Enough Is Enough Thomas And Friends Edition

Exactly. It wasn't the reveal I wanted and I certainly was a little disappointed. I do feel maybe this wasn't the best way to announce it but here we are. No point throwing a strop like a child.

However I can see why they have gone with Thomas as it's good marketing, good for attracting young railway enthusiasts, and the sim can't be too bad in Mattels eyes.

As usual in this echo chamber the noisy majority are right as they can't see another side of the argument.

 

I predicted there would be fume as people's expectations were waaaaay to high about the announcement and by eck there is fume lol

 

That would actually be a really good idea. Just to mix it up a bit. I would go for Little Johnny Jet.

 

Making a sarcastic joke here..I cant wait to see how much tonnage thomas and friends can pull up Cajon ,HSC ,or Sand Patch ..lol or thomas and his friends run on schedule with a commuter train on MBTA Boston Commuter in free roam scenario mode How abute a CSX schemed thomas in livery designer..lol.

 

I wouldn’t be at all surprised if they restrict use of Thomas to just the WSR.

 

Having had a night for the dust to settle and the cogs to grind a bit more I've woken up with a wry smile on my face about the whole thing.

Best case scenario: it does well, biccies and bonuses all round, but Focus leave DTG to keep the sim basically as is, and we're mostly happy.

Worst case scenario: it does outstandingly well, Mattel buy the whole studio and turn the sim into their own cash cow, abandoning the "sim" aspect entirely to focus on DLC characters and stories. We all* howl with despair and are left with an ageing platform that relies on homegrown DLC until the DTG hardcore devs escape their golden handcuffs and kick off a new company "by enthusiasts, for enthusiasts" with a new engine using UE5. The cycle repeats, but at some point in the whole mess I'll have died because I'm knocking on a bit now

Most likely scenario: I've absolutely no idea. Time will tell. No point getting wound up about it. Que sera, sera.

I do know this though from 30-odd years of working in the software industry - when a company's top management gets excited about something that mystifies its customer base it's because there's more in it for them than the customers.

* ok, not all of us, but you know what I mean

 

The bit in bold really is what I feel tbh. It’s good for DTG, and it must be a big deal to secure a license for this kind of thing - and congratulations to all involved, because it must be difficult with such a large company like Mattel. Had this been just a normal announcement, probably it’d be fine. I think however putting it as the big reveal wasn’t great, because while it’s a big thing for them - looking at the ‘big’ things the community asks for, it’s nothing like what was released. So it kind of feels like we aren’t heard. We are begging for more realism - so I think really it should’ve been something like a new core feature - idk, platform announcements, train announcements, working passengers - or a highly desired route like KGX to PBO and a 91, or even C2C which lots of people seem to want. I understand not being able to please everyone with the announcement, and personally I’m not interested in C2C, but this seems like something no one was asking for really - we don’t really want fictional routes.

 

In Xmas jest vern will this be a day 1 refund for you.... you must have some legs left in steams refund policy again now?

 

The only disappointment I have is the lack of the Isle of Sodor and the rest of Thomas' friends.

However, maybe DTG is right to introduce Thomas and Friends to TSW given the infantile reactions they get on the forums lately. They have absolutely nailed their target audience rather well who are inclined to b*tch, whine and complain about anything and everything they release because its not exactly how they want it to be. Forum threads like this quickly turn from being hilarious to being quite sad, to where it feels like there is faux outrage for the hell of it... especially if there is more emphasis on inflating its length rather than its content.

Give it time, they might just treat us to Brio for TSW... Oh, perhaps not. That will only introduce another tedious thread titled, "Enough is Enough Brio Edition"...

 

But it isn't hyped up for over a month as a huge reveal like this pack was, which is the primary reason me and many others are angry about this pack. We first heard about this reveal in the November 2024 roadmap, released on November 11th, and the community was hyped about, there is a massive thread of speculation. We thought we were getting a Class 91, or a new core feature, or one of the many other things that have been requested over the years. Not Thomas the Tank Engine. I hope Dovetail Games learn from this disaster class of an announcement and don't hype things up like that again.

