Why are all the Updates just DLC?

[EliThe2]

It seems like all updates are anymore is DLC. I don't play Trailmakers much anymore because of this. It would be great if I could get all the "performance" blocks (IE: wings, motors, thrusters, ect.) for free. That won't happen why? Because Trailmakers is more about making money than delivering to the people. The dev's are just milking the cash cow, it's upsetting. You don't see Palword or Scrap Mechanic doing this, SM could've easily hid survival behind a paywall. You do see Destiny 2 (It's free so I can't get too mad), Cities: Skylines, The Sims, and others do it though. Again it's upsetting. So what are they going to take away multiplayer if they stop making money? Like Nintendo did with the 3ds/Wii. Again I hate the direction this game is going, with the new "update" being primarily DLC, I'm dropping one of my favorite games. PURELY DUE TO THE "UPDATES".

[alvaroping1]

Originally posted by EliThe2:

Originally posted by sperou:

heres an idea: buy it on discount, its cheaper
an even better idea: dont buy it at all and just enjoy the few free things u get every 5 months and shut up about it

Here's an idea, the dev's can give me my 25 dollars back. I didn't purchase a subscription. I purchased a game.

Correct, you purchased a game, not a subscription. You aren't entitled to a continuous development of new content for free

[EliThe2]

Originally posted by alvaroping1:

Correct, you purchased a game, not a subscription. You aren't entitled to a continuous development of new content for free

Why wouldn't I be? In every other game I've ever played I got all of the updates for free and part of it wasn't locked behind a DLC. That's kind of the standard is it not?

[EliThe2]

Originally posted by alvaroping1:

sure, the other options are:
- Microtransactions
- Season passes
- Lootboxes
- Making another game to sell at full price, stopping development of this one
- Subscription service
pick your poison. Having only free updates until the end of time is not an option, and skin/player costume/decal only DLCs don't make enough money either

Just wanted to say you have been technically correct on everything (besides the cosmetic/functional definition thing), and I'm sorry for being so rude. Also, thank your discord community for having your back and making me step back remain objective and re-read everything. Also, could you explain why maps and merch aren't profitable enough to do instead of including blocks in DLC?

[alvaroping1]

Originally posted by EliThe2:

Originally posted by alvaroping1:

Correct, you purchased a game, not a subscription. You aren't entitled to a continuous development of new content for free

Why wouldn't I be? In every other game I've ever played I got all of the updates for free and part of it wasn't locked behind a DLC. That's kind of the standard is it not?

you bought a product, not a service. You gave the devs money and they gave you a game, and that was the end of the transaction. If they then decide to make more content and give it for free to people who already payed them they can, but that's not a requirement and you aren't entitled to that since you aren't giving them anything for it. If you want that kind of service, you need to pay for a service, not for a product

Originally posted by EliThe2:

Originally posted by alvaroping1:

sure, the other options are:
- Microtransactions
- Season passes
- Lootboxes
- Making another game to sell at full price, stopping development of this one
- Subscription service
pick your poison. Having only free updates until the end of time is not an option, and skin/player costume/decal only DLCs don't make enough money either

Just wanted to say you have been technically correct on everything (besides the cosmetic/functional definition thing), and I'm sorry for being so rude. Also, thank your discord community for having your back and making me step back remain objective and re-read everything. Also, could you explain why maps and merch aren't profitable enough to do instead of including blocks in DLC?

For merch: producing/distributing physical goods is expensive unless you specialice on it. In order to be profitable, you either need a very high volume of sales (which is not something small indie games can achieve, since usually a small portion of the player base is interested in merch and indie games don't have a big playerbase in the first place), or very high prices (>100€, which makes very few people buy it and thus don't earn much in the grand scheme of things). Getting deals with manufacturers/distributors/doing the logistics of everything is also expensive, which makes merch complex, risky, and not very profitable. Getting merch to be profitable on its own is hard enough, it's very unlikely you will manage to make it profitable enough to fund itself and the development of a game

For maps, they can be made and included in DLCs, but they are simply more expensive to make than other types of content (specially if they require new assets)

[EliThe2]

Originally posted by alvaroping1:

you bought a product, not a service. You gave the devs money and they gave you a game, and that was the end of the transaction. If they then decide to make more content and give it for free to people who already payed them they can, but that's not a requirement and you aren't entitled to that since you aren't giving them anything for it. If you want that kind of service, you need to pay for a service, not for a product

The reason why I disagree with this. Multiplayer games (IE: The Crew, GTA 5 Online, RDR2 Online) all provide a service (Online servers), which is normally included in the base price with the option of micro transactions, but everything in the game is possible without them.

With Singleplayer games (IE: Terratech, Scrap Mechanic, Stardew Valley) they all provide all of there content for free, there's the oddball but that's for absolutely massive amount of content, not just like 12 building blocks. If Trailmakers did massive amounts of content behind there DLC like what they did in Airborne (A map, campaign, and blocks) I doubt I would have ever made the post in the first place.

