I'm starting to see news items about TSW that have been posted on the Discord server and generously reposted on the forum by members of both. But this won't always be the case. Are we going to have a situation where DTG staff are posting on the Discord server and bypassing forum members who may not hear important announcements? This is concerning because I have no interest in Discord for a number of reasons. And I'm not sure why this switch is being made. Maybe I'm worrying unnecessarily. Or maybe I just don't understand the purpose of discord. I don't know. But I don't like discord and I don't like this trend.
I will say that DTG are way more active on Discord than the forums. At least Harry is very active on Discord daily but we rarely see her on the forums. Candace has lots of one on one conversations woth people all the time, but she is active on here as well. I have notice that articles are posted there before the forums as well. However they are too strict on Discord I find and alot of critical posts are magically removed. Example I posted blurry texture images on the TSW screenshots section and the next day they had been removed as inapproriate and I was muted for 24 hours. The game is dead and I uninstalled it from my Series X on the 16th. Which is a shame since I have been playing since 2020 and had purcased 121 DLC items. I feel like I wasted 5 years of my life.
When discord was announced I saw the writing on the wall for the forum I just wasn’t ready for how quick it would come. I get that forums cost money to maintain and data storage isn’t cheap. The fact that DTG latest love child Metro rivals doesn’t have its own sub forum tells us all how little focus they are giving to the forums and the remaining community here. I tried discord but in all honesty its just to hard to keep track of discussions and many important points are lost in the noise.
I get the picture. I'm sure if I started posting on Discord I'd get into all kinds of trouble immediately. Unless I suddenly became all schmaltzy and white knightish Ugh!
I get the impression that the move to Discord was made in some degree, to suppress high visibility issues. Post something on this forum & it’s basically preserved & will show up on google. Texture issues are a good example with multiple threads on the topic popping up, when googling the problem - same from Reddit & Facebook. Discord though, doesn’t do that. On Discord you have a much more effective ability to suppress & even punish community members for discussing such topics. I’m sure someone will be along to tell us that “posting issues in a screenshot channel breaks the rules” but I don’t think many actually understand the gravity of the problem, there is a significant number of routes in the game now which are plagued with the issue & seeing those texture issues are basically part of the gameplay. Discord is a highly mobile, fast moving chat, rather than a suitable discussion board. The only conversation you can ever have on Discord is the singular topic that’s the most popular at that moment, once the topic dies, the conversation is gone & there’s no getting involved in it unless you’re there every minute. If you come along 2 days later you’d never know it happened. I think for a game that has so many issues, technicalities to learn, community resources to be shared & many other subjects, something like Discord is the worst place you could pick as your main communication base. The other big simulators aren’t doing it & those sims are ironically in much better communication with their users.
This one does grind my gears.. i joined this place not long ago because I'm not on social media.. had enough of buying broken dlc and just having to wonder if it will ever get fixed.. Turns out i joined just as DTG decided they dont want to use the fourm they (presumably) pay alot of money for, as the main contact channel anymore.. so im back to square 0.. well square ½ as just like everyone else on here I can now grab at any straws and try and peice together whats going on! I wont join Discord as they aren't known for the greatest security and I shouldn't have to join a 3rd party app.. When DTG have this fourm! I ask myself why.. But I wouldn't want to have a public fourm that documents how ive failed to do my job over a number of years either!! (Not that id still have a job if I use DTGs definition of 'Fixed') Litterly years of receipts sat here acknowledging they are aware of years old bugs but still havnt fixed them! Id much rather a "closed" server so I can keep up the appearances of being in touch with the community, with the added bonus of being able to curate who sees any criticism and mute anyone whos not on the same hymn sheet! Dont worry though we get to know when to open up the wallet on here quick enough though!
