January - Drive 200 Miles, fair enough. February - Drive 1000 miles!? Ooof, that's quite the uptick! Curious as to what the reasoning behind such a big increase in this particular goal was. I grinded out the 200 miles on the Training Centre last night, as I was only roughly 50% done after completing the other challenges included in January's monthly. My concern is, in completing the 3 other challenges for February, how far off of 1000 miles total might I be this month?
To be fair, that's more of a challenge. 200 miles is for wimps . Anyhow you could still do it fairly quickly with a few runs on SKA, SEHS or even ECML. Going to get my teeth into this! Edit: A run I started last night and finished just now doesn't seem to count. Sorry for ping DTG Alex but last time we had to do weather related scenarios you kindly supplied a list. Is there any chance you could do this again for those where it's raining, thanks?
The mastery achievement bars will update with your progress, also the summary at the end of each individual run tells you how many miles or km you've done on that one. My personal plan is to find and tackle the scenarios first, then start building up the mileage. Just hope the reward is more than a decal for spending so much time in the sim to do this. £2.50 voucher off a DLC for completion, DTG?
A money off voucher for a DLC? How dare you use such words! You know what, a livery would be nice, I be happy with that, get a unique you can pick from US, UK, German and so on. It would be a nice reminder of the hard work you put in. Badges are just meh
Mileage always seems to break/not track when resumed from a save, so it needs to be done in a single attempt for it to register when you return to the main menu.
I read it as scenarios in the rain, not timetable runs. Well I found one on Salzburg to Rosenheim albeit a ghastly 766 drive so hopefully that will tick the first one off. Will find out in about 15 minutes!
Or five trips on the Isle Of Wight! Seriously though I will probably mix it up a bit with a couple of longer runs to get the mileage in.
An Azuma run on ECML and an 87 from Carlisle to Preston will take care of around 175 miles. After that, a few bits and bobs to mix things up and of course Mittenwaldbahn will be dropping in the mix a week Tuesday, too.
1000 miles isn't all that much really, a Preston - Carlilse run is 90 miles, lots of routes where you could do the 15 timetables and reach 1000 miles. Also grateful not being forccd to do scenarios, a lot of people have already done them all so end up repeating the shortest ones just to get a badge, whereas I doubt many people have done every timetable run on the list.
That was actually my thought, re scenarios. I tend to work through Journey mode on my routes which generally includes most of the hand scripted scenarios. So I do appreciate the extra freedom allowing us to choose our own routes and trains to enjoy in a torrential downpour! Anyhow think this could be a good time to dust off my playing card randomiser system for choosing a route to run on, spice up the variety a bit.
Hop on full length service in KWG, turn on AFB & LZB, turn off Sifa, wait an hour, a large portion done
Hi folks - we want mastery to be a fun set of challenges to complete each month, and it seemed our original goal of 200 miles/month was a low bar for many players to reach, so we're trying out ways we can make these more of an achievement to earn. As a note, there's so much more we'd like to try and do with monthly mastery, right now we've got our decal badges you can earn and share, but there's much more ambition we have to put more into the system, so it's a good test for us to see the interest level from you, and hear your feedback on what is too little / too much
I am 100% behind this, Alex. As I said 200 miles is for wimps (to slightly misquote Michael Douglas in Wall Street). You could spice it up by including aspects some players might not normally indulge in, such as travelling as a passenger or doing Guard duties though not for 1000 miles .
I like doing them its fun to try and complete them what you actually get for completing them is a bit lame just a badge make worth it like Small discount code for a route or some skins for trains something tho kind regards.
In some ways it’s a mini career mode as you are working towards a goal, not just playing abstractedly to tick off scenarios or Journey elements or gather skewed AP. It’s actually distracted me from playing Dirt Rally 2.0 which I just repurchased in the sale.
The mastery goals are definitely an interesting one. I picked up SEHS again and the run down to Ashford to get the high speed task out of the way. But did a journey mode service in the snow which also counted towards my rain services. Will now have to see if I can get to 1000 miles!
I think monthly masteries are an interesting idea, it gives a bit more play to TSW. However, if the masteries are too time consuming not everybody will be in a position to complete them and this ends up being a bit unfair, punishing people who have commitments outside TSW. On the other hand if the tasks are easily complete in no time at all, it takes the fun away for other players, so what is the solution? Maybe do like train ticket class system, get to 200 miles you get a 3rd class ticket, 1,000 miles you get a second class ticket and 1,500 miles equals first class ticket. Players could collect tickets or badges....? This way everybody gets to take part. What does everybody else think?
That sounds like a very good solution actually. I mean the route masteries are arranged by tiers, so why not a two, three or four tier arrangement for the monthly challenge.
Just had my first glitch. Got my first 120 MPH qualifier (just) yesterday evening with the HST on MML. Finished up an Azuma run on the ECML from Newark to Peterborough, plenty of 120 MPH + thrash, but still only shows 1/2 complete. Well I’ll check later on, see if it updates otherwise back on the Azuma I go!
The MML one definitely registered yesterday as I checked, even though I was only doing 120 for about 5 seconds. The ECML run was for much longer. At this point, no biggie I’ll either have another go on ECML later or fire up the Pendolino from Euston to MKC.
