Johannes is really attentive. He has looked at the feedback on his own route and taken on board the comments and criticisms and wants to work hard to correct, improve and also extend his route further. It’s a real shame that Rivet will not do the same!!! He must have been working really hard to correct the omissions and errors the community have commented on and although l was happy with the offering of Stratford to Willesdon Junction, l know a lot of folk have pined for an extension to Richmond. He obviously wants to please the community and strive for excellence in the work he does and Johannes has now confirmed that he is committed to extend the Mildmay further to Richmond without charge to those who bought his route. That is a wonderful gesture, which the community will be proud of! Wow, this guy is really amazing and this shows up developers like Rivet Games, who produce sub standard offerings and give no after care service, ignore customers feedback and complaints which fall on deaf ears and are happy to present their shoddy work continually to the community. Well done Johannes, the Train Sim community really appreciates developers like yourself, who both listen and acts on the complaints to make the product as good as possible. You obviously take after the Just Trains standard of presentation and want to equal or better it.
He has also disproved all the shills who for years bleated, “extensions not possible”, when we all knew quite nicely if you have a working master copy, no reason why not. So come on DTG… TVL out to Bishop Auckland, Boulby and Sunderland. NTP on to York and Scarborough. GWR on to Oxford and Thames Valley branches. PFR to Derby and Manchester. Sos to Chester from Runcorn and Crewe. ECW to Hastings/Ore and backfill to Haywards Heath. Rivet -WCL through to Plymouth and Bernina to St Moritz. SHG - MML to Sheffield, Lincoln, Skegness and Bedford. To name just a few.
Obsessive Rivet hatred still living rent free because West Coast Local never got no love, tho I do like what the solo dude is feeding people, and I'll happily eat more of anything he dishes up......
Keep in mind this is a FREE update too. The extension is a FREE update, and it really shows why DTG can no longer monetize extensions when a solo developer is giving one for FREE. DTG simply doesn't have a leg to stand on anymore when it comes to justifying not extending a route.. imo Extensions should be an absolute non-negotiable
Hate to be that guy, but......Dtg did a free extension to SEHS, plus free updates to Somerset and soon GWE
TBH I have already posted in another thread that I think the community SHOULD pay for the Richmond extension. Show Johannes a bit of love and reward him for his hard work. I suggested £5 a pop once the upgrade is released (well under market rates) paid directly to him. IMHO it's the least he deserves.
If he doesn’t already have it he needs to set up a buy me a coffee link or something similar, I see lots of love for him here and responding to (reasonable) user feedback and criticism deserves rewarding
Not if you already owned it wasn't it was a free upgrade. I bought the German edition of TSW 3 and it wasn't a base route but I already owned SEHS and it was extended for free. And as per the FAQ. Players who already own Southeastern High Speed: St Pancras - Faversham Route Add-on and/or Spirit of Steam: Liverpool Lime Street - Crewe Add-on in Train Sim World 2 will receive the updated version of these routes for free upon purchasing any copy of Train Sim World 3 (on the same platform & account). But LIRR was a paid extension.
Its refreshing to get Devs like JT, TSG, Johannes and Liam coming through with great content at the moment. It's clearly their passion and something they put a lot of time and effort into and that really shows with their content. Honestly they all do a fantastic job and I wish more Devs took a leaf out of their book
That’s right but we paid £29.99 for the route and Levenmouth is only a short extension. Mildmay although a slightly shorter route was £24.99 and the Richmond extension is much longer than Levenmouth. The quality of Mildmay is way superior to Fife Circle in my opinion.
I strongly believe that third party products are the future of the game, and it's good to see more third parties on the roadmap. As others have said, many Dovetail products simply lack the ambition required to take the game forward.
