Another Boring Non Career Route!

Discussion in 'General Discussion' started by trainsimplayer2020, Jun 5, 2021.

  1. trainsimplayer2020

    trainsimplayer2020 Well-Known Member

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  2. Nick Y

    Nick Y Well-Known Member

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    It's Just Trains. I don't think they do career scenarios on their routes.
    All the MML routes/add-ons don't have any career scenarios.
     
  3. Pookeyhead

    Pookeyhead Well-Known Member

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    I never play career scenarios... You end up driving unrealistically. Real train drivers don't aim for scores, or gold stars.

    How does being a career scenario make it any less boring?
     
    Last edited: Jun 5, 2021
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  4. IronBladder

    IronBladder Well-Known Member

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    I too prefer career scenarios. There's a sense of knowing how well you've mastered the 'test' set by the designer and a feeling of achievement when you get 1000 points. Realism? Well that's subjective in the context of sitting at a desk in a house pretending to be a train driver, but it gives me a lot of fun which is what I want from this hobby.

    And scenarios with achievements are even better!
     
    Last edited: Jun 5, 2021
  5. trainsimplayer2020

    trainsimplayer2020 Well-Known Member

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    I only play career scenarios because it is like how it is in real life.
    In real life you have a timetable to follow.
     
  6. Pookeyhead

    Pookeyhead Well-Known Member

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    There are time table scenarios for that. You don't need career scenarios to be time tabled.
     
  7. 749006

    749006 Well-Known Member

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    Except the real life drivers are not expected to drive at full speed between stops
    Real life drivers don't know what a Career Scenario is - they get paid to drive their train on time

    Something that exists on Real Railways but is not reflected in the game is Defensive Driving
    When a driver sees a Yellow Signal he is expected to react to that and start slowing down
    If a driver arrives at a station and the Signal at the far end is Red he would be breaking earlier than normal

    I had to laugh at a Twitch preview of TSW2 Bakerloo line where on the Network Rail section the train was doing 40mph at the platform end with a Red Light at the far end. Even sillier was the train setting off with the signal at Red expecting it to clear.
    Then I remembered TSW2 is some form of Arcade game
     
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  8. Mich

    Mich Well-Known Member

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    Just because that's the way most scenarios are designed doesn't make the career points system bad. Yes standard scanarios on the one hand don't result in the pressure that results in doing things like pulling 70 in a yellow section where you should being 25 just to be on time. On the other hand it doesn't have penalties for elements like say rough train handling, or indeed straight up exceeding line speed, which I feel is genuinely useful and can make you a better driver. Quite a few America freight routes in recent times start off with 1000 career points and don't have any due time, so the challenge is purely down to how well you handle the train and follow speed limits, which is very good use of the career system. Likewise it's solid for passenger or scheduled freight runs as long as you don't make the due times tight to the point of utter ridiculousness.

    When DTG or others make a bad engine or route that's not realistic and poor quality we blame them, because we know TS is a powerful program in the right hands. The career points system is like that as well, it can be a great boon for scenarios as long as you implement it right.
     
  9. ntypeman

    ntypeman Well-Known Member

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    The idea behind career scenarios is good but the way they are implemented is bad...

    I got a shock when I tried one for the first time driving a long freight train... I was about 2 minutes late but that compounded with a 50 wagon train resulted in a score of MINUS 10000 points and I'd only just started... Needless to say there was no way I was going to make that up so I went back to the main menu...!!!
     
  10. andy.malcolm

    andy.malcolm Active Member

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    A "career" aspect to train sim could be really interesting, but it was a half arsed feature when implemented and they never went back to it.
     
