The funny thing is that I personally also have an issue with the people who complain about the quality deficiences and buy the route still. That we even have in common. The important difference between both of our arguments is the perspective. While you speak about hypocrisy in terms of that people complain about the quality here and thereafter buy the route nonetheless, my point of view lies on the opposite order. People that buy the route but still complaining about that quality standards did not met and Rivet really should improve things. In another thread there was a person saying that people should vote with their wallets to improve quality. One sentence later the exact same person said "I bought Fife Circle. I can afford it". For me as well as you, both of these arguments do not match with each other. Either I'm as okay with the quality of the route that I buy it and keep it or I do not buy the route or buy the route and then refund, because it does not meet personal quality standards. Of course, if you purchase a product, you still can expose your opinion and raise critic about it, however you made a clear statement that the product is good for you as it is and that it serves its purpose. Otherwise you had refunded it once you could. In my opinion, every particular individual is free to choose a side in this debate, but you should not be a representative for both of them. Because this indeed is hypocrisy. Well, let me ask you: What else do you think keeps the quality low then in your opinion? If people going to always buy products in their current faulty state, what makes the company/developer think you have a problem with it? In fact, with your purchase you sent this message to the company: "I'm fine with your product. It complies to my own quality standards. I like it and it proofs quality for me because otherwise I had refunded it." Not even mentioning the impact to the latter message when you A. preorder or B. buy in the first week after release and no update happened so far. So how do you think a purchase gives the developer the signal to improve their products if you as one costumer of it obviously seem to be okay with it? That's what I don't understand about your on-going argument, that a purchase would provide the opportunity to improve a product from the developer side. Your argumentation mainly boils down to the meaning to invest in the developer, so that they can maintain and enhance the product. Although I agree that an income must be made that the business keep on running and keep things on developement, however let's take a closer look at the company/developer in question, Rivet Games. This is not their first project being somebody new coming into the franchise as like a community creator who turned into a third party dev. They are selling products for TSW/TSC for years and those products still provide an active income. They made a stable business out of it, that they even consist of about 20 employees up to date. They are as financial well situated that they can employ community managers venting out on costumers, so they should have a budget available to go into the developement instead. Take a look at this community creator [source] for example, who in comparison to them, has: - No fundraising as a financial support to help developement. - No active income from past products. - No past income from past products. - No reputation (or fans) - people that buy products from him regardless of what it actually is and what it for a quality has. and he still provides quality in an impossible time frame. He created this route in 7 weeks the PC Editor was out. Now tell me how a company, who obviously has way more financial support and is in the business for years can't be treated and classified in the same way developing and maintaing their commercial products as equal? Of course market forces do exist. But I don't understand why you use this as an argument for your argumentation. There is a difference between the interest or demand in a product (which clearly is there for Fife Circle - otherwise we wouldn't complain here about it) and the actual quality of it, which again influences back the demand of it. A product of clear evidence to have a lack of quality has the effect on the market in decreased interest/demand to acquire it. And independent upon the supplier would be willing to improve their products, reputation damage is already done to the brand. This exactly is what has happened and happening here I guess with Rivet Games. People realize that while they can deliver a product, it lacks of quality, and this factor back influences the demand. So in the end, yes of course you need to take into account all factors which influence the market forces, but I think I could rather use the argument of market forces for my argumentation than for yours.
That is a very optimistic way of looking at it. Especially when we know the community has grown since the days of the first TSW releases, but the quality went down. Maybe it's not "oh there's more money coming in, we can do more now" but rather "oh there's more money coming in, clearly we're cutting corners correctly".
This thread has truly jumped the shark now, with the quoted post summing up the total pseudo-babblling-meta-nonsense people are spouting. You are perfectly entitled to love the route or hate it or anything in between. You are perfectly entitled to have purchased the route and feel angry or satisfied or meh about it. You are free to state your opinions about the route in this thread but, ultimately, the best signal-to-noise ratio is likely to be from those people who have actually played it. Criticising people for choosing to spend their money on whatever they want is ridiculous, shallow and pathetic (in the true sense of the word), and their decision has absolutely nothing to do with anyone else. Seriously, grow up. (I don't own it, I haven't played it and I've only seen the ill-fated preview stream.)
