Dtg Are You Actually Trolling The Community?!

FFS… Service 1C05 GER Diesel legends.. SPAD as soon as the game loads… repeatedly. Anyone care to comment on why I should be happy? Yes I’m also posting this in the correct forum too before the blue lights appear.

 

Thanks I’ll do that…

 

At least it wasnt an instant derailment like we had with multitude of services on this DLC prior. Its babysteps in the right direction (satire just to be clear). No you shouldnt be happy with this and we shouldnt need workarounds but have you tried spawning in on foot a couple of minutes before the service start time?

 

Hi Pat, you might be posting in the right forum, but not really the right thread. Can I suggest you post in this thread for maximum chance of someone picking this up and being able to answer for you. https://forums.dovetailgames.com/threads/great-western-express-remastered-feedback-thread.96489/

 

THx.. I have posted in a GWR thread and asked for it to be moved if incorrect. It’s a class 52 thread but I’ll see if I can maybe repost as recommended.

 

We still have a Harrow & Wealdstone sign at queen's park which has never been updated. The rushed releases are starting to be unacceptable.

It's been clear from the start, they either need to hire more developers or have a different business strategy all entirely.

The quality assurance isn't really there in my opinion, but going forward. I've noticed that most of the DLC releases this year have been much better than the core developers (DTG). To be honest DTG should be leading the way, if it feels more of a passion project rather than giving what players want lately.

I'll agree some of the showcases that we've received from DTG lately, have been very unprofessional in my opinion, especially with the showcase of the HST pack.

When it showcased, we didn't even pan around the train to see the livery (Which is a key selling point to this pack) A lot of of the stream went a little off-topic (I'm not against people having fun or going slightly off-topic) But this is the key-part of DTG's marketing when they showcase products, broadcasting this to their target audience which is a great idea. But it's become not very organised, there was no major introduction on the stream, there's been laughing going for 10 minutes at a time one stream previously in the past I had to switch it off which I rarely do.

The attention of urgency has gone out of the window, I remember I spoke on a discord Q&A in december regarding about Platform announcements being fixed/amended to stop the terminus' station to be announced if you are currently at that station. For Example at London Paddington, terminating trains' will be announced like their a service ready to board. These need to be fixed, after asking about this I thought the latest we'd receive an update would've been February/March.

Not only that, route hopping was starting to be "forgotten about" until players started to complain about route hopping as we come into each release it's like the features that were previously on old version of TSW don't get inherited correctly into the next phase/title of TSW.

Personally I'd like to see high quality routes/lengths and stock. Even if it's more costly I'd rather have 2/3 releases a year with more playability and something confident i'm buying that may or may not have updates in the future.

When we are buying these products there's a huge chance some of the bugs we encounter will never get fixed again.

The company needs a big-overhaul with change and direction to provide confidence with players.

 

You think that's bad? At Kilburn Park on the Bakerloo all the northbound and southbound signs and displays are flipped!

 

No I’ve not tried spawning earlier.. hadn’t thought of that. Didn’t know you could do that tbh. Might be worth a punt just to see. I just do runs straight off the timetable or scenarios.

 

Yeah that's so bad, I thought that got fixed tbh I think a few stations got updated but only a selected few?
Another thing of complete laziness is the the PIS at station on the overground route (Gospal line) It might be Leytonstone high road I can't remember but instead of fixing the PIS it was just completely removed I don't know why these little things aren't getting updated I'm sure before the project is finished it should be finalized and looked over for quality control and you can tell it's all been rushed in places I may just stop buying day 1 releases from DTG until the QC is a lot better and checked. I get it a lot of games aren't 100% perfect but these things are so easily noticeable leaving the players in the dark if it'll get selected for fixes/updates or not.

I think the snowball effect is real right now at dtg

 

TSW does seem to be suffering from years of tech debt and I wonder even if DTG wanted to if they could even fix it without breaking more than they fix.

 

That's the most stressful part of going on holiday for me. Getting home and hoping the cats will accept me back into their house.

 

Anyone else discovered that since the latest "patch" that when they complete a timetabled service it no longer marks it as complete? I mean it's not the end of the world as far as I am concerned, I just don't want to unintentionally repeat the same services, but I know others are in it for the completion...

