Enough Is Enough!!!

Well, yeah, that is the point of this whole 47 page thread - that many of us don't agree with what is worth it in DTG's eyes, when other developers clearly show what is possible.

 

on this point for DTG, it is also a balance of what options their is for each route/train and whether work put into that is worth the trade off for work somewhere else.

 

"Possible" does not mean it will be economical in any sense other than gaining kudos instead of money. That's legit to do for a first product, but not sustainable over more than a few DLC. I did that with my G6 too. It was not a economical product in any way, but it showed some decent quality as a first product. Same for the bunch of 2nd party work i did for DTG. It was not nearly economical in the first stages years ago, but it was quality and showed what i am capable of. So, as a company you can do that for a while, but not forever. At some point you need to get economical or you will end up being bankrupt. Does not mean DTG could disappear when the raise the quality a bit. But that's at least their very own decision. There might be reasons why things are done as they are done. And no, it's not laziness or lack of knowledge how to do things. That's way more complicated.

 

Surely there must be a way of finding a balance between the two? I'm not sure if its corporate pressure from the top down or something like that perhaps. Because surely as you say you'd get more kudos and better publicity for releasing higher quality content? You might get more sales as a result more people would be invested in the game as they'd see the level of quality increases.

I want to see DTG succeed. And if its corporate pressure thats reducing their dev times and meaning we aren't getting quality investments for our money then I do feel sympathy for the devs. Because they take all the flak for that.

I think there does have to be some realisation that you'll lose business if you produce poor products. There has to be some sort of balance between economical factors and product quality.
And I do hope that dtg can figure that out somehow. And I hope that in some ways the dev team can catch a break and be allowed to produce something special.

 

But that's just an assumption of most people from the outside of that business. In reality that's really not the case for most products. I, for my own products, have some empiric numbers to being able to state that. Better quality does not mean higher revenues. The latter is the case, at least for most of my products compared to other, less quality products. So, there it begins to make decisions how much quality is needed and possible to stay economical. And that is probably what DTG is doing. They try to stay economical. Yeah, a company could say "hey, we can't reach the quality level we would wish for, so, lets close the company since it will never become reliable". Guess, especially for a TS, customers don't want that. But such decisions are not made by the enthusiasts within such companies, they will be made by the financial department of a company. The world would be wonderful if all would work as customers wish. But it isn't that wonderful. If you see outstanding quality for low prices (and ~30$€? are low prices), there is a cost you can't see as a customer.

 

Basically dammed if you do, dammed if you don't.

The downside is that poor quality routes can lead to lost sales though and a poor reputation. Look at New York to Trenton and the lost sales dtg could've avoided if the route was in a better shape when it released. You had those saying that they wouldn't buy it and reviewers not recommending that dlc. It took a 30+ page thread which I found in the forums and feedback which made them decide to at least attempt to improve the route.

NASCAR 21 made by motorsport games is a game that released back in 2021 and it released in such a bad shape and got bad reviews, that the company lost money and eventually sold the license to Iracing.

I know the second example doesn't relate to tsw but lower quality products won't always have high sales and will have those turn away from the product

 

TBF, I don't think Motorsport Games was a serious company and was always a bit shady thru the whole deal, it just never came to fruition till Ignition launched.

 

There is a fundamental difference between economical route and asset building and sloppy as we seem to have received with Maintalbahn.

 

Completely valid points, but this whole thing reminds me of Baldur's Gate 3 release situation. An amazing game that pretty much shocked the industry it was so good and it is still recieving updates. Big studios tried to brush it off as "it's an anomaly, you can't keep making games this good and remain profitable", but it's just damage control to avoid looking bad with their mediocre games. This game has been in development for years and I don't see them going bankrupt.

Same for games like Cyberpunk 2077 or No Man's Sky - both games were in development for many years, released quite poorly, but have been updated through the years for free and now they are amazing. Yet, I don't see the developers being bankrupt!
But if you want more fair comparison, let's stick to simulators. ETS is always brought up as a great example - it's done well, offers great deals with it's add-ons and gets core updates. Yet the devs are no bankrupt? Same for Himmsim Metro, the game I always keep bringing up - it offers 6 playable trains for less price than a TSW add-on, constantly keeps getting updated and now the game gets a free upgrade to UE5.

