This idea of DTG "getting rid of the forum" (presumably to push more people to Discord) keeps popping up. I think it'd be a terrible idea personally as a business decision, but maybe it's just me. I put the greater question to the forum. This will of course be a bit biased in that it's posted on the forum, but I think that many of the "big players" that are heavily invested in TSW and DTG DLC in general are represented here and again, personally I know I buy more TSW content because I see it discussed here, announced here, and there's a sense of community here that encourages more involvement. Without that extra "push" I don't think I'd be as involved or have bought quite so much content (for good or bad ;-) What do you think? Would it have an impact a significant on your TSW experience, and in particular how eager you were to continue to support the game?
Whille the forums and other social media are nice to have areas to discuss - they realy have little to no bearing on my time in TSW or TSC for that matter. Infact, I see them more as entertainment outlets for the most part as many of the discussions deteriorate rather quickly. I have no problem with Discord either since i am using it for MSFS and many of the DLC developers for that title.
I think the forums should be kept, but it wouldn't affect how much I play TSW or TSC for that matter. The forums really helped me in the early days when I was trying to learn PZB with a few clarifications. Also my many questions about TSC and mods. On Discord unless there happened to be an expert on there at the time, it's likely my question would have just scrolled past unanswered. Hopefully since those times I've been able to help others. I also enjoy reading the discussions and seeing how people react to things. You can almost guess the reactions of certain people and whether I agree then or not, they are an important part of the forum's character. Removing the forum would be a loss in my opinion.
I cannot get used to using Discord. Perhaps it's my age, I grew up with forums, and they are so neatly organized in clear discussions about certain topics. Discord seems like a chat, it's a chaos of subjects and non-related discussion all mixed together in a blender. Wouldn't know how to find information about a certain topic using Discord, wouldn't be my choice of platform to ask a question either. I think the poll is pretty useless though. TSW is still my hobby and I would keep on buying TSW products. But if the forums would dissapear, so would I. I would no longer participate in the community, as I simply cannot get the hang of Discord. I consider the forums to be a valuable part of the community and would certainly hope it stays.
I have not heard any mention of the forum closing? Is there any evidence or a link to the suggestion of such a move? Or is this just hypothetical? Surely discord is just another outlet for DTG? To be honest, I only use the forum and would not use discord. I'm still reasonably young (ish), but have no time for these apps, and am happy just being a contributor on the forum. Much like TikTok I wouldn't bother with it. TikTok is another thing I'll never understand, it is a site that I find very cringe worthy when adults post on there...
Whilst I personally have no interest in using Discord, so hope it isn't a replacement, but more of an alternative for those who do wish to use it. I don't think closing the forums would affect how I enjoy playing the game though tbh
I’ve never been a huge fan of Discord, I only ever use it if I’m playing a game with a friend on another platform, the good ole Discord call comes in handy then. It would be better to keep both avenues open as a means of connecting new and existing players.
The forum is vitally important to me. I may not post as much these days but I’m here every day reading many threads, keeping up with everything that’s going on and reading all manner of interesting thoughts and useful information about the routes and trains depicted in the game from players who are more knowledgeable about the railways than I am, as well as people’s opinions of the game and content, and info on issues that arise and how to deal with them. It’s not perfect but it’s quite well organised. It’s easy to navigate, search or catch up with threads from where I left off last time I came on. It’s also fairly civilised and may be skewed more to the older players like myself. I really can’t imagine what it would be like without it. I’d be out of the loop with what’s going on and not have an easy place to look up if I have an issue. Discord is not a replacement for this type of resource. I wouldn’t use it. Would it affect how I use the game not having the forum? It would make it harder for me to find out potential issues and may lead me to think twice about buying a DLC but I can’t say for sure. I’d be less happy with TSW overall as the forum is all part of my experience with it. I think DTG would be mad to close the forum but they might not think so. It’s not like there is just one TSW community who all congregate in one place, this is a certain part of the community and it shouldn’t be lost. There’s a separate community (with a bit of crossover) that can be seen in the chat on live streams and those are I guess the players who are more likely to like a chat environment like Discord. Not me.
I'm just here for the poops and giggles, as much as I respect everyones opinions and are glad they have them, I really don't care about any of them. The forum for me is a little snapshot into the human condition and how crazy humanity actually is.......
It's somewhat ironic, as due to mine, I grew up with IRC, the thing Discord most reminds me of, only transitioning to forum use in the late 90s/early 2000s, but I see very different purposes for both. You cannot have long form posts on a chat service.
I can’t see them switching off the forums atleast not on the foreseeable future whilst the number of active users remains high. Maybe that’s the long term goal who knows, and perhaps the mantra “Use it or lose it rings true” for us. I like many find discord extremely hard to navigate and quite track of and I absolutely hate that there’s a paywall for much of the features, why should I pay to interact fully with a game I already pay enough for? It makes no sense to me to do that And whilst I’ve used it previously it’s been out of necessity rather than desire, and currently I’m in one sole group for a YouTube channel I’m a Patreon of and I’ve no intention of adding DTGs to that list at the current time.