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  11. trainbraint

    trainbraint Well-Known Member

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    I'm sort of an even split.
    If you're two minutes late on a timetabled standard scenario you fail the instruction and can't complete the scenario, whereas no matter how many points you have in career, if you complete the instructions you complete the scenario. However, I realise there isn't really any other way of penalising players in standard. Although the speeding system in career is a little unrealistic, I think I actually maybe prefer the TSW way of doing this, maybe you ought to have a leniency of a couple of mph where it tells you you are speeding, but doesn't actually deduct points. Or maybe that defeats the point of the challenge of career a little.
    In terms of the general public, I think it is also probably a fairly even split, maybe more leaning towards the standard side of things. Career is good when you want a challenge, and standard is better when you just want to realistically drive some trains. I think most of the scenarios of popular third parties like JT and AP are standard as well, whereas it seems DTG have a very strict career only policy. I think it would be good for DTG to bring back both career and standard scenarios for routes, as they did with older routes like the PDL, considering it doesn't take much to convert a scenario from career to standard.
    In terms of the route, I don't think the type of scenarios should stop you buying it. From what I've seen of it (on YouTube mainly - it's been available from JT's website for a couple years now) it's a nice route, through some great Devon scenery. The only thing is - the section from Exeter to Newton Abbot (plus the branch to Paignton) has been in game with the Riviera Line (that's a route that does have career scenarios if you want to look into it) for a few years now, but since it is a complete recreation from scratch by another dev I'll allow it - and also because it's only a small part of the route. However, the stretch from Highbridge to Exeter has been released on steam twice before - once as part of Bristol - Exeter and the other as part of southwestern expressways. And considering it is the same route by the same dev - only slightly updated - I think it's a bit cheeky of JT (or DTG - whoever's responsible for that sort of thing) to include it as nearly half of this route and make us pay again for it!

    (Although - in retrospect - they probably would have charged us the same even if the stretch to Highbridge wasn't included so for those who don't have Bristol - Exeter or southwestern expressways I'm glad they included it)

    And personally - I don't buy a route based on the scenarios that come with it. Occasionally it's just nice to have a nice route to look at and drive along. If I want a challenge, I'll go on a route with career scenarios - they almost all are nowadays (except DTG have gotten into a bit of a habit recently of releasing routes that JT have had on sale for ages). There's also always the workshop - and if it comes to it learning how to make one yourself isn't too hard. Matt Peddlesden has some great tutorials on youtube which is what I used.
     
    Last edited: Jun 5, 2021
  12. Nacho

    Nacho Well-Known Member

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    Or you can just drive the career scenario and ignore the points
     
  13. trainbraint

    trainbraint Well-Known Member

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    Yes, there is always that approach I suppose :)
     
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  14. decrepitts#7027

    decrepitts#7027 Well-Known Member

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    Having never in my life been a competitive person, I'm one who plays Career Scenario with points/scoring disabled. Now, in Standard Scenarios I do attempt to finish with as few 'demerits' as possible, though some demerits matter more to me than others.
     
  15. NEC Railfan

    NEC Railfan Well-Known Member

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    Well in terms of realism I've always preferred standard scenarios over career, as I don't have the fear in the back of my mind of losing points. (Being a perfectionist by nature). My guess is you wouldn't get completely screwed over with just going .1 mph above the speed limit in real life, especially when attempting to adjust a correct brake pressure on a downgrade or throttle on a grade.
     
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  16. Mich

    Mich Well-Known Member

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    They might in more modern times, because in real life they don't expect you to be going 99.9 percent of track speed at all times like in badly made career scanarios. In a situation like that you'd probably slow down as you're going over the top to make sure you don't speed. I know railroads don't have much tolerance for SPADs for example, they expect you to be on the ball when approaching danger no matter what, Now back in the 40's (and earlier I presume) they were places with lots tolerance for speeding, as the speed "limits" in a lot of cases were more suggestions than hard and set limits. They didn't even have speedometers in many engines back in the day after all, and certainly had nothing recording that data in most trains back in the day. So for routes set in that era it would probably be fair to not have those penalties, or at least tweak them to be much less punishing.
     
  17. 749006

    749006 Well-Known Member

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    The difference between the game and real life is you exceed the speed limit in the game and you lose points or get a tut-tut.
    In real life all trains have OTMR* which like an Aircraft Black Box record everything the driver does and on some routes there are times track circuits where the system knows how fast the driver is going based on the interval between two consecutive track circuits being occupied.

