It was clear that something was wrong. The amount of DLC released in such a short time was unprecedented. And now there's a complete silence, apparently. Unfortunately, I think the situation is quite difficult for the employees. I understand them; I too have been fired three (3) times due to company failures or reorganizations. It wasn't a pleasant experience.
I think Skyhook are working on another 158 pack (Northern), I suspect they’ll also do a TFW one sooner than later. It’ll be nice as we’ll finally get some Northern Diesel traction that can add & displace inappropriate layers, a TFW version should give much more realistic consists for long distance services that are currently layered by their local stock. I will admit though they really need to work on their patching game, but of course we don’t know how much of that is down to DTG. Their timetables have been much better than most third party options too, other than the FC on which is…poor. Rivet I will say did a great job with Riviera, probably one of the better routes we’ve ever had for TSW, though it’s suffered from some poorly QA’d updates. Their turbostar packs aren’t so bad either but they’re making promises regarding updates to those packs that they aren’t delivering, and they do indeed suffer from a huge backlog of really poor quality content.
Unfortunately it's always been a one-sided experience with DTG, when they want to sell you something they are everywhere, when they want to keep dangling the carrot they "encourage you to leave feedback, get involved in the forums, let us know what you think" and then when something goes wrong, or they actually do get constructive feedback they dissappear. Zilch. Nothing.
Honestly how many DLC of the Class 158 do Skyhook want to flog us at this stage, the Scotrail one was a year late and pretty tame. The Nuclear DLC has more bugs than a banana in a fruit fly convention. I'm aware that at this stage it's Adam, not really a team at Skyhook so scope is somewhat limited. Riviera was an easy win for Rivet, very little trackwork, lots of easy to populate countryside, but it does look great and plays smoothly and the timetable is decent.
WCMLS was rubbish and to some extent still is. Just look next time you go through a tunnel with the repeating wall textures displaying a diagonal black section every few yards. Riviera wasn't too bad but then I suspect DTG had slightly more oversight of the process.
Aside from the tunnels and DTG never releasing a fitting timetable what would you point out as being things you've seen on WCMLs you don't like?
AWS not set up properly is another issue, still get a few signals where you receive a horn vice a bell. The tunnel portals look nothing like the prototype either. Don't misunderstand me, it's not all bad and perhaps rubbish was too strong a word and some improvements were made after release. Plus the biggest problem is that it didn't go far enough - Northampton and/or Rugby would have been a much more suitable end point.
Going back to the 158, as much as I welcome it's inclusion, I have a couple of concerns with it. What does it even do? There's only MAC really, which apparently it isn't for I remember someone saying in the other thread in general discussion. Then there's the risk of Skyhook just becoming a company that just repeatedly releases 158s. I know it's only Adam (and maybe a couple of others) because TSW isn't their focus anymore, but will people generally appreciate another 158 pack...? Also, I wonder what will appear on the roadmap first, Northern 158, GWR 387 or the ScotRail HST?
What would be the point of a Northern 158 pack? It wouldn't even suit the MAC route which is the only modern day Northern route. ATW I guess could layer on to MAC (there is an ATW 158 that you can spawn in freeroam which appears to have come with MAC on the QT), I suppose it could layer onto Cardiff Network though I'm not sure how much they did down there. WCMLS isn't great but it's not the worst out there either, I suppose in my case being a PC user means I get the benefit of user made enhancements and fixes as well as a better timetable but I'm running Rivera in Vanilla and think its good enough.
I am not sure the division of labour was that clean. Procedural generation based on say OSM data would probably produce results not different to existing TSW routes!
tbf the rolling stock overall on MAC is a mess, AWC shouldn’t be there, the LNR 350’s, 323’s on diagrams they weren’t running & doing so in the wrong consist, the SR 158’s etc. I think a northern DMU would only make it better tbh. It’s clearly just a route that exists for the sake of being in Manchester in a modern era, not much more. Given it was removed from the roadmap at the last minute, I suspect we’re missing context behind the Northern 158; either it not being northern at all, for another route we don’t have or some sort of Rivet 484 style remodel of an existing route. In any case I think a TFW or GWR 158 would have been more valuable at this stage in TSW.
MAC was a tricky one as it is missing a lot of core rolling stock regardless of when it is/was set, the 323s were always around though in this they are subbing for either 319s or 331s - neither of which are in game, the 150/153 is subbing for either the 175 or 197, again neither are in game (the 158s did also drop on Airport - Wales runs as the 175s were being phased out). I think the 158s were hired in to cover the 195s which had not yet been delivered, but they were not in Northern livery. Obviously you have the AWC and XC units too... The other problem with the route was if they set it just a year or two earlier they'd be missing 142s, 150s & 156s on top of everything else. Ideally to get the most out of it, it'd have been set either in the mid-late 90s or early 2000s, sure the 156s would be missing but all of the other units and loco hauled stuff would be there but that's just my wishful thinking
Yeah that’s why I think the NT 158’s wouldn’t be an issue, they’d if anything just help it look more like the route is supposed to & less like a cursed scenario planner party. In any case it’ll be nice to get some more NT stock into the game, I just hope it will have good gameplay value unlike some other things.
If we’re talking about failed DTG titles, both TSW Tycoon and the New York VR title seem to be getting little to no discussion in their respective forum sections. So I guess it’s safe to assume neither was a rip roaring success. Seems to me, DTG need to overhaul the brainstorming department when it comes to devising new original titles!
New York VR was released only for Meta. If this game had been released on PSVR2, sales would definitely have been better.
