiculous. There's no incentive for anyone to sign up for it.

Quote from Michalxo :

Just a thought, weren't hi-res skins considered as getting something for extra donations? Or am I only putting it for myself that way? You pay extra - you get extra (hi-res skins). Discussion over, it was decided that way a long time ago ;-)

So, if you want to donate, "buy" hi-res skins. It was the main intention for devs to get extra money.. My guess.

The point was that

Quote from Dajmin :

There's no incentive for anyone to sign up for it.

I wouldnt say incentive. I would say: a rule. Actually, change of rules

And I dont perceive it like extra money for the devs - it is rather as I can imagine, valuable resource - the time - they have to spend on their main projects to run their hobby, LFS.

There are too many variables to consider IMO on this. Checking LFS-World my last race was 22 August and there were big gaps before that too. Would I pay for those months I wasn't racing to keep this licence and my stats or would it just be dormanted until I re-activate it by paying the monthly subscription?

Depending on how the subscription and licencing was handled would affect whether I would or wouldn't pay. Overall though I probably would pay but I would expect something more. I don't know what more though as I appreciate development speed is limited.

Why people want to pay more?

I propose to pay 1200 € instead of 800 € you pay now! What a great idea! Huh?

Quote from Greboth :

Depending on how the subscription and licencing was handled would affect whether I would or wouldn't pay. Overall though I probably would pay but I would expect something more. I don't know what more though as I appreciate development speed is limited.

I proposed tis because it just works both ways: first ppl recognize if they are willing to pay monthly/annualy and give more stable income for the devs. However... they will pay monthly/annualy if the devs would supply good content.

Accept: Yes. Because I love LFS and something like this wouldn't stop me from playing it.

Like/Support: No. Because I hate the thought of "renting" a computer game.

I believe an idea like this could theoretically work for LFS, but I also think it would just turn it into an Iracing clone, and I know alot of people including myself, who refuse to pay monthly for a computer game (even tho LFS is more to me than just another PC game)
I know peeps who pay for WoW monthly, the kind who spend most of their time sitting infront of the PC (eating quick junk food and getting fat )

One of the attractions of LFS is/was that you could pay for parts, S1 for just £12,
at the time I pre-paid for S1, PC games were £30+ in the shops and S1 was way better than most driving sims back then, when S2 came around spending another £12 was very easy and again well worth it IMO
The very idea of single price, play forever means I can take months off and I don't waste money.
Lets say if/when S3Alpha comes about, if it was priced at £24 I would gladly pay it without hesitation, pay once play forever, I think many others who don't like the monthly idea would too!

Like Zeug I love LFS, but if pay to play is introduced I would have to think long and hard before I signed up.

I do pay for the hi res skins (around £1 every 2-4 months approx) and don't mind paying for this, I would probably pay a little more if it was required

SD.