Hello gents.

I'm thinking on buying this game, I've been playing the free version and it seriously kicks ass. But I have some questions before I go for it, most of them related to this buy-the-game-then-buy-more-stuff kind of business model they have that I don't really like...

1) How many planes are there to buy separately? How much money we're talking about to have a decent set of planes?
2) The planes available to buy are only flyable or are there non-flyable planes too? I mean, do my skies "blossom" with new types of planes or all types of non-flyable planes are already included in the retail game?
3) Where are those planes stored? What happens if I format the PC? Do I get files I can copy to a backup or I must download them again?
4) Last but not least. How about buying a digital copy? I don't have access to a retail hard copy of the DVD, I'll have to order online. But third world internet is quite slow and sometimes unreliable... so a good start, stop, resume-because-city-workers-cut-the-fiberoptics-wires kind of schema would be good (yeah, I had to vent my anger somehow )

As you can see, I have a ton of questions!

Thanks for your time.

1) I don't know the number, but they are all listed on the website at http://riseofflight.com/en/store
2) You only purchase planes already in the game to make them flyable. Essentially purchasing the cockpits to allow you to fly them.
3) The planes are stored in the core game files, they are there regardless of you purchasing them or not.
4) You can burn the downloaded copy to a CD or DVD and install it from there. There is no difference between the download version and the purchased hard copy (aside from number of planes included and printed material).

Even future planes that are released by the devs will be in your game. You can fly with or against them. You pay for the ability to fly them yourself. The planes you buy are tied to your account. If your HD crashed, you would just reinstall the game and enter your account/password and all your planes will be there.

You don't need to buy the game. It is free and is the same as the retail game. Just buy planes you want to fly and have fun. And, right now, they are having a sale so you can buy planes for cheaper than they normally cost.

Wait, what?! Really? I can just buy planes for my free demo? That's great.

EDIT: I see... Buying all available planes is more expensive than buying the Ultra Edition... Oh man, oh man, my credit card is shaking in fear.

Yea, it can get expensive to buy everything all at once. I have most of them but I bought them a few at a time.

You might try just buying a few that you really like. If you want recommendations you can post your flying style here and I am sure many will jump in to recommend you a plane or two. The main thing is that if you want to fly online (on most servers) you will need to buy the more popular planes. You can probably buy 4-5 planes though and fly on 90% of the servers.

Also check the planes available in the ultra package. I do not think it contains all of the planes.

Yeah, I was thinking on the multiplayer aspect of it, but since I'm more of an off-line flyer I really don't care. Besides I know in the bottom of my heart, that I'll end up buying all of them.



Well, according to the site, to have the game with the same set of planes:

Ultra pack $60 + 10 additional planes $47.9 + a free (or is it 25% off) plane of my election (say, the most expensive) - 9 = $98.9
Free download $0 + all additional planes $92.75 = $92.75

There is little to no difference, really. The UP seems to come with the full mission editor, though.

I thought everyone got the mission editor? I bought the game a long time ago as a box so I have no clue about the differences in demo upgrades but I was pretty sure that the only difference was the planes you got.

I am pretty sure if you bought all the planes on your demo account you would have the same as if you bought the ultra pack plus the rest of the planes. I am not 100% sure on that though so someone else should step in if they know for sure.

Also remember each plane has upgrades that can be bought as well... Then there is that personalization pack with the streamers and handgun...

there is a sale going on so fill your hangar with planes and field mods, really cheap!!!!!!!!

Doing the math is next to useless. If you are just getting into RoF post "Play it Free" era (lucky dog), then just pick up the aircraft you want on this sale, or buy them all! Memory of the last series of sales has faded, but this seems to be a very aggressive sale, with some of the older buses/crates going for $2.99. I mean really, those who complain about paying for additional content need their head examined (not that anyone has in this thread...).

Mission editor is free BTW, always has been. Not sure if one can fly the 'Career Beta' though without having to buy some aspect of the game still...

