Train Sim World Add-on Explorer

I just saw this posted in the Announcements but since you can't comment there, I'll try it here.
What is it exactly?
An in-game tool? A link to their website?
Does it search all Add-ons or just ones you have already?
It would seem rather pointless if it was just DLC you already bought.
It's an interesting idea, but there's just not enough practical details in the article itself.
From the layout it sounds more like a future concept rather than anything usable in the near term.

 

I miss one option for the console version of the game "DLC without blurry textures". For me, it's a waste of effort by the developers. They should rather focus on fixing bugs in the game, such as blurry textures.

 

It is a tool on the website to find DLC from several filters you can apply.

It’s next to useless. Maybe it will become useful one day but at present it is set up incredibly badly. It’s for new or newish players, who may want to have a look for a DLC to buy based on what they like to drive but many combinations of filters show no results or very limited results and will give the impression TSW doesn’t have what they are looking for when it actually does.

If you are looking for freight on it, for example, it suggests just two US route DLC. It does not show any UK or German routes that have freight on them. It only shows two out of all the US freight routes. It doesn’t show any freight loco DLC.

A combination of Urban and Commuter filters shows only three US routes and nothing else.

As I say, pretty useless.

 

I second this, my thoughts exactly

 

I think it's more of a guide for newer players.

With there being a load of DLCs it can be overwhelming for new players, so if Joe Bloggs has an interest in German railways and wants to drive commuter, it'll point him in the right direction.

So for us, yeah it's useless. But for new players it can be very helpful, especially when all the routes are added.

 

That’s the idea but it is not actually good at doing it. If you put in German Commuter it gives no results at all. Joe Bloggs will be none the wiser.

 

It's not working for me - most combinations of filters yield zero results, even though I know of many routes fulfilling the criteria.

 

It sounds great in theory until you realize there is already a project team working on that and not everyone else in the company can be on that team. I understand you're upset about one thing in the game, but the game isn't just one thing.
It's like complaining about the flight being delayed so suggesting that all the other flights the company is running worldwide stop until your flight gets priority.

I get the frustration but stopping every single thing the company is doing until that ONE thing is "fixed" seems a bit disastrous if taken as serious policy. Especially when most people are not getting the blurry textures, so what do they do? Get nothing in the meantime?

How would not having a website feature possibly speed up the solution? They're entirely unrelated.

 

Maybe they're not in the system yet?
The press release did say a "limited number of routes were in the prototype system."
There's over 100 DLC with only less than a dozen listed in the release.
Could just be they're filling the database?

 

the whole thing seems utterly pointless to me. a new player will get a far better idea of what to buy by asking on the forums or discord than this tool

 

There is that, which is already suboptimal, but then the tags they’ve used miss out big elements of the routes they do have in it because there’s only one from each category. Crewe-Preston does not have the freight tag because it has a historical tag but it has lots of freight in it. Clinchfield doesn’t have the historical tag because it has the freight tag, even though it is set in an older time period than Crewe-Preston. They really need to make these things fully functional before releasing them and not have 10% of a feature badly implemented. Although it does mean we know DTG have made it as they specialise in that kind of thing. If they stick to the categories they have it will never work well. Freight and historical are not mutually exclusive.

 

Absolutely.
The web-version of creators club is here for years and the filters are still garbage. I use it because it allows more repaints than the ingame interface. But many things I just can't find using the web-interface, things I know they should be there - even if I use the exact same search / filters I used in-game.

 

That's weird, that violates even how it's described in the article. It specifically uses Clinchfield as a rural, freight, historical route example so multiple tags would be required. DTG has an odd mix of "hide a concept till the last minute" followed by a "rush to release."

This one is frankly a lower bar as it's not advanced game dev, it's just a simple search filter from a spreadsheet. It's the sort of thing you could hand to an intern or new employee to see what their work quality is.

Having exclusive tags like that means you can't really narrow down your focus much. It WORKS don't get me wrong. However, it'd be a lot more useful with two-factor filtering. I realize that's probably another level of complexity and it probably IS a new employee doing it so I don't want to be too hard on them for that as it has basic functionality. It just means the user has to take on more of the workload.
(If I want historical freight I can't look for historical freight, it has to be one OR the other and then go through the results myself to weed them out.)

The link is below since I don't think it's been posted yet.

"Find Your Journey" Add On Navigator
https://live.trainsimworld.com/news/find-your-journey

 

Myself, I can see the usefulness of it on its surface for new users, but the way the "gameplay" is arranged means you can't search for multiple gameplay features.

You can't do "historical" and "freight" for example. You can only do one OR the other and then go through the list manually. I get that it's probably made by an intern or new employee and it's a "simple" spreadsheet and filter project, but it does put more work on the user.

It also has a limited selection (not all DLC are in there) which... is fine it's a prototype. However, the definitions are a bit up to the user. For example Crewe-Preston to me is a "freight" route with some passenger route added on. The main focus to me is the freight workings. Yet it doesn't show up under "freight."

Who makes the decision for what "gameplay" it qualifies as? Seems a bit arbitrary.

 

The marketing team could also help fixing the game by simply playing it. Should this have be done at least once before TSW7 release, they would immediately have noticed the unreadable UI and stuttering camera when walking. (Xbox Series X).
Good game -> More customers -> good marketing

 

Is this sarcasm or do you sincerely not know what marketing does?

 

Erm, why not just put it in the core game to guarantee 100% visibility to all users? Or just add the relevant tags to each DLC on the store page? It seems like a awful lot of effort building a website feature that most people might not even know exists!

 

Sarcasm by a disappointed player seeing his favorite game going down.

 

Sounds like you have been marketed to.

 

It's often hard to tell the difference without being in person.