You say all that, but that whole "purchasing any copy of Train Sim World 3" was almost certainly the only reason DTG did the "free" upgrade. The only scenario that you save any money at the time was purchasing those aforementioned US or German regional editions, and even then only slightly. Needing to spend at least $40 to get a "freebie" is no different from spending a certain amount to get "free shipping". The point isn't to get you a good deal, it's to make you spend more than you otherwise would have. It's 100% supposed to make money regardless of the semantics, and that is notably different from the aforementioned GWE & WSR upgrades.
Fife circle may not be the highest quality route but it was still over 50 miles at release, Mildmay was 12. So the price for both routes is justifiable. If the full Mildmay line from Stratford to Richmond/Clapham Junction came at release it would probably also be £29.99 or £32.99.
It’s pretty much what happened with TSC. DTG released a lot of slop for it with the occasional diamond in the rough. Give it a couple more years & the solid third parties we’re seeing will eventually get into a solid release pattern & we won’t be dependent on DTG’s stuff for gameplay.
True, but chances are a lot of people already own them. Obviously those new to the franchise would have to buy them. As for SEHS, can't exactly be free if you had to buy TSW3 to get it.
So I paid $29.99 for the German regional pack, less than the price of a route. For the base game and Kassal Wurzburg. I never repurchased SEHS. I didn't spend any more than I would of just buying 1 route, so you can believe what you want but my wallet says it was a free extension at least for me.
This isn't an "extension" in the sense we mean it. Neither is SEHS 2.0, or LIRR 2.0. These are the same route, revised and expanded, as a new release (paid or free, it's still a re-release of the old route with new stuff). An "extension," properly understood, is a standalone module that plugs into a preexisting route or routes (say, a hypothetical Maintalbahn that integrated with MSB at Aschaffenburg)
So? Yes some get a genuine deal out of it, my point still stands, that isn't necessarily the point from a business stand point. Stores don't do discounts or buy one get one free deals to genuinely give good deals to people planning to buy those things. It's to do things like convince people who were on the fence to come to buy them, or spend more than they would've otherwise. Similar logic would've been used when enlightening SEHS, and DTG wouldn't have made it "free" if they weren't convinced that it would genuinely not make money for them.
Johannes has been refreshingly honest in saying Mildmay wasn't the full end to end route because he couldn't spend the extra time on it without bringing in any money, but presumably it's sold sufficiently well for him to go back and do that extension, which in turn will lead to more sales from people who thought it too short, which will fund his next project. It reminds me of the game No Man's Sky, which was released with less features than the players expected, but because it brought in a decent amount of money they had the funds to make a lot of extra stuff for free. The devs for that game have said in interviews that every time they do a free update they see an uptick in sales, the same should be true of any TSW extension/remaster.
Considering there are probably others like me who haven't purchased this route due to the length/start stop points. I'm pretty sure there will be an uptick when extended.
Essentially the first release of Mildmay was an early access version with the (subsequent) undertaking to extend it. I could go with that model and part of me hopes DTG are applying it to Cardiff - otherwise why charge £30 for a route that is barely 20 miles in total.
The best news I've seen today. I wonder if Johannes will stop at Richmond or keep building in the background. Either way, what a legend.
Mildmay is more than slightly shorter than FCL. I will likely get Mildmay once it is extended as it looks to be the same quality as JT and TSG products. However, for me TSW needs more than great quality. When on TSC you can drive a well modelled train on a 100 or even 200 mile full journey on a good looking route and yet on TSW short commuter lines seem to be the height of excitement.
On average, the train journey from Stratford (London) to Richmond (London) takes around 1 hour and 4 minutes, compare to an average of 53 minutes to travel from Edinburgh (Waverley) to Markinch by train stopping at all stations. So Mildmay will soon be slightly longer!!! Previous Mildmay to Willesdon Junction was 43 minutes only slightly shorter, as l previously said. We paid £5 less than Fife Circle for a far better quality route!! So a huge congratulations to Johannes as it was his own work.
We I made the entirely reasonably assumption as did others that you were referring to route length! And yes I agree he has done a great job and now he's is extending it I'll buy it. However I would say FCL probably offers more driving experiences.
