PLEASE DTG, give us an option to either completely deactivate these messages during the journey or show them at the end when we get the summary. The worst is when the message obstructs signals !
what achievement messages? the external ones by the program/platform you use (steam/epic/ps/xbox/whatever)?
I think he means the AP messages you get. "CONGRATULATIONS YOU USED THE WINDOW WIPERS!!!! RANK UP LEVEL 2".
Not to mention they repeat - congratulations for using the throttle for the umpteenth time on the same traction unit. The distance driven messages that repeat or fail to heed you've already driven 10x that distance already with the loco type.
Totally agree, none of this stuff has any place in a simulator. The worst part is that it’s all also completely meaningless and can’t be turned off.
It really begs the question who gives a LOVE about that stuff. I’m trying to just drive a train, not see if I can beat my previous score of using the windshield wipers or congratulate myself every time I go 100 miles in the same locomotive (or cabcar). It’s silly and unnecessary. It’s stuff you’d expect in some children’s game, not a simulator. Although DTG tries hard to market to the young generation. There needs to be a way to turn it off for those of us who couldn’t care less.
I said elsewhere that TSW seems to be in a constant identity crisis and is trying to be all things to all people, which just isn’t possible. It just doesn’t know what it wants to be.
I do find it ridiculous that a message would pop up saying that I use the windscreen wipers or horn. I never cared about stuff like that either. Although it never really bothered me, it would've been nice to have an option to disable it. TSW in my opinion does suffer from an identity crisis. This game just doesn't know what it wants to be and it's been like that for a long time
I agree, these messages always do me in and always seem to be triggered when I get properly immersed. Very annoying.
should not be too hard to include an disable popup messages for services i think on scenarios it might be tricky to do that
I agree, these messages are very immersion-breaking. I usually get rid of them by fiddling with every possible control at the start of the first service (after doing the tutorial since they don't pop up there). Throttle, brakes, wipers, horn, etc. You can't see anything for about 6 seconds, but then they don't pop up when you don't expect them.
I wish you could just disable this points nonsense full stop. If it actually meant something it wouldn’t be so bad, but the whole shooting match is completely pointless (pun intended). Like so many things in this ‘game’ it’s just there for the sake of being there. It shouldn’t be that you have to actually work to play this game as a sim. It’s a constant faff of disabling things, turning things on that should be on by default EVERY time you play, dealing with on-screen pop-ups etc. If you extrapolate the player numbers from SteamDB across all platforms (which is a fair assumption to make) it would certainly suggest that player numbers are declining. I’d say there’s a fair chance it’s because we’re on this relentless merry-go round of buggy DLC with no real gameplay improvements since the day TSW released 7 years ago (I know people will disagree with me, but I don’t count free-roam as a gameplay improvement. To me it’s a gimmick and I’ve got no real interest in sticking random trains on routes they don’t belong on).
Absolutely right. Which is why the possibilities of yet another German commuter route with a one handle EMU, regardless of location, fills me with no interest at all and why I have little intent of fleshing out my back catalogue of missing routes in a sale. It’s the same old, same old. Journey mode that mixes the scenarios with a few timetable runs or a couple of depot (yawn) shunting moves. No randomisation or anything to add a spark to what becomes, after a few trips, a mundane A to B predictable experience. It was Vorarlberg that really finished it for me, after all the hype it was a tedious 90 min bus journey stopping every few minutes on a route that never actually put you in the mountains. The game needs a spark, either by moving into brand new territory or adding elements that make it more interesting. All on top of a massive core update to throw out the bugs, stuttering and poor audio.
I guess this belongs in the same corner as the stuff they asked us about the recent "What Marks A Route as completed For You?" thread. It's nice to have gimmicks like that when you come new to the game, however some people in charge seem to clearly have no clue on what to put emphasize on in a train simulator. And this is rather shocking than it could be even meant as a bad joke.
Just a +1 for getting rid of all of these messages. They're meaningless and irritating. We're not five-year-olds.
Can't those messages be turned off with the notification setting? I haven't gotten those messages in a long while.
Oh boy, does it ever! It's seems like the game has been rolling downhill ever since the false hope generated by the Rush Hour routes. A series of tired, mind-numbing one joystick electric trains on tedious routes. The one saving grace for me could have been NYT, but DTG can't seem to get it rolling after a series of false starts and a failure to fix the most elementary errors with trains and stations. As far as the childish messages and scoring /collectible nonsense, it seems to me that DTG is aiming its sights squarely at a very young audience that will increasingly marginalize serious train fans like me. Yes, call me a snobby gatekeeper if you wish. As a true trainsimmer, raised on a diet of MSTS and TSC, I'll wear that moniker as a badge of honor. This is not the game I imagined when CSX: Heavy Haul hit the market. Maybe Just Trains can come to the rescue.
My guess is that one joystick modern electric trains are much more popular than older BR era or older freight routes like Clinchfield. Apparently Clinchfield didn't do well in the sales department. I do perfer modern trains, but when I do hop onto NTP from time to time, I do enjoy driving the Class 47/4
Part of the problem with modern trains is that in reality there is more than put some power and go. In TSW, the process is simplified, therefore there isn't much to do, hence why put some power and go is really the only way to drive modern trains.
