Dtg Are You Actually Trolling The Community?!

We might not like it, but the most likely root cause of delayed 3rd party patches is due to the consoles. Since we already know that DTG handles all the distribution, and 3rd parties are not game studios with their own relationships with MS and Sony, to get developer kits, they are at the mercy of what is available at/through DTG. And this most likely means that builds for consoles are prepared by DTG based on the code and assets that the 3rd parties commit into a release, while they can pack and internally test on PC the consoles need to go through DTG. And we know confirmed from the Medway issues that in depth PS5 testing is not really even being done due to them not being in Sony's proper Beta program.

In conclusion, DTG can prepare and submit updates for in-house content as often as they wish and keep to at least delivering something each month, while any patches coming for 3rd party content get placed in a queue of sorts in order to be processed by someone at DTG in order to get it through QA and into a patch window. If there is any issue it all goes back to the bottom when the 3rd party submits a new code revision. And most likely new content still takes priority over fixes.

Order of priority of what gets released to QA and in the end to stores, most likely is:
- New Game versions
- New In House DLC
- New 3rd Party DLC
- Core Patches
- In House DLC Patches
- 3rd Party DLC Patches

Both DTG Liam and DTG Lukas are now both 3rd pary developers and DTG team members as well (as far as I know). And not even their content that they produce as 3rd parties is exempt of the process, it would be immoral if they got preferrential treatment yes, at the same time these are the people that could help make the process better by seeing both sides.

 

Yes it is, but us as the consumer also has a voice that we can shout up. At the end of the day, the developers don't get paid unless we buy their products. There's a lot of people who won't buy stuff day 1 now because of issues, thats a MASSIVE headache for 3rd party developers who need the capital to pay staff and start new projects.

Fixing stuff in products, makes the brand stronger. Failing to fix, resolve and communicate with the community destroys a brand.

 

So you do say we shouldn’t be buying 3rd party DLC until it’s updated? I’m losing track you more make U-turns then a UK government (regardless of which party is in power)

 

And exactly out of Mildmay, WCMLoS and MAC where unplayable on release?

 

We are all talking in circles again, many great points have yet again been made, but as it stand unless something very drastic happens within DTG/Focus, and they actually engage with the community honestly it changes nothing, they will always keep going on as they are until It's either stopped by there bosses or they start losing money, and the latter is a double-edged sword, they would either change there approach or just can the lot.

 

I don't believe anyone has said they were unplayable upon release.... The issue is that when bugs are found, that can affect certain aspects of the route, DTG are taking far too long in getting the developers patches out to the public.

Sometimes routes break when DTG update the core engine, and then patches also take forever to fix issues caused by DTG's inability to QA their patch against the available product lines, because the process has become so disconnected.

I know what you're trying to do here redrev1917, you're trying to rage bait users like you often do in threads where you feel the topic of conversation is controversial.

All the users in this thread have been asking for, is that when users are eagerly awaiting for a patch, and the 3rd party developers say a patch is coming for a product, and it's been finalised and sent to DTG for approval and it then disappears, that communication is given. The product is slowly getting full of annoying, game breaking bugs. Some users can get over this small bugs, but for others it's a massive detractor that they've paid good money for, yet don't get something they can enjoy.

 

Not at all I replied to someone else saying a boycott was cutting their nose off to spite their face and he replied telling me I was happy getting ripped off (if that isn’t rage bait I don’t know what is). So no you are wronng when you say all users are asking is communication, some are asking for full boycotts which is silly and self defeating.

Just because someone has a different opinion to your own doesnt mean that they are rage baiting, its called a discussion forum for reason, if you dont want discussion and just want a angry mob echo chamber then maybe this isnt the place for you.

 

Then I apologise for my comments...

You're quite funny to be honest. I'm the one trying to keep this topic on the topic as the original poster. Actively encourgaing people to give constructive feedback here.

 

Apology fully accepted, let’s move on

And in fairness I owe you one, as I hadn’t realised that you and the guy who said I was happy being ripped off wasn’t the same.

 

I never signed-up to be a bug tester, but I've submitted about 30 DTG support tickets in the last couple of weeks..... Of course, it's all screaming into the void, and I don't expect anything to get fixed. Would be nice if they proved me wrong.

Uninstalled TSW6 because I'm honestly burned-out from being a volunteer beta tester. I bought a video game, not a career.

When a hobby turns into a thankless job, you wonder why you even bother with it.

 

They close tickets before addressing the issue the ticket raises. There can be no expectations of anything.

 

TSW is imperfect but I'm happy enough with it for it to be a hobby of mine.
Looking at the other hobbies this weekend, I've had a couple of okay days of reading outside, I love meteorology so this current average, dry weather is suboptimal. I pay hundreds of pounds every year following my football team which is currently glitching worse that any route does on a PS4. And my final big hobby, listening to music, wasn't an option due to an ear problem, so that was disappointing too.

Hobbies, sometimes expensive, sometimes brilliant, sometimes not, sometimes I wonder why I bother. That's life innit.

 

Matt is an employee of the company. Yes, he is an important employee in many ways. As Executive Producer he has an important role in the company. He works many extra hours. He is pretty much the "face" of the company in the streams. He is a railfan but also has technological knowledge and is good explaining how things work in layman's terms that we can understand.

