Pricing For Tsw Dlcs! [dtg Answered]

If people think you're going to fix it they'll be more inclined to stick around and give you money while you tell them it's a harder job than you originally anticipated it'd be.

 

so if they had no intentions of keeping their word, as they have no legal or reputational reason to, why should anything they claim hold weight. for this exact reason, as you say.

 

It's because that little glimpse of a fix being just around the corner will keep people buying the DLC, downloading the latest free version, putting up with the overpriced, poorly optimised route because they told us that a fix is just around the corner, guys.

 

i mean vodka#2734 actually brings up a good point for console players at least.
Dovetail DONT have any legal or reputational reasons to keep their word, so maybe console players should be absolutely taking any TSW7 statments with the biggest most massive grain of salt

 

I have never heard anywhere that they are not going to solve the problems. The fact that the deadlines have shifted - well, that happens.

 

And vote with your wallet if you don't like something. That's okay.

 

so if i dont like the quality of a new DLC, vote with my wallet and dont buy it.
if i dont like the quality of an old DLC i have already purchased, DTG havnt said they *arent* fixing these issues the deadline just got moved. but its still not their fault


was that about the attitude i should have when it comes to TSW?

 

why dont people give this kind of defference to Raytheon, or Westinghouse, or BAE Systems, or Haliburton.... Maybe Dovetail needs to look at moving into a different industry lmao

 

Plus Simrail on console is horrible, even worse blurry textures, terrible draw distance, console servers are dead, no access to DLC and for Xbox there hasn't been an update/patch since January a week after release.

Its night and day compared to the PC experience

 

No one forced you. You could have saved your money and waited until things got better, or didn't.

 

Sorry, I totally forgot this was my fault. Thanks for reminding me. You're absolutely right, what a fool I was for buying that first DLC back in TSW3.

Although back then it wasn't Dovetail either. Funny how it always seems to be the players fault and never the publisher or developer of the game.

 

I understand you're upset hecticjojo, but if you are expecting me to defend everything DTG happens, you're building a straw horse I'm not going to ride. This thread is simply about the rising price of a video game, not listing every thing DTG has done over the years to upset you.
If you don't think it's worth it...then don't buy it. I'm not being facetious, I'm being practical. That's how you "teach" them to change.
Customers not buying products shows behavior that can be quantified by the company.
Since they live on that revenue, it's the most important thing to them and they'll act to preserve it.
Don't you go out of your way to keep your job since it pays your bills?
Does anyone truly think they're sitting in some villains lair somewhere twirling moustaches, cackling and plotting how they can make the players' experience inconvenient on purpose?
Or are they just like you and have the same human motivations that you do?

 

Have you ever worked with those contractors? If you had, you would be laughing just as hard as I am about that silly statement.

 

SimRail seemed interesting at first, much like running train. But for me their being only one country (and RT being PC only) limits my interest in them.

I tend to flip flop between North American freight and UK passenger or high speed runs. And right now the best place for this on console is TSW.

A lot of the German stuff, and some of the busier UK routes still have layers randomly disappear depending on the load order of the DLC. So someone with not many layers won't see this issues and it isn't until you go over some random number of GB worth of DLC the game starts chucking a wobbly.

Blurring also seems to affect you more the more dlc or layers you have, so again a newer player with not a lot of DLC isn't going to see this issue.

It's going to disproportionately affect those with more DLC or veteran players more than those who are new. Which means that on the face of it you can't openly and plainly see these issues to then choose to or not to buy.

It is the most unideal situation and while I don't envy the position Dovetail have worked themselves into, the way forward in my opinion isn't just blaming the player for "not being smart enough to see in the first place" it needs to be Dovetail fixing the game. And if that's a multi year project that isn't the players fault either, and the player should not be made to take the blame for Dovetail dropping the ball.

 

The plain truth is that unfortunately I do view Dovetail as a villain, and unfortunately I do think they're sitting in Chatham at Dovetail Towers going out of their way to make the console version of this game an objectively worse version by their inaction. And unfortunately as more time passes I find myself becoming more and more radicalised.

Was this always the case, hellllll no. I was once wide eyed and bushy tailed, happy to wave away the issues as just par for the course.

