Upcoming Release Cardiff City Network - Coming Soon!

To those that have responded to my posts, thank you.

l feel we have been spoilt recently with top quality offerings and then bang, the stream of this route was so disappointing. I agree with those who are abdicating for a reduction in price which is sensible, but l cannot see that happening. We will have to wait for a sale.

The poor quality of this route is as disappointing for the first Welsh route in TSW, as it was for WCL and the same for both routes is an abundance of trees to replace the actual real scenery. There is no attention to detail on the track as it all looks as though it has just been laid. It just looks so pristine and clean as though the track had just be laid. It looks like new!!!

 

That could take months and years. I don't think they can afford to not release dlc for that long.

 

Yes l agree, but if they can’t do a decent job, they shouldn’t take it on.

 

It might just be speculation, but I don't think TSW operations really recovered from Covid. The introduction of the "work from home" culture with minimal supervision seems to have been perpetuated. I don't know how much is still done centralised at DTG Towers in Chatham but there is probably more motivation when the boss is looking over your shoulder a couple of times an hour (and their boss looking over them). Also they got used to doing research from the web rather than going out on field trips which might have inspired the people doing the route to take a closer look at Cardiff Central concourse. TBH the whole thing smells to me of a training project which was given to an intern as an exercise but was deemed good enough (Ha!) to push forward as an actual DLC. That would explain the very limited route scope and the shortcuts that seem to have been taken.

 

If they managed to create a beautiful route with the suffragette line I don't understand why we should accept less on this to be honest with you. Especially for the price point. It just seems like a let down with the good stuff.

It Needs another pass over on the scenery and it needs some TLC. If they just spent a little more time on the route before the preview and got the scenery to a good standard they'd make more money from selling a good route to people who were interested. The preview stream if anything has lost them money from all the people who have now decided they won't buy it.

 

Wouldn't surprise me if that was a contributory factor.

It happened to me. When I worked in an office, I declined when working from home became mandatory. Who's to say a similar situation isn't playing out here?

 

I said in the other thread I feel people need to cater their expectations to the length of this route. 20 miles total is not a lot.

i also criticised Matt’s statement of the concourse being too much work.

if this is too much work after the vast majority of the modelling has already been done, then I don’t know what to say really…

really poor show from DTG this. To try and justify it too is astonishing.

 

They managed the massive concourse at London Euston and made that fairly well!

 

CDF isn’t exactly a small station, but compared to Euston…. The concourse is tiny. I really don’t believe that Cardiffs concourse was far too much to model. An excuse to cover up the fact that they want you to teleport to platform 0 instead of actually putting effort in.

also noticed some nitpicky things about platform 0. OLE masts being in the wrong position (far too close to the platform edge) and missing PIS displays and off indicators.

 

Is this Rivet involvement. These flats appear in their routes?


Whitchurch station as it looks in real life.



No foliage just a wall and the wrong colour for the flats. In black and white it wouldn’t look too bad.

 

Yep same sloppy buildings that were on fife circle shocking really

 

Those buildings are just awful. Looks like a prison block. And what happened to the parking lot? Hate to use the L word but really. I saw better in MSTS freeware.

 

The whole route looks its from Minecraft blocky and nasty to look at

 

It’s bad overall - but I wouldn’t describe it as something out of Minecraft. Clearly a lot of effort has gone into *some* parts of the route. But it’s an absolute snore fest in others. They really let this one get away from them.

 

l agree that some effort has been put in, into some parts. But it’s another stinker from Rivet as it’s extremely shoddy and unprofessional yet again.

It’s a shame that they can’t do a good job as TSW would be so much better if they could.

What we need, is someone like Liam to remaster all Rivet routes, because Rivet won’t ever bother. If a jobs worth doing it’s worth doing well and that isn’t the case with Rivet. Unfortunately Liam has so much other work to do than to tackle all of Rivet’s calamities!