The forum isn’t just about what people are saying now. It is a highly valuable and searchable historical reference tool for current and future players to be able to find information about any aspect of any of the games DTG make including all the vast back catalogues of DLC. Discord is not a suitable substitute for that. It’s a chat room. It’s okay for it to exist as well as the forum and I suppose the staff can favour giving people instant gratification there over being visible here but they may not realise the dire consequences of closing down the community reference tool they have here if they decide to do just that. It will cost them money. I won’t play complex games that don’t have a decent place for me to find out all about them. I’ve done a lot of research over the last couple of days just on the forum in order to persuade myself to spend another £30 on DLC in the PS sale. All the info I needed was contained in these pages. I wouldn’t buy any DLC blind. Too risky. I could always try social media comments if I could find relevant ones but everything is painted as bad there as it is where people vent. There’s no praise or balance on social media platforms. Here there are balanced views from the most dedicated players and I can find them easily. There’s also education from such enthusiasts. It’s a massively useful resource. I wouldn’t use Discord. It’s a chat room. That’s why it requires the staff to do 24hr a day moderation 7 days a week using extra staff and AI bots. It’s of no use to me. I would stop buying DLC if the forum goes. Closing it would drive me away from TSW. Don’t be daft DTG, you must keep the forum.
Not really used this forum in a while, I am not a hardcore train sim player I kind of play it come off it, then come back to it. It is crazy what has seemed to happen on here. Seems so much of the core fans are unhappy and I cannot believe the dovetail team are not that present on here anymore. This forum is so useful it has to stay alone used so many guides from it over the years. Please don't abandon it.
Yes, nice words. But I have the distinct impression that there is a greater presence of the CM's on Discord these days than on the forums. Just like on Discord, valid and urgent questions are being asked on the forums. I don't see a lot of answers or updates here though. What's so hard about giving " quick and informal replies to individual questions " asked here on the forum " in real time " ?
All I'll say is that the phrase "Talk is cheap" applies here. (Well that, and to be clear this is a remark directed toward DTG, not Calidore266 personally)
Discord feels like a chat with friends. You ask something and CMs or devs reply to you in an informal way. Answers like "No news" (a polite way of saying "I have no clue") or "someone sent a patch for x thing 3 months ago " seem valid there. If they said the same in the forums, someone would quickly tell them to go ask the question to someone that knows the answer, or in the case of the patch someone would ask why is it taking so long to get it into a game release. The issue is that, even if Discord feels like a chat with friends (thats what you usually join discord for, chatting with friends while you play a game), when we are talking to CMs and devs we are not approaching them because they are our friends but because they are staff members of a company. That line is somewhat blurred in Discord.
I am on discord but the forum is easier on the eye and used more by the community. DTG should respect that and post on both.
If they are censoring posts on Discord that’s yet another reason not to use it. May have posted this previously but seems DTG are copying N3V. When I posted on the Trainz forums a few weeks ago about something, I was told don’t expect anyone from the company to respond as they rarely visit their own forum. Yes, you guessed it, all over on Discord. So as seems to be the case here, the forum is simply retained as an echo chamber for the malcontents (and token acolytes), neatly corralled and tidied away.
What I hate most about Discord are all the ' expletives ' in the form of obnoxious graphic files, without a setting to supress them.
Discord is way easier to get communication out and also if setup correctly, to track and link issues. I don’t know how it’s setup do DTG, but I do use it for other games and it’s better to find information than searching a forum. That being said, if you want to talk to a community, it should be easier in theory but it seems to me like forums are better to that. It also seems like it’s a split of younger people liking Discord more while older people liking forums more because it seems more structured. As someone between that I use both, but I can see why most here like the forums over Discord because you can continue the conversation over time vs hope that the company Discord is setup in a way that makes it easy to have those conversations there.
I haven't actually used this forum for very long, but would hate to see it go. Better than the game itself most of the time!!! And I would never use the glorified late 90s chatroom that is Discord.
That is exactly how I have seen discord it's hard to keep track what's going on unless your on the app a lot. At least on the forums you can follow the structure and replys.
