This is one of the main things which caught my eye whilst reading the TSW 2020 article. No doubt we’ll get a more detailed explanation and answer to this in due course however there’s no harm in a bit of speculation beforehand. So, what do we know already? Journey system is NOT intended to replace service mode. It is an entirely separate feature. Quotes from the text: “blends together more than 24 hours of sequential gameplay for each route” - Perhaps a new feature featuring the days of the week. Monday to Friday and Saturday and Sunday, transitioning in real time according to set time zone? - Another feature included with this is real life and/or transitioning weather. “enjoy hundreds of scenarios, service timetables, and jobs to complete around the railway” - This sounds like entirely new scenarios have been made, as well as new 24 hour services and jobs, which might mean doing specific ‘tasks’ around railway stations and yards. Giving the user a lot more to do rather than just looking at it. That is my take on it, I’d like to hear yours. Speculate away...
Er, after a quick interlude back to your... In TSW with you being the driver rather than the train I'm thinking the Journey system may be some sort of career mode? "Start a Journey on any route" being the beginning and then progressing from there. How it would work out I'm not sure but a bit of character development might add a little something. (It would go with the new points scoring system possibly) The "blends together more than 24 hours of sequential gameplay" does sound like clock on, do a full day's work and clock off type off thing. I hope they sort out the saving! But who knows. Well they know I suppose.
After journeying your way through 2hrs of your 24hrs worth of gameplay, the good news is that if you have something else to do (and you should), you won’t be able to save your game and come back to it. I can’t get excited by it. I don’t believe for one second new scenarios & services have been written for all the routes in TSW. It would be an absolutely mammoth task, particularly given all the routes have shipped with only 5 scenarios each. There’s only so many scenarios you can do in the rain anyway My speculation is it’ll be the same scenarios and services that are already there but presented in a *slightly* different way.
I mean combining ALL current scenarios together, it wouldn’t even make it into the hundreds so that theory would contradict what they’ve said. Although I really can’t think of where they would’ve got the time to make entirely new services and scenarios for each DLC. Also without the editor, it’s not like we can contribute to creating any new scenarios or services. I hope it isn’t just combing all the current services and putting a voice over on top of it paired with a few instructions because the nature of service mode would mean it’d get very repetitive, fast.
Maybe it’s some sort of procedural generation of services and scenarios that can whip up something random on demand. (Guess I should be saving this for baseless speculation...)
That would be a good addition, nothing worse than ending one service to find out the same train isn’t due out over 20 minutes later, waste of time going back to the main screen only go load the route back up and start the next service you want.
I would say that Journey System is nothing more than multiple Services back to back. Once you finished one, it tells you where to go and how long to wait, and then you do the next service.
That's better than my guess: You have a save function so that you actually can work a 24-hour day. I do it all the time in Run8's single player mode.
Yes, thats what i think the journey system is. Like take the train "XXXX" and do services of that train a hole day. But lets see how they implement this, and what new features will come with this addition.
Whilst it would be nice to know when the next service(s) are, I’d like it to be done the ‘proper’ way by utilising the customer information screens on the station platforms. Having more realistic announcements would be nice too. Having it on an overlay on the screen could potentially get quite messy, especially if there are loads of services to list in a short space of time. With it only having the ability to list one service at a time.
No. Obviously not. I’m convinced that TSW2020 is simply a marketing exercise to re-brand existing content, with some minor changes to aspects of the game that weren’t broken, and didn’t need fixing. Meanwhile, metaphorically, Rome continues to burn. The only ‘new’ content will be the West Coast US route.
In fact, nobody understands what DTG offers with this "new" mode. It's really not clear, and it seems more like recycling the existing service mode. I hoped at least we would have the display of train schedules in game. But I understand now that DTG does not want to do it. It's a shame, if it's true.
Define "content"... The issues spoken about above concern routes and other bits which are not the core game engine. TSW2020 is an update to this front end rather than the content itself and DTG haven't said that it will have any bearing on the "content" What it will have bearing on is how you access the content, how you interact with it etc etc
Gees. It seems as though every time I post these days you pop up trying to argue the semantics of a previous post. Everyone else seems to understand exactly what it is I’m talking about, so I don’t know what it is you’re trying to do? Draw me into an argument maybe? Obviously, Content = DLC and everything contained within. What you pay for. What you download. In the specific context of this thread it’s scenarios and service mode (which is implicit in as much as that is the topic being discussed). I agree that TSW2020 is just a simple update to the front end - which is the point I’m making. The press release suggests that much more is in the offing, however. Amongst other grandiose statements, is the announcement of a new ‘journey mode’ which DTG have inferred is a new way to play. They’ve also implied that as part of this mode, there are going to be many many more scenarios and services than currently exist. Reading between the lines it’s pretty obvious to me that that is not the case, hence the discussion, and the point of the thread in the first place!