    These days in the UK Speeding on the railways can cost a driver his job

    OTMR* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Train_event_recorder
     
  18. trainbraint

    trainbraint Well-Known Member

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    But I wouldn't imagine you could lose your job for going 1mph over the speed limit, even for an extended amount of time... Could you?
     
  19. Pookeyhead

    Pookeyhead Well-Known Member

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    That's just another thing that annoys me about career scenarios. It's pretty much impossible to be accurate to within 1mph on stuff with an analogue speed gauge, yet the game still deducts "points".

    I think Pete said in another thread that it was 2 or 3mph in real life... which makes more sense.
     
    Last edited: Jun 8, 2021
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  20. UP13

    UP13 Well-Known Member

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    My two pennies worth...

    When I first got the game about a decade ago I only played the standard scenarios. Once DLC became pretty much career scenario only then I changed and only played career scenarios. I enjoyed the fact that there was something stopping you from speeding etc as previously on standard scenarios I would speed as there were no repercussions. All the workshop items I were making were exclusively career scenarios. It would annoy me when I bought a JustTrains product of Steam that it was standard only.

    However in the last year, having read comments on here and realising most people on here seem to play standard scenarios, I have given them a go and actually prefer it. No longer do I have to restart a scenario or at the very least return to a save point because I accidentally sped for half of a second or had wheel slip from a steam engine right at the start of a scenario (some engines for some reason have wheel slip even when not moving if the brake pressure drops below a certain point, which means you have to release the brakes immediately on starting the scenario).

    Yes there is no punishment mechanism but I'm pretty self disciplined these days and I no longer have the stress of ruining a perfect score (when people say you can ignore it, it is very hard to do when you are trying to tick off Steam achievements). Many posters on here make a valid point about real life drivers prioritising safety/defensive driving over keeping a timetable to the nearest second. It did frustrate me that so many scenarios require almost full line speed between stops and near perfect braking on a high notch in order to be on time and that you would be deducted points for being a mere 30 seconds late.

    The scenarios I create for the Workshop are now all standard and I've deleted all my career ones.

    Regarding buying DLC for the scenarios, I wouldn't worry. I spend way more time making scenarios than playing them and I much prefer creating my own then playing pre-made ones. Same for things like AP products - it doesn't matter if I hardly own any of the requirements, I'll put said DLC in my own scenarios.
     
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  21. Nacho

    Nacho Well-Known Member

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    Converting Career to Standard it's easy, so it wouldn't be an issue for the new routes. The other way around I'm not sure if it's plssible. To me is the same asI don't care Bout the points and stuff. I run on career mostly but when I edit scenarios in order to include other rolling stock then I use standard.
     
  22. Reef

    Reef Well-Known Member

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    If you're not running at 75.9mph on a 75mph section are you even a real gamer? :D:D


    (let's see how many miss my "think about it" sarcasm this time around)
     
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  23. Nick Y

    Nick Y Well-Known Member

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    I actually prefer playing standard scenarios as there's no pressure and you can drive correctly.
    A lot of career scenarios (whether official ones with a route or workshop ones) have unrealistic timings between station stops (eg 5 miles to the next station in 3.5 minutes when the line speed is only 70mph and not taking into account acceleration and braking).
     
  24. triznya.andras

    triznya.andras Well-Known Member

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    To be fair, Standard scenarios require more unrealistic driving, actually, as with career scenarios you can simply be late, but successful, whereas with standard scenarios being late means you failed the scenario entirely.
    For joke value, I have recently failed a free roam scenario, too.

    I agree with your comment about not timetabled scenarios, however, regardless of mode.
    (Although there was a recent thread on Steam inspired by some really racy scenarios, and it was a common agreement that 100% effort is how timetables are written nowadays - Germany, Australia, tram lines... I couldn't match the real life timetable on Trier-Koblenz with a 442.)
     
  25. theorganist

    theorganist Well-Known Member

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    I like making timetabled scenarios to actual working timetables, it is interesting to see how the timings differ in the sim, often they are quite accurate.

    I have never personally enjoyed career scenarios as I don't feel they encourage realistic behaviour. Although, the few times I have played them I do find myself getting quite competitive so they do work as intended I guess.
     

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