So it's been more than a year since London Commuter was released as part of the Rush Hour pack. Sadly the product was given to us in an unfinished state. No rush hour passenger what was supposed to be a key feature of the routes included in this pack, as well as a number of issues that to this day have been left unaddressed. I remember a promise made to us on a stream at the time that the route would be fixed up into top shape. But after seeing "Rush Hour passenger system for London Commuter" on roadmaps for I don't know how long without news, I'm starting to wonder. Has there been any progress made on this route you can tell us about?
Probably nothing as of yet. There are more pressing issues and more core issues such as those to dispatcher to prevent roadblocks and red lights from occuring and stuff.
Sadly I think it’s quite clear that any DLC associated with TSW 2 is now pretty much abandoned/no longer receiving updates bar support for livery designer.
This was discussed in the Road Map stream today and Matt said that the update to TSW2 is in the works. Also rush hour passengers for London Brighton will come, but several other issues in that route have to be fixed first. Watch the stream is you desire more details than I can remember.
I won't ever understand too. There a tons of problems and in the today stream, JD talk about cats in the last EN Dlc. What people are looking too? Passengers with dogs whereas the passenger behavior is bugged as ****. I think DTG and the fanboys live on another planet
I agree. priorities,priorities. they just fire and forget. the more routes that come out the worse is going to get. this german route was released when they knew about all the bugs it had.
Spirit of Steam is so empty in places, same goes for Birmingham. I'd support them 100% if they just churned out DLC of locos, wagons, sounds, whatever until each route can't be any better, and only then work on new routes.
I don't know why people keep demanding things and expecting it to be 100% perfect every single time. The amount of whining and general negativity I see on this forum for, sometimes, the most intricate detail is insane.
Forgive me, but you’re completely missing the point. I can only speak for myself, but I have never expected things to be 100% perfect. We all buy software and we all know it’s never perfect, but I’ve been playing games for over 35 years and I have NEVER played a game or franchise that is as consistently bugged and broken as both TSC and TSW are. This isn’t about intricate detail (although you say that like it’s a bad thing), this is about slam-dunk, right up in-your-face bugs that are immediately obvious within 10 minutes of a release. Sticking with TSW only, the issue with it isn't that there are bugs (as we’ve established, it’s unreasonable to expect there to be none), it’s that they are so numerous, so major, so obvious and in many cases so game-breaking that it’s hard to conclude anything other than DTG don’t give a stuff. Their QA and beta-testing is an absolute joke. There are a number of people also doing (dare I say) the typically British thing of saying the workers on the shop floor are all passionate and committed and it’s that the Managers are the ones to blame. Personally, I don’t think the workers on the shop floor are as blame free as some would like. They are the ones who are putting these routes together, they are the ones that are misplacing scenery, texturing only one side of signs, using low res textures, developing broken systems and so on. Their lack of attention to detail is a major part of the problem…get it right the first time and then no one has to come back and fix it. There is absolutely no excuse for having placed cars that are half in and half out of a wall, placing buildings back-to-front etc, systems that don’t work, lights that are either too bright or not bright enough. The list of problems with this game is endless, some of it is niff-naff and trivia, much of it isn’t. It takes no more time to do those things properly, it’s just downright sloppiness that they are as they are. On top of that you then have the (very) long standing design flaws and broken implementation that they never fix. Lighting, passengers, sounds, signalling, physics (derailments) etc. Because of the way they designed the game, every single time they release a DLC they compound this problem because it isn’t as simple as applying a fix that works game-wide. Each DLC is like a self-contained unit, so the fix has to be done for each and every thing, on each and every DLC. Very clearly they now have a body of work that is beyond their capacity to mend. TSW3 was going to be a clean break, but of course that released full of problems too and surprise surprise, the two native TSW3 releases that have followed not only contain those same problems, but have added a load more of their own for good measure. I mentioned the fact that customers jump in and defend or apologise for DTG when they generally have no idea what they’re talking about. It’s like Putin’s MO; if you’re prepared to say something, no matter how implausible, with a straight face until the other side give up then it becomes the truth. You’ve seen it in this thread - ‘they don’t have have enough dev time’, ‘UE4 is hard to develop for’, ‘building routes is complicated’, ‘it’s all down to the