My honest thoughts and feelings are that as long as I enjoy the route, then it doesn’t matter what people think of it. It doesn’t keep me awake at night, or do I feel the need to spam the forums telling people what a bad route it is. People will make up their own minds. The thing that does grate on me a bit is everytime there’s a new route/DLC announced, there’s the usual crowd that have to pop in and announce “I’m not buying it”. We get it. I mean, after all you told us you were never buying another piece of DLC 4 releases ago, so it’s not a shock. But trust me they always end up buying it. And if they do buy it then that’s not a problem. But personally, I don’t see what that achieves in the long term. I don’t see what publicly announcing, making such a protest and song and dance about it everytime really does and then doing the complete opposite. It’s not really constructive. I think the problem with this route is that it was hot on the heels of the superb Suffragette (Goblin) line, the preview stream was in my opinion a disaster. That preview stream lost a sale for me. There has only even been one route which I wish I’d never purchased and that’s West Cornwall Local. Thankfully, the ambassador streams really showcased the route and that convinced me. And having now played 12 services over the past week, I genuinely couldn’t be happier, it’s given me hours of enjoyment. It’s not perfect but I’m just hoping we get a patch soon and if we do I’ll be even happier.
That makes no sense really. Quality has to be increased to earn more sales, if quality remains low, why would anyone buy it. If Rivet can’t be bothered to put the work in, they should be punished for it. It’s how business should work. Only those doing a good job should reap the rewards.
Rivet have had plenty of chances to up their game. For whatever reason, they are incapable of doing so. Why reward them for that incapability? Let them fail if they can’t step up.
It’s unfair for individual people to lose their jobs, but that’s still not a reason to support a business doing LOVE work. Pretty much the reason the UK no longer has a thriving car manufacturing business - although in that case it was the workers constant strikes on top of the poor quality that knackered that. If those employees do lose their jobs, they might need to ask why they didn’t see it coming. As an employee you know what the culture of the company is like. If you are tolerating it, that’s up to you. There are plenty of opportunities out there to change jobs or move on to another company - like Adam did when he left DTG.
I'm sorry but this is MASSIVELY untrue. Look at Flight Simulator which has HUGE number of gamers getting into it now, Have you seen the market place? there's utter trash on their from well established developers cutting corners now because they can sell any old thing to XBox gamers. more people != higher quality at all. In fact I'd argue it's the complete opposite. This arguement doesn't even hold up remotely well if you look at games before digital downloads became mainstream. Buying a gamecube game which was almost perfect and bug free, where you couldn't just put out a patch to fix it. Developers and publishers have gotten so lazy and the consumer suffers because of it, it's a real shame.
Hopefully we can keep the player numbers sufficiently low for TSW in order to make it better. I don’t know how that could work though. Maybe I’m missing something. The people not buying stuff are actually improving the game. Who knew? I’ll get on to DTG’s marketing team and tell them that they should stop trying to sell the game to console players as it will obviously make it worse if more people buy. PC only, and keep the numbers low, got it.
You have completely missed the point despite examples proving that giving game companies more money doesn't guarantee better products. Giving game companies more money does not guarantee a good quality product despite you falsely claiming. It's a common issue in the video game industry. If a person doesn't buy a product because they have standards that this product hasn't met which leads to low sales (too many bugs, low quality, etc) then that business needs to figure out why their product isn't doing well and figure out ways to make their product better so that people will buy. Businesses are not charities and we are not obligated to support them out of good will. I am not advocating for businesses to shut down, but if a business goes out of business because they didn't sell good products, then that is their problem, not ours. If Rivet want to do better, then they need to make better quality addons, but since they do not and often don't go back to improve their previous content, this is why they have the reputation that they have. They have more resources than modders who often make better work than they do. Look at Just Trains or TSG. They don't have this reputation because they made good quality addons from the get go and Just Trains and now Skyhook with MML listens to any feedback to improve their content.
