Train Sim World 7 - Discussion

Something about trains sims being too niche because they have been too crappy since MSTS to attract a large audience.

 

Charger must be created from scratch. Moreover, it requires a set of sleeping cars. A locomotive from scratch + cars from scratch? Take a look at the ALP-45DP. What do you think of the Comet cars from the set? Here is your answer.

 

True. You can bet on a maximum of one new (or modified existing) train per route and a few deluxe trains.

 

No, I mean the Charger will give this route 4 trains(2 Silver Meteor and 2 Silver Star / Floridian) per day.
Matt previously said on one of the streams that they don't do Amtrak Long Distance because it's a lot of work and adds too few trains to the timetable. Although, as far as I remember, there is a space in the timetables of some routes left for them.

 

Ah, like that.

 

You've yet to do any work on "economies of scale" at school then. For a computer/console genre train simulators are niche. That's not because "they have been too crappy since MSTS to attract a large audience" it's because train enthusiast isn't a particularly common hobby.

A quick sweep of 600 friends on my FB profile reveals 3 that are into trains and gaming enough to be owners of TSW content.

Compare that to over half who buy music and/or go to gigs or the 20 or so who not only like football (not the US type) but support the same team as me. Or the none who play golf because as soon as I know someone likes golf I disown them.

 

Nah, I think a large part of it is that what we have just hasn't been great, asking $40 a pop for a DLC is not gonna get you mass market appeal. Especially when train sim products have been consistently controversial ever since Railworks was a thing, I remember seeing reviews back in the early 2010's negatively comparing TSC DLC to MSTS content due to things like inaccurate signaling compared to other versions.

Heck, a big reason truck sim took up in popularity was that it was both good looking and not highly demanding on PC specs. Which I always took to be swipes at both Train Sim and FSX, which both notoriously needed quite good PCs despite also being pretty middling games in terms of visuals and out of the box simulation.

 

I think Wivenswold is partly right : aren't there more fans of trucks and planes than of trains ?

 

I'll always take "partly right".

 

I beg to disagree, from my perspective flight simming is wayy more popular than TSW and to get the full experience you have to have a good set of controls and at least 1 high fidelity aircraft, often costing north of $40 for the aircraft alone. I just think train sims have a limited appeal compared to flying, my assumption is the 'fly pretty much anything anywhere' is a lot more enticing than short and specific routes and I'd imagine that if you survey people at random more people would want to be a pilot compared to a train driver. Of course this is largely conjecture, but considering companies like PMDG can exist selling aircraft per variant at nearly $80 a pop, I'd say that there is something to it.

 

I still would love a Great Eastern Route in TSW but set in pre 2010 with old Stratford no Olympic Park no Crossrail no 754 755 720 set in one blue with a better 90 then LOVE ats one with a dvt and new 321 and 360

 

Apparently

There were more fans of train sims than power washing sims until 2022. Then all of a sudden all the general gaming channels were power washing! Not because there were a lot of power washing fans in hiding, but a fun game based on it came out.

TSW's problem is that it is not good enough to attract people who are not already a train fan, it's barely good enough to attract people who ARE a train fan.

Thomas & Friends is a pretty popular IP, right?



If giving TSW a Thomas skin can't make it popular then I don't think the problem is the subject matter.

 

Interesting to see those stats, Thomas seems to have very quickly become stagnant and sadly they weren’t able to keep the momentum going. I fear unless they resuscitate it in two weeks, it’s fate will be sealed.

 

Power washing simulation might appeal more than train simulation in general, whether it's TSW or not...
Maybe it's more enjoyable, so it attracts more people...

 

Apart from the expensive DLC, the biggest single lack of appeal to many potential players is the lack of a decent, easy to use creative tool set - be that routes, scenarios or anything else. Yes MSTS and to a certain extent TSC had us tearing our hair out initially, but with a bit of thought and mutual cooperation wasn’t long before there was a thriving freeware community and the odd souls who then went on to do payware.