How comes all of these studios can remain afloat for years, but only for DTG it would not be financially viable to do things better? If that really is the case, then clearly there might be something wrong with their company structure. Quite often people bring up the argument that this is a niche market and you can't generate enough sales - I would say this is once again a DTG problem only, and the case of the "death spiral" where they offer mediocre products, therefore sales are low, meaning funds will be low for the next development - and the cycle of mediocrity continues. The game and the playerbase will never grow if they keep shoveling out half finished, buggy content as shovelware.

 

I may be wrong and have said this before... I get the impression DTG is top heavy with management, admin and marketing staff all being subsidised by the relatively few actual coders and content makers on the coal face, so to speak.

 

Yeah, without it the whole thing would not work at all and there would be no TSW. But it also isn't something related to DTG only. The whole Industry works this way. Except some special cases, as always of course. Read through the list of people a big game is made from. The amount of logistic-staff is about 70%. Rest is 2% coding, 8% animation, 5% asset creation, 5% level design, 5% game-play/story, 5% what's left including audio, localisation and such things (roughly, differs from game to game a bit). I'm not talking indie games or such. There it mostly does not follow reliable financial strategies.

 

Thank you for your insights Maik Goltz.

I think the problem is not the Maintalbahn route itself, it is just the cherry on the cake. A lot of us here feel fooled with TSW4 released, lots and lots of core features not working and still over 2 month after release there are only marginal fixes. At the same time we get the JT route which looks and feels like the 2nd route which is done with a lot of care besides the TSG developed Niddertalbahn it is a high point in the TSW franchise.

So on one hand we have lack of communications, we have a Simulator since a minimum of two years with a lot of broken core features (which had gone worse with the release of TSW4) and on the other hand we have JT's BPO in outstanding quality showing what can be done (including your Niddertalbahn - but both also have problems due to broken core features like passengers). Then DTG comes around the corner and gives us the next medicore release and still no fixes. So it feels like money please! But fixing your basic product? We will see...

We guys are bagging here for support and fixes, for answers to our questions, so we just feel fooled (at least a lot of us) one way or the other.

And on top of all of this comes the big SimRail patch which indicates their is another sun rising at the horizon of Train Simulators.

 

August through September 2023 was ludicrous with complete silence (coerced I'm sure) prior to the release and still some people found out everything due to leaks. Embarrassing and if repeated next year, I really don't know what to say.

 

Well, saying "the whole industry works this way" is really not a good point, considering the industry nowdays is full of bad releases, half-assed easy cash grabs and shutting down studios. This is the same reasoning as when people say "well EA also releases the same game each year" - like yeah, and it is exactly the reason why nobody loves EA anymore, even though they used to be the kings a decade ago.

Of course, I am not an insider. I do work in software development, but not game development, so I don't have full insight. But I still believe that normalizing all these obvious issues in company structure and publishing strategy is a big mistake. It's like when 70% of your workday at a company is just meetings. Nothing gets done, just hours of pointless talking that could have been a simple email, a shorter meeting or less attendees.

I don't have a problem with the DTG staff themselves, they do seem like nice people and when we can see communication from them, they do seem passionate about the product. But the company structure and strategy seems to be really flawed.

 

I have identified at my workplace three Departments: The People Who Do Things, the People Who Tell People To Do Things, and the People Who Tell People To Tell People To Do Things.

 

Remember, most of the dissenting voices on here are the type of people who delight in shouting at phone staff and blaming them for their issue's instead of acting like an adult and talking, they seem blame all of DTG when in fact it's most probably just the high ups, directors and investors, but instead of putting in effort to track those down and complain to them they just shout at the nearest employee, TBH DTG is actually not that bad of a company when you compare it against the likes of EA, Ubisoft and Blizzard/Activision who have done way more shady underhanded stuff, I'm all about standing up for what's right, but am totally against taking my issues out on employees when there just trying to do there job, and probably agree with a lot of the complaints you make but are powerless to do anything about it, so have a little think about that the next time you wish to vent your spleen to the world about how butt hurt you are. You should be supporting the Devs not punishing them, they don't make company decisions, and just have to deal with them like we do.

Take Care
Gary

 

I'm sorry, claiming things like the number of developers creating assets will be the same as the number of people designing levels is just utter rubbish.

 

That sounds very much to me like a business that has lost sight of it’s core purpose and control of it’s costs.