Leven to Edinburgh Waverley is between 1hr 7mins to 1hr 20mins in timetable mode on Fife Circle, still longer than Mildmay.
I’m really enjoying Mildmay as it is. So the news that it’s being extended is really excellent. I’m still really impressed that a single developer could do such excellent work. Whilst I enjoy the Cardiff route as well, despite its faults. It does look very poor value (and quality) when compared to Mildmay.
Sorry l should have explained that the times were quoted from the real railway via Trainline and not the game as these can vary according to the player etc.
Real life Leven - Edinburgh is still about 1hr 7mins on average, so still longer than the Mildmay service by a few minutes.
Very true. I can remember reading this forum a long while ago (when I was solely a lurker), from the same few people all the time; “extensions not possible because it’s been baked” or some such nonsense. They are the ones who were half baked it has been proven. Then there were the ones that said stupid things like “not possible to have Azuma’s in stations on rivet Scottish routes because DTG can’t mix their stock with rivets”, I wonder why these noddies feel the need to speak up in some sort of strange justification based on making life too easy for a game dev they themselves are paying money to purchase products from? Can anyone see the irony in that? Fools, you know who you are.
Another +1 for Johannes, Mildmay Line currently my staple and up there with one my favourite UK routes. Always loved it in Train Sim Classic because it was a busy, varied route. There’s a few timetable tweaks I hope Johannes makes, but apart from that I can’t wait to see the extension!
Why not Newcastle? We'll set aside neither are actually on the Tees Valley Line or had many, if any, through services at the time bar to Middlesbrough. Hartlepool I could understand as there were Hartlepool - Darlo services.
I agree, it’s an excellent route especially when you consider a sole developer was responsible. So busy and so much to do and see. The scenery density is remarkable. The fact that he is going to do the extension to Richmond as a free add-on should make up the mind of everybody who hesitated the first time around because as one run this is going to be a hell of a good value route.
The difference is that Fife Circle was produced by a fire and forget developer. Johannes takes pride with his production and is now working harder to extend and better it. Thank you Johannes for taking the route now on to Richmond and for free to owners which is fantastic.
You've described the entire reason why they can't do it - it would be free. Paywall extensions are (unless done the way SEHS or LIRR were) out of the window as we've now seen a solo dev do it for free. However, free extensions unless there's some attached way of making money (TSW3 itself with SEHS, for example) aren't going to make much economic sense for Dovetail to throw a team at. It would take up time which could be spent on a route which would actually make Dovetail (or Rivet, Skyhook, etc) money and just be a drain of resources for them. As a passion-project of a few people, similar to the recent remasters or DRA's Meißen "Extension", then maybe - but otherwise not a chance and you're wishing for something of a fantasy.
Well there is a slight difference between extending the NLL to the location it should have gone anyway and pushing TVL to Boulby and Bishop Auckland, or NTP to Scarborough. That would justify a 2.0 and fresh purchase.
I would say TVL would be a solid shout for a 2.0, yes. But the likes of Bernina Line probably wouldn't be because they're up to date and at a good standard.
Well my view on Bernina is that by finishing in the middle of nowhere rather than going to St Moritz it is very incomplete. IMHO should be extended free of charge but Rivet and/or DTG, as you say, are unlikely to entertain the notion.
Rivet Games are a fire and forget developer, but Fife Circle is a poor example of that. A better example would be something like West Cornwall Local. Since release, Fife Circle has had two timetable updates (albeit still far from real life) and will soon have a third with the SHG update, a free extension (though only with two stations), and some scenery updates. Even as a route itself, Fife Circle is the opposite of linear and features really cool service patterns. However, after the upcoming SHG timetable update, I doubt it’ll receive another major update.
Fixed it, thanks for calling it out lol. I was in a flow with the writing and didn’t notice how I wrote West Cornwall Local instead of Fife Circle.
