PlayStation Another Dovetail Direct, Another Absence Of Details For Console Issues

If you have any questions you are expected to contact customer support, or as an alternative ask in Discord or the forums.

CMs have a lot of tasks to do and can't answer every single question that is sent to them thru private message.

 

I don't think their build is quite the same as my build where I've had to delete about two thirds of the DLC I own in order to be able to install other games.

 

Either way I find it difficult to imagine DTG would want people going round swearing constantly on the official forum

 

How can that work?
After all, you at DTG wrote in a post yourselves that, for the versions which are subsequently released for sale, DTG has to submit these versions to the various platforms up to two or three weeks in advance.
So how can DTG, for example, send an updated version to the platforms on Monday 5 September, so that buyers receive the updated versions?

 

Does Series S get any reduced timetables for the core routes?

 

So not allowed to contact the senior community manager about a question a member of the community has - ok! Or, and here's the real kicker, Alex could be courteous / professional enough and reply saying everything you just did - thanks for your enquiry, but please redirect to XYZ. You think it's ok for a 'senior' community manager to just ignore a dm from a member of said community? You said "CMs have a lot of tasks to do" - does any of it actually involve what the 'C' stands for? Community? Also no-one in their right mind would expect to have to ask in Discord when DTG has created a forum which pre-dates it - it's the very essence of what the forum was created for, and a community manager for that matter (?).

 

Who was swearing? 3 letters and an asterisk? God forbid someone over the age of 18 might know what it all meant and be shocked. I would also have thought DTG would be more interested in dealing with their community on the 'official forum' as you put it, than anything else. I take it you have read the forum / posts and have an understanding why 'some' might be ever so slightly frustrated with the lack of community feedback on certain / asked about subjects?

 

Yes.

In fact, a PC player with a GTX 1060 card does not get the same experience as a player with a RTX 5090 card. Both players pay the same for the game and I can tell you they do not get the same graphics. In fact, the player with a 1060 gets worse performance than you with the console.

 

Speaks volumes mate, speaks volumes.
That's why I'm also going down the route of no more money to DTG from me - period!

 

The difference here is that you expect the 5090 to give you better performance (it's why you paid so much more for it) - however, a PS5 Pro is so much more powerful than the vast majority of graphics cards (not all, obvs), so you would expect better performance from this than a lower PC build - and yet that's not what is happening (I assume - as I don't watch the streams anymore).

 

I think its time to get off at this station and take a break.

I'll wait until December and see what "Big" update they roll out.

By that time it should be 50% off for the bundles on Xbox at Christmas as usual.

But we will see how the game is then.

 

The problem is that the PS5 PRO has a slightly better CPU, a much better GPU (its all integrated in a SoC, but lets leave that aside) and faster memory BUT it still has 16 GB of memory. Exactly the same as the normal PS5.

It doesn't matter if the GPU in the PS5 Pro is much faster and could potentially draw more trains or more textures if it does not have the memory space to load more things.

 

1.- A console is not a PC. You don't get to pick and choose the performance options you want.
That has advantages and disadvantages, but it is that way and everyone knows it.

2.- No, a player with a 1060 cant use DLSS or frame generation at all. Anyone that knows a minimum about PCs knows that trying to play with epic settings with that is a joke, even if it was possible to get the route to load that most probably wont.

 

Believe it or not, console players usually pay more because Sony and MS take a bigger cut.
I'm surprised that you don't know this, because it happens frequently.

Latest example:

Pricing overview for all Transport Fever 3 editions:

• Standard Edition: $49.99 / €49.99 SRP for PC and $59.99 / €59.99 for consoles

• Deluxe Edition: $64.99 / €64.99 SRP for PC and $74.99 / €74.99 for consoles

• Collector’s Edition: $119.99 / €119.99 SRP

 

Not to mention Steam's TOS about people not being allowed to undercut themselves on any alternative storefront. That's an interesting read for sure, but the bottom line is that Steam will most often be the cheapest place to find any game on an official storefront because that is their own rules.

Also I hate to say it and I mean no offence or nastiness to anyone when I do, but you don't (and never have since the dawn of multi platform gaming) get to pay less because of your own hardware lacking behind someone else's. Consoles in this case are unfortunately no different to someone with a 1060 GPU spending the same as someone with a 5090 only to have a less visually pleasing experience. And believe me as someone who in the year of our lord 2021 was forced to resort to a build containing a 1050Ti, I've been there. I've upgraded since then but I don't pay any less or more for content for it, and thats just how it is.

