I first noticed this with Cardiff City Network, and I've seen it on a couple of Riviera line services too - you get this "hop" method instead of crossing over or under the track, generally where the platforms are only connected outside of the station. I sort of get it, but I quite liked the bits where you can go into the street a bit, it adds to the "World" part of Train Sim World.
Yeah, I don't really think anybody likes this. The scenery is already there for us to walk through, put some invisible walls around the area outside of the station and let us actually walk. This teleporting stuff is simply lazy and leaves a terrible looking bright blue marker on the platform. Riviera as a whole just seems like whoever built it hates the walking part of TSW, they block us from walking anywhere (Dawlish), and now not even on the street to get to another platform. Goblin is the route that comes to my mind, on said route a lot of stations had full road access to get to the other platform, its not as if its something impossible to make, genuinely just seems like laziness. E̶v̶e̶n̶ ̶F̶i̶f̶e̶ ̶C̶i̶r̶c̶l̶e̶ ̶d̶i̶d̶n̶'̶t̶ ̶h̶a̶v̶e̶ ̶t̶h̶i̶s̶ ̶t̶e̶l̶e̶p̶o̶r̶t̶i̶n̶g̶ ̶n̶o̶n̶s̶e̶n̶s̶e̶,̶ ̶w̶h̶y̶ ̶a̶r̶e̶ ̶w̶e̶ ̶r̶e̶g̶r̶e̶s̶s̶i̶n̶g̶ ̶w̶h̶e̶n̶ ̶i̶t̶ ̶c̶o̶m̶e̶s̶ ̶t̶o̶ ̶t̶h̶i̶s̶ ̶n̶o̶w. Hopefully this doesn't become some trend with future "DTG" routes.
So this seems to be a UK route-specific phenomenon then? Small sample size, but I've just visited Summit station on the Morristown line, which has a cool footbridge from an island platform that takes you out of the station, and you then turn past the station building to walk down to the other platform. I like this sort of thing.
Yeah it's laziness yet again. They've done it at Dawlish Warren and Marsh Barton on Riveria and its just bad. Surely they can't cut anymore corners.
Fife circle does. Am pretty sure its lochgelly station that has the teleport thing between platforms.
got to give stockport on MAC a thumbs up for the working lifts, and yes i did use it coz why walk up stairs when you can use a lift.
Oh, in that case I take back what I said about Fife. I did try and check for myself before I sent that post and was still wrong! Can't say I'm surprised though.
It does feel like a bit of a retrograde step, one that goes against the general trend of TSW recently. No-one's expecting fully-rendered town centres, but we all enjoy the aspects that make the world feel a bit more real - the lifts, the more detailed station concourses (compare Salzburg from TSW4 with Koeln from TSW), the extra walkable bits in certain routes.
I completely agree, I remember watching the Cardiff preview stream and DTG were showing off the teleport thing as if it was a cool addition to the game. I made the same complaint a few days ago but of course people dismiss it and say its just pointless moaning. I've seen some say its an optimization thing which makes no sense. I don't really know much about game development but on GOBLIN there were multiple stations which you could walk out of and on to the pavement, no silly green teleporters needed, hell there was even a field and huge lake which players can visit. I get the reason is probably laziness but I'm still curious to know why we are seeing more of these, especially on UK routes from DTG/Rivet.
I also agree. I really don't like the teleport feature for changing platforms. As others have said, older routes such as Goblin and Cross City had the full stations built with the ability to walk between platforms, even those which required walking out of the station. The only possible argument for this being a thing that I can think of is cutting corners to save on development time, meaning less of the stations external scenery / collision boxes have to be modeled and set up? But yeah, personally, not a fan. I hope DTG and third parties take note of this thread and stop doing this in future addons.
This idea of teleporting to the otherside of the station is a waste of time. Why wait for the game to load up when you can just cross the tracks. At least with footbridges, subways and walking out and around the station is actually doing something worthwhile IMO. Also I don't understand why the put the working level crossings in but you can stand behind the barrier properly. Which is something which would give better experience too. If JT can do it for places like Hest Bank on WCMLoS then surely the others can do it too. As for teleporting between two different stations, I have to say the Manchester Airport Commuter line has got it spot on. Quite a few of the stations you teleport to the outside of the station and then you can walk in. Just gives it a bit more atmosphere.
Yeah, I would quite like to have seen the outside of Exeter St. Davids too. Again, not expecting to be able to walk up the hill to the University, but just to see the full station.
The thing is there are literally traversible paths that you could probably walk if they hadn't invisible walled it off. It's not like its miles out of your way. Absolutely the peak of cutting corners.
There is a somewhat related weirdness at Leipzig: in the Hauptbahnhof, they modeled the lower-level mall, but the stairs and escalators to it are blocked off. At first I figured it was just "distant scenery" - but then found that the lifts to it work! So why block the stairs???
Are they escelators? I think they are IRL, and TSW doesn't do escalators well. There's a level crossing at Radebeuel-Naundorf - the only "safe" way of switching platforms - that is blocked off by an individual wall. This is one of the new stations at the Dresden end on the Leipzig route.
That's true; but usually they just become narrow metal staircases which you can still climb even if they don't move.
For me that was the fun part walking and exploring by foot aswell. Takes away a big part of the games chatacter. In the end i buy 90% of all upcoming content on heavy sale. The exceptions are from tsg and jt. So i dont really care what dtg is cutting next out of lazyness. My time of active support is over since the buggy release of Tsw4. Thats the downside of making all those crappy new features. A lot of cuts on train related or cuts on route related modeling to keep up all that nonsense. The TSW6 faults are a joke and everybody played the 101 expert knows that. So what is DTG trying to do here? They should just focus on their core game instead of crippling it year for year. From all the cuts and lazyness, DTG set their priorities totally wrong. Not even time to model the underpass anymore, because they try to model features which DTG isnt capable of. Im glad i stopped my active support 2 years ago. Its just how it is...just totally pathetic what i read of the reviews
It's about the flow of the game too. If you're in an FPS game and press reload, and are met with a loading screen, even if the loading screen is quicker than a reload animation, it takes you out of it, breaks any immersion, disrupts the flow of the game, and will overall feel longer. They heavily marketed TSW2 on immersion, and now we have something that actively breaks it. I understand using them to teleport you to, say, a point of interest or a popular trainspotting location that would be difficult to get to, or another station, but it's just being abused and comes across as lazy.
