Enough Is Enough!!! The Ongoing Saga!!! 3 Year Anniversary

Well, at various stages of the recent stream-a-thon thing I asked multiple questions regarding the overall quality of TSW, the broken promises from Dovetail Games and his feelings regarding the "enough is enough" thread....and guess what? Not one single response from Mr Peddleston regarding those queries.
Also, this thread contains 4000+ comments and has had over 180,000 views.....and guess what? On not one single occasion has anyone of note been bothered to address any of these concerns with a quick "we hear you" (or words to that effect).
So yeah, it's quite clear that what's broken is of no significance and taking our money is DTG's only priority.

On a positive note from the stream, it was made abundantly clear why steam was dropped. SoS did well and Peak Forest didn't so the project was dropped with the excuse being that certain people will only buy specific (regional) routes & locos, meaning that an already niche category would be further dissected into even smaller niches. A point that would generally hold water but for the fact that SoS (one of those "niche" regions) "did well". Forgive me for thinking this way but didn't it ever occur to anyone at Dovetail Games that Peak Forest didn't do so well because the whole steam thing wasn't done particularly well in SoS and people weren't prepared to have a second bit of the cherry?

I own SoS...I live 2 miles away from Millers Dale...I didn't buy Peak Forest. Think about it.

 

Also the update (or its effects) must have wiped Save progress from yesterday.

 

Not even they believe that excuse, I'm sure. If steam was done properly, a huge amount of people (me included) would be interested in routes that are not even close to our focus. I am (relatively) young, from Central Europe, and I still had an absolute blast last year at KWVR. Quality, Matt, quality sells.

 

No, no, no, NO...
That is all wrong, Quality Shmaulity, Who cares about Quality, Their motto is the more that is sold is what matters. Just get the Darn Frelling thing out the door, maybe we will, er-um get to it after we release TSW55 or something like that.
Honestly look at the Major patch TSW3 received well after TSW4 was released.
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I second the motion, kind of that is. Only because there have been the "she said he said they said bickering" those types of back-and-forth issues can use an ignore.
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And we shall continue to be ignored in this thread and elsewhere, But Props to ya for trying to ask, in all honesty, I and others could have given a better response than you received.

 

And as was pointed out numerous times after the announcement, starting at Amebergate and ending at Chinley gave the route a total nowhere to nowhere feel. Requested repeatedly for a pause to allow the route builder(s) time to push up to Derby (Manchester expecting too much) but totally stonewalled. So we ended up with a route where a large number of trains start or finish at Matlock, because only a handful of services call at Ambergate. That's before the missing Millers Dale shuttle. For the £30 they should have been building the Class 104 to include in the original package.

Even so it was a Day One purchase for me and both the scenery (even with the odd missing distant hill) and the signalling which was a labour of love make it in my top 3 of UK routes up there with NTP and BPO.

 

I love all the steam content in the game, including the Scotsman (I know it has issues) and the rail tours. What I heard was that steam is hard to make, and that the time they would have to put into it is not justified with the lack of interest out there. I understand that steam is not everyone's cup of tea, but neither is the VECTRON lol

 

im beginning to loose confidence in tsw going fwd ,steam is but dead ..and US freight content seems to be following close behind to join the dead line. As for new routes the only 2 that im interested in are fife circle and metrolink La San Bernardino

 

Honestly I agree with that, I love PFR and one of the routes I don't regret purchasing day 1 its just unfortunate nothing followed it up and it had messed up end points and timetables etc. They did most of it so well

 

One particularly annyoing thing is not necessarily the bugs, but the way DTG deals with the community. False promises.

This TSC thread is a very good example.

- missing textures reported in March 2019
- confirmed by DTG, "artists are working on it" (not true)
- five years later, nothing has happened. Another message by DTG, "Will have a look" (doesn't say when)
- I'm checking on it and provide a fix 30 minutes later
- no reaction from DTG

https://forums.dovetailgames.com/threads/metro-north-textures-not-loading.15301/

Does it have to be like that, really? How would you feel, DTG, being treated like that?

I'd much rather get an honest response like "We're sorry but we don't have the resources to address this ourselves."

