Xbox German Preview Stream

My question is simply this why on the first stream are we only seeing work in progress gameplay when early access is only 3 weeks away is this going to be the case with Riveria line the flagship route of tsw6 even though this is only previewed night before early access starts and what clarity/garuntees can dovetail give that Riveria line won’t be as bad as the tsw 5 wcml was ?

 

Haven't watched the stream but this, tied up with the comments by the EP to the effect none of the routes were near ready does raise a yellow flag. I know we have discussed that digital distribution can be much closer to the mark than getting a Gold version to the DVD pressing plant but still. And it's actually just over two weeks to go for the early access, not three.

 

the part of the stream with half a dozen trains all stuck at reds cause of an IC service that didn’t move… oofff

 

For those who didn't see it just to clarify how work in progress it was, none of the random events (train faults, signal delays, temporary speeds) were functioning, the announcements inside the train mentioned the wrong side when saying which doors would open because the formation was travelling in reverse, and at the end of the ICE service there was a gridlock in Dresden because of a 101 which was sat at a green light but hadn't moved several minutes after it should have. And we are three weeks from launch.

 

Lots of "I'll make a note of that", or "I'll pass that onto the team to look into"...here we go again!

 

The ambient chatter from the passengers could be heard loud and clear in an ICE… where the first section behind the driver cab is the quiet zone?

 

Doesn't sound good. Seems like a postponement and another month in the oven might be in order.

Though hopefully the UK route being less complex and busy won't have the signalling lock ups.

However if the intention was to sell TSW6 to those on the fence, it might have backfired quite spectacularly.

 

I heard that also. I liked the acknowledgement that they have a fix for that but it won't be ready for release. I feel the need for a game of bingo for these things that are said over and over again

 

Are we surprised? Took WCML months to get to a good state. Literally all of their content comes out way too early.

Saddle up, because no matter what, you’re going to launch the game at the end of the month & see 15 different issues within 5 minutes.

 

This is the reason why they need to stop rushing new tsw versions, it’s always going to end up like this and they won’t fix it

 

I don’t have anything against yearly TSW releases, but I do take issue with how rushed everything is, just to fill their wallets. It’s painfully clear that they simply don’t have the time to do this in a healthy and sustainable way. Personally, I’d be fine if they stopped with these nonsense yearly releases altogether. A lot of people are against this, so why keep doing it?! I think the reality is actually the opposite the people who are happy with the current setup probably wouldn’t mind if the addons were just released as part of the normal addon cycle.

From April onwards, there’s been nothing, and I honestly wouldn’t mind at all if these 3 DLCs were released over 3 months instead of all at once, and then in such a poor, unfinished state. But of course, DTG doesn’t want that. At this point, it honestly seems like slave labor at the studio.

 

As others have pointed out, would actually be nice to have previews on console. While I'm very much looking forward to the route itself, the anxiety of blurred textures and/or video memory errors as well as wider optimisation in general are still my main concerns as a Gen 9 console player.

TSW 5, in my opinion, has been the lowest point in the franchise as a console player, so I'm really hoping it has to be better; at least Leipzig-Dresden has a full timetable the same as PC - unlike Frankfurt S-Bahn on Gen 9 (still!)...

 

Hi guys, I didn't watch the stream as I do I forget to watch it but speaking to someone who did, apparently Random events was turned off due to it being not ready. We are 2 weeks on Thursday from Early access then 5 days till the early release, isn't that very concerning if it isn't ready?

 

Yes but we have no clue wich type of build they have used in stream and they are not very clear about that.

 

Continuing watching the stream at the moment and it mentioned performance memory improvements specifically for Series S overall which is good.

 

You'd have thought if they were streaming the latest version which they apparently have to release every year to attract new customers they would at least have shown the new features in this release which are supposed to attract the new customers.

Apparently not though.

It just looked like a tsw3/4/5 route with a bit of extra background audio.

 

Well, one good thing about early access is that there will be plenty of players to " guinea pig " the new routes for the rest of us.

I have to say that, if this whole annual merry go round is meant to attract a generation of new players, this year's parade seems to be getting off to a rocky start with the float of shiny new features missing from the line-up.

 

Because that’s exactly what was shown tonight.

Including incorrect background audio. Too loud for silence area, wrong exit side of the train announcement

As stated in the stream: Because it is really hard to determine which side is left or right. ( After traveling for 20 minutes in the same direction )

 

At 2:00:14 the OHLE near Neustadt is still missing as it was in the original.

