Having been a regular poster on these forums and having a relatively good level of experience with DTG’s community engagement, I often find DTG dismissive of the community. Given that we have several community managers, they very rarely properly engage with the community other than to post screenshot competitions and announcements etc. Live streams are picked by the community managers with really no opportunity for the community to have a say such as by polling etc. The DTG Train Sim World community is quite a decent community with lots of suggestions, ideas and player to player engagement. I would wholeheartedly think DTG would like to maximise the potential of that engagement, but very little is done. Do you think DTG is too dismissive of the community or does it even take it for granted? What would you like to see?
One other example of this is that Sam said in the Roadmap stream last week that we’d see an updated Roadmap due to various issues with the original published last week. It’s a week later and still no update (unless I’ve missed this, in which case I’ll say I don’t know how I have missed it, and I’ll apologise in advance).
What can the community managers really do, though? How many times and different ways can they say "okay, we'll pass your feedback on to the team"? And they can only relay to us what the development team are actually working on, which -- at this time -- is likely not to be many, if any, of the hundreds of features, requests, or suggestions made by the community. I don't think DTG is too dismissive of the community. Maybe they used to be, but they seem to be working on getting better; maybe part of that is pressure from Microsoft and Sony regarding publisher and quality standards for their respective online storefronts. But any slightly bigger core updates will take a lot of time, likely being slowly implemented in new add-ons; which means, until the current roadmap gets cleared off and new routes are revealed, there's probably not that much in a polished enough state to show off to us.
In the various streams sam always asking for the community input feedback suggestion comments etc if the community doing this and dtg chooses to ignore most of it then whats the point.Why have any forum if you don't really care what anyone says when you ask for there input.
It's a though question and it's hard to me to decide a Yes or No, I think the community managers are doing all they can, but I think we need a little more insight from the actual developers on what's going on, why some things are the way they are and why they are prioritizing x instead of y. Also I don't like how the streams seem so important, I don't want to go through hours of VODs to hear the explanation to the question I asked, I'd rather have either a transcript of the streams or to have regular written Q&As and the streams used for showcasing content. For example, about LZB on Pres.Co, I asked in a stream if the BR182 will get LZB so we can run in SKA (where in real life hauls a Nightjet), the answer I got from Matt was something along those lines: "LZB wasn't in the game when we produced the BR182, so don't expect it to come, also the 182 hauling DoStos il limited by the coaches at 160 km/h etc..." yet the majority of people would not know that (even though Adam later hinted to the possibility of such things being added). I, for example have never heard from anyone at DTG why the 423 is not substituting the 422 on SKA, and if they would answer it would be a "technical reason", like the signals out of Köln being wrong... (maybe they answered that question on a stream ) So from a certain point of view I think the Community Managers such as Protagonist and Natster are doing everything they can, but I'd like more insight and participation from the actual development team, similar to the presence of TSG about his add-ons.
You can sweep away much of what would seem like being dismissive of the community with a few statements of fact. Firstly, DTG isn’t a democracy, it’s a business. Secondly, the live streams are mainly marketing. Thirdly, their lack of posting on the forum is not an indication of a lack of reading the forum, or acting on what they read. What’s not going to happen is the community dictating how they go about making their products, or showcasing them. They take notice of everything the community says but they make decisions based on more factors than what we say. The developers aren’t going to come on the forum and offer explanations for everything, they are busy developing the games. That’s why they have community managers. As Sam has explained many times, they can’t reply to many things on the forum either because they use their time feeding back to the development team all the things that are important to us, logging requests and reporting the bugs we post about. They have recently shown that they can’t be that dismissive of the community. They have changed what route a loco DLC is being made for, mostly because the community recommended to do so. They have featured things in the streams that are requested by the community. Sam read out a list of most requested routes in a stream that shows that they have been collecting every suggestion made and ranking them, and we requested they made that list public. Matt did a German safety system tutorial stream at the request of the community. They do the roadmap stream and they answer questions in every stream they do. It was the community that requested a roadmap in the first place. Generally what gets streamed is down to Mike, the tea boy and also head of brand for TSW, not the CMs. If we request something for a stream, he’ll be the guy who says yes or no, and it has to fit around the marketing side of it. Most of DTG’s aspirations for TSW are the same as the community’s but they have to develop what is possible not what is just wanted. A request for a feature could take years to get through all the stages required to implement it. There’s no quick response to something like that. They can’t really give an instant yes or no to most requests. Overall we just have to keep requesting things, telling them what we like and what we don’t like, and what’s not acceptable in terms of poor quality. They are listening but everything is a long process. Very rarely do they ever come out with an outright no to something, that would be seen as being dismissive to me. I’ve been having a right go on here about how badly TSW2 works on PS4 and how many bugs there are, and I don’t get the impression they are not hearing me, in most cases they have acknowledged my concerns.
