Just Trains Class 20 - New Pictures & Video!

[stephenholmes]

Hello Everyone
I think in terms of pricing it all depends on what is considered good value for money
There are some members that are on a fixed income and have a limited budget to play with
I personally do not hold with the reference to a model railway
A model railway is a tangible assett as opposed to a virtual railway
There is no resale value in computer software in fact most software cannot be transferred to someone else
I enjoy train simming but I do have to consider each purchase carefully
In closing I will just say that should VAT be increased to 20% this is going to increase costs further
Now before anyone shoots me down yes I know VAT is applied to other things as well
Kind regards Stephen

[gypbrc]

I understand what you're saying about the tangibility. From a commercial point of view though I would point out that one cannot pirate a copy of a model railway, and that must surely also be taken into consideration. I'm sure we have all seen Railworks DLC available illegally; and to be fair the way the game works opens itself up to being copied rather easily if one desired. It's a shame that people feel able to justify such a thing but they inevitably do and some people will take advantage of this. Just Trains being one of the largest DLC produces must surely have come across this problem and is bound to be reflected in their marketing.

Just like real railways; people who try to get something for free are making it harder/more expensive for everyone else.

[stephenholmes]

Hello
I don't think I was suggesting people want everything for free
But if RW was totally payware I can safely predict sales would taper off
It is a matter of offering a good product at a sensible price
I recently saw the boxed version of Railworks in Manchester Arndale Centre for £10.99
Kind regards Stephen

[growler37]

Hi
Stephen is correct with the VAT issue,the way addon pricing is going, if and when the VAT is increased it will put the products out of reach of the average user,which in turn will lead to fewer sales,this is a micromarket in the scale of things, so shrinking the sales market further could have disasterous consiquences for some developers,but lately i have felt that the hand that feeds was being biten to much for my liking anyway! one of the downsides of RW and to be fair most of the modern sims, things take a lot of time to develop be it stock assetts and epecially routes,production costs will never be recouped on routes as an avaerage route cost would have to be at least £150 to claw anything back,this is why comercial companys are not intrested in home produced routes.
So were does that leave us,as a hobby not a lot of difference i would expect,except hopefully a revived intrest in freeware creation,one of the beautys of this hobby is we can survive without comercial involvment,but not the other way round,food for thought maybe!
Regards
Kevin

[gypbrc]

Hello
I don't think I was suggesting people want everything for free
But if RW was totally payware I can safely predict sales would taper off
It is a matter of offering a good product at a sensible price
I recently saw the boxed version of Railworks in Manchester Arndale Centre for £10.99
Kind regards Stephen

Sorry, no I hadn't interpreted it that way. Everyone likes freeware and I agree that freeware is a very good foundation for furthering the game. What I was getting at was that some people decide to take it upon themselves to make those products that the majority of us pay for legitimately (however much the cost) available for free to others.

[stephenholmes]

Hello again
I'm glad there wasn't a misunderstanding of my post
As a freeware creator I think there needs to be a balance between payware and freeware
Like I have mentioned if pricing is kept at sensible levels then customers will support the product
Adding freeware into the equation enhances the product further
For example a route as Kevin (Growler) has mentioned can take a year or more to produce
I have been working on Candlewick now for more than a year and I have received assetts made especially for it from the community.
It is this spirit that is to be encouraged
Kind regards Stephen

[phat2003uk]

It is perfectly possible developers would absorb the VAT increases themselves and not pass it onto the customer.

[briyeo1950]

It is perfectly possible developers would absorb the VAT increases themselves and not pass it onto the customer.

Yes, that is a possibility, and I hope they do.

Market forces will decide this in the end, we will either get sub £10 addons, not much chance of that Im afraid, or sky high prices because they can charge just a little less than a model railway and most people would be happy.
It won't matter so much to me as there is plenty of mileage left in the Railworks content I have and the freeware I hope is to come.

[Darpor]

and epecially routes,production costs will never be recouped on routes as an avaerage route cost would have to be at least £150 to claw anything back,this is why comercial companys are not intrested in home produced routes.

Where do you get these figures from?

Commercial developers are interested in producing routes, Bristol to Exeter is on the way (albeit a bit behind schedule) and you also have no idea what else is in production.

[NikkiA]

Hello Everyone
I think in terms of pricing it all depends on what is considered good value for money
There are some members that are on a fixed income and have a limited budget to play with
I personally do not hold with the reference to a model railway
A model railway is a tangible assett as opposed to a virtual railway
There is no resale value in computer software in fact most software cannot be transferred to someone else
I enjoy train simming but I do have to consider each purchase carefully
In closing I will just say that should VAT be increased to 20% this is going to increase costs further
Now before anyone shoots me down yes I know VAT is applied to other things as well
Kind regards Stephen

I've already reached the point where Railworks has become something I can't bear to open up, everything about it constantly promotes more and more DLC. And as one of those fixed-income types, I can say that the VAT increase is going to hurt - even if I were to continue buying RW DLC, food and other things, the price of which will increase under 20% VAT (and it IS happening, the tories have already confirmed it), luxuries such as DLC takes a far far away place in terms of things to spend the already stretched disability + benefits on.

