I'm not really seeing a big deal with the IAP but I'm the type who doesn't mind throwing down some coin for something I want to play. I agree that it's a shame there isn't a premium version because the game looks and plays amazing on my iPhone 5, iPad 4, and iPad mini. However like I said I don't have an issue with paying instead of waiting and even if I did have to wait I don't have an issue with that either because I only play games on my idevices in small chunks while I'm having a smoke or on the shitter. I guess I fall into the category of having more money than brains. That being said I'm loving this game!
I hate IAP as much as the next, but I think we need to remember something EVERY FREEMIUM CAN BE PLAYED WITHOUT PAYING IAPS! Firemonkeys put a lot of work into this and I respect them for it
Events are unlocked when you have a car that suits. They are purchased with the in game currency. A series consists of different cups for 3 tiers of cars. The higher cups earn more money allowing better upgrades and cars. The IA currency are gold coins. I did one initial purchase of $6 which was focused on cars and money (not coins) a grabbed a few cars in different levels. So far I haven't spent any coins and have loved it. In terms of performance it's amazing on my iPhone 5 but it sucks on my iPad 2. Will probably replace it with Real Racing 2 on the iPad.
I don't believe it's not out in Canada yet. Like most apps that are released on Wednesdays every week, I think it'll be out at 9pm PST/11pm EST.
Sure, it can be played, but not without a great deal of absurdity. It doesn't matter how much work those people put into the game if the final product doesn't deliver. The racing experience may be great, but the F2P model designed specifically for this game is insulting at best. I would respect Firemint if they developed and produced this title, but Firemonkeys is just another division of EA. If those clowns want to see a penny of profit outside whatever development contract they sold out for, they better pray IAP's are through the roof, otherwise any amount of work they put in to this travesty is going straight to EA.
I'm happy to pay for content. I'll buy some cars, I'll buy some tracks but I'm never going to pay (and keep paying) to remove a friggen timer.
$15 won't get you anywhere in this title. You'll be back at the 'Confirm IAP' screen in less than a week if you don't want to wait out their ridiculous timers.
There is nothing wrong with a freemium game done right, however Real Racing 3 has a few too many long timers for a racing game to do much with, you can buy more cars and bunny hop between them but it's just not the same as playing real racing 2, just like how let's golf 3 was quite different in play then the first two because of timers. Paying coins to fix damage is fine right now, the timers are not too long if you wait it out and you can avoid damage by driving well, however the service stuff is way too long and there only to force you to spend coins even if you are a good driver, and it's a huge turn off. Another thing they could have done is charged R$ or gold for fixing an engine and replacing the oil, just without the timers. Charge 5k for an engine swap instead of 2k and 3 hours wait, people will still use coins then because it saves them R$5k towards something else like a fast car. If this game was exactly like it was without the service stuff, I would give it 5 stars as a freemium game, right now it's about half that rating.
Alright, I'd like a moment to discuss some trends with the App Store market in general and what that means for developers, and RR 3 specifically. I took a look at the Top 100 apps in the Paid, Free and Grossing charts for today and took a look at which developers had games on those lists, and how many games each dev had on there. I'll make a Google Doc with the full lists later this evening. Here's what I found for Top Grossing, for all devs with more than one game (I live in the USA, so the chart numbers are from the USA charts) (Company - # of Games from that company on the chart) Zynga - 8 TeamLava - 6 EA - 5 Mobage Inc - 4 Applibot Inc - 3 Supercell - 2 PopCap - 2 Pocket Gems Inc - 2 Funzio, Inc - 2 Top Free Games - 2 Phoenix Age Inc - 2 Shark Party - 2 Rovio Entertainment Ltd - 2 Buffalo Studios - 2 - snip - There's 53 more devs each with 1 game on the chart. Here's what I found for Top Paid, for all devs with more than one game: EA - 12 Rovio Entertainment Ltd - 5 Disney - 5 Chillingo Ltd - 3 Activision Publishing Inc - 3 PopCap - 3 Gameloft - 3 Halfbrick Studios - 2 FDG Entertainment - 2 Robert Szeleney - 2 ZeptoLab UK Limited - 2 Rockstar Games - 2 Sony Pictures Television - 2 JN Interactive AB - 2 - snip - There's 51 more developers each with 1 game on the chart. Here's what I found for Top Free, for all devs with more than one game on the chart: Rovio Entertainment Ltd - 5 EA - 3 Top Free Games - 3 TeamLava - 3 Zynga - 3 King.com Ltd - 2 Imangi Studios, LLC - 2 Cheat Master and Friends Words Cheats LLC - 2 GAMEVIL Inc - 2 TiniDream Studios - 2 Supercell - 2 Halfbrick Studios - 2 Pocket Gems Inc - 2 FDG Entertainment - 2 Chillingo Ltd - 2 Miniclip.com - 2 - snip - There are 61 more devs with 1 game on the chart. 