Enough Is Enough!!! The Ongoing Saga!!! It's Almost The 3 Year Anniversary

Shhhh.. It’s my first guitar and I’ve had my first ‘play’ today. There were some strange twanging noises coming out but a few sounded quite good. Now it’s just a matter of coordinating fingers and brain then get my fingers to find the notes whilst hitting the right string and play them in the rig.but for day 1, I’m happy…. then I’m gonna change my name to Jack Bruce… The plus side is I understand arpeggios as I play a bit of harmonica.

 

i’m in pure disbelief that this thread is more relevant now than it was 3 years ago. but i’m also not. yes, dtg have introduced the free starter pack in the last few years, but that’s a consolation for the awful state of tsw

 

Because nothing ever changes, and crucially DTG never ever learn.

 

I played the Trans Penine and West Cornwall routes yesterday. Whilst the TP is getting a remaster, what about west Cornwall? I mean, we’re used to being at the arse end of the country, the place people want to invade and ruin for their holidays, but this route needs remaking with proper scenery and at least one more train. The scenery is pants!

 

NTP is a DTG route and WCL is a Rivet route, and I don't know how receptive they'd be to a remaster of their route. A remaster of it would basically be a new route though, which is probably the best step forward since DTG now have the GWR license back.

 

Personally I'd hope if they remastered WCL they kept the era the same

 

Me too we have no other routes from the 1990's.

They could make as DLC the two regional railways liveried bubble cars which ended their days on the St Ives branch to fund a remaster. The 150 is a nice model but needs the sounds and physics to be like the GWR one. Also there is an incorrect speed limit on the St Ives branch which makes driving on it tedious.

Chances of it happening though are almost zero.

 

Well they should have addressed that speed limit as a bug. Sure I pinged Jasper about it, before he removed his forum account, but nothing ever got done.

 

That was Rivet Games through and through. A shame because they made some truly unique routes but their post-launch support was shocking. Ha, I remember winning the Arosa DLC in a Youtube giveaway....and the streamer in question was giving it away as a booby prize

 

I just ignore that speed limit and stick to 30mph.

 

Same here, I mean the AP for each run on the route is negligible anyway so hardly going to miss it.

 

It looks like TSW7 is just another rushed release. They didn't learn from the release of previous versions and they didn't listen to all the concerns and complaints. Well maybe the employees of DTG did listen to the feedback, but they just don't get the time to do it right. It's sad to see it's just happening again.

In the preview stream of console, when the 1st ctd happened, Matt's face was telling something and he didn't down play the issue. I can imagine how frustrating this is for employees who actually want to make a good product. The management of DTG/Focus really has to change something, or the management itself should be changed.

After seeing the console stream and reports on here about blurry textures on Xbox (this is even without layers) I decided not to buy TSW7. I was really looking forward to play the UK route, but with those issues I will be frustraded anyway when playing.

It also seems the new guard feature is bugged with doors not closing, so yet another new feature not working correctly. The tail lights of the LNER are not working, I believe this bug is copied over from the ECML version. Then there is the z-fighting issue on the class 333 and I believe someone also mentioned the popping sounds, both are long overdue not fixed issues.

DTG management / Focus, please make a big change, give your employees the time to do things right, to fix all the overdue issues and stop rushing releases with clearly to tight deadlines.

 

Especially as it gets the p… widely taken out of it on other forums etc. I’ve been to. Think it probably started as a joke but at this point and particularly given all the issues the game has, my personal view is a more professional look would serve the situation better.

 

I’m certainly no kill joy, in fact I’m pretty good at acting the clown, but there’s a time and a place for everything. (I wore odd socks with sandals just the other day just to see people’s reactions. You could read their thoughts. LOL )

 

It all started because Matt used a big pink cursor in his PC to make it easy to spot. People started saying he had to change it, etc ...

So he just doubled down with the pink headset.

 

This has been an issue since before TSW, nothing will ever change because no one in charge wants it to change, they will keep pushing minimum viable products because they have no real competition. Why make an effort and spend more money and time when you’ll still sell the product anyway, welcome to late stage capitalism.

 

IIRC, the origin story Matt told on a stream was that he got a pink car in a racing game and did very well, and pink kind of became his good luck color from then.

 

Not the story I heard, but would not be surprised if there is some truth in each version.

 

Could it be...

 

FWIW, I was watching the stream when he told the story, so it's not third party. It was just a long time ago, so the details are fuzzy.

 

This is weird. I was replying to ask if there's a picture in your post because I can't see it. But the picture does show in the quoted part of my reply, just not your original post.

Edit: But not once I've posted it; just when I'm typing in the reply or edit box. Bizarre.

 

I was watching the stream too when he told the "big pink mouse pointer" version. I think Sam was still the CM at the time, so quite some time ago.

Some time later I have also seen him many times driving pink cars in Wreckfest (those weekend nights were fun lol).

That's why I think there is part of truth in both versions.

 

This is why I wish the streams were recapped or at least indexed, so we could easily find the answers to the important questions.