So to get all of the planes (I have the demo) I have to pay roughly $92 USD? Sadly too steep for me, but the Ultra Edition is tempting. Is the $60 the sale price, or are there further discounts on that?

And for online play, does the Ultra version have enough planes of different time periods for functional online play?

I have all the planes and field mods myself. I originally bought Rise Of Flight: Iron Cross Edition at Gamestop about a year and a half ago, and added planes on sales and as they became available.

Was it economical? No. Did I feel that each and every plane was worth the design and implementation effort that went into them, plus the fact that patches and updates ( plus the relatively new Career Mode ) are FREE was worth the couple of hundred that I've spent over the past year and a half? Yes and no, but mostly ( 95% or better ) yes.

As a somewhat older gamer and flight simmer ( I'm 45 ), I've blown somewhere in the neighborhood of 3-4 GRAND ( that's rather conservative, I'd say ) on games and simulations over the past 2 decades that I've had this hobby, plus close to $700 on over 4 years of subscriptions to Eve Online ( which I fortunately dropped 3 years ago ). Has this been the best money I've spent both in terms of content and dev support on a product with the features that ROF has? Definitely one of the best.

Yes the business model isn't like what I'm used to, yeah it can be odd compared to the vast majority of sims and games past and present...but it's very open-ended... you get a FULLY functional sim for NOTHING unless you want to fly other aircraft, and free patches and updates for as long as 777 Studios remains viable.

Not a bad deal.

I own most of the planes, but you know in the end you can only fly one at a time, and every mission takes time, and
every mission is mentally exhausting. So, even though I own most of the planes, I spend most of my time
in the SE5a. Now and then I'll boot up my DVII career, or my Brisfit career, but rarely do I find myself in the
other planes.

The point is, don't stress about buying tons of planes right now.

1+.

I'm a fairly recent "convert" to ROF. I resisted even downloading the free demo, since I already had more sims than I had time to fly them...

But I've gotten "hooked" on ROF, and eventually bought all the planes and field mods. Like Gambit21 mentioned above, I find myself just flying a handful of planes, even though I own a whole bunch.

The demo planes (Albatros V and Spad XIII) will get your "foot in the door"; and you could just stick with those two. But the Iron Cross Edition (paid upgrade of the Demo) gives you a good "stable" of aircraft to build on.

Or, just add one or two at a time, when the "need arises".

I was initially resistant to the business model used by ROF... but now I actually support the "buy as you go" plan as a way of preventing detailed flight sims from vanishing. I think we are going to see this business model more frequently as a way to support ongoing development of detailed sims.

Best wishes.

Bottom line is you are in control; people seem to forget that...
While I agree with you, it probably is not a popular thing to promote in other flight sim forums.
To me this is even more important if it keeps 'Steam' out of the RoF picture...

They would do well to release a steam version. There are so many gamers out there that would buy it if it were on steam. Hell, I would buy it again if it has steam integration and would be willing to buy and gift it to friends as well.

I've bought everything as it appeared.

But if I was starting out again and was on a tight budget. I'd d/l the free game check out a good campaign in the career mode and buy the one or 2 aircraft that would be required.
Even a career in Jasta 11 with added DII. DIII, DRI and DVII is only $12/£7.80/€9.50 at the moment

That, my friends, is an absolute bargain for what it'll give you

I d/l'ed the demo and got all the planes for my dad. Now he has the full set of planes, but the sim still says "demo" up in the right-hand corner. How do I get rid of that?

Maybe this will get removed with next patch.
"Demo" is just a leftover from older versions where it was really a demo. Now it is the full game.

I have all the planes and only ever fly the SPAD XIII, Nieuport 11 and 17!

I really like Steam but it may not be the best place for low volume products.