I don't think they are dismissive. I can see a clear effort that they are trying, e.g. with the roadmap. At the same time, this effort seems to be biting them quite often as well. What I do see as an issue however is their constant "we value your feedback" and me having the feeling that they absolutely don't. I have reported so many issues on the forum, I have contacted DTG by mail, Natalie and Adam directly on the forum about issues and offered my help, and I never got a single reply, not even a "No thank you", I'm just getting absolutely ignored. Same for the reported issues, they don't appear on the roadmap, there are no comments or reactions to it. I'm sure they are reading a lot on the forums, but are they reading everything? Are the issues I bring up even seen, or do they disappear quickly and nobody from DTG even sees them? Should I post it again, spamming the forum to make sure somebody sees it? I can never tell, and that leaves me puzzled and frustrated, and I believe I am not alone with this feeling, especially among the more active members that are dedicated to the game.
To be fair to DTG they’re community engagement has improved and is better than that of other game developers. I just think there is an opportunity for DTG and the community to get more from the relationship.
I can say one thing for certain, spamming the forum with the same thing over and over again is not going to achieve anything more than annoying people. All things considered, they will never be able to respond to every request or report there is not enough time, that does not mean they are ignoring anything, but from what I have seen they do try there best to read as much as they can.
id like to see when they are doing streams is one week do a stream on a Playstation the next week with a xbox and the week after do a steam on PC. that way we get to see what engines and scenery looks like and draw distance and also any bugs that come along. to me they they show everything on a PC and forgetting about consoles.
It true this is dtg product and they are not bound in any way to take anyones input on anything unless it make sence to them,BUT if they want people to BUY there products because it takes MONEY to continue there work on train sim related efforts,but if it become highly apparent that dtg shows to offen they are disinterests in the feedback they ask for then they do no favors for themselves or there players.This goes BOTH ways without people paying for there products they won't have a business to keep making the trains sim almost everyone loves,because no money will equal no place to work no pc's to work on an no people to do the work,because working for free isn't very profitable.In the end we need dtg for great trains/routes to drive but they also need us to buy them,that the circle of life in a train sim world.
Hiya, I'm around the forum, reading and taking notes. I recently co-ordinated an update to Sand Patch Grade, to release alongside the C40-8W locomotive launch, and we currently have a bunch of updates to the Schnellfahrstrecke Köln route queued up (see the Roadmap). For these, I got a report from our support team who manages the Kayako support ticket system, a report from our bug database, and I scanned these forums for topics about the routes. The update lists are only small granted as I need to keep things manageable. I'm currently gathering feedback about our British routes. Keeping posting, we do read your feedback. All the best.
In the end this game has a very loyal fan base and wants to help dtg by not just buying new dlc but by also doing want they ask when it comes to feedback on ideas,suggestion and letting dtg know about any technical problems,it offen said any big job takes a team effort and for tsw2 player base they like to feel like part of the team even in some small way.and when dtg does well everybody can benefit from the effort everyone put in to get there.
Some people clearly don’t listen to what DTG has to say. 5 minutes on any stream can prove it. It must be soul destroying when people don’t listen and keep asking the same inane questions over and over again.
Maybe if the same question is asked it could be because it might be a new person who just joined the stream wants to ask it or they may not have heard the answer to that question
From a certain point of view I agree with matjamca, seeing people that ask the same questions again and again makes my blood boil I can't imagine what it feels like answering the same question again and again... but that's the problem with using streams as Q&A... I missed most of them and because of that I am so afraid to ask any question the few times I actually catch a stream for this exact reason. As I said in my post above I'd just have written weekly Q&As for example and the stream only for showcasing content....
Oh you definitely have the anti DTG crowd running around on the forums, normally transplanting mountains where mole hills used to be.
There is no definition, but usually by anti DTG, I mean people that are actively trying to find every little fault with every product (for the sake of "proving how bad DTG is"), another kind is the people that are stuck in the past, still saying how bad DTG is because of the lack of MP/Editors. Most of this people are not giving any kind of constructive criticism but just runs around telling everyone how awful DTG and their products are, or even worse coming up with the conspiracy theories for every decision DTG makes. I think here DTG has a just a tiny little bit of responsibility since before this new "era of clear communication" DTG never explained why some things were the way they were or the reason behind some decisions (which I think could be improved even more) but mostly is just people disappointed from one or more products and having developed this kind on "personal hate" towards DTG. Happily since this new era of more clear communication with the community such people are more and more rare to come by, especially in the forum
It would be good for people to critizise the game with the intent on the game to improve instead of just bashing with no intent of asking for improvements the game because if people are not critizising to see improvements or hate the company so much, they shoudn't be playing or buying their products
DTG seem to do a good job. There streams how they act towards the community is quite fun and interesting. Don't see that many replies from them in forums though
Yeah, but still. The amount of times they’ve had to say “NEC ain’t coming over” or something like that.
Because people can't be bothered to do 10 minutes worth of research before asking a question. That makes me so angry. I can't wait for people to start criticising the ballast and centenary on the LGV stream even if we were talking about it for months...
I can understand some people bringing it up, but after a while you think, well, they’re ignoring this so they obviously won’t change it.
That's sad. Now for Steam, they said with TSW 2, they are focusing on High-Speed. IIRC, steam trains arent extremely fast. They also said they needed core Improvements in order to have steam trains. About multiplayer, we ain't getting it no time soon. It'd be nice, but then that'd be a whole new thing they'd need to worry about. I'd love to work with someone as a guard/conductor though.
I know, that's the point people constantly asking for things we already know... I did read the FAQ before launch which seems a lot of people didn't do...