 

I draw the line at wearing anything pink unless they’re frilly and hidden from view. Me and the dragon have our own jobs at home, she does pink jobs, I do the blue jobs.. that way we never tread on each others painted toenails.

 

Certainly a lot of competition for TSW in the next few days!
The main event of course is the long awaited release of Transport Fever 3 on Tuesday 29 September. I won’t be indulging straight away as it, 1. My hardware is slightly under spec, well my old CPU is and, 2. I think £45 is a tad pricey. Looks like there are some new management features but preview streams don’t show a massive improvement over TF2 graphics. Will defer for a sake or if/when I have a better PC.
Also released on Tuesday is the Cars add on for American Truck Sim. Not so eagerly sought after as Coaches for ETS2 but worth a punt at some stage.
And the unexpected wild card - SimRail releasing their first diesel loco (BR285) the day after.

 

Interesting stuff. Probs punt on the BR285 but must admit I spend most of my Simrail time on the dispatcher side. Very enjoyable indeed.

No sign of Carlisle to Workington which is my next TSW want.

 

I thought the TF3 price tag was pretty fair (on a par which Railway Empire 2) considering the amount of game time you're potentially going to get out of it. I've always worked on the theory that if I get 1 hour of decent gameplay for every £1 spent then that represents good value for money...and being as how I dumped well over 500 hours into TF2, I'm pretty confident I'll get my money's worth if/when it arrives on X|S. This is probably the reason I don't buy TSW content any more because it's highly unlikely I'll ever find 30 or 33 hours worth of value in any given addon. Maybe back in the day when TSW had an ultra-high novelty value but nowadays there just doesn't seem to be enough sense of purpose in driving the same track over and over. I think of it as buying FS25 but just working on a single field and growing the exact same crop year in, year out....with the only real variety being able to buy different equipment to do the same job/s.

Definitely buying in to Road Trip on ATS though....but even though this game is by far and away the most played of the two, the coaches expansion has caught my attention the most. I also kinda like the new proximity thing in ATS where it detects undriven roads within a short distance of your trucks and 'paints' them onto the map as driven. Great for those complicated intersections but I'm not fully sold on it auto-completing opposite lanes of freeways so I only tend to use it in big cities with ridiculously complicated road networks. Great for those who want to 100% the map though, but I'm happy driving new roads as and when - and that's why I've only unlocked 50.8% of the map after 265 hours.

 

One of my favourite things to do in a new Forza Horizon is to drive down and discover all the roads. If there's an option to do that in Euro Truck or American Truck without worrying about freight it sounds like a great afternoon or two for me.

 

TF gives way more value for money (time wise) then TSW (whole game) and even more when you look at a single TSW route. With the price of EUR 40,- for one route, they even made this worse. Not to speak about quality of the game, with all the problems which never has been fixed, just to release the next broken product. With a single route, you aren't even there, no you need other routes for layers, consuming your storage for what? You need pretty old routes for just some freight wagons, because DTG is to greedy to include them with the route.

I played mostly German routes, but they become all the same now, with just red DB stock and the ICE. I didn't play German routes for months now, mostly playing UK routes and the Dutch one. But after some time, also UK routes are becoming boring, missing more very scenic routes like Preston to Carlisle. Preston to Carlisle is one of the routes worth the money, lot of rolling stock included, the scenery is an enjoyment to drive trough and the overall quality is good.

The replay value of TSW is limited in my opinion, because you got the feeling you're doing the same thing over and over again. Some trains and routes are more interesting then others, so you play them more often but there are also routes you only touch a few times, not bother again about them. So in the end, I do like to drives trains and to play TSW, but the value for money and quality are both terrible.

 

Thats why a while back I found Simrail and its Dispatching to be way more immersive. If TSW could simply be a bit more real with delays and certain operational aspects then the replay value would increase for me.

 

But Simrail on Xbox is a mess, with no fixes, no DLC and poor quality overall. But the state on PC seems to be a lot better and I can see why there is more replay value, as every journey is different and more dynamic. Random events on TSW are just speed restrictions (on the new UK route even every time on the same places) and they are only annoying, so I turned them off.

 

TSW is getting away with the wow new train new route crowd and not really going deeper into simulation than already done.

 

Going deeper into simulation, will not automatically make it a better game or attract more people. My main issues with the game are the quality, what you have to pay for a route or single train and the whole layering system. Instead or selling a complete route, they're trying to force you to buy another train DLC and/or complete routes for layers. This together with the high prices, is making the game poor value for money.

 

It needs to have every reason to go back to routes. My PC runs it fairly well so the bugs are less of an issue. The fact that most runs are the same is a major one. Although some routes have a lot of trains they run on clock face timetables meaning predictability. A lot of the simulation and gaming world in general has moved on from rigid set scenes and actions.