Originally posted by alvaroping1:

For merch: producing/distributing physical goods is expensive unless you specialice on it. In order to be profitable, you either need a very high volume of sales (which is not something small indie games can achieve, since usually a small portion of the player base is interested in merch and indie games don't have a big playerbase in the first place), or very high prices (>100€, which makes very few people buy it and thus don't earn much in the grand scheme of things). Getting deals with manufacturers/distributors/doing the logistics of everything is also expensive, which makes merch complex, risky, and not very profitable. Getting merch to be profitable on its own is hard enough, it's very unlikely you will manage to make it profitable enough to fund itself and the development of a game

For maps, they can be made and included in DLCs, but they are simply more expensive to make than other types of content (specially if they require new assets)

Makes sense

[alvaroping1]

Originally posted by EliThe2:

Originally posted by alvaroping1:

you bought a product, not a service. You gave the devs money and they gave you a game, and that was the end of the transaction. If they then decide to make more content and give it for free to people who already payed them they can, but that's not a requirement and you aren't entitled to that since you aren't giving them anything for it. If you want that kind of service, you need to pay for a service, not for a product

The reason why I disagree with this. Multiplayer games (IE: The Crew, GTA 5 Online, RDR2 Online) all provide a service (Online servers), which is normally included in the base price with the option of micro transactions, but everything in the game is possible without them.

With Singleplayer games (IE: Terratech, Scrap Mechanic, Stardew Valley) they all provide all of there content for free, there's the oddball but that's for absolutely massive amount of content, not just like 12 building blocks. If Trailmakers did massive amounts of content behind there DLC like what they did in Airborne (A map, campaign, and blocks) I doubt I would have ever made the post in the first place.

For online games, you usually pay for the service with microtransactions/lootboxes/season passes/other forms of revenue, some of which rely on predatory tactics to extract a huge amount of money from a tiny portion of the player base, and thus can afford most players getting everything for free.

For singleplayer games, they can choose to make free content for a while, but reality will force them to eventually stop development or look into other forms of revenue, which they can do whenever they want as you aren't paying them to keep up the service. The only exception are extremely lucky games that become extremely popular on release (such as stardew valley or balatro) and make their small team rich, but planning your game assuming that will eventually happen is naive at best and setting you up for failure, because it doesn't matter how hard you work if you aren't also extremely lucky.

Making DLCs is a middle ground between not paying for the service and having it eventually stop, and paying for a full subscription service which requires periodic payments just to maintain access to the game

[Duo]

gamers are the most entitled, selfish, fun ruining, impulse control lacking, group of people to ever exist. let me guess all of you love to just constantly kill people thinking ever server is warthunder and use 100 gun 100 shield max glitch max complexity builds and wonder why it runs like crap also and complain

[Paulie]

Originally posted by Duo:

gamers are the most entitled, selfish, fun ruining, impulse control lacking, group of people to ever exist. let me guess all of you love to just constantly kill people thinking ever server is warthunder and use 100 gun 100 shield max glitch max complexity builds and wonder why it runs like crap also and complain

no, but if you try I got a dozen builds that will defeat that.

[Workshed]

People saying free updates don't make sense as a developer - wrong. There are always new people entering the gaming market, and if the developer improves their game, more people will buy it. So free updates can = more $$ for the developer. The idea is the game gets better and will sell more over time as a result.

[alvaroping1]

Originally posted by Workshed:

People saying free updates don't make sense as a developer - wrong. There are always new people entering the gaming market, and if the developer improves their game, more people will buy it. So free updates can = more $$ for the developer. The idea is the game gets better and will sell more over time as a result.

Infinite growth doesn't exist. That's just how reality works. The idea that the game will sell more over time requires infinite growth. No matter how good your game is or how much you improve it, eventually base game sales will go down to 0. The amount of kids entering the market isn't nearly enough to make any significant difference over the life cycle of a game

[Eli]

STOP IT UR #######

[Paulie]

Originally posted by alvaroping1:

Originally posted by Workshed:

People saying free updates don't make sense as a developer - wrong. There are always new people entering the gaming market, and if the developer improves their game, more people will buy it. So free updates can = more $$ for the developer. The idea is the game gets better and will sell more over time as a result.

Infinite growth doesn't exist. That's just how reality works. The idea that the game will sell more over time requires infinite growth. No matter how good your game is or how much you improve it, eventually base game sales will go down to 0. The amount of kids entering the market isn't nearly enough to make any significant difference over the life cycle of a game

dont you understand? the universe works exactly how he says and if you don't agree you'll be banned from his discord server.

[Darkling]

Originally posted by EliThe2:

Originally posted by alvaroping1:

Correct, you purchased a game, not a subscription. You aren't entitled to a continuous development of new content for free

Why wouldn't I be? In every other game I've ever played I got all of the updates for free and part of it wasn't locked behind a DLC. That's kind of the standard is it not?

Wasting your time arguing with the Flashbulb mouthpiece

[EliThe2]

Originally posted by Darkling:

Wasting your time arguing with the Flashbulb mouthpiece

I know, I have pretty much stopped arguing with him.

[sperou]

Originally posted by EliThe2:

It seems like all updates are anymore is DLC. I don't play Trailmakers much anymore because of this. It would be great if I could get all the "performance" blocks (IE: wings, motors, thrusters, ect.) for free. That won't happen why? Because Trailmakers is more about making money than delivering to the people. The dev's are just milking the cash cow, it's upsetting. You don't see Palword or Scrap Mechanic doing this, SM could've easily hid survival behind a paywall. You do see Destiny 2 (It's free so I can't get too mad), Cities: Skylines, The Sims, and others do it though. Again it's upsetting. So what are they going to take away multiplayer if they stop making money? Like Nintendo did with the 3ds/Wii. Again I hate the direction this game is going, with the new "update" being primarily DLC, I'm dropping one of my favorite games. PURELY DUE TO THE "UPDATES".

look, i dont think there should be absoloutely 0 dlc but well, you got a point, all of the updates (other than bug fixes) have a ton of blocks locked behind dlc, if it was just even 2 dlc for every 3 updates it wouldnt be as bad
but well, a flashbulb's gotta eat so sadly for you (and most players who dont want to spend 80$) they wont change it, so this isnt worth it to talk about it