Can anyone explain to me what ‘Masteries’ are all about? What do ‘Posters’ bring to the game? I expected to see them at stations after unlocking this ‘Mastery’, but I haven’t noticed anything like that. The same goes for ‘Decals’. How can they be used? Is it even worth paying attention to these ‘Masteries’, or is it some dead, useless and long-abandoned feature in TSW?
Mastery just gives a little more purpose to playing the route, or game in the case of the monthly one (though the April objectives were almost none existent). The rewards are, frankly, for the most part trivial - silly stickers for the monthly ones or a diorama for the route masteries. No substitute for a proper career mode/progression.
I think it is just for people who like to feel they have 'achieved' something by completing certain objectives. I just like to drive trains. Each to their own, etc
It's the Aldi / Temu version of Playstation trophies. DTG are giving you stickers to slap on trains, that other people may have missed, so you can show them off in multiplayer... Except there is no multiplayer, which makes it all kind of pointless.
I only consider caring about them when they add some cool stuff to the scenerey of a route (like the little Chiemseebahn on Salzburg-Rosenheim). Otherwise I mostly forget they even exist. xD
They give a focus for what to do as I often haven't a clue. Adds scenery tiles and access to areas. Never thought about them until recently, about 6 months ago. It's a good thing.
The best mastery challenges are the distance ones. In February 2025 they set a target of 1000 miles or 1600km total distance driven in the month to get the achievement, but since then the monthly ones have become less and less ambitious to the point now where they are quite lame.
If there were some genuine rewards like credits towards dlc, I might be tempted. But for stickers and posters, sounds a bit childish. Not knocking it though, if that's your thing.
Exactly and I don't want the rewards to be anything non-trivial. I appreciate TSW is generally speaking not really a 'simulator' but my own preference is for it to be as close to that as possible; I've no interest in being forced to do something I don't want to do, I want immediate access to every train on every service on every route that I own. The only non-trivial reward that I'd support is a discount; I'm fine to miss out on that and I suspect a lot of those who want rewards would be very happy with it indeed...
The trouble with that is that it is easily subverted. Because then there's an incentive to the publisher to bump up the base prices more, on the assumption anyone can get it for a "reduced" price if they "put in the work".
Have to slightly disagree on that. I got so bored with TSW I’ve temporarily shelved it and jumping around between OMSI 2 (very addictive), Snowrunner and come the end of the month when Witcombe Park Farm releases (for free… ) FS25. However that might not have happened had TSW had a decent distance accumulator as part of the Monthly Mastery to offer at least a little purpose to those A to B runs.
There's only ever been a handful of masteries worth unlocking, most notably the Class 76 on the Glossop route, even then I used trainsimcz's tools to unlock it
Sure, it's a form of market segmentation. Nothing inherently wrong with that, Dovetail are a business. (I'm not saying do it. I'm just saying it's unobjectionable compared to having bits of the sim disabled)