And as I’ve said in another thread, if DLC sales are waning then it’s partly due to price (I fully expect tomorrow’s SimRail 140km route extension to be retailing for £10.99) but that the game is saturated with very similar routes all offering the same sort of gameplay and the days of paying £30 or even £35 for that experience are coming to an end. Well maybe apart from the hardcore fans who buy any old rubbish and then defend it. That and running DLC that is either full of bugs because DTG QA and management wave it through to the store front, or the core issues they seem incapable of fixing.

At this point I honestly feel TSW per se is ripe for retirement and we need a new title that does things better and introduces more gameplay elements, or, failing that at least start selling content that breaks the mould. More countries, different eras, try some narrow gauge or tramways. Revisit steam traction and do it properly this time.

 

I'd love for another product to have all the benefits of what TSW does good, but seriously addresses all the points where TSW falls short. However, I have no faith in DTG to deliver such a product. They simply don't have the reputation of making reliable train simulators. Not TSC. Not TSW. I'd love for them to prove me wrong though.

 

When it comes to TSW, I wonder if numbers are tapering off, rather than it being a complex issue, is it rather just that the quality itself (not in terms of trains, but blurring and stuttering on Gen9) is causing people to reconsider the game? I'm fairly sure at the time the official response to the initial criticism at TSW5 was "well it's the best selling title to date etc... "

I can't speak for the Thomas game itself as I have a absolutely no interest in it. But if numbers are dropping for TSW, maybe it's more to do the ongoing blurring and similar quality issues that have made some of the player base lose hope and lose some player numbers?

 

I still like TSW very much, but aside from the performance issues (which definitely curtailed my gameplay time yesterday trying to complete a Watford to Euston run - on a flagship core content route that still performs poorly!) I find the game becoming a little same same.

The DLC doesn't vary as much as I'd like and I have a very similar experience each time I play. I am very appreciatetive for the awesome runs thread as this helps find novel experiences, but I wish there was more variation and unexpected things thrown in as standard, not just dodgy speed restrictions. More open world like routes or at least interactive elements within routes would be great.

I am playing a lot of Farming Sim at the moment and in contrast to TSW, the ways to play that game are almost infinite. If you know FS25 you know what I mean. And I never wanted to be a farmer, not sure how niche that is as a sim subject.

 

I enjoy the game too, but lately, the constant stream of bugs has really dampened the experience. Various bugs are discussed here, but it is deeply disappointing that so many fundamental issues remain unfixed. I want to know why these bugs cannot be resolved. Issues like people walking on the tracks or missing signals are bugs that simply shouldn't happen. Even a timetable mode capable of handling 100 train runs is essentially unfinished if it’s broken. I question the decision to move on to the next phase when items from the TSW6 roadmap still haven't been released.
I really want to see a clear commitment from the developers to properly address the needs of us users.

 

For me the blurring and stuff has become a massive deterrent to the game, and I have been playing a lot less. There have been quite decent routes that have been released that I can't even consider buying because of it. If they manage to fix it, so that busier routes run fine, then I will probably play a lot more and invest in more addons.

 

A month ago or so, I bought the TW6 Special Edition when it was on sale. I tried both Leipzig - Dresden and Rieviera Line and both are suffering from blurry textures and I even don't have all layers. So I'm not really interested in TSW7, unless they guarantee blurry textures are solved for the new and the existing routes.

 

Completely agree.

It seems that performance issues are again negatively affecting people enjoying the game. Years ago when the Victoria to Brighton line released on TSW2, many were unhappy at the awful performance with choppy rendering and excessive stuttering. It took many months before DTG admitted that they had "bitten off more than they could chew" and they promised to address the issue. They did improve the route to where it is acceptable but took over 2 years to do so.