As someone asked on page 4, I too think that the DTG folks have suddenly clammed up since the roadmap and patch notes were released and surely most of them are not involved in active development of the game but purely to work the socials...

And don't forget chaps & chapettes, infighting amongst ourselves is both a distraction from the actual discussion of problems and also going to lead to a staffer locking the thread and/or coming down with the ban hammer.

 

Thankfully I don’t have this issue personally on PC as this would totally make playing pointless for me to the extent I’d be playing something else til they fixed it

 

I'm on PC (Steam) but think I have figured it out, it only seems to be happening if I "return to freeroam" after completing the timetable mission then exiting straight to desktop rather than back into the menu.

 

Initially I thought I’d just misremembered the count, but yeah on MAC I did notice it wasn’t checking them off for the TFW runs.

I always just return to timetable on MAC runs though.

 

I fear that TSW will end up need to be rebuilt from the ground up. They keep adding new features to TSW but it will make it more unstable like Windows 9x (and Win Me) in the long run. They need to make it more efficient and stop duplication of trains. I fear it wont happen until its too late or it gets too much.

 

Oh yes that’s been a long term bug for a few reiterations. So far back I’d forgotten all about it until you mentioned it.

 

For me it has become a habit to go to the main menu before exiting the game, same as I never save and restore a service unless I have no other option because I know it will probably cause trouble.

 

This will not happen. Best case scenario is they will make a better (easier to maintain) core design for the UE5 version of TSW (whatever it will be called) when they decide to make it.

 

Well I see the new “Week commencing…” announcement, as well as being two days late has absolutely nothing to say other than go search YT for ambassador streams.

 

I was kinda hoping that they was gonna announce that the so called big lot of updates and patches where coming today .

 

Their silence tells me that there is ' Trouble at Mill ' so to speak. Community Managers have been extremely quiet and have not been very forthcoming about any updates or fixes of the multiple bugs recently. Especially after a plethora of DLC releases in the last months. So I wonder whats going on at Dovetail headquarters ?

 

It smells like the end

 

Ah yes, announcing that they have nothing to announce

 

It's not the first time that message ("we don't have any streams this week") has gone out and it probably won't be the last. Expressing your opinion is one thing, pointless conjecture is another. I suspect people at DTG are hurting right now, projects have been thrown up in the air, etc. Give them time to grieve (that's what it feels like) and I'm sure they will eventually tell us what's next.

 

More likely it sounds like they got too big for their boots, New York VR was terrible, TSW Tycoon seems to have gone nowehere, The Thomas franchise will be a plethora of DLC now, TSW itself has huge problems with the continuing saga of blurry textures on consoles and tons of bugs and "mistakes" that seem to have gotten very common with DTG producing very little in-house any more. DLC rushed out unfinished and shown on livestreams with half-baked promises of patching over the cracks somewhere down the line. Third parties waiting months and months for their respective DTG partners to sign off patches and bug fixes. The same "this shouldn't have happened" happening again and again to the point of mistrust at anything players are told.

1: DTG need to focus on the core TSW coding and fix the textures and bugs and core features that don't work.
2: They need their third party team to step up and help third party teams get patches tested and pushed out to players much much faster, not several months down the line.
3: Close the forums if DTG consider paying lip service is acceptable.

 

It’s always quiet this time of year. If recent years are to go by TSW6 is coming to the end and internal focus will have switched to the next reiteration.

 

why are people getting their knickers in a twist that there’s no streams this week? it’s not a roadmap week, there’s no imminent dlc, what else would they do? there’s obviously not enough engagement with the CM streams to make it worthwhile so i’m not sure what people are expecting

 

DTG could finally give us users the important updates this week – some of which have been pending at DTG for a very long time.

So they could clear some of that backlog and finally release these updates.

 

It happens every so often. A molehill is encountered and before you know it a mountain is formed. Then it quietens down for a bid, then repeats ad-infinitum.

I honestly think some have too much time on their hands.

 

DTG usually makes their yearly plans end of february / march every year.

With all the DLC that was released in march this year I bet they are a bit late with the meetings / planning for this year and that is probably what is going on.

 

They need to decide which new Core features will be added to TSW 7 so they can start implementing them in June/July. They will then, in August/September, let us know again that the announced features are not ready and will be added to the game after launch.