 

Wasn't there talk about definitely adding green diesels as well (the 104 I believe?)

 

This one is actually a pretty good food for thought. Imagine DTG staff getting a messed-up coffee order, the person at the desk is like "oh yeah, we'll fix it soon" and just goes on to take new orders, because profit DTG just standing there with the wrong coffee and waiting... wouldn't be enjoyable, would it?

 

AFAIK the only confirmed item is the Class 104.

 

Well that, apparently, is coming, but as a 3rd party DLC

 

T'would be nice if there were a 33 layer, or shunting with the 09 (not quite correct, but close enough)

 

In all the forums I participate in, I find the ignore feature essential because of the children. But as someone rightly pointed out - one should use it silently. This cranky old grandfather just had enough of the blantaly untrue statements, I forgot my manners.

 

Where do I sign?

 

Would be nice if there were a green 45 and green 08 (perfectly correct!)!!

 

What I’d like to know, after reading another bug report of something that used to work, OHLE on Tharandter Rampe going missing, which is one in a growing list of introduced bugs from recent updates, is… What are they doing to the game that is breaking all of this previously working content? I wish they would stop it. This is a completely different situation to bugs in newly made content which is to be expected but someone somewhere within DTG is changing all manner of things they should leave well alone. I’ve never known a time when so much old content suddenly stopped working or gained new visual bugs. I’ve noticed new texture loading issues on older locos when returning to cab view, as well as the giant numbers appearing briefly when returning to a screen with the HUD on it from the map or pause screen. Plus all the other graphical errors with snow textures on many routes, platforms on GWE, other rendering issues in NTP scenery items. What’s going on?

 

Unfortunately someone/s doesnt give a toss about TSW. The game will continue to crawl down this downward spiral if the higher ups continue.

 

Higher ups aren’t introducing the bugs, that’s tinkering devs doing that. The higher ups likely just want more content sold. The devs don’t need to touch whatever it is that’s breaking everything to make new content. Something’s going on because each update breaks something completely unrelated to what the patch notes have said has changed.

 

Im not a dev nor have I been but wouldnt the devs have to propose their ideas to the higher ups?

 

I think devs are often working alone, either to fix something they've been told to or they're tinkering with things on their own time with perfectly good intentions to improve a route or some other aspect of the game.

When they're done they can check if something has been fixed but probably not able to check every possible side effect of what they have changed. They are possibly relying on feedback from the community instead.

Is it lack of supervision or not having someone else double check the fix? I don't know but these side effects do seem to happen with annoying regularity.

 

Maybe someone is trying to sabotage them from the inside?

 

I was thinking the same thing… it’s been going on for years after all

 

Don't be ridiculous.

 

Sometimes things in this world aren't so cushty, you should know that by now. The whole Skyhook Jane situation springs to mind in this particular case.

 

You cant rule it out.. the overwhelming majority of messages on this forum are complaining about something or reporting a bug. Somethings going on because the bugs arent being fixed either..

 

Unless you've got a better idea,that's one possibility.

 

Even if it ends up in a release and community is the first to report it, the problem is it isn't then acted upon. The longer you have a DLC the worse it gets even if nobody does anything to it.

What is that referring to? I didn't pay much attention to MML, but this has been mentioned multiple times already.

 

Trust me you don't wanna know. But if you do, it's scrolling back 58 pages to understand. Not exactly the community's finest hour. (That includes me)

Midland Mainline - Skyhook Feedback

 

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanlon's_razor

Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.​

 

Yes we all have this vision of DTG with a large office floor and cubicles filled with people beavering away but think the reality might be different. Wonder how many full time “coal face” employees they actually have with most of them being marketing and PR people. Wouldn’t surprise me if the majority of work is dialled in from home, by people who are doing this in addition to their full time day job. That’s certainly my situation when I worked with 3D Train Stuff and later Blue Arrow on routes for MSTS. All done in spare time at home.

 

I think you hit the nail here. The times when you'd develop software in a Dilbert like cubicle environment are long gone. No financially sane management could afford that anymore. Imagine the wages of all these devs if they were all UK based?! No no, I can't prove it but heavily suspect a good deal of outsourcing. And why not to a huge Asian country with an enormous population. Wherever there's software development, they're involved. And they're legendarily competent for this. Just need to be managed and guided with competence.

