Tongue firmly in cheek, but the surge in requests for MP in the Suggestions forum followed by the immediate rebuttal from those of us who see it as a bad idea and waste of resources… Does make me wonder if the Great, Great part of Dovetail Direct will be DTG announcing they have figured out how to implement and are bringing MP to TSW. Would be somewhat ironic.
I'm playing on Xbox Series S and lately I compared some TSW2 routes in TSW2 and TSW5. In TSW5, the old routes run better, less stutters and a better framerate at busy stations. There are also routes with updated track shadows/LOD in newer versions of the game. I didn't notice other differences to the graphics between the both of them. Do you have examples of things looking better in TSW2?
I appreciate that Multi-player is a divisive topic, but I'd be so disappointed if that was the big reveal. Some things in life just seem a bit pointless. The only possible reason for it would be a driver/guard combo but even that seems a bit dull. Otherwise, I can't see how waving at your mate passing in the opposite direction would provide anyone with a dopamine hit unless it was in real life. My hope is that they've figured out how to inject random events into Timetable mode. If it's easy enough to cause chaos by placing an unattended loco on a mainline and sitting back to enjoy the show, there must be a way of injecting TSRs, signal failures, weather-related operating issues and extended station dwell times for minor technical issues. That sort of thing would resolve the somewhat predictable nature of Timetable mode and keep drivers on their toes.
Speaking from SimRail, it's not that much of a hit. The Watney's Red Barrel of train simming! Not only that, given DTG can't even moderate the forums at weekends or even overnight in the UK, how are they going to police a MP server with all the scope for griefing it brings? And that's the other thing about Simrail, At first you could have a friendly chat with other players, within reason. But first they restricted the distance at which other players could hear you or see your text entries, then restricted chat to essential ops comms only.
While I don't think its something I would use myself, given how TSW routes are isolated, small (in comparison to Simrail) and that dispatching could lead to chaos, it would seem to be the ideal implementation of multiplayer (if it were to happen) would be something like a central lobby, on which users create sessions, or join sessions. A session would simply be two players having selected a route, selected a service, with one player acting as driver and the other as conductor (on passenger service) or as second driver (in a freight service with a banker). Having multiple simultaneous sessions in a single route could be interesting, but as Wivenswold says horning your pal at Gatwick Airport isn't likely to tickle anyone's pickle
But as they have said in the past in order to impliment multiplayer would require a whole restructure of the game top to bottom as it was never developed for multiplayer in the first place. So basically you would have to build a new game using existing content. Not going to happen
I've long said that a co-op mode would be absolutely fantastic for TSW, and given we now have a guard mode I see no reason why it shouldn't be considered. Of course, getting MP to work and getting servers going may be expensive/difficult but I think it would be a good addition. The roleplay aspect of buzzing between the guard and driver and having the guard deal with your doors (which only happens on the 158 to-date, afaik) would be a very big immersion boost and would be a good way to tick off services when variety runs thin. I've turned against a full-lobby MP with players all driving trains, though. Unless it's a free roam setting I can't see it technically working (given how the dispatcher can be) and it would then turn quickly to anarchy.
Hence my thoughts that one of these new IP's could indeed be that. An existing route(s) adapted to whatever DTG might want to offer with MP but outside the core game - similar to what they did with VR or the Roblox thing.