I've got a brief experience with IRC, but I experienced it like a chatroom, fun to chill with friends, but for any meaningful on-topic discussion, I've always preferred to use a forum.
Things like Route Suggestions, there's no possible way to handle those on Discord in a meaningful, useful manner.
Wouldn't stop me playing the game but IMHO it would be a huge mistake to try and replace or downgrade the forum by switching focus to Discord instead. This is something N3V have apparently done with Trainz and their admittedly much smaller team apparently don't even look at the forum anymore though they have kept it going for now. Apart from the odd ruckus these forums serve the game and DTG quite well. They are often a source of valuable information and the search function, while not perfect, will usually find your answer.
This forum is full of life and looks like it’s going to stay that way for a very long time. I can sort of see the concern though with other forums on the internet… as many of them are dead. Some people would say forums are old fashioned now and are a thing of the past especially since social media became a thing. I love this forum. I hope it stays active for years and years to come and i reckon it will. I have never ever used discord neither. Not got a clue how it works lol.
I'm a bit of a lurker on here, read it all the time, but hardly ever post. For me this is kind of what the UKTS forum was back in the heyday of Railworks/TSC and indeed you find some of the names from there on here, although mostly in the TSC section. I find it useful to pick up details of when things are coming out and any random useful (or sometimes useless ) information about the upcoming or previous DLC releases.I would prefer to keep it rather than have to use some other system.
The forums disappearing is pure speculation. I love how 2+2=5 here…..so DTG start their own Discord server and the world & his wife think/say the forums are being wound down! Personally, I prefer Discord over the forums anyday. Much more dynamic and instant. Another benefit is that the server Mods & Admin can ping everyone with important messages, updates or when a stream has gone live. As for people saying they don’t understand it etc its simply a server and multiple chat rooms. Some of you ‘oldies’ must have used chat rooms previously surely?
^Little Frank! I rely on this place for identifying bugs where I think it's my fault the damn train won't move, and pointing out any discrepancies between real life and sim. Thanks to the knowledgable folk on here the game is far more rewarding.
Oh I wouldn't want to lose this forum. It's my man source of information about the game and I read it every day. Yes it can get a little argumentative and even a little scuzzy sometimes, but, for the most part, it's good humored and well moderated.
Not interested in wading through Discord I’m afraid. If they bin the forums I guess I’ll be missing out on the goss, but it wouldn’t affect my experience of the game. I’d probably be more cautious in buying DLC though, I find the forums useful on the whole for deciding on a purchase - probably wouldn’t buy anything on day 1 and just wait for a sale, just in case
At its current state, DTGs discord server is too general to be used as anything more that a large chat room. Especially if you want to talk about a topic but everyone else is talking about something else. Hence why the community TSC discord is still better than how DTG has their set up. And the forums should still have their place. There isn't any reason DTG should shut it down.
Not sure if it's my age or whatever, but I had no idea what Discord even is until I looked it up on the back of this thread. Does seem like the usual social media 100mph stuff, which I guess is fine if you grew up with it, but I do much prefer the easier browsing style of a forum.
Not to mention how much harder it is on Discord to filter out malicious bots once a server grows, and the amount of things they are potentially capable of in that environment of things moving much faster, as opposed to being much more tied down by the limitations of a forum..
Well I for one am always perusing the forum even though I might not always have time to comment. I enjoy the back and forth and especially all the guessing games about the next route or loco. I would really miss a lack of a forum. I’m not a fan of discord and don’t find it as easy to use on the few occasions I have tried. By comparison this is accessed in seconds and there is no chaff to get through. I’ve got it on speed dial!
While Discord is very nice for a quick chat, fun and memes - for long form discussions that can stay focused on a specific topic for longer than a few minutes / hours, nothing beats a forum thread. So it makes sense to just keep both.
First of all, I'm not a big fan of Discord in general. If the forum really would die in favour of Discord, I wouldn't migrate there. The forum here has its flaws, of course. A forum lives off its members. There are a lot of nice and likable people here, some of whom I had great discussions with. But there are also some who are... how do I put this diplomatically... difficult to deal with. The fanatical haters, the yes-men (and women), the loudmouths, the know-alls, the trolls... but that's all very much like in every other forum. (and my personal enemies, the I-have-to-speak-German-at-all-cost-fraction... saying this as a German myself) No, my support for TSW would not dwindle if the forum would go. But the forum is a good source for information about TSW and a good place for debate over TSW, if done politely and sensible. Much better and more organised for that than Discord, in my opinion.
