Dovetail Games Tsw November 2025 Roadmap Q&a Thread

Morning folks - closing the thread and working on a summary for other questions that we didn't cover too. Expect an update shortly

 

Hello everyone,

The November 2025 Roadmap is timestamped, which highlights all our discussion topics, and answers to many questions from this thread.

November 2025 Roadmap Livestream


(Thank you to our team, chat moderators and some of you in the community who have provided answers to many!)

Just a quick mention that anything regarding new content that we've not yet shared details about, we won't be able to answer directly. Many of the questions in this thread were directly answered on the Roadmap stream above, so please be sure to skim through the timestamps to see if you got an answer!

Key Discussion Topics
This Roadmap, we wanted to address some frequently mentioned topics in the community, from question in this thread, and mentions from players during the month until now. These all had ~10 minutes to dedicated discussion on our livestream, and you can find links to these below:

• Discussion Topic 1: Status of Blurred Textures - What causes them, what we've done so far, and what's next.
• Discussion Topic 2: How we use Community Feedback Threads - Taking feedback through the full process into patch notes
  • In this topic, we also talk about recent updates and patches to TSW6, learnings and QA processes
  • We agreed that in recent months, incorrect builds and patch communication can be improved, and we're working with new internal processes that can help us keep getting better in this area.
• Discussion Topic 3: Dovetail Games Communication - General discussion about how we communicate, and how we can improve

Additional Community Questions

Q: How are we ensuring we fix longer-standing issues alongside new updates?
Since the release of TSW6, it's fair to say a good amount of our dedication has gone into addressing core route issues that impact the highest volume of our new community, many improvements which are still on the way with our upcoming update next week. However, as part of our patch process, which we've been continuing to refine over the last month or two, we're trying to identify the wider range of issues that are from older content, considered "lower priority" to players, or generally focused on feedback instead of a key issue/bug.

I'd love for our teams to get more of these longer-standing issues improved so that patient players can see improvements they've been waiting for, so I'll be doing my best to encourage each update to have a balanced spread of changes from new and older content, and hopefully patches coming up over the next few months can reflect this.
I fully agree with the comment about substance > communication, and I hope we can start delivering more for players moving forward with our patches, with some good changes already happening for our most recent update (See more from our Feedback discussion topic linked above).

It's not always a simple choice however, as updating older content always comes with additional consideration and testing time required, which means that when looking at longer-standing issues, it's best for our teams to identify mutliple improvements we want to make in one bulk, rather than picking out 1-2 issues per patch for a specific piece of content, to help improve our QA testing efficiency.

Q: Why have we not shared any information on the Expert DB BR 145?
When we create the Roadmap each month, we directly reach out to all of our third-party teams for new information/screenshots of their content, and whilst their work is always continuing in the background, we may not always get responses from the teams, or information that we're able to present (potentially for licensing reasons as an example).

Given the volume of partner add-ons in development, it'll become more regular that we don't give an update on everything each month, otherwise our Roadmaps may likely become too large/unsustainable to share.

We'll share more details when we have an update, and hopefully you can see more of the 145 soon, as I know TSG are keen to share!

Q: Any plans to bring announcements/TSW6 features to older content?
Currently, nothing planned. We completely recognise the community feedback and desire for this however!

Q: Any Frankfurt S-bahn Timetable Updates planned?
We don't have any plans right now to improve the timetable for consoles users, as we made specific reductions due to the platform limitations and ensuring that the performance provides a good experience for players.

Q: Do we have improvements coming for Riviera Line (Including sea textures?)
Yes! Our next core update is coming next week (final date TBC), and will look at further core improvements to TSW6 routes and locos, including Riviera Line. Whilst the notes are not yet finalised, the sea textures were one of the key improvements we were hoping to address. I talked through our current WIP patch notes list on our stream at 56:37 on our Roadmap livestream.

Q: Specifically for NateDogg7a - Regarding the Support Website
Please make sure you're using our new website, as we've recently changed the infrastructure.
Dovetail Games Support: https://support.dovetailgames.com/hc/en-us

Q: Are we making improvements to the Fife Circle Timetable?
We're currently working through the player feedback since our update, and passing this to the relevant internal teams and groups at Skyhook Games. Ideally, we're able to make key improvements here that will ensure the update lands as players expect, and once we can confirm when these improvements are coming, we'll share in patch notes.