 

the PS5 pro actually has 16GB (split between RAM and VRAM) unlike the base model, which effectively has 14GB because the operating system allocates 2GB for itself
since the PS5 pro has a separate 2GB only for the operating system, there is also a bit more "breathing room" regarding memory when comparing the pro to the base model

 

Just checked and that is correct. I bet the game is already using that memory to load textures, reducing the number of blurry textures.

 

Oh dear, you've got that wrong - the PS5 Pro actually has more RAM than the standard PS5 - 2GB more, of which devs have around 1.2GB extra addressable memory. Get your facts right at least.

Edit: Ahhhh, I see someone already pointed that out to you.

 

The awesome google AI gave me that data and I made the mistake of trusting it.
Still, you need that memory to prevent (or at least mitigate) blurry textures.

 

The fact that this extra RAM exists, however big it may be, and makes seemingly no difference to blurry textures shows just how bad this issue is. Forgive me for saying or thinking this but it's easy to come to the conclusion that DTG may just be out of their depth with this one, especially if the problem as they have said in the past exists within the core part of how the game was built from the beginning

 

I know where you are coming from, but it's not exactly apple to apples comparison. You pay the same for the PC game irrespective of the machine spec - however, the game is designed to take advantage of a more powerful system, and if you upgrade you will benefit - fair enough. Consoles are a known fixed spec - so when someone buys a game it will run as is - no variations. However, this is different regarding the PS5 / Pro - basically the same scenario as the PC setup - a more powerful machine in the same eco system, and yet I'm not aware of any specific updates the Pro gets (I might be wrong) - so would be akin to the game being written for the 1060 GPU (or standard PS5 in the console example), and it running with no extra bells & whistles on the 5090 (the PS5 Pro in the console example) - which is just not the case - the game takes advantage of the extra horsepower (on PC).

 

In all honesty I think this has always been the crux of most of the issues with TSW. It's mainly down to the devs (DTG).

 

For Real Bro, Back in 2023, I never used to miss a Live-Stream and always engage with the discord community, But now... Things just went south.... Bro I miss the old times...

 

I know - it's crazy. Streams also used to be brilliant when Sam was around - as he knew what was what and pushed DTG hard on a lot of things. It was refreshing to hear him telling things like they were, he made it feel like we were actually a community.

 

I'll give you that, the game is written for PC first and then ported to console afterwards so naturally isn't made with consoles fixed specs in mind from the outset. This is different to a leading franchise such as GTA which so many people like to use as comparison, which is developed for consoles first and ported to PCs much later.

Yet GTA's PC ports also have extra graphical options, and in fact only with GTA 5's third release on 9th gen did it finally reach the same graphical fidelity that PCs had access to almost a decade beforehand at the exact same price. Make of that what you will.

Another way of looking at it then is that the same development time and cost still exists, and in fact consoles take more development time due to the porting process, thereby justifying the equal cost. If someone agreed with that position and yet still proclaims that the game isn't worth that cost in its current state, then you must naturally conclude that the game on consoles is financially unsustainable.

I say this because, surprising though it may be to some, I personally believe this. I will actively promote the idea that console players should only take the free upgrade and not give money to DTG with this launch, because the game in its current state is not worth the asking price, nor is it remotely sustainable for it to continue in its current form. That is different to making that conclusion based on core features though.

 

A big part of the problem is that when the game was made it only had a handful of different trains in each route at most. For quite a number of years they didn't have to stop to think what would happen when there were 40 layers (among other things).

If things were going as usual, we would be getting the next generation of consoles probably next year with 2x the current amount of RAM and PCs would be coming down in price too. But those times do not seem to be coming back soon.

 

The move to 9th gen has been dragged out enough as it is because of hardware shortages, I wouldn't be surprised if 10th gen transitions are twice as bad and as a result it becomes the only new console gen we see for the better part of the next decade. We might not see 11th gen until the mid to even late 2030s unless something major changes.

 

Click play and listen carefully:

 

In retrospect it's pretty clear DTG really didn't do much forward planning for TSW. they developed what they needed for the first few early routes and called it day. Then once the game started needing to push harder for certain things they have to go back in and redevelop those "good enough" spaghetti code solutions. Most obviously the need for multiple dispatcher rebuilds due to the need for more traffic, and despite that it's still not anything close to optimal. Likewise Simugraph being designed for diesel and electrics, with steam engines getting screwed because that evidentially was just not on DTG's mind that week. Not to mention all the routes that are basically stuck at where they are because they're so temperamental, like London-Brighton.