Managers’. Is it though? It looks very much the same as it did in TSC to me - build objects, texture objects, place objects. Of course there are differences and nuances, but they’ve even used assets from TSC in TSW so it can’t be that different. Plenty of other developers manage to build games in UE4 and don’t suffer these same problems, so why DTG? If it is that UE4 is for some reason impossible to develop for, then that is on the DTG employees who did the due diligence and picked it as an engine in the first place. Then we come down to price. DTG have always worked like this, annual ‘new versions’ with DLC in-between. This is not a cheap game, not by a long stretch. At £30 a throw you are now being asked to pay almost the price of a full game for a DLC. You add a few of those together and it soon adds up. Bought TSW3, BCC and the new release? That’ll be ~£100 please. That’s more than the standard (and pretty much the same as the deluxe) version of MSFS. I’ve spent much much more on TSW than £100 and have done so in the hope that DTG meant what they said, that this was a next-gen simulator that was really going places. I’d given up on that hope about 8-12 months ago but figured I’d give TSW3 a go, and I bought BCC for good measure. When it became apparent that actually virtually nothing had changed and some things were actually worse than before then I’m certainly done. I’ll see what ATS and JT bring to the party, but as for the bug-ridden mess that passes for DTG’s content goes I’m out. I’m really disappointed, because this game could have been so good, a 90% plus title. As it is it barely scrapes 60%, and that’s being generous.
Some of the things I am seeing recently are because DTG are trying to automate what was once manual, such as speed signs. Seeign a lot of them being wrong now whereas in the past they were right ATS have release their own buggy messes in TSC and JT's work on the Great Western packs has been dubious (including sinking windows at PNZ from memory) so my expectations for both are pretty low, but then I play the game for fun not photorealism
Well, I think there have to be passionate people at DTG. We wouldn't be getting the stuff that is detailed and high quality if they didn't give a $!$? about their work and were just doing it for a paycheck. Well, no game ever has come out lacking bugs. The difference is that DTG rarely goes back and fixes them.
I'm not trying to be controversial in saying this, but I don't see a "bug-ridden mess." Now this is probably because I don't really know the first thing about trains. I'm not a driver, engineer, worker on trains, and I don't have a particular passion for seeing them in person or watching/listening to them online. I previously had no idea how trains worked, and if I'm honest I still think an EMU is a bit like an ostrich...? So for me, I wouldn't have the first clue if you told me that the sound "isn't right" or a station "isn't like that" etc... I have no idea, so take that feedback at face value. I'm perfectly fine pootling along in whatever I happen to be driving at the time, focusing most likely on the HUD so as not to speed or SPAD (I had to look up this acronym after watching a livestream!) I can appreciate that if you are highly familiar with the inner workings of a given type of locomotive, or the precise layout/gradient/features of a train line/station/shed/depot and you see things which don't tally with reality, they are going to stand out of course... but some of the emotive language applied really makes me think I'm playing a totally different game at times. But if I were going to look for an example of a "bug-ridden mess" honestly, I'd look at something like Cyberpunk - where the game was indeed fundamentally broken for everybody in many ways. I'd consider (and I realise this is a subjective definition) a BUG to be a mistake in the code that means the game doesn't function as it is supposed to. There are certainly inaccuracies, and in places poor execution, while some decisions frustrate me (before anybody labels me a DTG apologist for presenting a different viewpoint), but I can't really understand how you can see TWS3 in this category.
Except it wasn't. I completed CP2077 within 3 weeks of release, had no game breaking bugs and saw only a couple of odd "characters in T-pose" and a few AI car crashes. It did have a lot of bugs for a lot of people.. however 2 years on it's been fixed up a great deal but was still fine for me back in Dec 2020. TSW hasn't. It still has game breaking bugs from years back but due to the nature of it being DLC based they just move on and leave them broken. You may not know much about railways but taking SoS as an example.. AI SPAD's that stop scenarios dead, AI locos that make no sound, timetables that are impossible to keep to. Those ARE NOT nitpicks. The footplate crew are not prototypical, the timetable is totally sparse and major stations are devoid of multiple services at rush hour, passengers act oddly, train make-ups are incorrect. Those ARE nitpicks based on expectations of historical accuracy (in what is marketed as a simulator). But there are plenty of game breaking bugs even in a route released just 6 months ago that doesn't require any railway knowledge to notice. And looking at the roadmap, there is no intention to fix it.. just to roll out more DLC.