I'm not expecting anyone from the community to ride any horse, straw or otherwise, we are all free to feel how we feel about a company. Defend them, dislike them, hate them or feel. Indifference towards them. It's all gravy baby.

But to bring this back to the topic at hand and my original point. There is nothing wrong with increasing the price of something, and my issues were never the raw price increase but the faxt it was hand in hand with another round of 'no updates'

Clearly I feel fixes and updates should come alongside these price increases, clearly some dont care at all and some have reservations for other reasons.

 

£33 for a route, if it was actually made to a good standard, would be absolutely fine. But they so rarely are that standard I would expect.

DTG were charging £11.99 for loco DLC 10-15 years ago, so that hasn’t moved much to be fair.

 

Where have you been?

The core is free. Wait for sales. Sorry XBox, but why are they here?

 

Yes, DTG can raise the prices of DLCs whenever they like, but then they should also fix any bugs and issues in a DLC first, before it’s released to the public.

You only have to look at the latest route for TSW 6 – Nuremberg to Ingolstadt had some really serious errors that even a blind user would probably have spotted during testing.
But DTG doesn’t care about that; the main thing is to release yet another DLC and rake in our hard-earned cash.

Or when you look at the TSW 7 roadmap, this image immediately springs to mind.



You only have to look at that track layout in the bottom right-hand corner.
Do DTG and Follezz World really want to sell us this DLC with that track layout?

Because if so, then in my view it’s simply a rip-off, and they’re turning a blind eye to such problems.

 

The prices of physical media are nearly the same because the demand for them has drastically decreased. Most people buy digital or use streaming services now. And in terms of other games, while prices haven’t changed too much for the basic games (maybe $10 USD difference since the N64 days), gaming companies have figured out they can charge more for early access or deluxe pre-orders without adding much overhead. Add on that it’s also mostly digital, and you’ll notice that prices for all games have actually increased with inflation and aren’t truly the same price anymore.

I get the price increase doesn’t work for everyone especially since the base issues with the game still haven’t been fully ironed out. But I’m just glad it’s nowhere near as expensive as the flight sim community because third party devs are changing $70-100 for one individual plane, let alone all of the other stuff. Again it’s optional to get, but it is quite a pricey hobby compared to TSW.

 

As I remember it, the reason given for increased prices in some DLCs was that these included extra completely new stock (like Zwolle) or the route was much longer than usual (ie. Preston - Carlisle).

When I, for example, take a look at the Tri-Rail route I just see a normal length route with stock that is very similar to what we already had in San Bernardino or Antílope. So, in my eyes, the increase in price for this kind of route is not justified.

You can try to sugarcoat it how you want, but this means the old "with extra" content price is now applied to normal content. And when the time comes, the "extra content" DLC price will be increased as well.

PS: I think we said this is the baseline price going forward. I don't think anyone said the new pricing scheme would be applied to pre-TSW7 content.

 

Seems to be confirmed now.

No price change, apparently.

Why this wasnt communicated properly in the first place is beyond me...

 

Appreciate the response Alex, but you must see how expensive this is getting, when one DLC potentially approaches the price of buying an all new game. And your prices are not competitive with other games in the same genre, whether SimRail (where I paid just over £10 for the Lodz North Region with the early bird discount), SCS although I get the vibe that the Coaches add on for ETS2 - when it eventually appears - may be knocking on the £20 mark - but it will open up a vast additional range of gameplay opportunities. The only comparable train game product is probably Run 8 where the new route sections are usually $40 a throw but then that’s only expensive because of the lousy Sterling exchange rate. And the last one I bought, Fresno to Modesto, includes a huge industrial park to service with the Industry mini game.

So like many others I will be far more discerning what I buy and when, particularly if the quality in the DLC and core isn’t there.

 

Thank you Alex for the transparency on that.

So its only for the TSW7 core routes, panic over

 

Since we have the free starter pack, I don’t see a reason to get the TSW 7 new content bundle. The routes are okay but it’s hard to justify paying $80 for the deluxe bundle when the same bundle will be -80% off on Steam come spring next year. And given that I have a huge backlog of routes to drive, I see no reason not to wait until a large sale.

 

Time will tell, but I'm not feeling optimistic about this right now.