 

No but I might dust off plans to convert the Isle Of Arran to Sodor in Trainz. And thinking about it, didn’t Sodor also have a narrow gauge railway and an electric mountain railway, similar to Snaefell on the Isle Of Man?

Could be a great little network if they applied themselves properly to the task.

 

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I wouldn’t be at all surprised if they restrict use of Thomas to just the WSR.
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The characters can be driven on any route Add-on using Free Roam

What happens when you speed read through red mist!!

Thomas on the Bakerloo Line, anybody?

 

This thread is WAY better than any of the Xmas LOVE on TV. Please, keep going.

Perhaps for April 1st DTG could add a patch so Thomas and fiends appear randomly on AI services on EVERY route? Now that forum reaction I would really pay to see.

I also think you guys really need more practice insulting one another, you haven't even questioned anyones ancestry one generation back, never mind three or four.

 

Percy won't be in the TTTE route expansion unfortunately, he failed to file his tax return.

 

Takes me back to visits to Early learning Centre when my kids were small.

 

Now the trains watch the people moaning it's not a real sim

 

Running Thomas at 300+ kph on LGV could be fun.

 

Or a Halloween horror event when Thomas and friends with evil faces appear on your track going towards you at 160 mph and if you don’t press “Thomas acknowledge” button they’ll hit you

 

Whilst you’ve been spending ‘months’ working hard on a getting Thomas into the game, some of us wonder why that?

Given the state of TSW, time for you guys is clearly not a resource you have, as many, if not all of your releases are stained with issues, so people are right on the money in being concerned with the direction of TSW - you’ve displayed that you’ve used one of your most valuable resources to go after cartoons instead of investing it into your core demographic that has stood by you for years.

Personally the biggest sticking point of this for me is the licensing. ATS’ new route set in Manchester is going to have LNWR & Scotrail stock all over, because TSW doesn’t have a TPE license, instead we’ve got Thomas. We still only have 1 Northern train & are making up for that by way of Scotrail, instead we’ve got Thomas. WCML is 50 miles of unbranded LNWR stations, with fake liveried trains, instead we’ve got Thomas.

The last couple of years has been an onslaught of fake timetables & stock diagrams, whilst irritating, it’s understandable to a point as we’d hoped your licensing teams had been working away at getting us more ToCs & loco artists putting the existing licensing to more use, but instead we’ve got Thomas.

The new German route set in specific enough time that has allowed you to use existing stock made up of outdated models - is this one the actual direct result of your teams needing to work on Thomas? Developed at the same time & you’ve prioritised Thomas?

Every other UK route comes with an EWS (or more sparingly DB) 66, because there has been no push to get anything different & the first opportunity you’ve seemingly had to make new locos & spend money on licenses - you’ve made Thomas.

 

I've had a thought. As this is aimed at a younger market and designed to appeal to get younger players into the game, will the controls and physics of this new pack be simpler?


Like will it have basic stop and start controls and a speed limiter so it adheres to the max 25 mph running on the West Somerset Railway map?

Because I cannot see a younger player being able to easily grasp running the regulator and reverser to drive it.

If this has been made to appeal to younger players and get them into the world of TSW then why was the Roblox game made? Are parents going to drop the £ for both this DLC and the WSR route so their kids can play it?

 

I have to say I sat through the 24 minute video they released which was basically what was in the release paragraph and didn't give anything new to my attention apart from Matt talking regarding the control system.

This got my alarm bells ringing a little as it was very much set out in a pick up and play sort of way and is apparently different to anything they've done in TSW so far. Which doesn't to me sound like any sort of steam physics or firing improvements. This to me sounds more like flying Scotsman/4F infinite boiler pressure, forwards and backwards experience. Although I hope I'm proved wrong.

 

"That’s my fault, but a marketing campaign that makes the user feel stupid does not work."

This. You hit the nail on the head. It ended up (whether intentional or not) being mean-spirited, which seems like the exact opposite of the whole vibe of Thomas and friends.

I don't doubt the genuine enthusiam for the project among the dev team, but wow the marketing strategy was a disaster IMO.

 

What was the precise quote?