It's a real pity the game was not made in a more forward thinking way out the gate, a lot of problems they have now could probably have been avoided with better planning on their part.

 

Not that a good bunch of us didn't warn them at the time, but here we are.

 

I love his work, be it community/serious software based stuff like this, or the hilarity that often ensues on his Colonel Failure Youtube channel. Plenty of times he'd be just as willing to call out DTG as well as unreasonable comments etc. An asset wherever he plies his trade.

 

Sam was/is brilliant.

 

Asterisk or not, it's still a swear, which is not allowed

 

The word shut / shot is a swear? Really? If you know it to be some other word, then that's on you!

 

Ok bro. Even you yourself admitted to using an asterisk to censor, and I think everyone and their Mum knows when you put s, h, asterisk, t what you really mean

 

While it's not alot, it does have an extra 2GB of DDR5 RAM which is dedicated to background tasks.

This means there is more of the GDDR6 RAM available for games. So it can increase the texture size pool which might be enough to avoid the texture blurring issue plaguing the game. However it means little unless DTG actually supports it.

 

Does DTG need to do something? I think if there is more memory available the game will just use it. The problem would be if even 2GB extra are not enough to load all the textures at high quality.

 

There is likely a texture pool size that’s set by the developer at an engine level, that is likely determined by memory on the base PS5, as setting it to the pro memory size would likely cause significant texture problems for the base model.

I imagine for PCs there is a dynamic pool size in place for obvious reasons, but for consoles it’s more often than not, been a case of X machine has X available memory.

We saw evidence of this all the way back in TSW4 when it was revealed that there was one build for Xbox & that build had to follow hardware constraints of the series s, which was why the series X had issues such as limited draw distance in comparison to the PS5.

I think there is a basic level of enhancement that DTG could be making for pro users though, I know Matt was talking about PSSR implementation last night, but of course that’s a much meatier build to work on, then just doing what they did with separation of Series S & X builds in terms of basic hardware performance.

Matt has always said how important it is to save even mb’s of memory, and this is evident in repeated memory footprint reductions on the Class 390 - you’d think they’d be chomping at the bit to get a whole 2GB of extra memory, even if it is only for 1 out of 4 supported consoles.

 

My understanding of the PS5 Pro RAM versus the OG PS5 is that the Pro has 2GB of DDR5 RAM for system use meaning the 16GB GDDR6 RAM is entirely available to gameplay?

EDIT: I see this has already been pointed out. My bad.

 

Lol. Good to see some early impressions of TSW7 on YouTube, and what a train wreck it is. Similar bugs as always, lacking polish etc. it's as if we, the community, were right all along! Go figure? And then the recent stream.... It's a joke!

 

That is exactly right, it certainly does. This is one factor that also alllows it more efficient ray tracing, PSSR etc. Thats why I am shocked that Jet lighting enhancement cannot run on at the very least a PS5 Pro. I am also surprised this stuff can keep coming out each year unfinished. Should be renamed to TSW Early Access.
Look at the magic that CD Project is doing to Witcher 3 with the Remastered version (and its free to ALL existing owners), so I am sure PS5 Pro could handle better in TSW.
But I will wait till proper release day, who knows they might surprise us with TSW7

 

PSSR is just one of many areas we can now identify where DTG constantly treat console owners as an afterthought, not to mention treat us with contempt

The main though is the constant blurring situation where we are all told is a 'priority' for DTG. We are told that they are doing a texture pass which will be released in December. However they also say that this is the first pass (so in short it won't fix the situation)

I however think this is just deliberately misleading us as to the real issue.

The real issue is the now know problem where trains are retained in memory when used in game. Every texture in every train you pass is just taking up space in the texture pool until it is chock-a-block and texture blurring is all that we see.

For ages now DTG Matt and co have told us that something has been retained in memory but they have been investigating to find out what exactly it was. They must have known all this time it was the trains (it was a deliberate choice made to offset hitching happening on Gen 8 consoles). So now what we need is each train updated to include code to release it from memory as Gen 9 SSD's do not have same issue as the mechanical drives of Gen 8

Problem is while DTG Matt has told us about the above he hasn't actually told us they have started this. Guess they have not started yet as DTG coders are off working on code for the PC version instead...

So much for being a priority eh

 

It surely can't be the hardest thing in the world to find some people to port it to consoles properly? Yes it may cost some money in the short term while they do these hiring and take some time getting a port properly done, but it feels like they just cut stuff out if the PC version to make it work on console rather than actually looking at how to get it running properly.

 

Think the problem is when you are talking about the difference between core game and the DLC as well as complexity of a problem.