 

I recommend keeping a note on this since it wouldn’t be the first time they said they not doing something to just end up doing it anyways

like them saying they weren’t giving up on fixing steam physics in tsw 3 and then they changed their minds in tsw 4

 

I don't think the bundle prices are too bad.

The fact that any single standard content DLC going forward is going to have this price is bad.

 

honestly, the fact the price change isnt across the board is a huge relief for me.

However, DTG arent off the hook just yet.

For £32.99 we will be holding these core routes at a higher standard, as its competing with some premium third party routes.

So these routes better be spick and span, no bad scenery, no naff timetables, no cutting corners.

They NEED to be better quality.

 

I believe Microsoft. I can't prove this, but the only reason PlayStation and steam content for the game only goes on sale more often because Sony and Valve demand it

 

And this is why console players need to take a stand. PC players get a better product overall, they get to see roughly what they're actually getting on preview streams too.

If us console players boycotted DLCs until the blurring and crashing (xbox) issues are sorted, DTG would actually put more than 1 person on it...

 

In real terms a couple of pound for something I might buy something of occasionally isn't much. There are sales and if you are on steam you won't have to do wait too long.

As ever I will decide whether I will get value of out of a DLC and make a decision based on that. If not I will get it in a sale or not at all. Some on here don't seem to have any level of discipline.

I'm on an average PC and for me the game runs better than ever and some of features in TSW7 are welcome so I'm happy to keep buying the DLC I want.

 

While I dont agree with DTGs stance on console, boycotting is simply an impossibility.

 

DTG Alex
It used to be the case that you could buy a DLC on Steam as soon as it was released and get a 10 per cent discount.
I don’t know if it was the same on other platforms.

Why isn’t there a 10 per cent discount anymore if you buy a DLC as soon as it’s released?

 

No you didn't. Preston - Carlisle was released in November 2024 (TSW5) for £32.99....at a time when inflation was 2.4%.

 

And the actual fact it added more than like three normal routes worth of content

 

this is unfortunately the case, as long as there is a free starter as an entry point. but moreso because a handfull or a few dozen people not buying a product wont even cause a blip on the radar of DTG.

This game could be great, i most certainly want it to be and i would presume most players also want TSW to be the best game it can be. perhaps the desire to maintain a 1:1 parity between consoles and PC needs to be re-addressed as no longer possible or perhaps there does need to be a completely separate game for the console built FOR the console from the begining with the 9th gen specs in mind.

I dont know how dovetail will be able to get out from under the mountain of years of technical debt but seemingly it might take quite a while to do so. is this the right time to just leave TSW's console core code and build a new version rather than potentially spending 1 to 2 years working on what we have now only to just abandon it in favour of UE5 anyway.

Boycotts are a strage beast, personally i think more awareness is whats in order. as long as players on the console are aware of the genuine state of the game and the time it is going to realisticly take to fix the game - so that an informed purchase choice can be made.
right now, as it stands, there is no way for console players to get a true and valid overview of a DLC until after it has released and even then only if it is popular enough that the TSW youtube sphere runs with it. which means unfortunately most of the NA or German stuff is right out the window, most of the TSW sphere only want to play and show the UK stuff. fair play if thats what you like but yeah it is what it is i guess until it isnt

 

No it didn't. It's a shorter route than SKW, which cost around £13 as part of the TSW (TSW3? I can't remember) standard edition bundle.

 

To me this is just a prime example of "I like pancakes" being interpreted and twisted into "So you hate waffles?!"

 

The price for the deluxe locos of EUR 19,99 is insane. Is this even correct, the Pounds price is less then the half.
EUR 19,99 is half the price of a TSW7 core route, that's poor value for money. EUR 17,99 was already pretty expensive, but this way to much for what you get. You can even discuss if those deluxe locos should be included with the core routes.

 

I certainly think that would sweeten the deal going forward if we are looking at more (not all, giving Alex the benefit of the doubt) routes coming in at the £33 mark. Either go back to the 10% discount for a pre release purchase, or do what SimRail are doing and offer at 10% off during the first two weeks.

The one slightly good thing (for DTG at any rate) to come out of this is that for some reason I was convinced the pre-order price for the Standard edition was £45 not just over £40, so not saying I'm definitely going to relapse, but that is roughly 60% off the price of buying the three routes at the "new" standard price which the best sale on Steam isn't likely to offer until some time next year. I'm also still keen to learn what involvement Rivet have had with the UK route.