I agree that SoS is not in a good place, and is even worse since TSW3 released. The bugs do indeed involve SPADs and due to the pressure bug the timetable is a joke. That route I would class as a mess right now. I take your point about a simulator, but at the same time most other routes are not a mess. Some need some tidying up, others are in a good condition. They have made good improvements on the save game issue, which was unacceptable until they did something about it; and they believe they are making progress on the derail/AI SPADs as well. I feel like the majority of "bugs" that people pick out are immersion issues, which I sympathise with, but don't bother me to the extent that I get very upset about or would go so far as to say make it a mess. Again, I'm not suggesting that detail isn't important, just that there is a counter-view in the extent to which it's a deal-breaker (or game-breaker).
Don't forget you need to add internet hyperbole... Because SoS has issues and because there are still some red light issue obviously the whole game needs throwing in the bin Personally I work WITH the issues rather than against them and only get frustrated at my own incompetence (such as sliding through the last red light at Lichfield TV in the snow) rather than banging a drum we know nobody is listening to. It really doesn't help that the Dovetail flywheel (google it) is still in effect but knowing this is the case I rather enjoy the DLC I have and count myself fortunate to not be bothered about DE or US routes, where a fair few issues reside
To be honest I don't even know what the difference between "rush hour passengers" and the passengers we have is... more of them I guess? London-Brighton has trouble running as is so thats likely why they haven't added more passengers. I doubt there will ever be a way around that unless they come up with some magic solution to improve performance in the core game. Right now it is in serious need of optimization. I mean I get being mad if they promised these passengers but whats the point in adding them if they just cause low FPS and crashes? The big problem with the route right now is the timetable is literally broken, at least on TSW3. If you try to do more than 1 service in the same sitting you will get jammed up by trains which are currently getting stuck south of Haywards Heath... that issue has been present since September and still no fix. I uninstalled the route.
Only thing I'm going to say to this is Bethesda still have bugs in F76 that go all the way back to Fallout 3 in 2008. TSW is a very complex game, so it's not surprising there are issues.
The fundamental issues to me on BML are sorting out, i.e. finishing, the mess that is still Reigate, putting in the missing track at Redhill and a general tidy up including putting lineside fencing where it's missing, e.g. the Quarry Line. They also need to look at putting approach control on the signals, there's a particularly nasty example at Norwood Junction where some runs throw you across from the Down Fast to Down Slow with virtually no warning. In terms of lock ups and stand offs, touch wood not encountered any on my recent runs and that includes resuming from a save. It is generally a more enjoyable route than on first release but does seem another example of what was high profile in the build up to launch, quickly dropped and forgotten about - just like SoS. This was also a route with massive potential for DLC such as Class 456, Class 700 or even a retro CIG/BIG and VEP pack, but also seems to have dropped off anyone's radar.
Dont forget the issue with the AI train from eastbourne that is blocking trains between Wivelsfield and haywards heath in the UP direction. this is only on TSW3 and is do to train from littlehampton (hove portal) is spawning at the same time as another train which is bound for brighton. so both services swawn at 16 minutes past the hour.Joe the fish did the researched and he's aware and trying to find the solution. This was since Oct12 which he posted. So on TSW3 you can't play continuos time table mode since you will get stuck eventually. Hope they find a fix soon
Me neither. BML is a complete enigma. It has its quirks as you mention, but I've played a lot of services, running up and down the line and I've yet to be troubled by tie-ups, red light issues or actually any serious gameplay problems. The route runs as smooth as silk for me. I don't doubt that other players have serious issues with the route, but......just lucky I guess.