Well mobile flight sim community is thriving. Rortos and Infinite Flight produce a consistent high quality product for their consumers. Ofc they have their floors but what doesnt. But those 2 atleast get ontop of their bugs within days of release
And the other anachronism that I don’t think has been mentioned yet, is why should Rivet get the same pay day for the banal carp they put out as SHG, JT and even DTG themselves?! And I don’t mean by that we should pay more for the non Rivet stuff. Though to be fair, JT have been guilty of a few sharp practices themselves in TSC, notably the Met Line which to run all the scenarios requires separate purchase of the S7+1 and S8 stock. And I believe even their latest Midland Line sections require purchase of additional rolling stock to run the scenarios. And of course some of their earlier efforts in TSC relied heavily on Kuju default items and we had the silliness of the Class 166 doing services from Edinburgh to Dundee.
Oh I am not suggesting that those companies are not without their faults. I remember the issues with the Metropolitan Line. But I just don't understand how one can try to argue that giving companies more money will lead to better products when there are many examples of companies that are doing well financially releasing products that have issues or are of a lower quality compared to previous offerings. More sales for video game companies doesn't guarantee that their next product will be better and we are certainly not obligated to treat them with good will if they release a poor quality product nor are we obligated to treat them as a charity.
Exactly my point! And even in the case of the JT Met, I waited until the route was on sale and bundled with the S7+1. Never yet bought the S8. But I have drawn a red line where Rivet are concerned. Not bought Fife Circle for all the reasons discussed, didn't buy Bernina because it's only half the route. Bought and refunded EtoG as the 385 is such a ghastly train to drive. Even the reworked IOW isn't perfect with several signalling anomalies and I'm not convinced the 484 sounds or performs right (way too powerful).
Not commenting on the wider discussion, other than to say I really do hope that improvements can be made (similar to MML) - we will see. But talking about non-online systems from decades ago which were bug-free because they had to be, and equating modern games with updates down to laziness is really a very imbalanced way to look at it. The complexity of games now - even from smaller developers and publishers - far outstrip those in the past, and the ability to patch and update has meant that companies are able to push much more for big steps forward as a result. But take the Unreal Engine as one example - how much that has changed in the past 25 years, and what it now enables in terms of game quality and variety... The downside of what's now possible is that perfecting the art and doing so without any issues just is a false expectation. That's not to say that good QA isn't important, but I would put a lot of money on DTG, Rivet, Skyhook (and the vast majority of videogame developers) are trying really hard to create something that is as good as can be. The reality is that companies who pay people as employees to create something cannot simply (a) ask those people to work all additional hours available or (b) pay people indefinitely until perfections is achieved. If you're not running a business and making stuff in your spare time, you face different challenges - but not those. If Rivet haven't lived up to expectation with this one, it will hurt them personally and professionally. There's a chance to redeem themselves, we'll see if they (are able to) take it or not. But to accuse them of laziness is wide of the mark, and unfair.
To be fair, JT provide scenarios with « default » TSC stock, and also a number for people who have sold their soul to AP.
I do not think that the employees of Rivet are lazy. they do produce quality items and are sub-contracted by DTG on occasion to work on their releases. I have bought Fife Circle and have enjoyed it so far. The problems with this particular release is, I speculate, due to a rushed release schedule, and that is not usually an employee problem, more of an employer, finance department problem. I have encountered similar issues on far more significant projects where timeline compression has resulted in simple errors getting delivered into production, normally resulting in a greater cost through penalties and rework than just releasing when ready.
But why would they spend more money investing in more advanced routes and technology when they haven't got the sales to justify it?
DTG seem to be doing just fine in sales. But who's fault is it that a certain route doesn't sell well? Ultimately they decide what routes to make and it is up to the customer to decide if it is worth the money. A route may sell well because it is good quality or a route may not sell well because there may be a lack of interest or it is riddled with problems. It doesn't even have to relate to TSW. Even if previous products did well, there is no guarantee that the next product will be good in terms of quality. Dumping more money into an issue doesn't always solve the problem
Got to agree there! Been caught out numerous times by those speed approach signals and I seriously doubt the real Met and Circle Line etc could keep to the timetable if trains have to crawl at 5 MPH for a considerable distance.