The marketing of Train Sim World has been gradually shifting towards a younger audience over the last few years. More gimmicks are another sign of this. DTG need to make clear if this is being pursued as a game only or a proper simulator.
Kirby gives you the occasional text prompt very early in the game, but it only does so at places like at the beginning of the level, or acquiring a energy sphere, times which you aren't doing anything. Most of its instructions in-game are done with little signs that are in the background, thus never block the stage like they can in TSW. I don't like that people say these are "for the kids" because it implies the messages in TSW are in anyway are good design for anyone. But simple fact is even a tutorial prompt shouldn't be blocking the gameplay at any point, whether it's for the kids or not.
I think there are different things being talked about, though. The tutorials prompts I don’t have a problem with, because I recognise they’re useful for new players, and they can be switched off (there are a few issues with the occasional one still appearing, but that’s a minor problem in my view). The messages which annoy me are the ones giving congratulations on using the wipers for the first time, or completing 1,000 miles in a class 47…. I really can’t imagine that they are useful or interesting for anyone, and they can’t be switched off.
So, I´m not the only one. I´ve always wondered about those rather obvious messages. "Congrats, you opened the freezer door to get to the ice." Brilliyunt!
My post isn't talking directly about the tutorial prompts themselves though, it's on how they're integrated into the game. That point applies to any message in a video game equally, there isn't a appropriate time to block the screen mid-game. I use a tutorial as a example just to demonstrate that even important messages don't need to do that.
They still know us lot who remember the good old days of BR are still here though as their music choice for the advert video thing was excellent. In fact hearing Depeche Mode playing over FS and the 801 did give me a weird shiver and made me look forward to TSW4 more than any other edition. Gimmicks are fine as long as they don't interfere with and take priority over the simulator side of things, which in this case it does.
You can add the following line to your engine.ini to get rid of them: ts2.RewardMonitor.ShowLowImpactNotificationsAsFull=0 Reward monitor is enabled in default project settings, so even blowing horn, using wippers, etc for the first time on new content triggers the full notification banner in the middle of the screen. Progression will be still monitored and increasing levels will apperar at the service/scenario completion summary page only, not during gameplay. Only the major achievements will be still displayed on screen during gameplay but that happens from time to time only (e.g: driven 100 miles with a new locomotive). Cheers
Shame that console players can't tweak ini settings. DTG should just introduce an option by default rather than players needing to tweak ini settings
I'm okay with the "gamey" progression-type milestones being present in TSW. I don't play to them, but some people do. I just wish the ones mentioned here didn't come up in the middle of the screen right in your field of view.
Agreed, but why can't it be both? It doesn't seem that much of an ask to have two modes,"Arcade" with HUDs and indicators galore, points, rewards, incidental music and so on, or "Realistic" with a minimal HUD, safety systems turned on, no extraneous pop-up messages and no incidental music. Then if users want, they can turn on or off the extra bits they want (or don't) via the options menu.
It’s an interesting little game to play to flick every switch and open every door to get all the “Well done Timmy, you did something, here’s a biscuit” rewards out of the way before playing a proper service just so they can’t intrude later. That won’t stop the mileage related rewards but it is a start. While it may be irritating to some of us it may well really please some people to get these rewards. I’m wondering what the alternative could be where these rewards didn’t exist and if these people would think “Hey, I just opened a cab door for the first time and got no biscuit, I hate this game” and move back to Minecraft. An interesting thought experiment.
Well, every achievement that can't be completed generates a lot of angry people, so there is your experiment.
Sometimes it seems that the loudest and most vitriolic complaints in the forum are about some medal, " award " or " mastery " not working or being achievable. Of course, such complaints receive immediate and apologetic attention and figure prominently in patches, whereas real issues concerning gameplay, routes and trains receive relatively lukewarm responses, take forever and often are never addressed at all. If these so-called achievements were eliminated from the game, no doubt a chunk of the market would fall by the wayside, but perhaps the game itself would be better and be more attractive to serious train simmers as attention shifts to problem solving and improving performance.
Yeah, but those are the game platform achievements not the purely in-game points bonuses for flicking a switch we are mainly talking about here. Surely nobody would miss them because there isn’t a list of what they are before you play so are unknown.
So much childish gatekeeping in this thread. Do i like the popups for using the wipers or whatever? No, so i just ingore them. Do i care about Action Points? Not at all, so i just turn off that HUD element. Do i care about bringing new players into train-simming? YES! I am not, nor will ever be a programmer/modder etc, so if i want to keep playing train sims for many years to come, a vibrant community is must- if achievements, mastery, medals, action points, and all the rest are what's needed to attract new players, then i'm all in for it. I'm 44, so i guess on the older side, but i've been playing trainsims since MSTS came out when i was in my early 20's, and the gatekeeping has ALWAYS been the worst aspect of the community as a whole. Just to pre-empt, "but it's a serious simulator!", no it's not, not really. Zusi is a serious simulator IMO.
I think even new players would be annoyed if the same message came up saying "well done you've used the wipers for the first time" every time they drive one particular train.
Can we at least agree that these messages should be displayed in a way that doesn’t block out the center of the screen? I don’t mind the Steam achievements because they show up in the corner, don’t interrupt anything, and disappear quickly.