 

Morale at DTG must be very low right now, understandably.

 

TSW6 Core Features....

Train Faults - never tested before release, most people turned them off because they popped up literally every second.

TSR - still to this date all come up at 40mph and two carriages long. Never fixed, even though Matt told everyone on a livestream "it's just a tick box that needs selecting to fix it".

It's either incompetence or deliberate lies to sell software.

 

Pure conjecture.

Just because a company is very busy doesn't mean morale is low. Being busy and it leading to some positive improvements in the pipeline can be a very satisfying place to be. In fact I've worked on and also led projects that were insanely hard work and morale was excellent, as was the buzz when there's a positive outcome.

My least favourite jobs were the boring ones.

 

I'm surprised we haven't had so much as a warning or something in these threads honestly. I thought at least one of these would be locked by now or we'd have had some edits on posts?

The thing is that DTG were actually trying with the engagement when one CM started they were everywhere and chatting with everyone and taking things down which was a massive breath of fresh air. But it seems to have slipped a little.

I listened to a podcast from another developers community team earlier and he spoke a lot about how they released a piece of content that went down really badly and he took it really personally as he was involved in that release. But he realised they had to detach the feedback from taking it personally because it's just the players telling the Devs what they want. Now he's dived even more into the community engagement and the games in the best state it's ever been because of that engagement with the community.

 

would you engage with a community that is shaming staff for taking annual leave or do nothing but over-exaggerate bugs to the point of abusing staff.

 

let's be realistic... train faults = bugs intentionally introduced into an already buggy game
what could go wrong, huh?

 

I get 4 weeks of vacation a year and I take it when I schedule it. The sky could be falling, everything could be on fire, it doesn’t matter. Does that mean I hate my job? Nope. Does that mean I don’t care? Nope. Someone else can handle it or it can wait till I get back. There’s always going to be a fire to fight.

 

And we’re going to be pushed to redownload all of our DLC with fun new bugs in the next instalment to both get the patches that are stuck in QA hell and a useless gimmick feature that doesn’t work properly, Yay! It’s sad really, most bugs I spot are on run 1 of a new route which begs the question if content is even tested at all beyond the ‘timetable simulation’ thing, when even the low hanging fruit doesn’t get fixed what hope do we have for rarer and harder to fix bugs to be noticed and fixed.

 

I mean thy could actually weed out those peddling such nonsense by handing out life time bans to those abusing staff and make this a positive environment for constructive criticism?

 

absolutely

 

Sometimes you can never win with the public though.
1. Member of team goes on holiday because they're entitled to it = They should be working.
2. Tightly moderate forum = "They're trying to silence us".
3. Let the forums police themselves = "They've given up".
4. Keep posting regular updates = They should be working on things instead of updating us.
5. Work on things instead of updating us = There's no communication, what are they doing?
6. Release a fix = that wasn't the fix I was waiting for.
7. Release the fix someone was waiting for = other things need fixing.
8. Release something new = they should have sorted the old things out.
9. Stop new releases and just fix bugs = no income, DTG closes and we don't have a hobby anymore.

I'm not saying the balance is right, I appreciate that some are very disappointed people, there is always an outstanding job, I look forward to this being a happier community and I want TSW to be the best it can realistically be. I hope everyone at DTG is okay, especially as the MR news may have been unsettling.

And for those at Just Trains, look at the front of those trains in my photo, look carefully, you're feeling sleepy, your next release is a 1980s or 90s Eastern Region electrified route...and you're back in the room.

 

It’s funny isn’t it?! People getting very dramatic and assuming the worst.

So let me get this straight the community is angry today because there’s no potential update for a potential DLC release, for a DLC that they were never gonna buy anyway?! As usual it’s the same old boycott the next DLC.

The same names are always in the “Feedback” threads having purchased a new piece of DLC, yet you can bet that they are also the most vocal in threads such as this too. Bewildering.

 

If I had a dollar for everytime someone has posted that DTG are going bankrupt, shutting down or in big trouble I could afford the game plus all DLC again.

Just because there are no streams doesn't mean anything.

 

DTG's parent company mentioned (and thereby confirmed) the "next iteration of Train Sim World" on their pretty positive investors' call less than a week ago, so all the talk of bankruptcy or the end of TSW is absolute nonsense at this stage.

JB