Wherever possible DTG and the 3rd parties will want there to be one version and one version only. Yes there will be differences in the versions occasionally but relatively speaking they are minor. Something like timetable differences for Series S and Gen 8 compared to the other platforms.

But we are talking about a system process such as how an asset gets loaded into the game. This means every single piece of DLC will have 2 versions. One for Gen 8 and one for PC and gen 9.

Yes you can port these different versions in the first instance at extra cost but then you have the extra issue when it comes to bug hunting and patches, which of course is another cost increase.

What seems to be the case is DTG had two options. Wait for sales of Gen 8 sales to diminish that dumping that Gen is an easier decision to make or put up with extra costs involved in keeping very different versions.

They obviously choose the former and made that choice knowing it caused issues for Gen 9 owners but decided to throw us under a bus anyway

 

[this really ended up quite abit longer than I intended]

I think sales in general haven’t dipped enough to give them the kick they need, to invest in solving the problem.

They were open about sales of DLC underperforming last year, but there is such a wide array of issues you could reasonably point at & say people are fed up of that.

By the time you get to console specific problems, you have to wonder how many people have stopped buying just because of the texture issue. DTG is probably attributing that drop to an array of things & the people who ultimately decide where time is spent, don’t see memory optimisation as the priority, especially whilst they can just throw us a barebones timetable without layers.

Just look at the console stream they did, it was disastrous by any metric (other than predictability) & they’ve said absolutely nothing, they’re mainly running around with stuff like “glad you liked the music”?!?.

That brings me to Xbox, where the situation is arguably at its worst, unlike PS5, the Xbox will flat out refuse to load more in beyond a certain point & where the texture issue compounds on PS5, the Xbox just crashes. That’s been a problem over the last few routes that have released & it’s obviously going to be a problem tomorrow when content libraries become available. But what do you see? Regulars posting in the feedback forum that they’ve had blurry textures & CTD’s. For me the blurry textures have been enough to put me off almost any new content over the last year, if I was on Xbox I don’t think I’d even have TSW installed at this point. I’m sure many other PS5 users will agree that even watching Xbox gameplay makes it hard to gauge how content will perform on PS, as it’s so much worse for them than us.

I think the part that annoys me the most though, is the lies & ‘mis-communication’ around the topic from DTG. People were posting reports of the issue way back from TSW3? & there was nothing said. Personally my first experience was with TSW4 on the Salzburg route, then the expert 101 released & that’s where it really became an unconfined problem, but it wasn’t until maybe early TSW5 that DTG even acknowledged the issue. All the way through that we’ve had various ‘updates’ which has led to really nothing in the way of a fix.

AAS seemed to reveal the true extent of the lack of care the devs have with consoles though, first they started with ‘we haven’t had any reports from testing that any issues exist’, followed by a release that was pretty laughably poor. Then they made the revelation of they don’t actually test on consoles because only DTG can do that, so we have this spread of third parties who are just blindly making software for a major part of the user base.

We’ve seen repeated attempts from AAS to fix the texture issue on B2C, to no avail. It’s hard to say whether that’s because they don’t know how or because B2C has an inherent cause. Meanwhile we skip ahead to JT who suffered the same issue with P2C, but in one patch just days after release, they manage to fix the problem completely? What’s with that? How are we going from such a pervasive problem that’s been unsolvable to ‘oh yeah we can fix that instantly’ - why has this not been done with all the content?

Now let’s rewind a little to Medway Valley where Firefly are really pumping out the PR for consoles specifically & to their credit they did release not only one of the (if not the, all things considered) highest quality routes we’ve ever seen - with no blur to speak of. Unfortunately though even here there are to this day, odd issues with console builds to where PS5 is still on an older build due to an unknown issue, which leads me to wonder how it’s possible to get there after years of releases where the particular problem has never existed. Back to the textures though, this was really the peak of discussion from DTG around fixing the problem, their whole thing with SEHS was a little odd IMO as it was never really a route which had the issue & even if it was, there were far more juicier routes to tackle with the testing. Ultimately though what we got was DTG proclaiming they had a large fix inbound in May, that got pushed a few weeks & then was never mentioned again - until a roadmap article.

A roadmap article is released which has quite the statement, after never releasing any fix they’d confidently stated was coming, they announced they were “confident they can release content that doesn’t suffer from blurry textures”. Of course that statement was A) after a route had literally just released that had blurry textures & B) just before another route would release with blurry textures. That roadmap article went on to say they’d be ‘reducing the amount of discussion around the topic’ - gee thanks DTG?