As it is, the continuing increases in DLC costs have been painful to watch, £15 for a (single) train is now 'the norm', £25 for a route looks like being the norm too. And the freeware releases have trickled, noone wants to release anything that is already payware - which covers most UK diesel traction at this point - for fear of treading on payware author toes. Even the few reskins are all for the payware 37 rather than the default 37 (why DID the community let RSDL get away with releasing a payware version of the one new loco they added on top of RS, less than 6 months after RW's release anyway??)

To add insult to injury, support from RS seems to have gone AWOL, it's been 2 months and Phorum Peninsula hasn't been fixed, critical bugs in the last update lay unfixed, even though they said 'no more DLC until the fixes are released', but there's no profit in bug fixes, so instead we've seen multiple DLC, both 3rd party and 1st party, against that promise.

Trainz may be a sub-par driving experience, but coupled with my 10 year old copy of MSTS, at least it's *cheap*.

And no, 'weekend offer' bundles don't help, not when I won't have the money required for several weeks, instead it ends up being a slap in the face

[growler37]

and epecially routes,production costs will never be recouped on routes as an avaerage route cost would have to be at least £150 to claw anything back,this is why comercial companys are not intrested in home produced routes.

Where do you get these figures from?

Commercial developers are interested in producing routes, Bristol to Exeter is on the way (albeit a bit behind schedule) and you also have no idea what else is in production.

Hi
If loco packs are reaching the £20 price, then it is fair to assume a route which takes many many months even years to produce,as in the example you have mentioned,ie Bristol-Exeter, in order to recoup costs,in time alone could be way over £100,for the costs to be covered,clearly no company could charge this,but the time and effort in financial terms would be emense i,m not talking about a freelance person building a route for months then offering it to a company to market,i,m reffering to a comercial company devoting its resources to route building comercially for a profit, a prototypical route from scratch building new assets,and creating a route would have to command a high price to even break even.
True i have no idea whats being produced,i have three Freeware projects on the go myself,which have been progressing for over 13months if i was producing comercially, i would expect a descent return for that work and time, the only way to recoup the cost is by sales,and as RW and trainsimming is a minority intrest the costs would be inevitably high,this why the freeware hobbyside of RW routes will always be non commercial in my view.
With kind regards
Kevin

[RSderek]

Hi,
Phorum is still going to get the updates, but yes I agree those have taken longer to get out than expected, for that I am sorry, that was always the problem of creating something in a very short space of time but your money went to a very good cause and I promise the updates will be soon.
This goes for any DLC that has issues, if issues are found then we will do our best to amend and fix them.

The class 37 pack had a number of different versions and 3 extra new wagons that were added to the pack along with new scenarios and I'm sorry to say we did not get away with anything I know because I worked long and hard to make them.

Lastly what critical bugs? If you have an issue email Support@railsimulator.com

And The post about no more DLC was a twitter about adam fixing bugs for the German release and holding off on DLC work, and it had nothing to do with future DLC releases.

regards

Derek

[Darpor]

I am slightly confused by the suggestions that this pack, priced at £20 is an "overpriced locomotive". When JT released the Class 60 & Freight Wagons pack for the same price, there was little in the way of complaint as it was effectively a locomotive and two "PlusPaks" and rather than be critical, many gave praise for the decision to add some things together at a cheaper price.

Now the Class 20 collection is upcoming and it is essentially the same thing and for the same price although in my opinion, with the features it includes, it holds even more value than the Class 60 set.

Just another thing, how many times have people constantly complained about a lack of scenarios provided with payware content yet this pack contains 12 scenarios and not one comment has been made about it, not that I have seen anyway.

[FoggyMorning]

My personal opinion on the price of the Class 20 pack from JT is that it's quite a lot, but not necessarily unreasonable or overpriced. At that price it's going to be something I'm going to carefully consider buying rather than buying on impulse as I might a lower priced item.

That said, I'd echo Darren's comment about the additional content being supplied - the railhead treatment train and nuclear flask train look to be excellent creations in their own right, and 12 scenarios should provide a fantastic range of driving experiences straight "out of the box"

[Klaabu]

I am slightly confused by the suggestions that this pack, priced at £20 is an "overpriced locomotive".

Absolutely agree. I have nothing against if high quality products (no doubt this pack will be one of the best available) will be priced accordingly. Class 60 with freight cars was wonderful add-on. IMO much better than Class 66 from RSDL (modelling very well done but weak sounds and physics). Everybody has to understand that quality add-ons can't be cheap and if You think quality is not high enough for that price just don't buy it. Personally I will buy this package for loco sounds. Sly's Class 20 is not bad at all (model as such) but sounds are not acceptable. Great modeller like he is has to understand that one man can't do everything perfectly.
I'm sure if RW can provide flexible enough environment in the future some quality add-ons will be produced which price will exceed price of RW few times. Exactly like some add-ons for Flight Sim X.