I was referring to those above who were asking about more stations, as well as your comment of the new route (which is separate to but released with the update), so it is a valid statement We don't know what scenarios or ways of making the scheduler work in the background have been made whilst everyone here had been wanting more routes, more locos and more... Well everything So personally I hope that similar to the way they worked the substitution of assets in scenarios without too much notice of that on these boards, they could have worked in several things into the background that DO increase interest and vary the way things work in game. Certainly I can think of a few ways of making it work that way, and if I can, I'm sure DTG can, but still that's about the interface and control mechanism rather than the content itself I'm still hopeful that they've done a seven day timetable, maybe with random (or seemingly random) issues that arise with the control or an AI which effects the player service, or even the player train itself.
I sincerely hope this isn’t another false hype up, as we all know how that went when the console version of TSW was announced. We all know what marketing can be like, advertise one thing but in reality it does something completely different or not do it well at all...
If they haven't announced the editor, the multiplayer or a simple Quick Drive what do you expect us to be so innovative?
Well--someone with patience and courtesy -- what a pleasant surprise. (May I suggest the use of a spell checker, however?)
My best guess for what the new Journey system could be is maybe a quasi career mode. The article says you can "Start a Journey on any route and enjoy hundreds of scenarios, service timetables, and jobs to complete around the railway" The last part about jobs makes me think of non-driving related tasks. Like maybe being the guard or something, Also the part about "24 hours sequential gameplay" makes me think there are checkpoints or save points in this 24 hours of gameplay. Just speculation, but maybe it’s a system where you spend 24 hours as a GWR worker for example on GWE where you drive some services, experience delays or incidents, and then maybe do some other jobs as well in a 24 hours period.
I would like to see journey mode connect services together. Whether following a driver throughout their daily tasks or if we followed a specific train on its journey throughout the day. For example if you choose to drive a passenger train on GWE then you will be able to follow that train throughout the multiple services it is used for with a more seemless transition then the service mode. I do wish that if it’s possible for a train to travel from one route to another in real life that we might get something similar to that in this mode but I do think we would need to wait for more routes to be available that fill in the pieces in between, it does sound like with the TSW2020 release that creating route add ons is a little more plausible. The little information we do have for this mode is promising and I hope it is something dovetail can add to and evolve over time.
Yes, I was pondering this again last night and wondered if Journey Mode is a set of 'chained' services, representing a single driver's shift (though "more than 24 hours" doesn't really make sense in that context). Some people already use the timetable to work out chains like this, with minimal waiting time between consecutive services. Maybe Matt (I'm pretty sure it will be Matt) has put together a bunch of pre-programmed shift-length chains like this to make it easy for us. If so, I'm guessing it will be a varied and interesting selection (a little passenger, a little freight, a little shunting), rather than, say, just bombing back and forth between Paddington and Reading all day in the HST, with occasional adrenalin spikes for double yellows.
Hey guys, there should be more info about TSW2020, including the Journey system, in the upcoming days, so stay tuned.
At present as in TS1, you are still the train e.g the HST's services which should be 2 man services with a driver and guard it's still the driver that opens and closes the doors, I think that "Jobs around the railway" would include a guard on the 2 man British routes that would open the doors and tell the driver when its time to go, or a conductor on the American routes that will get out of the train and set points leaving the driver to just drive the train. we already have 2 man banking services where the player can choose between driving the leading train or the banking engine with the A.I doing the other, I hope we will get the chance to choose between being driver or guard.
When TSW2020 becomes available on August 15, seeing how some of the hopes, imaginings, predictions, and swags expressed in this and other threads play out.
Thanks TrainSim-Dmitri for keeping us updated and recognising this thread. I’m looking forward to hearing more info on things. I reckon we’ll hear something sometime next week.
So the jobs are just the collectibles? Please tell me we don't have to go through the hassle of finding them all again..
Looks to me like just a bunch of scenarios chained together. Nothing too impressive. Also we knew the new route would be the Peninsula Corridor because it's the only west coast route short enough for TSW where DTG has licensing. And I hope there's a way to disable the scoring system. I don't feel like having half my points deducted whenever I accidentally drift 1 mph over the speed limit for a second.
Very interesting, wondering if the collectibles represent jobs. Like dispatcher baton is dispatcher or the broken gate is engineer
Well to be honest, what did anybody expect from DTG. I wasn't focusing on "new features" because I knew there wouldn't be any (or at least any good ones). I was more curious as to what the new route was gonna be and everybody guessed right. I just hope the Caltrain F40 and cab car in this aren't as garbage as the ones in TS.