Many recent new and restored routes have been really high quality with the work from DTG Liam on GWE and ECW being especially notable for absolute excellence. Riviera, Trent Valley, Medway Valley, Blackpool And Carlisle have lovely scenery, are mostly smooth running and worth the full asking price.

Unfortunately the old problems with bugs and poor performance have returned. The Class 90 was so bug ridden that what was a certain purchase has been indefinitely postponed. The Crewe to Preston route has serious performance issues making it not worth the £30 I paid for it and has put me off any further full price content for TSW.

It is likely that a new version of the game will be released (TSW7 ?) hopefully with a free starter pack for existing customers but the whole yearly new edition grind has left me bored. We will probably get a few menial and mostly pointless new features that won't work properly, take months to fix and will cause umpteen other problems in the process.

With 41 items of added content including 31 routes and totalling over 200gb I am dreading the painful tedium involved in downloading the new game version.

Given my reluctance to buy any new content and the mind numbing boredom of a massive manual download operation I am having serious doubts about continuing to be a TSW customer and I suspect I am not alone in feeling this way.

 

With over 100 pieces of DLC available for purchase(Not Cheap), what kind of audience are you trying to attract, exactly?
They need a game like *Truck Simulator*, but about trains. And a high-quality one—not one riddled with bugs, followed by a hundred apologies.

 

Dovetail must be aware that in November there's something happening that a huge number of people are going to want to have free disk space for. My main hope is that this drives DTG to address this issue.

I don't know how much they can do with regards to doubling up assets across routes, but if we do have to download all of our addons again, they could sweeten this deal by separating all rolling stock from the routes - it would still be a combined addon in the store, but the download would be broken up into different parts. That way we wouldn't have to download and store entire routes because we want a certain bit of rolling stock to layer. This may also improve performance, and would presumably speed up load time. We could then shuffle our installations based on what we wanted to play.

Also I think any train that comes with 5 or more routes could just be in the core game by this stage (but again, as optional downloads).

 

???

 

I think he's referring to GTA 6

 

To me if sales have stagnated is rather due to the "unsmooth" experience of it, rather than lack of variety in material - could still be a factor but to me it's secondary, hence their current focus (be it superficial or otherwise) in making the game run as smooth as possible (Alex' words iirc in a q&a).

Price may be another factor but it also comes back to quality, if the game's constantly crashing or running very slow/blurry and isn't exactly cheap then many will wonder what the point is in spending money on it.

 

I’ve invested over €4,000 in this game. For the past two years, I’ve only been buying certain English routes; the US and German ones no longer interest me.
I’d like to see French, Italian, and Spanish routes.
As a result, I’m drifting away from TSW and playing ETS2 and ATS more and more.

 

I think the lack of routes and periods that are of interest to me has certainly reduced my play time, though to be honest during May to September my time on computer games is much, much lower due to me loving the outdoors and reading. Due to my body being full of pain in the cold, I spend most of winter indoors.

Though if I had a 1990s NSE end-to-end route with slamdoor EMUs and one of the Essex mainlines I'd be playing it in the summer evenings more. I've just finally successfully installed the weather mod/route annotations mod, having live weather will increase my playing time this winter. As will some interesting routes with the launch of TSW7.

 

Yes, definitely, as then the game would need to load a whole route, just so it can use a layered train. That would greatly improve performance. And if they do it intelligently, it could get rid of the problem with having trains 10 times in the game.

 

Same here, I can't even work up any enthusiasm to finish the August Mastery.

In addition to the truck and farming games plus a bit of flight simming and Snowrunner, my interest in train simming is alive and kicking but with TSC, Run 8 and SimRail. TSW basically lost its mojo - even the Preston to Crewe route failed to inspire me, just a few drives then tossed aside (doesn't help JT still haven't fixed some of the bugs afflicting the freight side of things).

 

the whole rush hour package was an absolute farce caused by broken promises and dtg underestimating how much they were giving us, and also when they announced it. shame that 5 years later, biting off more than can be chewed is still a recurring theme with dovetail