A few issues reared their head immediately as I tried to configure the HUD to match TSW as closely as possible. How do I disable the coloured markers on the track for stopping? In TSW this is fairly easy to toggle in the menu. In WoS, I tried the same but could not find an option which does so after toggling everything. The keyboard command from TSW did it temporarily but that only lasted until the next stop. How do I enable being able to see the next signal aspect in the corner, rather than as a hideous gigantic blob floating in the game world that obscures my view of everything else? I got a couple of SPADs because I was having to manually look at every semaphore flag from the external cams. Other issues seemed a bit more systemic. Why is it so hard to get a loco coasting? The controls make it exceedingly difficult to zero out the throttle and brake, with how there's no discrete controls for each. You always end up with a degree of braking or acceleration. Why does James' acceleration/deceleration display only show up with the full HUD when Thomas' one is visible in the minimal HUD options? This jumped out as an inconsistency. What is going on with the trains regularly just launching into the stratosphere at random from the track? Every single scenario I attempted on stream ended this way, and while it was entertaining for my audience, I can only assume it was not exactly intended behaviour. I would just be rolling along, a couple of mph below the speed limit, with a mile or two to the next station, and then suddenly, the loco is in the air going directly upwards and spinning uncontrollably. I have managed about an hour of this and am pretty close to refunding the game, as frankly the state it's in is disappointing even by TSW standards, which is saying something.
For the rainbow stop marker you need to toggle it on and off after every stop, CTRL+7 twice. I think it is in the menu, as STOP MARKER but as it just comes back on again in game you can’t tell you’ve actually set it to be off. For the next signal in the HUD, you currently can’t do it at all. The only option is the blob that obscures the view or taking your chances with seeing the signal in time. This one is just designed that way. Everyone has complained about it.
So everything is just a decision by DTG to make it objectively worse by taking away features which worked fine in TSW? Good to know. Refund it is.
Objectively worse for who though? I'm a big gamer, but had never played anything in the train sim sphere. WOS appealed to me as a Thomas fan first, which sure, makes me a bit of a poser here, I'll acknowledge that. But like...this is a Thomas game. I think Dovetail knew this would appeal to people (like myself) who weren't part of the train sim world beforehand, as well as children. It's a pretty smart move on their part honestly, because someone like myself is able to pick up and play the game without needing a intensive six week course on trains to understand what's going on. And, if you want more challenge, you can change some of the gameplay mechanics in the options menu to make the game feel more train-simish if you want. Chalking all that up to "oh well DTG just makes decisions to take away what I love - REFUND!" I mean, cool...but maybe you're just not the target audience here? And that's okay!
I'm a massive lifelong fan of the books and also of the show when I was little. Pretty sure I am in the demographic. My problems are almost all quality of life and accessibility features they took away that worked fine in TSW and could have been left as toggles. In the case of the stop rainbow it still IS partly toggleable it just needs to be done every stop. There's no logic to that when the option is baked into the engine to such a degree they could not even disable it properly. The only gameplay outlier being the controls, which seem to be an attempt to iterate on the absolutely awful ones from the TSW Thomas DLC that no child or adult was able to figure out. Which confused everyone at the time as most people's kids can pick up and drive the simplified controls of the Holiday Express no bother, so they had a beginner set of controls right there that just worked like a toy train set. My biggest hope on that front is they backport the TSW7 simplified controls into WoS. And trains randomly launching vertically into the air from a stop, ending a service is just a bug, a bug that's been there since at least TSW3 to my recollection but I have never seen it so frequently occur as on WoS. Previously Thartandter Rampe held the record for number of times I have encountered it. I guess because it tends to happen with specific services on specific locos and WoS has fewer of both.
Fair enough. I can also understand having that point of view, especially if you've played a lot of other train sim stuff. I have not, and I don't know what I'm talking about on that front, I will acknowledge that. I still think some concessions and mechanics were removed or made to be a little more palatable for the average person/kids, and I think that has its upside too. I really think they did a great job with how the trains feel and control, and as long as I can drive around a fully rendered 3D Sodor...then I'm good. Easily amused? Sure. But I like what I like what can I say
I have also never seen a train launch into the air, and that's after playing 30+ hours of this game. I'm not saying there isn't a bug that causes that to happen, it just never happened to me personally.