If your ‘support’ staff outweigh your ‘productive’ staff by that ratio I’d say there’s an issue there that needs addressing…most businesses can’t support that kind of bloat.

 

In hindsight, all I can just say is that seriously, my opinions on TSW4 have seriously changed, not for the better sadly, so many issues, glaring bugs and other stuff on routes that should not have these issues, take ECML, been out since September, why are there still 801s running on diesel with the pantographs up, why is the missing coaches still present from TSW3, why are there countless texture glitches, missing overhead line equipment on multiple routes. Sometimes you wonder if the game is just a rushed job. For God sake I have a PlayStation 5, I can run almost every other game without stutters or frame drops, but why does TSW lag my PlayStation. TSW is so poorly optimised in general, the game has so many fundamental issues that need to be fixed. Rushing routes and dropping them constantly isn’t a way to retain customers. All the community has been crying out for since TSW2 is just for DTG to fix their game before a new release. Come on man we are being charged AAA prices for broken content. This is the issue with modern gaming and the thing is most players can’t really complain because we have no alternatives. DTG needs competition to step up their game.

 

The problem is that the moment there would be one, I am afraid DTG would be unable to step up their game right away (or even unwilling to do so), meaning they would be left in the dust very quicky. Just look at what happened to SimCity when it launched in 2013, how it was a catastrophe and how it got overtaken by Cities Skylines very quickly, pretty much killing the SimCity franchise in the process.

 

Whilst we're on other games, I'm a Total War player; can you imagine if TW Rome II, Three Kingdoms, or TW Warhammer III had the same stutter/lag that could NOT be mitigated by changing settings to lowest. Their code is not broken is my point. (they also have benchmarks so you can test it on your system).

 

What if I told you there is a simulation game that exists that has, literally, the worst performance issues with any hardware even on lowest settings, a sloppy, decade-old codebase written in a old version of Delphi with some parts uncomplete, a self-made scripting language that uses Reverse Polish notation in the syntax, decade-old 3D graphics, and glitches, crashes and more if you do something outside of the scope in the game - but is still, ever since the last release in 2013, the unbeaten king of realistic simulation for busses, with a still very strong community, very active development both by the community AND commercial developers releasing DLCs on Steam?

If you know what I mean (if you don't, it's Omsi 2) and if you played it, you will still see, even despite of what I said above - IT WORKS IF YOU DO IT CORRECTLY. Omsi 2's core codebase is stable, but ALL content of the game is actually external. Bus physics (motor and transmission physics, door physics, general physics, bus functions like IBIS, PIS, etc, and so on), AI configs, timetables, and so much more it's too long to write. Bus models are defined in their own list, they share the same content but can define their own content, like different transmission - heck, you can even provide configurations for each type of model that you can set for seperate liveries! And sooooooo on.

So in the end, even if the graphics are bad, the performance terrible, but playable, but the content - the content is what makes a game a game. And this is especially true for games that have their community in mind and provide and support an open platform for content, like Omsi 2 and Zusi.

I know, Unreal Engine and so on and blaaah you cannot compare self-made engines to a platform that works by creating a game in their editor blah - well, I know. But my point is that DTG can make their content open, but they don't want to. Open content does not mean no sales, it does not mean content will be stolen, it does not mean it's copyright infringement, and it certainly does not mean harm if someone modifies it for their own purposes for free.

Like you cannot modify anything from the game's content in the TSW Editor.

 

Btw. whatever the internal problems at DTG maybe, I'm a customer paying for content and features which are announced or advertised to be within a product. It is not on my side to understand problems in the process of development, at the end of the day what I'm interested in is to get delivered what was announced or what I did spent my money on. It is interesting to get some insights by people like Mike and as much as I can at least to some degrees understand certain situations, we didn't get an apologie from DTG for anything or any insights from them of WHY things happen or are the way they are. We just get excuses at some points, but I feel DTG has never been that silent to feedback or critcism as in the last weeks. Besides we at least got some sort of "acknowledged" bugs list in the November Q&A.

So the point I'm trying to take is...this overall situation is not something new. When something went not as planned within a company processes have to be optimized, reworked, whatever. This is what is happening every day in millions of companies around the world, so after six years of TSW they should have learned a lot.

I also like to add that if your buisness is only working if you release medicore content 4-6 times a year something is wrong as well.

 

And a lot of Simulators like Omsi2 only survive so long because the base is so open that things can be added or changed. We see that to a certain degree also in TSC.