 

Everything previewed before launch day is always marked WIP, even if it's the release build (which it probably isn't. In fact the use of recycled TSW5 thumbnails makes it almost certainly not)

 

One thing I’m concerned about is the UI colour scheme, light blue, green, yellow. It just doesn’t seem right me, does this work for people with visual impairments?

 

And where is the updated ICE T sounds, DTG talked about in the dev diaries

 

I'm also worried by the state most of the "exciting new features" seem to be in, just about two weeks before release.
If the random events and train faults are "not in a presentable state" by now, DTG should consider pushing the release back a little, until things got sorted.
Them running into a traffic jam when approaching Dresden was hilarious and alarming at the same time
The issues with the onboard announcements don't bother me too much, since they will only be included in a very small number of trains as it seems now...
The route itself looks quite good, and the 294 is very promising!

While I agree about the visual impairments point, I don't think the UI is too bad. Fits my own personal taste much more than the previous one, and looks more bright, fresh and welcoming.

 

It wasn't a very good preview in my opinion. I only say that because they didn't show it off to its full potential.

 

Well I didn't watch the stream, but I cant say I'm surprised by any of this. I guess I'll just cope and say that it will be better on release, you know, because there's so much time until then.

 

Suggestion to anyone who didn't watch the stream yet: Watch it, if you got the spare time, and form your own opinion. Not everything is doom and gloom, there are quite a bunch of good things in it as well
It's just a couple of issues which stand out rather negatively. And the stream reinforced my perception of DTG's mindset being "abandon the old, bring on the new"... despite the topic being a remastered and extended old route, ironically.

 

Completely agree. Simply, they won't showcase consol play as they know they haven't addressed the key bugs and issues with them. I remember when the awful sound distortion bug persisted on Xbox, they went ahead and did a stream on the Xbox Series X with the sound distorting terribly with absolutely no mention of it during the stream. The same with the z-fighting. Too many elephants in the room to mention.

 

Just catching up on the overnight comments and those made on the other Leipzig threads.

At this stage keeping an open mind until we see what state the UK and US routes are in, along with the core changes. Hopefully those will be run off a newer build. But it does seem amateurish at best, incompetent at worst, to run a presentation when all involved must have known how incomplete things are, even worse vague promises about taking things away to look at or whatever was said. That does not to me indicate an operation with strong or determined management but a far too laid back approach. Someone at DTG whether it be the EP or someone else in the food chain needs to actually take charge and start some assertive management of the project.

I think they forget we are being asked to pay nearly £60 (more when it comes off pr release discount) for this and they need to get it right. From past experience we know exactly what this lackadaisical company do with core bugs or unpolished content so we have to assume they think that what we are seeing is good enough to be what we get. Updates will be optional.

As an aside, I’m guessing at no point during the stream was any answer offered with regard to questions about the save game slots?

So while my finger isn’t quite hovering over the refund button, they need to seriously impress me with the South Devon and NJT offerings.

 

Sounds like a case of ‘Preview Stream Bingo’ again. Did anyone get a full house?

On a more serious note though, preview streams have never been on par with a ‘grand reveal’ and more of a ‘this is what we’re still trying to make’ kinda thing. I’ll avoid the Riviera one, avoid the early access and then see what’s what on the 30th!

 

Ngl I do worry about the state of Riviera but now if the German route looks like this so far I worry even more about the Uk route after last year's train fire of a release for WCMLS. Especially as Rivet now seems to be DTGs answer for UK development.

I do hope it's a good release, honestly DTG need it to be. Just a couple of alarm bells ringing! Is there anyone on the Beta team or any staff that can put our minds at a little more rest with current route states?

 

I came into the stream expecting half the core features not to work properly and not expecting much from an extension to Leipzig as it is all LZB 2 track running. I hoped on more freight or extending the Nachverkerhr part and adding the triangle to Elsterwerda or going to Decin. I always got the deluxe edition because it looked exciting. this route on the stream with nothing done to the original DRA. "updated to TOD4" is a total lie as that happened with TSW4 release. Lot's of "doesn't work yet" or "we have a fix later"
I am very much considering a free upgrade and the 294 as I'm one of the four players enjoying freight. but this route I will get on a sale, however much I love the original DRA and want the timetable upgrade. I hope the DE route is not the best route on offer this time around for the sake of the UK and US players that got the short end of the stick last year

Edit: I am very impressed about the performance improvements though. it was time for that. but regio announcements on ICE services and only "next stop, exit side" on every single station. maybe UK got more love as they have 2 or 3 voices instead of one but this seems like an incredibly simple "we have one announcement and will blanket it on everything" when do they realize "simulator" is in the title. guess I'll keep using the mod announcements as those are way better

 

If anyone has Discord there is apparently a Q&A going on for the preview stream. Seems to be Jan and Alex from the look of it so I'm not sure how many of the technical questions they'd be able to answer? But might be better than nothing?

