Road Map Train Sim World Roadmap - November 2023

You can do that but that's against the general guidelines of the process of software development.

 

I don’t think it’s an against any guidelines to release or continue to develop before release game dlc…

 

This month's roadmap is rather underwhelming for me. Apart from BPO and the Koln timetable update (so happy to see the ICE 1 in more routes), there's nothing else that hardly excites me which is incredibly frustrating for TSW 4.

The new German and Swiss routes, which I was excited for initially, are not really of interest now. Firstly, I'm not a fan of single-track routes which lack long-term replayability/variety; instead of Maintalbahn - considering we recently just had another single track DMU route on the outskirts of Frankfurt with Niddertalbahn already - I'd rather of seen MSB upgraded to TOD 4 with a fully revamped timetable (or even extended to Wurzburg) while Berninalinie, which I suppose does sound quite interesting, I'd rather of seen a proper large standard-gauge Swiss route with an IC2000 etc.

The new gameplay packs also are not the most interesting. Regarding Edinburgh-Glasgow, if you want something that will be of interest, then just please finally add the most obviously missing LNER Azumas to Waverley, it's incredibly baffling how this has not been done yet! Also echo other comments that UK content really needs more freight locos, again another strange decision considering the plethora for Germany and the US.

Meanwhile, I'm not a fan of having a 323 Regional Railways gameplay pack as this loco is getting rather repetitive since TSW 3. I'd of loved something like this but instead for the Class 150 and/or 158; for example, having these in Northern's livery could bring new Rose Hill services to Glossop Line's timetable etc. Or, alternatively, if you want new gameplay, then I and probably many other players would very welcome fresher content for much older pre-TSW 3 routes.

Overall, with newer TSW content for me personally being rather underwhelming compared to past examples, I only hope more older routes, from RSN to BML, and MSB to NTP get revamped timetables like that of Koln as I play these much more than routes from TSW 3/4. Finally, I also remain optimistic that the community via the Editor will have a lot of interesting content and I hope one day this can eventually be available for those of us to play on consoles too.

 

Ooh could this be a new steam loco for the peak Forrest. Little 3F?

 

Although the tease is BR green so maybe not

 

Probably a teaser for which route the br green is for

 

I’m going to place a guess on a deltic, maybe I’m far off but we’ll see in time

 

That would be fun!

 

they are green and I remember seeing an old video from 1967 I think where they pretty much advertise the comfort compared to steam trains and how they can make a cup of tea on the hot plate. So maybe onto something or very far off

 

I'm assuming it's the rumored BR green Loco/ DMU pack that was very briefly mentioned after Peak Forest.

So, I would assume maybe a reskinned 101 at least, but maybe another 1st gen dmu in a diesel/dmu/ steam mixed timetable at most.

 

maybe correct, I was wrongly assuming it was a loco addon not loco pack until now.

 

Self imposed constraints. Just look at NY-TRENTON. The way that route released cause 30+ pages of backlash. Had that route not been rushed, it would've gotten better reviews and probably more sales. There are already some that have said that they won't buy the Swiss route because of the length. The whole line is 38 miles in reality but we aren't getting the full 38 miles. Of course there are reasons, but it's not unreasonable after 7 years of development, to expect things like that not to happen.

SEHS was extended by DTG, they added the hs1 section which is just mostly countryside and the section to Dartford. The sheerness branch isn't like running in a built up city or anything so it wasn't unreasonable that there were those that would've expected the branch to be added.

 

This roadmap doesn’t exactly honk my horn as it’s a little light on specifics.
Although if we actually end up getting BR green on PFR I will be well and truly honked

 

Building the line to ashford and dartford even though it's "just countryside" like you said is a lot of time required for modeling. That's 56 (49 + 7) total miles that all need to be modeled. Thinking it's easy to do and something they can quickly do in a single day is the wrong perspective and mindset

 

I wonder if Bernina Bahn gets the Gem 4/4 Dual mode loco and also Blackpool Ormskirk Rail tours if one doesn't have NTP Huddersfield line

 

Did you miss the part where I said that "of course there are reasons"

I don't think that a line can be made in a day but DTG choose what to and to not include and it isn’t unreasonable for those to have expected that branch to have been part of the extension given how short it is. Whilst I understand, I don't need you to be a DTG spokesperson explaining to me how development is difficult or that it takes a while to make content. I am fully aware of that

 

One star review for this road map, none of the coming (hopefully) content have realese dates. Very blurry.