Falcon 4.0 wouldn't have a so active community if the source code wouldn't have been leaked years ago, today it has even VR support with BMS and is getting a new terrain engine, nearly 25 years after it's release. Why is it a legend? Because of the unbeaten dynamic campaign Spectrum Holobyte build into it back in the day (and no I'm not asking DTG to release the source code).

Same is for Silent Hunter games for example, still survive because of their moddabillity.

 

And furthermore - you can only get such a community if third-party devs can rely on there being some degree of stability - i.e. not releasing a new version every year.

 

Thinking of grabbing this after watching a couple of YT clips, though there doesn’t appear to be anything recent. Looks good for just over half the price of a DTG DLC, probably less if I hold out for the Xmas sale. However still a bit anxious about the level of English localisation, is that going to make operating the train an issue? Well I guess I coped with early versions of Densha de Go back in the day. Only downer is that unlike the version they did for the iPad, you can’t import BVE routes and trains to play on the platform.

 

It's absolutely irrelevant how the internal processes at DTG work to the customer - it's only the result that counts.

It's plain and simple: they can release mediocre and bug ridden content because it sells. It does. So many people either do not care, do not know about railroading or simply buy a DLC and then "hope they'll fix it later" - the perfect customer for DTG, allowing them to further cut development costs (Maintalbahn looks like it's almost completely autogenerated, including the strange 90 degree railway crossings). People will buy nevertheless.

I've instantly refunded Maintalbahn because it is rubbish and not worth my hard earned money. It just doesn't exist for me and I don't miss it. I'm not here to support DTG - I don't care for them as they don't care for me and you. If they go down they only have themselves to blame.

It's you, the customer, who decides what DTG can get through with. Do not buy if it doesn't meet your standards. And if you buy - wait for good sales. Begging for a change on the forums will fall on deaf ears.

I've made 2,000 kms on 6 different locos in SimRail so far, and have not yet spotted a bug (and I do consider myself a bug hunter). That feels good! Now Searchlight have joined in, and I hope other devs will follow into what is a very serious and high quality railway simulation.

 

That's not even a remotely similar comparison. The 'big three' are multi-billion dollar industries who can afford to burn through their customers due to the sheer volume of gamers that could potentially offset any drop-off, whereas DTG are a relatively small company operating within an extremely niche genre with a greater reliance on it's core userbase.
If you look at any pretty much any small indie studio trying drive their product forward then the one thing you can't help but notice is that their primary focus is acting upon feedback from the customer and creating something that those people want to buy because they don't have the luxury of releasing any old tosh and hoping for the best, their livelihoods depend on making sure what they're producing is of a worthwhile quality.

I've been a member of the DTG fanclub since TSW2020 and the one thing I have noticed is that of late they seem to think they're an awful lot bigger than they actually are and can suddenly afford to burn through customers in the same way as the aforementioned, when in reality they're just a lightweight studio who got bought for a couple of million quid (to put that figure into perspective, SMS were financially on the brink when EA snapped them up.....for £30 million!) that seem to have forgotten why individuals like myself invested so heavily in their 'vision'. This is why people within this thread whine and shout (yes, that's exactly what we do). Not because it's cool to get a load of likes from equally as discerning members of the community, but because the bulk of us tend to remember when TSW was a far, far better product than it is now.

But hey, the one thing that Dovetail Games most definitely have done well is make the whole train thing a lot more appealing than it used to be and as a result a new word has now been thrown into the equation. "choice".

 

Well to some extent MSTS achieved that. Prior to 2001, compared to flight simming it was a very niche corner mostly serviced by text based games or the crude use of video clips like Ashley Greenup's Cab View Driver using Railscene digitised VHS cab rides (somewhat disparagingly referred to as "Crap" View Driver where the view would suddenly swing to the left or right when Jeremy English, RIP, spotted an item of interest). MSTS opened everything up as I doubt the (then) Auran would have contemplated Trainz and of course what we now know and love as TSC was borne out of MS' two failed attempts to do another version so Kuju went it alone with Rail Simulator.

 

I still have fond memories of playing MSTS. It had a much better save function and had locomotives and routes that we may never have in TSW like the Class 50 on Settle- Carlisle. Sure, the graphics may have been lacking, but it was very playable.

I still remember the joy I felt when I first saw the boxed version in Best Buy 22 years ago.