I can’t say I’ve personally encountered very much, if anything, wrong with anything ATS have done as pay-ware. Just Trains released some very questionable stuff around the time of Western Mainlines, but starting with the Penzance section of that route, and after they effectively replaced their route building team, they very significantly upped their game. The Midland Mainlines are exceptionally good quality, both in terms of build quality and attention to detail. If your expectations of JT are of the Western Mainlines days then you should be in for a very pleasant surprise indeed. Finally, I’m afraid that for many of us the graphical fidelity the sorts of which we’ve come to expect in virtually every game of every genre in late 2022 / early 2023, is very much part of the ‘fun’. I want this game to simulate driving a train in the same detail and with the similar visuals and sounds that MSFS is capable of generating. When I say that I’m not talking about the creation of a whole world, but the manually built sceneries and assets, the attention to detail, the fidelity of pay-ware aircraft, the lighting, the weather system etc are in a completely different league to TSW. That’s what TSW was initially sold as - ‘next-gen’…instead we’ve got people in raptures because the developers stuck pointless cats all over a route whilst at the same time the scenery often looks like a game from 20 years ago, sounds cut in and out, signalling systems either don’t work or are only partially simulated, trains flip upside down if you brake slightly too late, the lighting is still woeful (even after a ‘full’ rework) etc. DTG is not a small company, nor is TSW a cheap game. This thread is about a route that is a year old in a game that is now over 5 years old. It still has many of the same issues that it had the day it was released and it inexplicably still doesn’t have ‘rush hour’ passenger's, which was the major selling point in the first place! IMO they should be doing far far better than they are.
I could have given you a list a year or so back but don't play TSC any more I don't HAVE expectations. I deal with what's in front of me. If their TSW stuff comes out good, great. If not I'll probably still play it if it's UK based and not steam Sorry, this busts an argument for me. Microsoft have billions of dollars of kit sitting there generating all these assets and even if they have a "small studio" doing some of the engineering dev, the bulk of the power comes from Redmond. Unless google decide to get into gaming I don't think anyone would come close Still, when MSFS came out they had bugs and flitches of their own from memory such as tower bridge being solid? Can't disagree here, and I would have my own opinions on how it could be achieved. Unfortunately whoever is steering the ship either isn't listening to us or has their own ideas about what's important in the game And of course we know they're constrained by their knowledge of optimisation over what is it, 9 platforms?
You’ve misunderstood my point re MSFS (I wasn’t clear enough) but I can’t respond properly right now sadly. Just quickly though, I’m not talking about what MSFS is from a Microsoft point of view, I’m talking about the 3rd party sceneries and aircraft. There is real care, passion and incredible attention to detail in very many of those add-ons. When plugged into the excellent engine Asobo have built they look spectacular. Microsoft and their AI etc are pretty much superfluous to the point really. As I say, got to go but hopefully that makes a bit more sense.
With all due respect, Vern, while those are definitely Bad Things, to me they all fall into the "aesthetic concerns" bin (except for approach control which is under the "brand new feature just implemented this month" category); I am much more concerned with the stuff in the Doesn't Work bin like permanent red lights, derails, AI SPADs, framerate collapses, nonfunctional loco controls and impossible timetables. I can live with missing fences.
Personally I've not had many issues with BML apart from the main ones of not being able to complete the Reigate to Redhill services because of redlight issues stopping you gaining access to the platforms and some FPS issues at East Croydon, other than them it's just small nitpicky bits which I don't let get in the way of my time playing it.
Oh I agree, but to a UK based player missing lineside fencing is a fairly significant oversight from a British route. Likewise the missing track section at Redhill, even if not used by any actual "paths" stands out like a sore thumb. As I said, I've been pushing my Journey mode a fair bit on this including resuming from saves and had none of the redout or lock up issues. Stuttering with sound dropouts particularly when running at speed is still a problem, but that's more of a core thing as it affects other routes too. But really, how long would it take to recall the route builder and get them to add in the missing bits - a couple of days work?
Promises, promises..............it's all we ever get. Anyway, never mind your broken route...........look! 'Over there!! A new version of the game complete with all new bugs.............and as a bonus we even tossed in a few old bugs for free! Can't say fairer than that, John. Know what I mean? Nudge, nudge. Wink, wink.'