 

With all Rivets projects for tsw, they are developing something that is running on/in dtgs game. So why don't they have the final say, if something isn't good enough?

 

Well that is the question occupying our enquiring minds. Either DTG don’t care so long as the money rolls in or someone at Rivet has some in flagantre delicto pictures and the negatives!

 

I'll just quote myself from another thread:

Summarises it nicely.

 

Whilst I see and your respect your perspective, I do politely disagree in the sense that, if DTG recognise they have a mediocre route that's purely profit driven, why do they take it in their stride to hype up routes that are at best mediocre? That's another thing that really winds me up. Just read the initial description of WCMLS for example, the hype they built it upto be and what it actually turned out to be are two different things entirely. It's misleading on their behalf.

It was slightly better with the honesty the first time round with the timetable for Cardiff City as disappointing as it was. But still the hype is over the top.

I understand selling your product and making it appealing, but I do feel some of this hype is false advertising at times. Insincere excitement too...

 

I do think that's the crux of the problem.

It always felt like Rivet rushed out the unfinished Fife Circle in March 2024 because they were contracted to move on to WCMLS.

Now Cardiff City is coming out in an apparantely rushed state, again in March, presumably because they are contraced to move on to whatever core TSW6 route they will be building.

Talk about history repeating.

It is such a shame, whilst shorter than some would have liked, Berninalinie was a really good route and shows just what they are capable of, when they aren't rushed.

 

What is it with Rivet. I showed a comparison previously of Whitchurch station. Grey Flats instead of the real life brown shade. Surely this would have been better found elsewhere on the route.
This is typical of Fife Circle and some of their other routes. Where they show that they haven’t designed the correct building and then one is found further along the route that would have suited. Doesn’t make sense to me.

 

i remember there was a q&a article for the cardiff and city line where did that go?

 

If DTG are relying on Rivet to produce the core TSW route every year, it'd probably help if they weren't also producing their own routes as well.

That way, they could spend the entire year on the core route. And maybe, just maybe, it won't feel rushed.

I don't at all think Rivet themselves are wholly to blame. I just think they're being given too much, and with the pressure of producing two routes a year, it's doing the opposite of what it should.

 

Do we have a release time for tomorrow?

 

10pm console 6pm PC

 

Thanks

 

NP mate

 

This route Tomorrow and Thomas goes to Wales 2 days later. What a bonus.

 

It will be Network Manchester with exciting routes such as Manchester Victoria to Daisy Hill, Man Vic to Westhaughton, Man Vic to Eccles, Man Picc to Levenshulme and many more...

 

Working from home does not lower quality or work effort, thats a myth. We did a study in Canada and production was higher when people worked from home.

The big factor is people tend to work over their office hours when they work from home, if they are at home with nothing to do they tend to do extra work.

However this can affect your mental heath because of lack of work/life balance/separation issues.

 

I was watching the British Ace’s videos today (more specifically the Cardiff Bay video) and he mentioned that there was no Cardiff Bay services for the 153. Is there any reason for this as my at least twice yearly visit to the bay has always led me on a dogbox shuttle.

 

I’ve not seen it myself. I’m not sure if the timetable is just one unit going back and fore like it used to do before the timetable change.
I know they used to regularly be a single 153. But as always, it’s just whatever they can stick on it.

One thing I’ve noticed is, there seems to be a lot of four car services represented in the game…. And they don’t fit on all of the stations, which is something that wouldn’t happen with the 150 irl, unless the guard only opens their local door and nothing else. But, I don’t know what the maximum 150!formation is on the coryton/radyr branches.

 

Actually, working from home directly caused my work quality to go down, and it never recovered from that. I never went over my work hours, I didn't even do much work in them.

 

I am in two minds one to wait one for a sale and one to just get it as the class 150 doesn't seem that bad than I thought sounds excluded but anything is better then the WCL class 150 despite the sounds its more bearable

 

There’s no 153’s booked to Cardiff Bay anymore, just 150’s.