 

SKW added one new train, all others included were copy and pasted. Also it was a route with only one stop in the middle and the rest spent at such high speed, you don't actually notice the fact that if you stop on one of the bridges and look over the side you'll find it to be one of the lowest detailed route in TSWs history, scenery wise. Shap on the other hand features a new train, multiple new coach types and a new freight wagon. That train also moves slower than the ICE 1 meaning the scenery of the entire route is done to a much higher standard.

Also the pricing naturally reflects the fact that Shap was done by a 3rd party whereas SKW was part of a compulsory core release (as in there was no free starter pack or buying the route separately afterwards back then) and when the route was released independently for TSW 4 later, I do believe it was the standard £25.

 

Simrail is nowhere near the content and scope of TSW.
Run 8 is also far more limited. You don't even get ANY rolling stock with a route, just the route with no timetable or anything. JUST the tracks and scenery.
SCS stuff (ATS/ETS2) sells many times what TSW does, so the costs are spread out.
If you want cheaper costs, the secret is to a) expand the player base for train sims and b) limit scope.

If you wanted them to only focus on routes OR locos like Run 8 and Simrail, they could do that and you could get cheaper routes (but it'd be more expensive when you have to buy each loco separately)
If you could sell 10 times as many copies like SCS, then that would bring price down too.

People wanting more out of TSW for less money aren't really honestly comparing to what else is out there.

To be honest, I'd be okay with decoupling locos and routes and timetables into different DLCs. Then you could just buy the loco or the route or the timetable. It'd save a LOT of money for people that don't want parts of it and only buy a route because of a loco or something.

Take $10-15 off for just a route with no locos? Sure. Sounds good. Then it would be like Simrail.
Sell "customizables" in the store like SCS? Sure. Do that too! Pimp the heck outta that loco with a ton of different liveries, dashboard bobbleheads and engine tuning packs to your hearts content!

However, TSW isn't organized or sold like that. It never has been.

It's also not set up to have cheap AI "shells" driving around without proper physics that you can't drive (like in the truck driving games for example)

It's not limited to just one region (saving all the assets costs of having so many different signaling systems, types of houses, different trains, trees, etc) like Sim Rail.

People demand a lot more out of TSW, but then want the "cheaper cost" of lesser products in other games and DLCs, coupled with a much smaller customer base.

It's just not realistic.

What you're asking for to match those other games... is a whole different game.

(Although to be fair, TSW did offer a handful of liveries and then stopped when that could have been a gold mine. They also skimped on offering scenario packs like TSC which also rake in the cash. If they were truly greedy they'd be jumping on those immediately)

 

the fact that prices are rising isn't a problem in itself (and is, in a way, understandable)
the issue is that quality hasn't kept pace with the price hikes (and let's be honest: the quality is declining)
so the increases aren't justified, also the lack of maintenance on the core game and dlcs in general doesn't justify them either
another point: it’s absurd that perfectly standard routes like ny–stamford carry a premium price tag (the same as liberec–stará paka and zwolle-groningen) while the tadami line costs the standard price
given the price charged for the stamford route, they really ought to consider extending it to new haven

 

Uh, thats bs, games like, for example, factorio only had one sale since their listing, which was more than 10 Years ago, on steam.

 

£32.99 for a Leeds Network where you have to pay more still for the most common train on the route.

£32.99 for a US route that's been cut down from it's TSC counterpart

£32.99 for a German route that only has one new train and nothing overly significant compared to other routes.

I don't really see where the value for money is.

 

Agreed, unless these routes make up for it in quality, which is something we'll have to find out.

But knowing DTG, the chances of them doing anything remotely close to some third parties is like Tottenham winning the Premier League this year, which is nearly zero.

 

Today's TSW tempest in a teapot is very boring imo.

Literally everything is getting more expensive.

Gas at my local station went up 10% just since yesterday. Beef and electricity are also up >10% this year where I live. These are things people need to live and I get being angry about that when your wages don't keep pace.


Video games by any definition are a luxury though. I just don't see getting furious about yet another thing. Think i'm angered out lol.

Looking forward to tomorrow's ministorm over whatever inevitably ends up being wrong with the Tri Rail preview.

 

Yeah, most won't.