None of which I have ever experienced on London- Brighton. There are a number of cosmetic issues with the route, as Vern mentioned, and my main gripes are the " push and run " electrostars, which can give me tollway trance. Overall, though, it's a very well-made route.
London-Brighton in TSW3 has been plagued by a perma-red/stalled train ever since the changeover, four months ago and counting. And that's not even counting the Redhill stalled train, there from the launch of the route and still not fixed. And are you quite sure you have not experienced a framerate collapse at Croydon? If so, you're the only one.
Yes and the train from Wivelsfield stops suddenly south of Haywards Heath at 36 minutes past every hour (if you have been playing for more than twenty minutes) The route is not working as intended and needs to be fixed. It is broken and should not be sold in its current state.
Isn't this a known error for which a viable solution was developed? Why hasn't it been deployed? This is close to a game-breaking bug, whereas aesthetic/cosmetic issues surely aren't as important. If anything, fixing this should be more important than fixing framerate drops, as it used to work properly in the past.
Every time a thread like this gets posted, there's always the answer that there are more pressing matters to attend to. More serious bugs to fix. But why is it that we are only allowed to expect the bare minimum?! Why should we be greatful if we can complete a service without getting stopped at a red light or the game crashing? I do not expect everything to be 100% perfect and bug free, but I do expect that all types of bugs, big and small, get sorted in a timely fashion, and noone can say that has been the case ever since the release of TSW2.
There's a difference between being grateful for completing a service and saying the game is unplayable if you cannot.
There are more pressing issues and more core Speed Test issues such as those to dispatcher to prevent roadblocks and red lights from occuring and stuff.
For me both are as important, and likely worked on by different teams so no reason to stop one for the other. It's not like we're talking about implementing something which doesn't affect gameplay across the whole sim
Yes you're quite right, more pressing issues do need priority. But every major update/patch seems to introduce issues that are going to be more pressing, leaving the longer standing issues to be pushed back almost endlessly. I found the part of the stream where they discussed this, thank you
If they put up a survey before they started, I bet we'd have some of these fixed instead of a new DLC with a toy train around a living room. But they won't ask, because new DLC means income, while fixing existing bugs brings no income.
They have polls regularly, and one of the questions is "should we spend more time fixing bugs", so I don't think this is a totally valid comment
Interesting! So, which do you think it's true? a) people have said "No, instead of fixing bugs, we want more DLCs to buy, bugs-and-all" b) people said "yes", and DTG ignored the answer I've only been around for about a month now, so my experience with the game is very limited. But I have encountered a bug that prevents me from getting an achievement, so, higher than the aesthetic group, but not game breaking category either. Searching through the forums, I see the bug has been around for a long time. They keep asking for feedback on forums, but do they act on it? I mean, anything other than "What DLC should we sell next?"
Do I think people said they want no DLC and the company to close because they had no money? Nope Do I think people said they wanted buggy software with issues or even things they can't complete to their satisfaction? Nope Do I think this is a more nuanced issue with points on all sides that could be discussed ad nauseum? Yep Again, there is a more nuanced argument in this. do they ask for feedback - yes do they act on it - the tech team do, yes do they then test it - probably do they then beta test it - maybe do they release it - erm... this is where it falls apart a bit Unfortunately DTG (and by that I mean the whole company not any specific person or department) has an issue whereby the people we talk to here (Matt, JD, Adam, Sam) are the "front facing people" who are full of good ideas and good intentions but seemingly little input into what gets put out and more importantly... WHEN So there are many many things which the dev team have fixed and indeed their version of the game works with these fixes and away they go. But we don't have all those fixes in our version of the game because they're stuck in testing purgatory Personally I wish they did something like Microsoft's "Super Tuesday" where once every three months they release every tested fix and update and then LEAVE IT WELL ALONE! until the next update. That way we know what level of stability we will have, and if they work three months behind... even better. What they do at the moment is dev and dev and dev right up until release. That means even when they test something they're not testing the live version of said thing. This is why when they fix one thing they break two others. Especially when those others were unknown or untested themselves... So overall I think they DO fix certain issues, there are others they could do better on and there are certainly issues they've fixed in-house but not released
