Metro Rivals Development Suspended

I think you’d still run into the same issue you have now, making built up areas is just taxing & if anything compressing them further would make it worse. Imagine B2C compressing all 3 cities into half the length, I’m not sure it would do any favours considering how tile loading works.

You then have the dispute ETS has always had, the game starts to feel like a toll booth simulator because as soon as you leave one city you’re ontop of the next, which then leads to next issue of cities don’t feel like cities as they consist of a couple of main roads. They of course aren’t 1:1 comparisons that a prospective rail simulator would need to worry about, but I think they’re factors which would still be a relative issue.

It’s definitely something that could work, but I think it only works at a large scale, TSW can’t really make 100+ mile routes work now & the ones that do exist tend to avoid major cities, I think many would just prefer to have 70ish mile runs from a major terminus to a regional hub.

 

It would be impossible to represent big stations with such a scale down factor. Not the station platforms themseves but the switches on the approach would take up a too large of a distance to be able to condense a route. In ETS the depots can be literally to 1-1 scale, and as far as I know even within city limits the scale is a tad larger so its not a constant scale shrink of the world. And in such a title great liberties will be taken in terms of realism of scenery, you might get a few landmarks but nothing that looks like the actual place.

Overall good idea, but not for a sim of train driving, more for a transportation sim/train driver life sim. Oh wait I just described something that already exists: https://store.steampowered.com/app/1330660/Train_Life_A_Railway_Simulator/. It had an earth shattering peak player count of 400, which is less than the concurrent players of TSW6 by itself in the middle of the day in Europe. Most likely reason for that is that the game is garbage, and simply the idea is not something that catches. ETS2 built on top of a decade legacy of 18 Wheels of Steel games much the way the TSW franchise is. Doubtful that a new entry to market can hit like a big bang, unless the budget and quality is of a triple A title.

I much rather spend my time driving in TSW and enjoying scaled down worlds in something like Transport Fever, both filling in a niche that enough people enjoy to make a sustainable business for releasing sequels.

 

On a Christmas LiveStream a couple of years ago the SCS CEO said they had looked into trains, and boats as potential additions to their successful ETS and ATS games, but decided on both accounts that the market was too small and niche for them and (at the time) games like Train Simulator Classic had a strong dominant position.

 

Indeed, the same points that have been touched on when this was previously discussed. And of course with ETS2 and ATS the change of scale between the open country and built up areas mean it can take nearly as long to pass through a town or city as travelling to the next one. And while later maps did a better job of towns resembling how they appear IRL, many still just appear as a generic cluster of buildings and delivery locations.

 

Sony introduced a beta programm last year, so players can test games. I don't know how easy it is for developers to get their games on there, and how easily they can decide who has access and who not. It's also meant to be for early access, so I guess that's how reviewers get early access to TSW and DLC.

However, Dovetail seems to port the DLC to consoles themselves, so that's why 3rd developers do not test their DLC on console in advance. It looks like, it's the easier to test the DLC on Xbox then on PS, as Firefly stated they tested a lot on Xbox.

 

The end result though is that whatever Firefly did with testing, should be the standard.

I have some pretty strong feelings about the PS5 sound problem though, if Firefly ever do a loco DLC or a route that has a star of the show train & the issue repeats, it’s going to be a massive problem IMO.

That aside, even disregarding the extremely high quality of the route itself, the technical quality is a huge leap for TSW.

 

Not to speak on behalf of Firefly but I've heard good news about the PS5 sound issues, they seem to have made a breakthrough and hopefully it's not too much longer now until a hotfix

 

Agreed, they did a pretty good job there. They didn't rush it out of the door and did test the DLC themselves.

 

I did have more confidence in the Firefly team hearing about who was on the team and how prominent they've been in the community. And you're right with the standards they've reached I think it's definitely set the bar higher for all releases going forwards. It's just whether third party's and DTG will sit in their comfort zone or push the boat out a little.

I think with regards to the unfortunate sound issues once they sort this one out you'd hope that it can be learnt from and checked going forwards.

 

Sadly, former DTG Community Manager Nat has been affected by the recent events of job loss at DTG.



This is saddening, I remember Nat was a fantastic community manager from 2021 - 2022

This is just rough speculation but, This is significant, as far as I’m aware, Nat wasn’t a part of Metro Rivals in its development?, so this could suggest the problem with jobs being lost could be greater than we originally thought.

The situation at DTG must be BAD and my sympathies go out to all affected.

 

Could be a sad future for TSW… which I really hope doesn’t happen… I really want to see TSW have years and years of content and support…

 

That's a real shame. I remember Nat being a great CM here.

 

Seeing DTG staff members slowly get wiped out over this situation is really worrying, I’m gonna be honest.

this is having a really negative impact, not only on this games future, but also the livelihoods of individuals and people who have worked on it.

I never like to assume the worst. But this is bad

 

Ah man, Nat was easily one of the better community team members TSW had, huge loss for DTG IMO.

That being said, looking at what she’s described, she’s really risen up from just a community manager role, so hopefully she’ll have no issue landing a decent role.

 

Looks like Nat and some others are currently in the 1st phase of the redundancy process where an employer has to put affected staff on notice of a consultation process where alternative options are discussed with each employee.

The problem for those who've risen-up the corporate ladder is that there are usually fewer alternative options within the company higher up. I hope Nat is snapped-up by another developer, I hope everyone involved in the consultation ends up in a better situation soon.

Having been through the process myself, it can sometimes be a good thing if you can find work quickly so that the redundancy money can go on something nice. Back in 2014 I was lucky to start a new job when my gardening leave ended which meant my severance pay paid a bit of the mortgage off and allowed us a holiday of a lifetime in the Caribbean.

 

Venture capitalists with big debts to service fully own DTG. They only really want revenue now and nothing that isn’t currently making money or is projected to do very well. It’s in their Q4 report. They’ve taken an axe to new and unfinished ventures. The gaming industry is facing huge challenges right now. Increased costs and a big drop in consumer spending. DTG will have been reduced to just TSW now.

 

Aye and i have zero empathy for those VCs, they were warned by gamers about pushing stuff nobody wanted, guess Karma came calling

 

The producer of MR does most likely not have a project anymore, so it's possible Natalie is afraid of that producer getting her job. It's not like she is fired atm, she is afraid her role is at risk. It's also not sure this is greater then MR, if you cancel a project you will have redundant jobs and a company has to choose who is staying and who is leaving. It's quite logical the company has to restructure the organization after canceling a game and it's to early for doom-mongering.

 

yes, and that's why I'm almost certain the order to suspend metro rivals development came from above
they must have observed that there would be no market and/or interest for metro rivals nor any other project besides tsw
therefore they gave the order to prioritize where the profit is (that is, tsw)
this becomes evident in this specific part of the statement

 

Yeah I can’t tell if people are just being dramatic for the sake of it, or just naive.

Companies don’t just keep staff on with nothing to do for the sake of it. DTG are done with CTS, Catan, TTE & MR. TSW has a dev team in place & they have what, over 5 community managers? I bet that number of CM’s gives AAA studios a run for their money in comparison.

 

Well, in general people can be dramatic or just not seeing signs and being naive. In this case I would say it's to early for being dramatic about DTG and TSW. Yes something happened why MR is cancelled, did they realize this project would not gonna be profitable or did they have issues with UE5, like other developers have? Lumen and Nanite are quite resource hungry, so good performance and good resolution are really a thing on console. But there where also enough signs, this game was not gonna be popular, so when the men in suits also did realize this in the end......