 

Am I alone in seeing layers as a bonus, not a necessity? As in, "if you buy this route and also happen to own this other one, we'll throw in some extra crossover for you." But the idea of buying an entire route just for that trickle-over into the first one, and especially complaining about the necessity of this totally optional bonus, is strange to me.

 

I think it used to be quite cool and I personally saw it as a bonus feature. But for the past few years it’s felt like every route requires you to own more routes to get the full experience. I don’t think that’s a bad thing per se - it’s the same in TS with all the third party content - but DTG are obviously milking the feature by removing trains that would, in days gone by, be part of the base route. The most egregious instance of that was probably the Class 390, which absolutely should have been in the route by default. The deluxe train should have been the 805 or 730, as an example.

 

Tadami Line won´t have a good start. Releasing the same day as Transport Fever 3. I know, what I will be playing Tuesday evening =)

 

It's more like, we let some stuff out, so players need to buy more. For example, to see some freight wagons on the yards near Haren on the Dutch route, you need to own RSN + BR 155, otherwise it's completely empty. Those wagons should be included with the route, but no, you need to own one of the oldest DLC + Loco add-on to get them.

If you don't have layers or additional train DLC, you just get empty routes with empty yards and that for a price of EUR 40,- for one single route. In my opinion this is disgusting and greedy.

 

Agreed, a layer used to be something extra in the route, that wasn’t intertwined with the main gameplay. For a while now though layers have been things that are integral to gameplay.

Even Aire&Wharfedale which was so close to avoiding that, managed to do it the wrong way around. The 331 could have been a nice alternate unit, but instead it was made the main unit which is unrealistic.

 

The mechanics of this layer are hard to grasp. It is difficult to understand, partly due to language barriers. There are simply too many of them, and as a result, the post-game counter remains broken.

 

With regard to Transport Fever 3, it looks like unless you have a CPU that supports AVX2, the game won't run full stop. I suspect that is going to catch more than a few people out.

Now some other sad news, as we no longer have an Off Topic forum. The second Huddersfield station cat, Bolt, has passed away - killed in a road accident. Bolt had actually been retired from station duties due to concerns over his safety while Huddersfield station being renovated and was living in a private home. The other cat Felix, passed suddenly a couple of years ago after being diagnosed with cancer.

So a very tragic end to the story of the Huddersfield station cats. RIP to them both.

 

AVX2 is introduced in 2013 with Haswell, so 13 years ago. In computer terms, that's a century ago, so I don't think many will be affected by this. AMD has introfuced it in 2015, which is 11 years ago. Only for budget CPU's it was introduced much later, but are you want to game on those anyway?

 

I don't agree with the arguments that layers should be considered a 'nice to have' feature. It's much easier to argue that they should be part of the core package when you purchase a route. TSW is supposed to be a sim, after all, and other traffic on the route is as much part of the environment that you drive in as trackside buildings, scenery, passengers etc..

DTG have generated a lucrative additional revenue stream by somehow convincing generally sensible people that it's reasonable to pay extra in order to get what should surely be part of the base experience....

 

In my opinion SimRail handles this correctly. You see all the stock in the route as AI, but you can only drive what you buy.

 

Yep, sensible. That's fairer.

 

I must have just missed the boat on it, however I do have a feeling more than a few people will get caught out by this.

 

I agree – the ability to layer other routes should really be included in the Core package.

Firstly, it’s not fair of DTG that people buy one route and then have to buy one or two others as well, just so that, for example, there are freight wagons at the marshalling yards.

And above all, it’s very confusing for new TSW players, as they’re not at all familiar with these nested layers across multiple routes, and they’re likely to be disappointed with TSW as a result, because they’ll miss out on parked freight wagons or perhaps even AI traffic.
And because of this, I can well imagine that new TSW players will be more likely to turn away from TSW.
So DTG really ought to do something about this at last, because otherwise these new players certainly won’t buy xx DLCs, as they’ll already feel that something is missing from the existing routes – something that many will undoubtedly notice.

 

Coming back to Transport Fever: you can simply download all kinds of trains as mods for free. DTG has successfully established and normalised the idea that you have to pay just to see other trains, or even individual wagons, on your route. But as others have pointed out, it really should not be the norm.

 

How could they know in advance every layer that will someday be included in every route? And would putting every possible layer into an already loaded core even be feasible?

I'm also curious how much is resource management. Does layered-in stock from another route reduce the hit on the receiving route vs. having it included natively?

I certainly agree that it would be nice to have heavy traffic and loaded sidings in every route from the start, but is it even feasible?

Dunno, I see this more as generally sensible people convincing themselves that it's reasonable to pay extra in order to get what they think should surely be part of the base experience, and then blaming DTG for somehow compelling their decision instead of simply owning it themselves.

 

Games companies have been carving core features out of games to sell later as additional content for years now. Heck, one of the Call of Duty games sold the single player campaign as DLC.
Let's not forget that Dovetail was founded and previously run by somebody from EA as well, who can be most egregious with their yearly releases and in-game purchases. These kinds of practices are, unfortunately, part and parcel of the modern gaming experience.