 

My personal views:

BPO is an easy day one purchase for me - looks fantastic and looking forward to pacer action.

I don't have much interest personally in non UK content but the Arosa Line gameplay pack seems.... eh. Bernia line seems uneedingly cut short but if it has great scenery and sounds it'd be good (doubtful though)

As for the rest of the British content:
Edinburgh gameplay pack: I don't own scotrail express (albeit I am interested in it - might pick it up on sale) and while 9.99 is a tough margine for a few liveries- atleast it should add some freight variation HOPEFULLY layered elsewhere.

Class 323 reskin: first of all - Congrats on this team for there first product - I'm sure this is just a testing the waters project. I don't really care much for this reskin as I don't own BCC or Glossop line (albeit the later seems more interesting) so likely won't pick it up.



So this month seems to be getting atleast 30 quid out of me thanks to the brilliant BPO! Black Friday though....... well DTG...... I'll either buy nothing or your entire stock...

 

If there’s not something on here for you then what does it take?

 

My guess would be a green 101 and a green peak, along with extra services & scenarios

 

385s don’t have a buckeye or a tightlock coupler though. There is no scenario in real life where 66587 would ever be seen with a coupler like the one the DB ones have. The buckeye on 66s 003-250 is built onto the loco and no others have it

 

No idea, I was just quoting what the article says.
I have little knowledge or interest in real world trains.

 

Thanks for the reply.
A suggestion.
(I know this is Off Topic here).
When the Consist Editor is available I hope you will take care to develop packages of freight cars, passenger cars and locomotives in order to have more variety, without them being "rigidly" linked to the timetable of
a specific route.

 

"Route - Union Workshop"

Only it will me brinin'g back in TSW (maybe, phahah)
....

Actually no - with the way the British feel about their game (bugs haven't been fixed for years!) and especially their players (unjustifiably high prices and disrespect for American fans in terms of the quality of USA DLC! ) I don't want to buy anything from them. Grown men absolutely do not want to understand what the players want!

 

Does this mean, you changed the route it is for, or is that dependant on the operator?

Or asked differently with a fake example: if we were to get the French TGV Euroduplex but for a German route, would that qualify as German or French loco DLC?

 

But is it still the same loco as before or is ti completely different?

 

Disappointed with the roadmap. There have been so many things fed back regarding TSW 4 within the respective route threads and next to none of it acknowledged or addressed in the roadmap. Same old story really. I don’t know why we bother to feed anything back in the first place

 

Nothing critical from the Q&A Thread has been answered, my posting their with questions was one of the most liked, their are others with 10+ likes which would at least indicate that a lot of people are interested to get answers to these questions. But no...I also don't know why we as passionate players give feedback here. I mean, I'm here and rumbling around because I like trains and I like TSW, not because I do hate it, I just want it to be better or DTG to use its full potential. I think this is the reason for a lot us here discussing problems, giving feedback pointing at problems, everything seems to be ignored. I don't know why.

With TSW4 release and this new roadmap I'm finally loosing my last bit of trust towards DTG. TSW3 did get a lot of things right and their was a small period of time where you could feel like things are going to change and going to be better, but right now it feels like the community is just ignored.

I mean, what is going on? People bought TSW4 weeks ago and their are for example crashes on PS5, the answer from DTG here in the forums is "PS 5 crashes I believe is on the list". Should we now say thank you DTG that you finally put crashes for people on the list two and a half month after release? The Editor thing is a big joke as well. Release an editor which is not working because you can't "produce" something with it because it can't export the files. I mean, why release an Editor that is not having the most basic feature being able to release content?

Why is "

• ÖBB 4024 Indicator Light Visibility"

On the "future patches" list? It took not even 48h for someone to make a fix for this problem in the community. Why does it take DTG more then a month to fix it and they still have not done it? Can't be so much work when people without having the official tools can fix it in their spare time. How many people at DTG are able to fix stuff like this? One person?

I don't get it and I'm just really tired about all of this :-(

 

It really does beg the question whether they care about quality. There is a lot of evidence (too much in fact) to suggest they don’t.