Currently, without further confirmation, we've not got anything listed for Fife Circle in our update next week, so for expectations, any changes we look to make here will come in later patches, and we'll keep you updated on the status when we can learn more. As a note, we appreciate the feedback from everyone since the update, and I'm looking to elevate this so we can see some changes here soon.

Q: What happened to the update at the start of November (this week?)
Since sharing our previous status report about how we're supporting Birmingham-Crewe and TSW6 core improvements a couple weeks back, the dates we were choosing were desired timelines, but since that point, we've chosen to give ourselves extra time QA testing and ensuring the updates land as we'd expect with players as we want. Worst case scenario, is we work on all these updates, and then we find out that builds are either outdated, or improvements aren't working as we want, so we're hoping that this next update helps deliver the positive changes you want to see.

These original dates chosen were aspirational, and whilst we've shared some direct messages that this update is taking more time, I can see we probably missed a chance to share wider news about this - when it comes to updates, I'm hoping we can keep up the clear communication about when new updates are coming, what they include, and if there's any hold-back to the dates we're aiming for.

Q: Is the new Class 171 and 377/3 Pack from Rivet Games coming with any updates to East Coastway?
We've not got any news to share on updates to ECW; however, we'll continue to talk about general developments for the new add-on from Rivet Games over the next few months.

Q: TSW has been a yearly release for a while now, can we still expect this to continue?
From our discussion about Communication on the roadmap livestream last night, we talked about trying to give more, but also recognising that even with perfect communication, there will still be things we can address, and can't answer in a satisfying manner.

This is certainly one of those topics. The best answer I can give for now is more about what the goal is for Dovetail Games for TSW - we're here to deliver the absolute best experience we can, for everyone who is interested in realistic train simulation, and everything that comes with that (Whether you're a fan of photo mode, conductor mode, driving passenger trains, hauling freight, or just something to sit back and relax with in the evening - and the list definitely goes on!). Now, depending on what you're looking for, it's fair to say that in some areas we do great, and in other areas we have lots of room to improve, but that's the goal - that's what we work towards, with all the passion and love from our teams. And it's not just about Train Sim World, but about providing for all the players who play any of our games, and the ones we've not yet reached too!

So, where does the question about annual releases come into this all? Well, if you consider the above context for our direction with the franchise, and our players too, then when it comes to how we support our business financially, we do this in a way where we can provide the above goals in a sensible way, so that we can go the distance - we have so much more to improve, new tools to learn, features to add, and in many cases bugs to fix and systems to refine too - but we can only continue that journey if it's sustainable.

Is the yearly release cycle the perfect solution? I can't necessarily answer that, but what I will say is that we've seen the success so far, and year-on-year we're doing well to reach new players, grow our studio, and reach new heights. So something here works well for us, and until we can truly reveal the next steps, I'd assume we'll be moving forward with these goals and learnings in mind - that is, until the day we take a different path, which may or may not happen, but just be aware that we'll react to the wider gaming markets, and this could always change at any time! (You'd probably hear about changes here alongside big announcements, or future Dovetail Directs).

As a final note on this, outside of business/sustainability, there's also the player consideration - and we completely hear you that upgrading each year can be a pain, installing your content (again) is slow and awkward at times depending on your platform. It's not a perfect solution by far, but when we think about these choices, we weigh everything up - from our goals, the needs from players, and business sense too. Even though it's been a similar process for a few years, we always take the time to question if we can improve this, and we challenge our store partners on ways they can support us too.

TL;DR - It's not a Yes/No answer, but I have shared the beginnings of how we think about this process, and that we don't just ignore the comments about whether new releases can be bundled into updates instead. It's a much more complex thought, and ultimately, we're doing our best to provide the highest experience possible. Hopefully, we keep improving on this as time goes on, and things like the Free Starter Pack as an example, is something in the last couple of years I know has been a huge success, that can has only come from the annual release structure!

Have a great weekend everyone!