Of course when he goes on vacation and we do not see him on the preview streams it is very noticeable to us, but keep in mind that he is not the owner of DTG, the CEO, a chairman or anything of that kind. The fact that he can explain to us how things are in a stream is one thing, and going around the company reorganizing everything, saying who has to do what or how the company's money has to be spent is another very different thing.

As much as I miss him in the streams, for sure he has the right to go on vacation as much as anyone else and I wish he enjoys them.

Threads like this will probably end up in the Director of Community Management's desk (JD), not Matt's, and I bet he will take the input and discuss it with the people that makes decisions. Everything we are discussing here requires long term changes. Nothing that they can fix with a post on a saturday or sunday evening.

 

"Just accept it" is exactly what DTG wants you to think, and the reason why they will never improve their content.

Posts like this instantly destroy any incentive to report bugs at all.... Just sit back and watch the quality drop, until it's a miracle that the game loads at all.

Because nothing matters.

 

A big part of the issue is that DTG are effectively gatekeeping TSW from 3rd party developers, unlike TSC where a group could release their own DLC they could also patch it themselves as an when required but on TSW it must go via DTG and that is the main cause of problems (core issues notwithstanding). Now that 3rd parties have to go via DTG is down to Consoles, there isn't a way around that one unfortunately.

 

actually, it's worse than that
in the end, we're all paying beta testers
in the end, we pay to test the game
in the end, we buy the game in beta stage

 

And god bless them for it. The situation for add-ons in TSC is insane. Some require countless other paid add-ons to work. For others the quality will be incredibly low. At least this way there is some standard set on how things work.

 

DTG are fortunate to not have any real competitors in the train sim space otherwise they would be in real trouble if another game was better

 

It's a double edged sword, one thing I really like about TSW is that add-ons generally work standalone but also layer onto other routes, the whole timetable and scenario situation is the same too. In TSC I never did scenarios as there would be one random obscure wagon or something which I would need in order to run it, at least TSW doesn't have that.

The problem though is that DTG are obviously incapable of handling numerous 3rd party developers submitting patches and tweaks en-masse, and let's be honest most of those patches are to fix bugs caused by core issues.

 

That’s part of the problem too….no competition no incentive to move the game forward.

 

For such heavy criticism against DTG, you are either lying about paying for the new iteration or you have double standards, which is the case if you still buy content while having that opinion about the game.

 

If the rumours of wide spread redundancies at dovetail towers are true they are potentially letting a some very talented and knowledgeable team members go. If someone passionate about train simming with a bit of capital was smart they’d by sweeping them up and making a rival train sim.

 

That sounds great but would it really be able to challenge TSW? One of the positives of TSW is that it can appeal to a wider playerbase as there are routes covering multiple countries, but looking at existing examples none can really churn out content at the same rate as DTG.

To be honest even the current TSW franchise doesn't feel like it's putting out a massive amount of content, but there isn't much else to compare it to. The only one I can think of is TSC which has a massive library of content. We really need a SW route in TSW.

 

I bought the deluxe edition, and it's precisely because I bought it that I have my opinion and my criticisms about it

 

Do what lol, and why don’t you opt to ignore me yourself if you suggest others do lol

 

this whole thing about dtg getting away with low quality is blown out of proportion time and time again. train simulation is a niche industry, people wouldn’t pick one or the other. lots of subwaysim players are also likely to be tsw players. same goes for simrail. people don’t pick one and stick with it, they’ll own and play multiple different games

 

You know what they say about assumptions, right?

 

chances are i won’t guess the exact one you’re thinking of, but i can tell you that this forum is full of them. lots of releases in one go? dtg going out of business. 3P updates getting delayed? QA is too small. a route is too short? laziness. whilst lots of these may have some substance in them, there’s a concerning amount of people on here who think they know more than they actually do. for all we know dtg could be doing just fine as a business, especially where tsw is concerned

 

The Holding company’s accounts to the end of their financial year 2025 are there for all to see. Makes for interesting reading.

 

I was replying to your comment about players of TSW playing more than one type of railway based simulator....

 

That is true but can you imagine how buggy a ported version of TSW would be considering how many bugs are in it currently with UE4? Not only that porting all the old DLC would cost huge amounts of time, resources and money... DTG aren't going to do that, I mean it would be nice but I think there's more chance of winning the lottery when you never play it.

Also you're other comment on the support tickets getting closed before the issue has been addressed has happened to me on multiple occasions, that's why I gave up reporting stuff through the support system and just pinged the CMs on Discord to report an issue.

 

At no point did I say "Just accept it". I report bugs, I have been critical of choices of routes, I've moaned about elements of the game and bugs that shatter immersion, as you'll see from many of my posts on here over the last 9 years. In fact rather than "just accepting it" I reached out to DTG as I'd like to become a tester for them once my current career ends. No sitting back from me buddy.

My goal was to point out that frustrations abound with all hobbies and more broadly with life in general. Maybe that was a little too abstract. I should have compared TSW to other simulator games that released in such a broken state they were unplayable; like Cities Skylines 2, MS Flight Sim 24 and Football Manager 26. TSW has never caused me the issues I've had with those other three. That should not be interpreted as "Don't bother reporting bugs" or "Just accept it" or "Everything is a binary choice these days so if you don't make your fury clear then I'm going to assume you think the complete opposite of my opinion".

I hope all of the bugs you've reported to DTG get resolved soon.