147 Delayed.

The majority of players are on discord.
The numbers speak for themselves.

 

That’s not the official one though, no? That’s a community server that’s existed much longer & spans various games.

 

Just finished reading a thread full of complaints about the alleged poor quality of one release to then read a thread full of frustration that a release has been delayed for quality reasons.

This isn't limited to the TSW gaming forum. I see it across many titles and publishers' forums. This lose/lose situation is causing me to pause development on my own website, I hope for everyone's sake that it's not putting developers off making add-ons for my favourite PC games.

 

Praise Discord for existing then. It shows that platforms like Discord can boost a games popularity ten-fold.

 

Even the official one has over 10,000.

 

You guys say stuff like this then wonder why devs avoid the forums

 

Because a lot of people don’t necessarily care when it’s releasing. This forum is a subset of huge train and train sim nerds…sorry I mean enthusiasts (include myself in the nerd group btw).

We’re the minority of people who buy the game. It’s the same for people who follow a sports team. You have your crazies who know all the ins and outs, the minor or youth team players, they hear the rumors about potential trades. But 90-95% of fans only watch the game on TV and get the team updates there. They don’t know all the details when they buy a ticket to the 1-2 games they go to a year. If the team is trading away their best player? They have no idea that’s happening, but they still pony up the money to go to a game because they enjoy the escape for a few hours or whatever their reason might be.

So people join the stream, get their news there, then wait to see if that new route or loco they may be familiar with releases. They see it in the store and buy it, whether it be late or on time. They don’t follow the ins and outs like we do here and they don’t care that they don’t either. They just want to play the sim and run trains how they want.

 

Go on any semi-serious gaming forum and ask what people think of Madden or Call of Duty, most of those people hate those games with a passion. Even back in the day, you'd have people who'd right off things like the OG Modern Warfare series as effectively slop for the masses. And sports game players notoriously are kind of in their own world separate from everything else.

Another good example, go to a Nintendo forum, and ask what's their favorite series, chances are probably higher you'll see a lot more Metroid's & Fire Emblem's (Among others) than Super Mario's, despite their tiny sales figures. (At least in comparison to the bigger franchises) And you'll practically never see anyone say Wii/Nintendo Switch Sports or Wii Fit/Ring Fit as favorites, despite those again selling way more than other franchise people do tend to talk about.

To pick a TSW example here, look at how revered Clinchfield is on here, then read the Steam reviews, it's considered a very mixed bag route on there. And evidently based on what we vaguely know on sales that seems to better reflect the overall public opinion since the route did seemingly poorly.

Something I always found interesting was Jeff Favignano's videos on it, don't remember which video, but he basically made remarks on how the route felt too similar to Sand Patch and didn't feel all that unique. Probably a very weird take to those on here, but it's always stuck with me because he isn't a massive train sim guy. And I do wonder if his opinion reflects a secret "silent majority" that only's really apparent if you aren't a massive train dork. (Which I'll fully admit I'm very much the latter)

Either way though, I think I've made my point, enthusiast forums are not great reflections of the public opinion.

 

Absolutely agree.

I preferred the internet when it was niche thing, there was so much more peer-to-peer respect, now it's the era of the keyboard warrior. Gaming communities were collaborative rather than confrontational. I sent a msg to someone this morning because I felt his response to me in a forum was rude. (I'm assuming it was a "him", it nearly always is).

My advice and I've said this before. If you wouldn't say it to someone's face, don't type it either.

jonnyd7 You use a good example. I'm an Arsenal fan, I've been going to games since the 1980s. If you looked at the opinions of our supporters on Twitter, you'd think we're all divided into fans who hate or love the manager, hate or love a particular player, many aren't happy with results even when we're doing well. Then I go to a match and there's 60,000 fans who aren't divided at all, they back the manager and the players, they chant and celebrate in unison and curse our misfortune if we lose. The internet and social media in particular is a cesspit full of people with ill-informed, arrogant, divisive opinions because rage-bait gets people the attention they are desperate for. But it's not reflective of the vast majority of normal people who have social skills.

 

Welp, seems they listened and now we're at least getting the Stuggi update seperate from the BR 147. Which might be an indicator it won't be coming next week either, but at least everybody on all platforms can now enjoy S-Bahn services and with passenger announcements even. And some other fixes which I'll be checking out asap.

Well done dtg_jan , that's a nice easter egg in the players' baskets.

 

I think in the not too distant future DTG will just become a publishing house for 3rd party devs with the exception of the increasingly becoming bizarre release of a new iteration of the same game each year. Then they may actually do a route for that with the aid of a heavily disguised rivet games.
I don’t mind that at all as for the most part the 3rd party devs release some decent stuff, usually superior in fact to in house.

 

Or, God forbid, they sell the IP to Rivet!

 

Aaargh!!!

 

Just Trains on the other hand...