ED seem to have found this out when Steam refused to stock Black Shark 2. Presumably by sales of Black Shark and DCS A10 Valve seem to have decided that there wasn't enough money in it for them

The only reason for ROF to go Steam would be publicity, I can't see any advantage over 777s own delivery method otherwise.

How about a million+ customer base who buy pretty much any steam game that is under 20 bucks, has dlc and achievements.

ROF already has all of that. All they need to do is link in the medals to the steam achievement system and make a few new ones for one of steam's big sale days and they could double their customer base with players they would never see unless they get on steam.

If you dont use steam every day then you probably not going to understand the mindset for this argument but... I know people who have bought hundreds of dollars worth of steam games that they never play because they are 1) On Sale, 2) Have achievements, 3) are part of a special steam holiday sale with just 1 special achievement that adds them into a steam grand prize contest.

If they programed the steam GUI in ROF and then added some steam focused achievements they could probably double their to date sales in one weekend when steam is running one of it's holiday sales.

That might seem stupid and unrealistic but it is also true.

There are plenty of examples of steam doing this for other game studios.

Look at Introversion Software. They were about to close their doors for lack of funds/sales and then they went on steam. Their launch week doubled their game sales and kept them in business for at least the next 5 years.

ROF could do even better since they could launch on steam as a Free to Play game.

I cant think of a better idea for ROF than to go on steam. Even if you would never play it on steam the only argument against ROF on steam is that you want ROF to fail and die from lack of sales.

The difference between ROF and Black shard is that black shark tries to make it's money on the initial game sale by selling it for full price. A-10 is still 40 bucks on steam and black shark just had a price drop to 20.

ROF is FREE with DLC that goes on sale frequently. That is the exactly strategy that sells well on steam no matter what the genera. It isnt working great for ROF because they dont have a million+ player base to feed off of like steam does.

To help put this into perspective...

4,165,491
Steam Gamers online Right Now

How many of those people have never heard of ROF? How many of those would play it if they knew it was free? How many of those would buy aircraft after finding out that they enjoy the game?

Not that I'm a fan of Steam, but publicity is a HUGE consideration. Publicity can be everything.

Master (and others), I'm 200% with you on the Steam issue. It would increase sales, publicity, multiplayer matchmaking, EVERYTHING.

However...

http://riseofflight.com/Forum/viewtopic.php?f=49&t=20031&p=258088&hilit=steam#p258088

It's not going to happen just yet.

It is a huge leap for a developer to pass all the direct relations to customers over to Steam. Steam gets the customer info, Steam gets the PR potential, Steam gets basically everything. It is quite similar to the huge issue it was for record companies to let Apple have all their customer data, all the PR potential, when it became possible to download songs via iTunes.

You basically only give up all of that when you are desperate because, your business model is falling apart (pirate downloads of songs, napster and all that jazz). Happily 777Studios aren't that desperate yet, it seems, which I guess is a good thing.

Thx for the info re: "demo". Yeah, it seems rather redundant, but it doesn't present a problem either, so...

I am an SE% man myself but I have to admit I have had so much fun with this sim that I bought all of the planes. But I mostly fly Camel and SE5

I see it like this: When a new plane comes out and sells for maybe 8 euros... - Well, that is the price of a cinema ticket, so I'm definitely going to buy it, and check it out, have fun with it for a couple of hours. If it then doesn't leave the hangar ever again, well, no problem whatsoever. I paid a few euros, had fun just fooling around with a new plane, admiring another gorgeous cockpit and flight model: all worth it to me! If I end up loving it and flying it around a lot, well, even better. And even better yet if it keeps this great independent developer in business. A plane bought in RoF is also an investment in whichever future flight sim offerings they may have up their sleeve.

I'm with you there Frey.
With the sale on at the moment scouts are at £2.99. I couldn't buy a cup of coffee at starbucks for that.

It really isn't that huge an investment, this game of ours. Especially if you only buy what you want to fly.

Tiny individual expenses for us. Life-blood for 777Studios and its programmers. No-brainer for me...