 

Some good things, some bad things. The route is nice, but it feels like the new features are all very beta or v1. Passenger chatter is nice, but also in quiet zones (though Lukas said there was a fix for that). Something I noticed was that departure announcements were missing at the first station. And proper final destination announcements as mentioned before. And I hope the ICE announcements will improve in future updates. They are now the same as the regional trains. They are quite lengthy, bilingual, with lots of information in real life. I’d understand it if the system can’t cope with all that information but something closer to real life would be nice. At least something different than the regional trains. Regarding platform announcements: people mentioned they are a bit quiet in the stream and I think it has to do with the fact they are platform bound and Matt was always away from the platform. Great for some announcements and impressed they implemented this, but to DTG: don’t forget many announcements are station wide. To end on a positive note: the regional train announcements are pretty great. They feel very close to reality.

 

I fail to see the joke.
A couple of years ago, when we could take the game's foibles in the quest to build a niche hobby, we'd smile and hope for better days.
I think DTG staff are still mainly on board, but it's getting increasingly difficult to tell, especially with this example where it was smirked away and brushed aside.

 

I got a sense of been here before after watching that stream last night. As the Train Sim Society YouTube video said it seems mightily close to early access release not to have the random events showing in the stream?
In addition the route looked rather too neat, tidy and clean for me and the culmination of the ICE run that met a gridlock bug is not the sort of culmination to a drive I want to experience. What’s it going to be like with random events enabled?
This combined has led me to refund my advance order of TSW6 and stick with TSW5 for now as I totally trust it and have tons to do. I do intend to purchase but have decided to leave it until further down the line (!) so as to save money and allow for patches to get the thing working properly. I don’t really want the German route anyway or the US extra loco.
I had enough frustration with WCMLS last year and I’m also suspicious of the new Riviera Line stream being left so close to release. Why so late have they something to hide? Has a certain dev been allowed to build the TT again?

 

The route looked nice, looking forward to driving it. But there were some things in the stream that have me worried:

- Train faults and TSR (temp speed restrictions) were not in this build while we are only 14 days away from early access....
- As I understood it, to get info (pop ups) regarding train faults, driver assits have to be turned on... ??? If that's the case, I'll be turning train faults off as driver assists are a big immersion killer
- Confirmed (as happened to Matt during stream): red light issues are still in the game

 

Matt mentioned during the stream that you have to brake to 160 quickly when exiting LZB near Riesa. I watched the stream back and It appears from "Ende" there is only 1.2 km until LZB ends. It ends at a signal (As I believe it needs to) but the line speed doesn't drop to 160 for about another 1.5km. This seems wrong to to me. It's at 1:26:10 into the stream.

Overall, as other people have said I think it's a mixture of good and bad. I like the new announcements but I just feel everything needs a little more time and things are just rushed. I think it worth noting that the first stream last year was WCMLS, and we all know how that turned out.

 

My main concern is how well the route will perform on 9th gen consoles with all layers turned on. It’s giving me an S-Bahn dilemma again. The route seems jam packed, it’s definitely going to take its toll on memory.

 

I asked Alex on Discord about this and he said they would show us console gameplay in these next two weeks. I'm in the same boat. I really hope its less stuttery this year, including for older routes, taking advantage of a whole year of improving the memory issues...

 

Track shadows are still pants, barely drawing into the distance and not being extended like the majority of TSW5 routes.

I expected this route to at least have that given that this is a TSW6 upgrade, but apparently not.

 

I think matt train fualts and tsrs turned off

 

I'm going to be honest, I'm pretty disappointed in the Leipzig night lighting shown on stream.



For reference, this is a picture taken by me there at night.

 

In my opinion, the Dresden–Leipzig live stream was an insult.

Nothing has been improved on the Dresden-Riesa line. It was copied 1:1 from the old Dresden-Riesa line, even with the same construction flaws we had back then. And that is simply outrageous.

The old contact wire is still there from Dresden to Riesa, while the new section has new contact wire.