 

What..... are you suggesting DTG are hiring people from Asian countries to take advantage of them financially? How absurd. Their quality may not be the best but thats taking it way too far...

 

Maybe, maybe not. There're very good programmers and coders in Eastern Europe as well. But the possibility that they sustain all of them on UK based wages can be excluded, I'd say. Unless you're prepared to pay triple the DLC price.

BTW: That certain ............... Asian country has an army of really good IT specialists that deliver anything except poor quality. Quite on the contrary.

 

Doesn't at all seem far fetched to me. You can see TSW models in many portfolios, so they are definitely outsourcing stuff. And yeah, it's the world we live in, where the same amount of work will cost you a fraction in India compared to the UK.

 

I would point out TSG's assistance on various models for DTG are almost certainly contract work. Skyhook also were on board with TSW from nearly day one, as they contributed to the now infamous Class 66 made for GWR that keeps getting rehashed.


Link to their ArtStation page where this image comes from for the curious.

So while maybe not from China or Japan, DTG certainly use contractors.

 

You're actually incorrect there. The GWE 66 got replaced by the ECW 66 model with updated physics and brakes. Thats the one that is used the most. The GWE 66 almost never subs in anymore. You can tell the GWE 66 from all the others by the text colour on its EM2000 screen.

 

The term "updated" still implies that deep down the GWR code's being used, just tweaked. So I fail to see how I'm in anyway incorrect saying the 66 originated on GWR. Not to mention Skyhook contributed the model and texture work, which excluding the occasional new livery has remained pretty much the same as far as I can tell.

 

That's development, unfortunately. One logical dislodged pebble can travel and become a boulder in another place entirely. I think the problem is in the follow-up.

 

" When a butterfly flaps its wings in Brazil it could set off a tornado in Texas. "

---E. Lorenz ( Chaos theory at work in Chatham? )

 

This saying may be poetic, but it's also untrue.
https://www.treehugger.com/can-butterfly-flapping-its-wings-really-cause-hurricane-4863374

 

I think the 'new bug' problem is due to DTG getting lazy, rushed or desperate and not putting all functionality in the core. There's now a lot of functionality local to particular DLCs, but in some way linked to the core, so when they update the core there's too much local stuff to properly test.

 

It's not meant to be " true ". It's a metaphor for small changes in one area leading to major problems in another.

Like someone at DTG solving one problem but causing chaotic effects in other parts of the game.

 

I've certainly noticed this enormous juxtaposition on their US vs European routes. As a north american player, I usually stick to north american routes, and noticed a whole variety of issues (floating cars, unapologetically euro assets, funny looking trees, undetailed houses, etc...) But whenever I play a UK route, I'm always blown away about how they're lightyears more refined from a quality standpoint in comparison (at least from a tsw3 point of view). I guess that makes sense since they're UK based, but even still... In any case, it Seemed like for the longest time, it was just the US Players getting the shaft for quality... but with TSW4, you know they've screwed up when even their European fans are pissed. Now everyone internationally is getting the piss poor quality shaft

 

I definitely don’t think theirs a bias on route asset issues per country, many routes have had good ones and bad ones from all the countries, Reigate in TSW2 to mention a early England issue among many others and many others in different countries.

theirs issues at times with assets or lack of assets what are very different from each other, that difference is the only difference not because it’s a England or Germany or USA route.

 

Push for 100!!

 

This thread is amazing but does anyone actually have hope of DTG changing their ways? I mean come on over 4000 replies 86 pages and they havent even addressed us... Actions are louder than words we need to stop buying their stuff so fast. Wait for reviews. Or if you are gonna purchase on release refund if you dislike it. Money is the way to DTG.

 

False hope, yeah. Doesn't do anyone any favours though.

 

I was reading the evening news and come across this - https://www.tomshardware.com/pc-com...-to-simplify-dlss-fsr-and-xess-implementation

If it truly make it easier for developers, then it sounds doable even for DTG who likes easy tasks.