Maybe one where you have to earn 500k XP or something. Setting the bar a bit higher is the way to go, so the 1,000 miles trophy is excellent.
Quick follow on from my earlier comment. The mastery has now updated to reflect 2 out of 2 runs at 120 MPH achieved. Right where to go next, maybe a little jolly with the 4F for a change.
Just the distance to build up now. Abandoned the 4F after realising most of the Peak Forest moves are just shunts or light engines so not much there. Jumped over to Germany and taking a 401 along the Rhine Valley instead.
Of course you could torment yourself and just do bus stop all stations services on every route. 1000 miles on the Goblin Line and/or Euston to Watford DC Line. Or those tedious Class 700 runs through the Medway towns! They’d be putting me in a straitjacket halfway through.
How can I complete certain objectives for the monthly mastery, but not actually manage to travel any miles? Am I just sitting in the cab making broom broom broom noises or what?
There is a bug where the progress is not visible in the progress bar, but still recorded in the background. So the mastery should still complete when you have enough miles. Furthermore, sometimes distance driven doesn't record when you save and reload a game session.
As a little update, I would say based on my experience so far, 1000 miles/1600km is probably the desirable maximum. Despite playing TSW5 pretty much to the exclusion of anything else the last week or so, I haven't even passed the halfway mark yet, though still working on it. Perhaps another challenge for Alex to consider and assuming the game and mastery algorithms can record it - make a defined number of passenger stops. I would say maybe 2500 to kick off with and for a real challenge maybe 4000!
I've been playing a little more TSW than usual but I'm nowhere near half way with the mileage. But have got through most of the other ones without too much issue. Starting to warm up a little to ECML which is helping with the mileage though. Would be nice if you could record the distance is something a bit more readable on the progress bar. Rather than individual meters which is what it looks like it's counting in to my eyes?
That would put me back on Bakerloo line. Grinding for a lot of stops I wonder if setting different mastery goals actually entices the community to play different types of content. For example, do DTG see more play on high speed lines with a big distance goal like this month?
Another thought for something different as regards mastery… Some of the tablet games, like Clash Of Clans, have a monthly “ladder” which unlocks various in game rewards as you complete different tasks. Something like this might add a bit more sophistication to the process.
Has anyone used the TSW tracker? I honestly don’t know why DTG doesn’t incorporate something like that into Dovetail Live. It allows you to track your route progress, breaking it down to journey / scenario / achievements / collectible progress and it includes a leaderboard, showing who has completed the most things in TSW. There’s a lot of potential function in Dovetail Live. One being storing your save profile and progress there, meaning you don’t have to mess around with profile transfer each yearly install when TSW goes up a number. The progress tracker I suggest above would tie into this. For those interested in Action Points and Driver Levels. They could do route events where specific routes earn you double AP for a period of time alongside some challenges on those routes. Might be a way to attract some players to older, less used content too. Driver level and Action Points could also tie into a leaderboard itself. Though that would require DTG to iron out any exploits, such as using the god mode mod to fast forward the game to boost AP gain x4. Generally, I think journey mode can be a good way to progress through a route like a “career mode” but the problem with it most of the time is that there isn’t any sense of structure in how services and scenarios are ordered. It very much feels like sticking a music collection on shuffle, rather than a more carefully structured experience of listening to an album in order from start to finish.
Agree Scott, Journey mode would be one way of presenting a driver’s shift while the save game limitations remain. Something like that was tried with Clinchfield and was quite good, but elements randomly inserted and jumping around all over the place doesn’t really put you in the “story” so to speak.
This month's mastery is a little bit too much as I've only completed 744km of it, and also this basically silently force the player to play high-speed route as much as possible. I'd say 1000km is enough. Maybe DTG should also throw in some conductor mode requirements.
It made me dust off the LGV Méditerranée DLC, where I probably would have never touched it again otherwise. And for a change, I actually find it enjoyable. So there is an upside to it. Same with Kassel-Wurzburg. However, I only choose the half timetables there (Kassel-Fulda), with full runs it quickly becomes a snoozefest. LGV is the most time efficient way to get the mileage in, other than leaving it running and going AFK at the training center.
I would love to get some support for an in-game UI to help show this, something I can suggest as a longer term goal. I really like the suggestion above for multiple "tiers" of the challenge, and I can investigate if this is something we can look into too. Critically, it's really great to see more support for this since we launched, and I'm glad you've all found that these challenges help (even if slightly) encourage more incentives to play
Have to concur that the 1000 miles/1600km is getting a bit grindy now. With the arrival of Mittenwaldbahn this evening I want to be spending a fair bit of time on that, where life is lived at a gentler pace and 45 minutes of driving will probably net around 30 or 40km of travel. Think I’m now on around 700km driven but with 18 days of February left that means I need to average 50km a day to hit the target. Not impossible but it means playing TSW when I might want to take a break and do some rallying or shoot some heads off in Sniper Elite, or force me to run on high speed routes rather than more leisurely DLC. With hindsight I don’t mind a big target but maybe best kept for the months with 31 days in them, give a bit more wiggle room!
Well that's great... Just went to check on my Mastery progress and see the distance travelled has reset to zero. Will check again tomorrow to see if it has restored. All the other goals are shown correctly as achieved so what could have wiped that?