There are a pair of 153’s booked in reality on Coryton - Penarth - Caerphilly - Penarth - Coryton services.

And even 3 x 153’s booked to Penarth at one point these then shuttle between Barry Island and Bargoed

 

Fair enough - haven’t been to Cardiff bay in over a year.

 

I am taking the plunge and buying the DLC in an hours time Despite my better judgement the class 153 has won me over and the class 150 ain't that bad not good but some what better then I thought still a Rivet product clearly also noticed on RichyRail stream some texture gliches on the AWS but TBF thats a preview build hopefully now fixed

 

Having watched a couple of streams the route looks better than it did on the DTG stream. I also don't think the 150 sounds too bad, certainly better than the WCL one.

I might get it depending on how good the Dutch route is as I'm limiting my TSW spending.

I would like to see more network routes although preferably with longer runs.

 

What platform was he showing it on? Was it Xbox by any chance?

 

I took the plunge and invested in it. It’s ok but not in the class of a Just Trains route more like Fife Circle, with a lot of unfinished parts and unnecessary buildings looking completely different from the actual buildings. The route designer wants to get their head around what the actual building they are portraying looks like, instead of just guessing. Don’t they use Google Earth or photos from the area.

Apart from that l am quite pleased but it really is a TSW2 effort and certainly not worth £30.

 

Fife Circle is not a bad comparison. And I sorta have a decent time on FCL despite its shortcomings. Tbh this route probably has a leg up because the in game variations of the 150 and 153 seem to be of better quality than the in game 170.

So in the end, I think it’s probably a middle of the pack route, in terms of quality comparison to other routes, but I really enjoy the 153 and that’s what keeps me running the route.

 

So, after playing on it for a couple of days.

My own personal opinion.

It's a swing and a miss.

Choosing Cardiff Central for a first network in the UK was logical, it's a massive focal point for the various branch lines and mainlines for the west, surely DTG couldn't mess it up?

They did.

The 150 is a missed opportunity for an upgrade with regards sounds and physics and sounds worse than the WCL version but looks great.

The 153 is a win, looks and sounds great and I hope it layers onto other routes in the future.

The route/s itself, Bland on bland, Cardiff Central should sue for how it's been represented in game with the external look like something from a 1990s train Sim and the opportunity to explore it has been taken away from us and other stations also suffer from a botchjob (looks at Whitchurch)

The FPS is shocking, I did a Pontypridd to Cardiff Bay service earlier and it was buggy as hell. Almost unplayable.

The sounds overall are terrible, the AI traffic promised so much and delivered so little, spend 30 minutes on Cardiff Central in real life and it's incredibly busy with services, Freight, ECS moves constantly flowing with trains waiting a long time for a path through the station...but in game reminds me of New Street on Cross City, devoid of life.

Why aren't the local Cardiff-Bristol-Exeter services represented? Where's all the freight services? Why use the wrong HST sets for London services? What time period is it set in? Wires up but no 800s? Surely wouldn't have taken long to put some in unbranded GWR colours? Other routes have got dedicated unbranded AI traffic.

Where's the Cross Country services? Just use EMR 158s if need be for them.

With only two complete branches...3 if you include Cardiff Bay being made to disembark at a random station and wait god knows how long for a return trip can slow the game down.

Aside from the 153 I can't recommend this route, especially at full price.

That most 3rd parties can produce better work than DTG is pretty poor from DTG and console players like myself don't have any options, otherwise I'd give the other parties my money instead.

 

You said “Cardiff Central should sue for how it's been represented in game”, the same can be said about WCL. The representation of St.Ives, Penzance and other parts of Cornwall is disgraceful as well, but that is the best Rivet can do, so l am not surprised Cardiff City Network has been fouled up too. It is another amateurish effort and what amazes me is that they have the gall to ask for the same price for us to pay as we do for other routes which are 100% better in quality than the work Rivet produces. Their work totally lacks quality and l am surprised DTG accepts it.