 

Yes it does, but it also raises a lot more questions. Let's stay with the Editor, it was announced in the TSW4 announcement stream. So you would expect that at this point of time they at least had a working alpha version where I would assume that someome tested if it is possible to make .pak files with it. If not their should have been at least something like a development plan with missing or not working features. Then with the TSW4 release the Editor came out, and it was mentioned by the community (not by DTG as a "known issue") that it is not possible to create .pak files. Sure they said the obvious stuff as "we are aware of it" "it is on the list" "we are looking into it" etc.

This is not just a bug it is a major feature being corrupted, like you buy a new MS Office and the print function is not working. You would expect this to be fixed with highest priority within hours, days or at least a week after release, not for DTG.

Same is as mentioned for all those small issues like missing OHLE on Voralberg, missplaced OHLE masts on one german route (currently don't remember where it is), all of this can be sorted out within a short amount of time. The missplaced OHLE masts also someone from the community already fixed in the editor within minutes, but it can't be released as a mod as the cooking function is not working. So it really raises the question like you say A quality and care of your work and B if their is really a problem within DTG of organizing the work, having work goals.

Like said, their are some issues since TSW4 release which should have top priority, like PS5 crashes, editor etc.

Then things like the new NYT timetable do happen, patch comes, passengers no longer working on the route, answer is "future patch" why release it when it brakes the game even more? Brings us back to your question, do you care about the quality of your work.

 

I wish DTG was more like Apple:
Obviously DTG doesn’t have Apple’s bank balance, but it can still take the time to pause current development and blitz fix bugs and general annoyances.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/arti...s-11-due-to-problems-with-bugs?srnd=undefined

 

Wikipedia says DTG has 200+ employees, we don't know how many of them work on TSW, but it should be a bunch of people as it is their main product besides TSC. So this should be not the smallest development team in the world. Their are much smaller developers which are able to get on top of their stuff.

 

All game companies regardless of their annual earnings I find are quite notorious for being bad at bug fixing.

Apple could spend that time but things will still be buggy I bet also.

but yea I certainly would agree it would be beneficial for TSW to have some needed Tech Support time concentration.

 

Rolling stock modelling is made by external contractors and not in house. At least I believe this. DTG do the SimuGraph and audio stuff then.

 

The problem here is that their are a lot of very small issues which could be fixed in a short amount of time, like PZB indicator lights, wrong placed light cones, missing OHLE etc. Nothing very "special" but annoying stuff. But if you just never touch it, well it is not some issues but it is a pile of small issues.

For the bigger problems in TSW it would help to get rid of them. Lets take the passenger system for example, problems since TSW2 rush hour. If they would fix it, it would benefit every single route. But they are just not touching it, why is the question...why?

 

My personal feeling is more and more that they don't do a lot of "core" stuff internally. You would expect that it is easy to coordinate work internally for fixes and tell some developers to take rid of certain problems. But as it always takes a lot of time...

On the other hand they seem to have a lot of people for graphical stuff as the output of new routes, skins etc. is working like it ever did.

 

Very much agree, no ai passenger lights is often a bug, I bet that one would be only a change of a setting to do but the 101 and probably others still have it.

 

That 200 people will also likely include marketing, HR, website and a bunch of other non productive staff. So I mean, thats not a great indicator of anything, really.

 

At least it indicates that DTG is not a small company.

 

Thanks for the clarification, JD!

 

That’s a very interesting point! Maybe a change made in reaction to feedback for Vorarlberg and the desire for more Austrian traction. Let’s hope it’s a really unique loco and worth the loss of the German loco that was in development. We’ll find out in a few months, I guess!

 

I don't think we'll find out, as we probably won't know, what German loco we missed ...

Also knowing that it's a completly new loco ruins my speculations on what loco it could be, based on the fact that it is suitable as an DLC for both countries.
I'm courious to find out, what is to come none the less.

 

Bernina Line is amazing!!!

 

So, a German loco was sacrificed for a completely unrelated Austrian loco? Interesting.

 

My initial thought was that after all of the backlash on sounds for the talent1 they may have reevaluated some ongoing projects.

 

Quite possible. I just had to think of Matt saying some time ago that introducing another country besides the big three will mean less content for the big three. So I was wondering if German content is now getting Beeching’s axe in favour of Austrian content.