Issue Closed

Over a week to respond to a customer support ticket in relation to missing content.

It appears DTG dont care about missing content claims as they have already received payment for the content, in this case they received payment over 6 years ago on the original release of TSW. Out of that content purchased, everyone lost the NEC as a route without compensation so DTG could repackage and resell the route as NY - Trenton, and in relation to Rapid Transit ive had 18 months where i couldnt use it because of my reasons, that is my privilege as a consumer, however ive also had 18 months of not being able to use my purchased content because DTG and PlayStation stores want me to purchase the route for a 2nd time at full price, but DTG dont seem to be bothered to fix this issue.

Im not looking for any compensation, i just want to be able to use content i have already purchased, can someone at DTG expedite this issue please?

 

Probably busy with the 100+ other tickets that are being sent in. I've set in a couple tickets and one took a couple days for a response

 

Did your issues get resolved?

I sent in multiple tickets for the same issue and the issues are still there?

 

Disregarding the posturing and self-entitlement on display here, you can expedite the process by adding the following to the ticket:

1. If it was a disc copy of TSW, take a picture of the game box and disc seperately along with a handwritten note stating your name and email address (associated with the support account you raised the ticket with) and attach the picture to the ticket;
2. If it was a digital purchase attach the email receipt from Sony showing the purchase of the game/DLC
3. If the email receipt isn't available, DTG may accept some other proof of purchase such as a transaction log from your purchase history on your Sony account (I can't say whether they would or wouldn't accept this since I haven't had to use this method)

My key claims have always been handled well by the customer service team, so as Trainiac says they are probably just dealing with a backlog and will get to your ticket. Have patience

 

After us the community listed every issue we all found DTG went silent. They were all over the forums and such for the release now it's like you looking into an empty hallway...

 

No response yet

 

A couple of days is alot different than a week without even an acknowledgement

 

Same here it has been a little over a week and there has been no response other than the auto reply with your ticket #.

 

I always get acknowledgement my ticket has been received, so that is weird.

 

You will always get an auto reply back with your ticket # this is standard with any company where you submit trouble tickets online. But it's the response time where they are to contact should not take that long.

 

Just one, I reported a crash

 

I got more than an automated response. But it didn't resolve my issues.

 

I never even got an auto reply, just that support ticket saying processing on the DTG support site

 

Sorry Matt, but how about boosting the team size of the developers and testers instead, so you get a less broken product - and therefore less customer complaints - to begin with?

 

Second this. After running TSW4 for a bit now, it makes you see how many bugs there actually are and what were missed on release. Many of which already reported but have failed to receive acknowledgment. Adds to the increased hopelessness that they will get fixed. Like someone said above, DTG was very active before and up until release. Now very quiet leaving the initial release behind to focus on what’s next? Are there even separate teams working on fixing the initial release and working on what’s next? And the motivation for the next $tep$ $hould be glaringly obviou$.

I think the days of coming on here with a bug report or question to be answered by DTG are far and few between now.

 

Surely the question here is WHY the latest and greatest version of this software is even allowed to be sold as an allegedly "new" product in such a poor state that error reports from customers cause the system to overload to the point of collapse.

What is even more alarming is that this fiasco seems to happen with EVERY new version of TSW even though basically under the hood it is the same game just rebranded and with a small amount of updates included whilst cynically marketed as a whole new product. It is not.

Perhaps DTG should reconsider it's priorities. You happily spend your customers money on glossy videos of an orchestra performing the admittedly pleasant new theme music but fail to have an adequate quality control set-up to avoid putting out yet another sub standard product.

Problems like this happening occasionally are understandable. When it happens EVERY TIME people have an absolute right to question the level of competence of DTG and people like yourself who should be ensuring that this situation never happens.

With this reportedly huge backlog of problems can your long suffering customers actually expect the fixes and patches required will not be delayed so long that they are forced to cough up more cash for them to be included in TSW5 ?

 

TSW 5 and us US freight people MIGHT be able to finally use the OTHER 50% of our locomotives. You're spot on with this reply. Pushing a game out when TSW 3 was in such bad shape is sad too see.

DTG if your really want your game polished up, I've seen the threads of coders and modders literally telling you how to fix half the small issues. Get your priorities straight. Fix what's in the game now. Stop focusing on next DLCs/Game.

 

More employees doesn't necessarily result in less bugs. Some triple a studios create games with many more bugs. Smaller teams like indie devs also create games with minimal bugs. More people doesn't always correlate to less bugs.

 

Also you do realise that NEC is long gone?

 

Long gone, like the last vestiges of DTG's reputation and credibility.

 

I think DTG's management refuses to spend money and resources on bug fixing. One post-release patch is always planned, but the rest is good will of individual staff members - possibly doing fixes in their spare time.

Look at Catan or Fishing - the forums are dead.

Most bugs are discovered after people made their purchase, so the money is there and with fixing bugs you don't make (short time) money. And with each iteration the reviews get reset.

That's their philosophy, and has always been. People will forget bad things, and Railfans are a very forgiving and addicted target market.

 

In their case, it might. Because after every rushed release, the answer is "we ran out of time". At every discussion about potential improvements, the excuse is "the X team is busy with something else at the moment". From what they communicate, it seems like they have very few people compared to the workload at hand.

So they either have to cut back the pace or get more people on board. But the current mindset of rushing every release, cutting features and neglecting QA and post release fixes cannot be continued forever, because at one point more and more people will be turnt away from the franchise - and then TSW will go into the trash alongside Flight Sim World.

