Good Quality Sims But.....

The quality of the sims that SIMSIG produce is of a very high standard but I fear that we are going along the lines of charging for all new sims.

Do you think you might introduce a loyalty programme for people that are buying all these sims. For instance the £5 Fenchurch could have been waived for all those people that have purchased Scotland and Marylebone.

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The quality of the sims that SIMSIG produce is of a very high standard but I fear that we are going along the lines of charging for all new sims.

I have a major new sim in the works. When released, it will be free (though I'll happily accept donations). I have plans to refresh Cambridge, Peterborough, Drain, and WembleySub. Those refreshes will be free. This is at least the third time I have made these statements.

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Do you think you might introduce a loyalty programme for people that are buying all these sims. For instance the £5 Fenchurch could have been waived for all those people that have purchased Scotland and Marylebone.

Apart from the technical problem of doing it, in this case you're talking about three different developers. Who gets to not receive their money (remember that at least part of your payment goes to the original developer)? I'm not saying it's impossible, but it's not simple either.

A single developer could run such a loyalty programme. You could view the bundled price for the MacSims as being something like that.

The quality of the sims that SIMSIG produce is of a very high standard

Do you think you might introduce a loyalty programme for people that are buying all these sims.

I don't begrudge people wishing to receive payment for their efforts. Trouble is, as others have said, we have had it too good for too long so people are going to grumble. Furthermore, as soon as you charge for a product I suspect peoples' expectation immediately increases. For example, the recent issues with regards the license manager and SimSig loader might be viewed as unacceptable when paying for a product.

I totally accept that Geoff has always acted to rectify such issues as soon as possible but, as I have said before it does make me think twice about spending what little spare cash I have. Messing about with the PC registry doesn't sound like something I should be doing as a non-techie so I'm going to keep my cash in my pocket for the time being.

Fair do to those developers that intend to continue down the donationware avenue.

Messing about with the PC registry doesn't sound like something I should be doing as a non-techie so I'm going to keep my cash in my pocket for the time being.

Can someone clear up a small point. Which sims are compatible with the new launcher ? At the moment I have Marylebone and Fenchurch which can be launched from it but I seem to recall Brighton and Lancing were also possible.

I'm so non-technical where PC's are concerned that as soon as I saw the odd report of possible issues I was spooked. I am running Windows 7 which, from what I understood, was one of the affected OS. Hence I adopted my usual approach - if I don't understand then I don't touch (I use my PC to run my own business so I can't afford ANY risk of corrupting things).

As I've said on other threads, things worked fine as they were from my point of view as an end user. Geoff has since explained why some of the changes have been made but I feel SimSig has started to become a bit less user friendly IMHO. Starting to remind me of the almost impenetrable way BVE is set up.

Charging for sims will lead to a decline in SimSig's prospects in the long-term.

Relatively few people will pay for and download the new sims. As there are few people that have the new sims, you won't be able to get a multi-play going using one of them. Also, as writing timetables is such a laborious process, there is no incentive to produce timetables for the paid-for sims as so few people will have or use them. So, if you buy one of the paid-for sims, you are buying a product with an extremely short shelf life!

SimSig does everything in secret. (Clive's post above is an exception.) Because there is no news about what they are doing or when, there is no reason to look at the website. That means that most people will not know that such-and-such sim has appeared suddenly, out-of-the-blue. Because free-sims are becoming few-and-far-between, there is even less incentive to check the site.

Instead of SimSig being a thriving community of hobbyists, it is little more than a collection of developers and their friends with a few hardy outsiders living in the dark. That is why the whole active SimSig membership fits into a pub in Derby (even after 10 years of activity!)

Charging for sims will lead to a decline in SimSig's prospects in the long-term.

Relatively few people will pay for and download the new sims. As there are few people that have the new sims, you won't be able to get a multi-play going using one of them. Also, as writing timetables is such a laborious process, there is no incentive to produce timetables for the paid-for sims as so few people will have or use them. So, if you buy one of the paid-for sims, you are buying a product with an extremely short shelf life!

SimSig does everything in secret. (Clive's post above is an exception.) Because there is no news about what they are doing or when, there is no reason to look at the website. That means that most people will not know that such-and-such sim has appeared suddenly, out-of-the-blue. Because free-sims are becoming few-and-far-between, there is even less incentive to check the site.

Instead of SimSig being a thriving community of hobbyists, it is little more than a collection of developers and their friends with a few hardy outsiders living in the dark. That is why the whole active SimSig membership fits into a pub in Derby (even after 10 years of activity!)