 

Yup, I do agree that Microsoft did it way back, but DTG have opened the whole train thing to a much wider audience.
Take myself, for example. Four years ago I'd have confidently stated that anything concerning trains was nerdy anorak stuff, yet here I am in 2023 desperately hoping Simrail makes the jump to consoles.

 

Likewise. Honestly I think my production of TSC locos is because I've been on a 15 year quest to try and get back the feelings I used to have when I played the Cambrian Route in MSTS. The cab I built for KevMT's GWR prairie (an early MSTS conversion into early Railworks) was literally that, I wanted to drive that Cambrian prairie again, and that cab was really square one of what I do now.

 

The tutorials, menu and i guess some of the driving controls are in English. Even though the tutorial is for like one train from when I last played, the majority of the trains are easy to set up and drive. Some things aren't covered in the tutorials which are text only but it should be good enough to drive

 

Well just ordered it for a play later, the benefit of the wife treating me to a couple of pints of real ale in 'spoons earlier - tends to numb the inhibition to buy blind!

 

The writing was on the wall with the launch of that first trailer featuring the orchestral soundtrack to this game. Sure, it's impressive, but it can't have been cheap. Personally, I would've loved it if they'd instead invested that money in a few extra months of developing Maintalbahn, for example.

 

Going to 'spoons will numb a lot of things, the ale is just a pleasant extra

 

A musician is generally very cheap to hire compared to paying a developer, but that's another moon to howl at another time.

 

You're comparing apples with oranges. Omsi is a bag of spanners for the more casual gamer who can't be bothered to work out how to get anything working together even reasonably well. DTG clearly doesn't pursue the same business model and that's their choice. No one is forcing any of us to buy their products if we don't like them. Someone should go away and write an Omsi equivalent for trains and then we can see how it fairs in the market compared to TSW (I don't know what would happen).

 

Oooh DTG really ought to get you in to consult to improve the regrettable state of steam simulation in TSW! At this stage 3rd party expertise is desperately needed if the current situation is to advance beyond the mediocre half-finished simulation we have today.

 

Unfortunately, wasn't that impressed with Hmmsim. Oh graphically it looks good and the sounds are excellent, but is very early access IMHO.
Couldn't get the key commands to work on the throttle with the main train type.
There is no HUD to show distance to next station. The stopping tolerance is ridiculously tight to line up with the platform doors.
Can't save a run in progess.
Finally, when stopped at a station I had the following train run in overlapping my train.
I won't say "rubbish" but not ready for prime time.
So DTG can rest easy that's one competitor product that won't be giving cause for concern.

Maybe in a year or two if it can move past its growing pains.

 

Have you ever played Omsi? Have you ever heard of Zusi?

 

Yes and yes, thanks for asking. And that was kind of my point, but it was probably too subtle. Why is everyone here complaining when Zusi is taking the world by storm?

 

OMSI is for casuals? OMSI is definitely not just for a casual person. It's a proper simulator and still is one of the best bus simulators today. The people who still make content for it aren't casuals.

 

For those complaining about DTG being top-heavy, it's not a DTG thing, it's a modern business thing.

There are so many managers with little to no experience of the core function of my business (insurance) who don't make the service we provide any better, they just make more work for everyone. I get around 40 emails per week from various management teams with invitations to training courses, seminars and meetings that don't have anything to do with my job. Management used to be people who'd worked their way up the ladder but now they're useless, personality vacuums with lots of bad ideas but no technical expertise.

A few months ago I decided to use some of the "business-speak" they constantly spout, I said something in a meeting that meant nothing but because I laced a load of buzzwords together but everyone nodded and agreed with me. If DTG are any different then they will be the exception in these bleak, dystopian times.

 

Ah, I see you've been leveraging the synergies again to drive maximum engagement in the thingamajig.

 

He's right in a way.

 

Orchestras are not that expensive to hire, unless they are big name professional orchestras.

 

If people are gonna pile into DTG do so valid reasons. A soundtrack written in-house and performed by a local orchestra won’t have broken the bank at all.

There’s plenty of issues with this game, the soundtrack isn’t one of them.

 

[nods in agreement]

 

Yes, and at the same time we need to trim the fat from the low- hanging fruit to take advantage of the bleeding edge by drilling down to the core competencies.
Getting our ducks in a row and avoiding a dumpster fire could be a real game changer.