 

They knew there were bugs, they knew it wasn't finished, they still shipped it. They always do, the Dovetail flywheel in action. Shipping dates are more important than polishing it up, you can always (promise to) do that afterwards.

In this case of course TSW is setting the bar even lower as some TSW4 features aren't even here yet (suspension, formation designer) while others are, uh, way off (editor, steam physics, lack of crashing!). The lighting? well its a moving feast, interesting that in the editor streams you just drag and drop a sphere into the world to set either TOD3 or TOD4, then of course every object with a shadow is calibrated separately so you have to change everything individually. No idea why its done like this, but they need to use something with realtime effects rather than baked lighting then they don't have to change everything manually each time something is updated in the core lighting. Its the same with trains and different versions of locos, everything is individual and made differently, there is no background architecture at all. I guarantee they would do things differently if they started the franchise now. It is almost less scalable than TSC.

I do wonder if TSW might get put to bed and TS3 prototype might be in the works, which from the off seeks to remedy some of these structual flaws.

From the FAQs in the future:
"Why TSNEW? This new game is built from the ground up with learnings from our time with TSW. We are very proud of TSW, but..."

 

You what? Nobody lost NEC. I still have it available for the original TSW, which it was included with and the subsequent TSW2020. So does everyone else who owns it. It was never available for TSW2 - 4 so we haven’t lost it from them.

 

Thank you for the reply Matt.

I dont know if its worth nothing but i submitted the original ticket to tech support rather than product key claims, i noticed last night the details below my above screen shots change and had red stars on them so i hit update ticket in case it was required.

Maybe a couple of word response to let me know that was needed may have been in order if it was a change manually made in the background.

Once again the reply is much appreciated.

 

+1 ... just look at train sim classic. Why is there an updated freeware version of nearly any route they made? Some of them beeing heavily modified with several community members working on them for years! TSW now has an editor, but you can´t change "cocked content". So the begging for fixes and updates carries on.... it has always been the case since 2012 or whenever DTG had taken over Kujus Train Sim. But the TSC community made a whole new hobby out of updating and fixing routes. Something that is sadly not possible with Train Sim World.

 

Terrible idea if we lose the current content from new version, TSW is a massive amount about collection, if that goes then everything was for nothing to players.

TSW has issues, those issues need properly seeing to, which has not been happening, sure the odd thing gets patched but the overall issue is still their.

Abandonment isn’t ever the answer

its the equivalent of saying we need TSW5 to fix TSW4, that’s wrong, TSW4 would stay un fixed and TSW5 has same and new issues…

 

The issue is still there, and my point is that at this stage the issue isn't fixable. Because the issue is there is no real underlying structure. They just make more and more content. Different people make it and over time it piles up. It isn't even all compatible. Couple a 150 and a 158? Nope. Run the ICE in different power? Nope. Are the different 155s the same? Nope. How about another version of the 101?

They make changes to the core and then sit back and go, gosh fancy that, when multiple things break because its pure spaghetti code. At this point it needs writing off and starting over again. They could perhaps port over some of the 3d models but thats about it. We might even get a functional in-game map. TSC will be the only game that never ends, TSW will get put out of its misery sooner rather than later. Especially if you are on Gen 8 or a less powerful PC.

 

Unless the content comes along, a new franchise is getting zero support from me, issues need addressing not abandoning.

coupling any train needs to be set up by DTG , that’s just like any feature, they can do it or not, new franchise would have the same issue of do it or not. Same goes for power modes.

I want to see bugs addressed properly and same mistakes not keep coming about, not sold a different version of the train sim, there is no prominent issue what’s been said to be completely unfixable because it’s TSW.

A new game brings new issues and any original franchise owner gets nothing but keeping content what’s not been properly addressed and is abandoned for further development/fixes.

Gen 8/less powerful PC’s will drop eventually (followed by Gen 9,10,11 you get the idea) regardless, the issue is it probably should have already dropped by now, that’s just simple new tech stuff regardless of game though impacted by each games offering mostly of memory usage)

edit: anyone who thinks a new franchise will solve people’s issues with TSW, only needs to see if TSW solved all of TS…

 

The more content there is, the longer it takes to keep on porting the legacy content. Each port also resulted in a lot of content not working. Let's say ue5 is planned for the future of tsw. That requires every route to be rebuilt. Currently there is 85 dlc and growing. Even if dtg started now, it would be years of work and it only gets longer with each new dlc released. So how does dtg go about doing that for hundreds of content. At some point in time, there might be over 700 pieces of dlc. How does dtg port all that over while being up to date on unreal engine? Tsw isn't tsc.

 

Either port it or say goodbye to any sort of collection, cause by that logic it will all gradually become too much.

The decision is with DTG, but I stay with the collection is more than necessary. How DTG gets the content across isn’t of my concern, my concern is purely collection.

what happens if UE5 comes, we will see what, if it does.

Edit: I’ve held since the start of TSW2 that if my collection doesn’t come across that’s where my stay with TSW end’s, I just hope whatever that point could be, that the last TSW iteration for that is in a good state.

no collection = new game, I’m 0% interested in a new game.

 

Thanks for your assistance Matt,

I received a reply from JD this morning and have provided all the proof of purchase etc that he may need.

And once again I understand pre release is a busier time for any developer's customer support, i just got a little concerned about the time length as i had not got a auto reply or email to confirm the ticket actually had been submitted.

Thanks again for your help.

 

JD,

Ive just responded to you on the ticket system and provided screen shots of email receipt proof of purchase and PS transaction log showing all the purchase details.

Thanks for taking the ticket on.
Alan.

 

DTG_JD and DTG_Matt,

Thank you very much for help with this ticket. All sorted.

Alan.