 

How will players interact with Thomas?
"Some of the Trains in train sim world can be difficult to drive. So we've really wanted to spend a lot of time, we've done some internal prototypes of different systems to try and understand if there is a way to make Thomas and Diesel rewarding to drive, really straightforward to use".

They also did user feedback and seeing how new players expected things to work at exhibitions."How they picked up the controller and expected the game to work".

"We think we've got a really good prototype for how you're going to be able to drive these trains it'll just be pick up and play and be really cool to drive"

 

It’s for kids, I honestly don’t see any update to the steam physics. That’s just building up expectations that are unlikely to be met. I haven’t watched the video, nor will I, but I’m guessing it will be very simplified controls more like a train set.

This is my main issue with DTG. The way they abandoned steam and tried to get away with not telling us until a dev leaked it was in my opinion disgusting.

 

It will be something like Trainz DCC mode where essentially you turn the controller as a model railway transformer with just a slight bit of inertia.

 

That’s what I thought all along. They won’t improve/revisit steam physics with Thomas - there won’t be much physics simulated at all. That seems clear through Matt’s corpo speak.

 

That would be a shame. Thomas is a steam engine after all and a steam engine should work like a steam engine. Maybe they could do 2 versions of it, a realistic one and a simplified one. If Thomas gets realistic physics, I would probably buy it at some point. Great opportunity to rework and bring back steam trains for TSW.

 

I probably would say no due toi how the license works. I would also suspect that these might not be livery designer compatible again possibly to how the liscence was agreed to use them. But fo full confirmation that would be a Matt P answer.

Hentis

 

All the more reason why it should get its own custom fictional route and not be given house space on one of the real world ones.

 

I would really like the other way round. The Isle of Sodor but with realistic trains, would be a great little network.

 

True.

 

Don’t even think to post anything remotely negative over on the TSW Facebook page, as the white knights are out in force over there…

 

Does that make you the Dark Knight?

 

I'm guessing it's going to be a mute Thomas?

 

That's called Derail Valley!

 

The AI version will be unless that is something they have bothered to fix!

 

Disgusting is an interesting word used for a company who you're potentially not a ceo at. Lord forbid they exercise their own commercial choices

 

Would be good if they could.

 

When you say "we" you are not speaking for me.

Just want that to be clear.

My guess 2 weeks ago was it was just going to be a Happy Holidays video from them. So this was bigger than I expected.

Maybe your expectaions were too big.

 

This would be the game that includes a sci-fi spaceship?

 

They aren't speaking for me either.

I wish posters wouldn't "speak for the community" especially when only reading the posts that chime in with their point of view

 

You do realize that lack of a license for, say, LNWR or Abellio is not a function of DTG not trying, but of the TOC saying "sod off"?

As for diversion of effort: do you see me pissing and moaning over the fact that DTG have poured time and money into not one, not two, but five New York routes, which interest me not in the least, rather than My Own Favoritest Route? Oh, that's right- other people with other preferences also play TSW!

 

Ah yes LNWR & Abellio saying no (for which you have no source, other than knowing of an undefined issue), means that no other licenses could have happened.

Ok, good for you I suppose?

Please do feel free to quote where I said otherwise.

Not really sure what point a group of you playing the usual aggressive defence in a thread which obviously mis-aligns with your opinion is supposed to achieve - that’s the interesting thing about a few people that can’t bare DTG being criticised, they’re often (ironically) on the attack.

Ultimately I’m unsure what your reply to me is supposed to achieve other than instigating an argument.

 

To summarise what DTG said on livestreams at the time of the route's reveal, they built the route on the understanding that LNWR would allow for their brand, but near the reveal that permission was revoked.

I would count that as them 'saying no'.

 

I ask myself exactly the same questions because many say that it is to attract children, forgetting that it is not easy to drive a train, especially for a child + the paid DLC policy (which costs a little a lot)

I don't know about the popularity of Thomas in the world because I don't think he was hugely popular in France, but I think the DLC is more for nostalgia (and the fact that dtg works with a big company but no need to say it since it's obvious) than to attract the new generation.