I don't use Discord for a trivial reason - it was blocked in Russia, so I will read and write on the forum as usual in the old fashioned way There is a pleasant feeling of a quiet tavern, where railway fans from all over the world gather and discuss their favorite hobby)
If not for the forum I would have never bothered playing TSW for more than a few hours. I was so frustrated trying to get the trains to move on SPG that I found this forum to get some tips to actually drive, and the rest is history. Now I have hundreds of hours in TSW 2-5. Discord is good as well for real time chat but forums have a slower classic pace that I like.
It’s interesting because my immediate reaction was that (sorry though I would be to lose it) closure of the forum wouldn’t affect how many TSW products I buy. But when I come to think more about it, I think I was wrong. There are quite a few routes which I was inspired to buy by the feedback, experiences and pictures provided by others on this forum. It’s also my window into the world of mods (I may get them from another site, but I usually find out about them here) and there are many routes I wouldn’t have bought were it not for the existence of the mods. Like many others, I’d never switch to Discord (I joined to have a look how it worked, and it’s far less useful than any forum). DTG have talked about what a high proportion of people have joined Discord, but they’d be better looking at the proportion who post regularly, because I suspect a lot of the people who joined took one look and decided not to go back, like me. I think if the forum went the amount of TSW stuff I buy would actually decline quite a lot in practice, and I suspect I’m not the only one. The fact that one of DTG’s objections to the forum is that it’s difficult to moderate should be a reminder to us all though - if we want to keep it, we need to try to avoid the big fall-outs, leaks and inappropriate posts.
Exactly my train of thought (sorry for the weak pun). In the recent months, so many threads and discussions here have turned into some sort of pro-DTG versus anti-DTG shouting match surprisingly quickly. Or a small bunch of people trying to troll just for the fun of it. It would be a shame if DTG had to put some more people to moderating the forums, who in turn could help fixing bugs on routes instead
i thought the suggestion forum was a way for dtg to find out what the players want for this game. but ever since they do these surveys to fine out what plyers want and it successful from tsw6 view is there point in keeping suggestion forum.
They need to keep the forum. It's a neat, logical collection of topics. I can browse through and look for specific ones, join in the ones I can contribute to, find important information fairly easily. I just joined Discord out of curiosity. Sorry, but I don't get it. It's like I've just walked in a room where someone else's conversation is ongoing and I'm butting into it. Where are the organised tipics? How can you go there and raise an important query or draw attention to an issue and not have it quickly lost in the babble of people typing over each other about different things? No, I don't get it and don't like it.
I personally love the forums. I have Discord but it is not something I check much. It's main purpose is to chat with people. With this forum it is easy to start/join a conversation on a specific topic and people (tend to, anyways) stick to the topic. Even if I'm not interested in contributing, I can quickly read and get it done with. If it's discord, I'll have to either look for an old conversation or start one to eventually find out the information I want. Like let's say I would like to post progress of a timetable or route I'm making, with a thread I can post it in a centralised location which everyone can easily access and quickly see. If I were to only do that on discord, that would only be achievable if I had my own server. One nice thing as well is the Forums seem much less susceptible to scammers and trolls compared to discord. My only (major) gripe with the forums is that you can't see attachments (photos mainly) without an account, which does sorta bug me. I sometimes clear my search history to free up space on my computer and I won't bother logging in for a while when I'm logged out as I genuinely can't remember the password to this account. I have a lot of passwords I use and just go through all of them till one works. XD
They have always been very important to me, I visit them very often to keep up to date with all the news and the feeling of the community. And considering that I don't speak English and I always have to be with the translator to read and write here. Even so, this is my 1000th message! I always try to show my appreciation to DTG when they do a good job and also be critical when they don't, or when things could be improved. I am very Gretel to the community for everything I have learned about both trains and TSW and I hope we continue to have these forums for a long, long time.
I like the forum. It's a great place for the community to gather, it's well moderated; not too harsh but not too "light touch". It gives rail and rail sim fans a place to debate, learn about the railway world and express their honest opinions on TSC/TSW. Sometimes it gets a bit gnarly (I'll hold my hands up to that, we all have bad days) but never too abusive or contrite. As with others, again it's probably my age, but I hate Discord and you can add Twitter and Facebook to that list for me. Keep it, I say.
I'm in the DTG Discord and conversations are fast flowing. It's better for a live chat space and some good banter with fellow players, but if you want to give paragraphs of feedback, it's highly likely your messages will get lost among everyone else's messages. That's where the forums are still relevant as users can setup a thread dedicated to a specific subject, I don't think you can do this as well on Discord. I'd be quite surprised if DTG went ahead and shut down their forum anytime soon. There are quite a few users here on aren't on Discord and if DTG shut this place down, they'd either lose that direct communication with DTG or have to sign up to Discord which they may not want to.