17 devs on the Top Paid list are also on the Top Grossing list. 32 devs on the Top Free list are also on the Top Grossing list. 10 developers are on all 3 lists. For the next part of this analysis, I will consider devs on the Top Paid/Free charts as being "popular", and devs on the Top Grossing chart as being "successful". Purely percentage-wise, ~26% of popular Premium-oriented or "Paidmium"-oriented devs (I didn't differentiate) had monetary success on the app charts. In contrast, ~42% of popular Freemium-oriented or Lite-oriented (again, I didn't differentiate) devs had monetary success on the app charts. About 43% of the devs who had monetary success were not popular devs. About 162 devs in total managed to place on at least 1 chart with at least 1 game. That means that ~11% of all devs are popular, Premium/Paidmium and successful at earning money, and ~20% of all devs are popular, Freemium/Lite and successful at earning money. About 58% of all devs are popular and not successful, with about 30% of all devs being popular Premium/Paidmium and not successful, and ~28% of all devs being popular Freemium/Lite and not successful. About 18% of all devs are successful without being popular. So at maximum, any random dev has slightly less than a 1/5 chance at being both popular and successful, if they go freemium/lite, OR slightly more than a 1/10 chance at being both popular and successful, if they go premium/paidmium. If they try to do both Premium/Paidmium AND Freemium/Lite AND be popular AND successful, said random dev has about a 1/16.2 chance at success. Doubling your chances at success when success is so goddamn slim is a pretty damn good incentive to try Freemium, both to become popular and to make a crap-ton of money. A sizeable portion of devs are popular without monetary success on the store. With all this in mind, it's a no-brainer why any dev would even think about the possibility of going freemium. It is slightly better to be both popular AND freemium... but not by much.... Which means you don't have to be liked by the general populace in order to have highly close success percentages to those that ARE popular. In short, Firemonkeys and EA have a 1/5 chance at most with succeeding on the App Store with RR 3, if it catches on to gamers and becomes popular with them. That success chance reduces to 1/10 if they had decided to go premium. So, under the absolute best of conditions, RR 3 still has slightly more than a 4/5 chance at flopping. Even if we TA folks adored the game to death instead of this HAET HAET RAEG RAEG, it still is very likely to flop. Need I spell this out any more?! The devs were screwed the moment they set foot in the App Store, EA included. No FTP conversion or even a Premium version can make the dev's chances any better. In fact, premium would have given their games a 9/10 chance at flopping, even if their games are popular. WHICH IS WORSE THAN THE FTP CHANCES. FTP gives the the devs a slightly more fair chance to compete on the market as it stands in the USA today. Not much more of a fair chance, but twice as good as their chances if they had gone premium. Does this suck? Yes. Can we do something about it? Only if you can subvert the free will of millions upon billions of iOS users and command them to change, which no human alive today has the capacity to do. Not even Eli. Not even TouchArcade. Not even hundreds of 1-star reviews on every single FTP game can change this mindset around. At least not within a year. No mass of organisms changes quickly. I'm sure things will change, but that's years, hell, decades, hell, CENTURIES further down the line. No subset of individuals however large can accelerate that change without causing some serious turmoil in the entire group, which the group does not want to experience. And how do we know that things will change in a way that WE want? THERE IS NO WAY TO ENSURE THAT WE GET OUR WAY. And who says the TA community deserves the power to cause such a change? Nobody can prove that we are worthy of charting humanity's future, not in a satisfactory way that everyone can agree to. In short: Calm down TA peeps. Sure, we can shout and scream and yell and moan all day and night and go down kicking and screaming. Can it be proven that such tantrum-throwing Neanderthal-like whiny hissy-fits are the correct approach? Can such spewed hatred and vile language really make the entire world turn to us as we shout "YOU'RE####INGWRONGYOUGODDAMNIDIOTS THISISTHE####INGRIGHTWAYTODOITNOTWHATEVERTHEGODDAMN####ITISYOU'REDOING LISTENTOMEI'MRIGHTYOU'REWRONGYOU'REALWAYSGONNABE####INGWRONG SOWEGOTTALEADYOUJERKSBYTHE####INGNOSETOGODDAMNGETYOUGODDAMNBLOCKHEADSTOGODDAMNLISTENTHEGODDAMN####UUUUUUUUUUUUUUUPPPPPPPP!!!!!!!!!!!!" in a manner that the entire world will BELIEVE us? The TA folks are right in that this particular implementation of consumable IAPs sucks to experience, and that it brings down the fun of what would otherwise be a 5-star game. You can't fault the devs for wanting to go FTP, though. They could have done the model better nonetheless. The devs are not beyond fault... but neither are we. Our tantrum shows that we are passionate, but also immature. We lose credibility even if our rants and raves bring up the truth. There is a reason the term "civil disobedience" exists. I interpret it to mean "going against the rules in a calm, logical, mature, polite and understandable manner." We did the opposite IMHO. Make of all this whatever you will. Sincerely, Mr. Album
The only gold coins I've used are for the final engine upgrade. So with the level ups and the coins I got with the purchase I'm up to 50coins. Changing cars while waiting for repairs works fine. It will be interesting to see how this works down the track. Maybe I will be out of coins and waiting like a tool but the way I see it the more cars you get the better. With 44 cars there are heaps to bounce between. You can imagine the Firemonkeys devs faces as the EA execs proposed the timer. It must've sucked. So far it hasn't killed the game for me but its ugly all the same
I'd rather spend money on a game that doesn't have these limitations. So, right now, I've bought RR2 instead of using that money on RR3 IAP. Heck, I've had RR2 on my Nexus 7 for a little while now. Didn't go with it on iOS due to seeing RR3 being announced... was going to wait it out. Here I am now. I'll play both, but I won't be spending a single penny on RR3 IAP. It's annoying to say the least, that a game that has been promoted so well, and looked so promising, comes with this wall of frustration and limits.