And the best part was that the ICE was stopped at a red signal in Dresden because many trains were not moving, even though the train had a green signal.

And in 14 days, TSW6 will be released, and they couldn't even show these new features in the live stream because they don't even work yet.
How is the dispatcher supposed to deal with this when the new features are activated if he can't even manage when they are deactivated?

And you had activated all the layers, which made me really happy at that moment.
But then when you drove along the track, where was all the train traffic? I saw very little train traffic, and the parking spaces were completely empty again.

After watching this live stream, I really feel like we're going to get another TSW that's not finished at all.
And we'll get tracks like in TSW5, which are full of bugs.
I believe Matt wrote at the beginning of July that the TSW6 tracks weren't finished yet, so I wonder when the beta testers will be able to test the tracks and the game.
But I suppose we'll be the beta testers again this year.

For me, this route is simply not what one would have expected.
Here, too, the motto applies: "Little work, lots of money.

 

As I've said previously I will be watching the streams on the fence because of last years frankly abysmal release...

Before I make a complete decision I'll be waiting to see all 3 streams. Particularly the UK one. I'm trying to remain hopeful for that given some of the positive feedback from trusted beta testers and ambassadors.

But quite honestly, I don't think DTG can afford to have a release like last year as their reputation will sink to an all time low that probably wouldn't recover for a while. But from a personal perspective I'd recommend people give all 3 streams a chance to show off any potential. 1 stream can afford to be slightly off, but the other 2 need to be upto scratch to save any reputation.

 

13 days from launch this should be fully working, considering it will have to be submitted to various online platforms before that date!

but as the saying goes "expect the unexpected"

I'm going wait for the YouTube videos on launch day

 

Seriously? Inproved track shadows should be default now. This is a serious issue DTG have, implementing supposedly new features with a scattergun approach.

 

My biggest concern is with those new core features. The fact that they aren't in a working state even two and a bit weeks before launch is bad enough, but it gets worse when you consider that odds are that means that even when they do finish and implement them, there will probably be almost no time for the beta testers to actually look at them before launch actually happens, and even less time for any issues they find to actually be addressed. It is utterly hopeless and innevitable then that those core features will launch bugged, and the best we can hope for is that they aren't bugged to an unplayable state.

 

I'll still never understand why they do these streams live. It always ends up painting the game in the worst light because, frankly, none of these guys are natural performers in front of a camera, and then there's the technical glitches and miscues, it's always just a bit shambolic and painful to watch at times tbh. I'm not trying to be mean, i know they're all doing their best, but that's just not their wheelhouse!

That being said, i think the doom is being overblown a bit this time around. I watched the run from Coswig-Dresden and performance was good, which is nice to see for sure and sorely needed. The 294 looks great, which if i'm being honest is the main star for me on a route that's been recycled twice now. Not all great news as Friedrichstadt seemed quite empty even with all layers but maybe it was just a slow time of day (9:30 was a weird start choice imo). Old track shadows are really bad just gonna hope that was an older build.

I really, really like the new announcements- they need a little tweaking on knowing their left from right apparently, but overall for the first implementation i was very impressed.

That's clearly the feature they wanted to showcase- might have been better to just make the first stream about announcements in general across all three routes?

I'll stop beating this dead horse now but i think DTG would benefit massively from a dedicated video/streaming team and let the devs do what they do best behind the scenes (for the most part- i'd love maybe one dev or producer per stream, not driving, providing technical info)

Edit: until proven otherwise i'm assuming TSRs and train faults will slowly emerge by TSW7 kinda like suspension did with TSW4/5

 

I do worry this might be another "Here's your deadline no exceptions" style release from the feedback, that the Devs are scrambling to make a deadline out of their control? Failing that possibility of having features held back might be on my bingo cards?

To me it seems like DTG and TSW may be struggling a bit? But I do hope I'm wrong and we get a well overdue return to form for the game!

 

Picking up on the livestream part, they should absolutely start posting a pre-recorded video of each type of service the route offers. Then they can do the live stream for the interactive stuff.

I just absolutely love how it’s impossible for the entire team to just be quiet for 5 minutes, even when being told multiple times to be quiet for 30 seconds they cannot help themselves. Then you have multiple people trying to get Matt to do various things & answer various questions which ruins his gameplay.

I switched off the stream halfway through the ICE run because of it, so hats off to Matt for keeping his cool.

It’s not surprising the viewer count on the streams is so low, they’re just an awful way to preview the content.