Yeah it's definately a management issue, I also don't think it's the developers themselves. I personally work for a large bank as a developer, we have excellent QA, so much so barely anything makes it into production, we have a stupidly low crash rate. It'll be a combination of as you said, rushed release but also a management team not wanting to fork out on solid QA. I do think they (as a business) should be embarassed though. It's really sad what's happened in the last 10 years of the gaming industry. Nobody takes pride in releasing a game / DLC because they all know they can patch it post launch.
Well to make matters worse I'm finding I can't release the brakes on 66s when loaded into timetable mode... and if I load a 37 the game crashes. Am on PS4. Does ANYONE test this stuff?
Can't say I've had an issue with the 66 loading in on a timetable run, Nor the 37. But Rivet isn't responsible for the console ports, that's a DTG thing
Can I ask a question about speed limit signs? I've seen a number of signs like this one on the approach to Markinch just now: The HUD is telling me the speed limit is 80, but the sign says 75 for regular trains and 80 for HST's. The 170 is not an HST? Can someone explain what the 75 limit applies to here? Thanks in advance.
Ah OK, thanks, I found this on railforums.co.uk: HST is a standard speed differential across the network that applies to all manner of stock (IC225, 158, 159, 168, 170, 171, 172, 175, 180, 220, 221, 222, HSTs, 373s, 80x)
Where were these replies, have they now been deleted or are they in another thread? Would quite like to read them myself and see just what Rivet really think about us
Rivet really are pathetic. I posted this on their forum and had it withdrawn from view!!! “In my opinion, Forth Bridge is the most iconic bridge in Scotland. Not many better in the world. Whoever designed it for the game deserves, massive congratulations for a first class effort for TSW4. I just hope the same person is working on the rest of the route for Rivets update. I don’t want to see another appalling mess when the update is released. Rivet you have the chance to make this route look realistic, please take it. On a video this morning by Train Sim TV, a new recent Fife Circle Revamp Mod (WIP) for PC users only. It is a mod fully recommended to all users who wish to enhance the visual look of this route. You will need ScotRail Express: Edinburgh - Glasgow for this to work!” Download the Fife Circle Revamp Mod: https://www.trainsimcommunity.com/mods/c3-train-sim-world/c19-patches/i4403-fife-circle-revamped-wip
Just watched his YT video of him going through the route with the revamp mod. Looks much better with the pink ballast and better foliage. Actually does look a bit more what Fife looks like in reality. A bit frustrating console players can’t get the mod…. Even more annoying that Rivet probably won’t bother upgrading the scenery…
mind sharing the youtube video link? I can't see it on the post Found it: Honestly what an embarassment on Rivets part, taking a modder days to improve the route already...
I wonder why they don't just work with them prior to releases to fix up the route and then release for all. Surely the royalties they'd need to pay would be worth the significant quality improvement.
Exactly. If modders can do it with ease then seriously what on earth is stopping Rivet from fixing it…. I can’t think of a good excuse to be honest… I’m guessing too busy trying to fixate on the next project.
Didn't know the Rivet forums turned into a Roast Battle https://forums.rivet-games.com/foru...via-dunfermline-and-kirkcaldy/page7#post18672
Just watched DadRails stream and it’s absolutely incredible that modders have made this route look 100x better in 2 weeks by changing the ballast and adding some scenery. Ridiculous that Rivet couldn’t do that. Hopefully console players get an update of that quality from Rivet.
It's stupid obviously people have had to take action into their own hands but regardless great something is being done
If you have any questions regarding upgrades or bug fixes to Fife Circle, the April Roadmap Q&A thread is open and maybe one of your questions can be answered in the stream today evening: https://forums.dovetailgames.com/threads/april-roadmap-q-a-thread.80429/
Thanks, Corrected it. Time flies so fast, the difference is almost unnoticable in the time machine we live in.