Bring on TSW7, they basically ignore any conversation around the topic despite it being likely the biggest contributor to drops in content sales on consoles, eventually Alex does start answering some questions & when I specifically asked if the German route (you know the ones that have it worst) would suffer from blurry textures with all layers active, he answered that minus hardware such as series S & PC (I presume lower spec?) that there would be no issues. Of course we then a few days later get a stream in which Matt can’t even leave one end of the route without a crash, and after driving for an hour from the opposite end, he then crashed.

Ultimately the journey of this problem has mainly consisted of ignoring the issue, lying about the issue, failing to fix it, claiming to have found a fix because a route that never had the issue, now doesn’t have the issue, back to lying about it, then ignoring it again, then completely solving the issue on a large route, completely ignore that just happened, lie about it again, ignore it, lie & now we’re here.

I have to say overall, I’m pretty firmly under the belief that DTG’s ‘fix’ is going to consist of more of the above, reduced timetables & generally just wait it out until Gen10 comes along & ‘solves’ the problem for them.

But I have to ask, what did JT do & why has this not seen any discussion?

Are PC users really happy about this too, despite the fact that it’s put devs such as AAS off making more mainline/heavy routes & do they really think that TSW would survive a complete drop of console support?

DTG are you actually able to fix this problem, realise you need to invest way more into stability for console development?

Xbox users how are you able to confidently keep buying content, even if you don’t care about the blurring, when it seems to crash most play throughs?

After all of this (if you’re reading still) it’ll probably surprise you to know that I do actually intend on picking up the UK route tomorrow, but I was once a user who despite all the other issues TSW suffers, would have picked up the deluxe & buy pretty much most of the releases, but I’ve dropped way down to buying one or 2 things a year, when they are small enough to avoid the above problem. I think that’s a real shame, as even if the problem does get solved, I’ve come to the point where my interest levels have dropped to where I’ll only buy something I genuinely really want, rather than just having a punt on most of it.

 

CK95 Unfortunately there are people who will still willingly buy the game,warts and all,regardless of how poorly it runs.Im on XSX and will download the free starter pack but no dlc until the worst issues have been fixed,the last`new`dlc i bought was the Riviera pack.Sadly i cant see them sorting the xbox issues any time soon,which is a shame because the games not all bad.

 

Very good analysis. Sums DTG’s efforts or lack of efforts perfectly.

 

Yeah I understand that, as I alluded to above, there’s a myriad of things that are problems but people either aren’t bothered about them or will buy regardless & play through the issues.

The new Leeds line has seen some blowback that I don’t necessarily disagree with, but I think as an overall product I would get more enjoyment than not out of it. If there was something such as ‘you’ll crash every time to get to Leeds’ though, I just wouldn’t buy as you’re not ignoring or not seeing an issue - you’re fully prevented from finishing a service.

At £30+ a pop I certainly wouldn’t keep buying & hoping both ends of a route are actually playable.

 

CK95
I do play on PC via Steam, but your post captures exactly how things really are.
Even as a PC gamer with a very good PC, I no longer buy every DLC as I used to.

And I read every post from console players where they describe their problems – problems that would have made me stop playing TSW a long time ago.
I’ve always been against the tactics DTG have employed, particularly with Gen8 and Gen9 consoles; DTG have basically just been lying to us all for years, just as you’ve summed up so well in your post.
I gave up hope long ago that DTG would ever change, or actually do anything for their community, instead of just promising things they’ll never deliver on anyway.

 

I think that's all about levels of expectation and the way in which they've lowered to accommodate drastically diminishing quality levels on consoles (throughout all games) in recent years. It got so bad for me that I took the unusual step of buying a Steam Deck last year because that overall quality level had slipped well below my personal levels of expectation to the point where I actually questioned the value of owning an XSX...and as a 20 year die-hard XBOX gamer that kinda hurt.

I don't criticize people for continually buying subpar products (after all, they're gamers...and gamers need their fix) but I do firmly believe that if not one person bought those offending games then the problem would disappear overnight. I've already decided to do just that by phasing in my Steam Deck (and Steam Machine if I can ever get one) as my primary gaming platform because to quote the infamous Train Sim World forum thread; "enough is enough" where console games are concerned.

Just to add: Although I will never condone the actions of Dovetail Games when it comes to releasing TSW onto consoles, I also have to concede that they're just adding to a problem that's been there since the introduction of live updating on X360. Microsoft have made it way too easy for developers to 'fix it later' and they're just exploiting that situation.