PlayStation Dtg Communication And Transparency

If I were DTG I would simply change the way the world works.

 

Well obviously it isn’t with DTG, hence why I said the business model is pumping out new chargeable content. However most developers recognise the need to invest to ensure sustained support for their platform or product. They release core updates so customers can continue to enjoy or use the product they’ve bought and that drives proper customer loyalty.

DTG are apparently moving that way, after 11 years of ship-and-forget. I suspect a part of this is their average audience is getting older (mobile gaming is basically taking over for kids), and therefore more selective to when it comes to purchasing. The strategy of “Hey look, it’s a new train, yesss!” may sell product, then you can stream the life out of it to try and get some more traction, but you can only get away with that for so long.

 

Have you ever known any other developer that spends as much time selectively blaming their chosen platform for issues? I mean they chose to use UE, nobody forced them.

When costing developing their own engine vs something like unreal you look at all costs. You may save a lot using a off-the-shelf engine, but in that calculation you need to include costs to maintain compatibility. Unless you don’t want to maintain compatibility that is.

 

Look into how much DTG adapted the vanilla UE engine to make TSW work... UE is the base, they built quite a lot on top of it

 

Okay but what does that have to do with the allocation of workforce for different fields within the company? This is a strawman argument.

 

I disagree, I’ve seen many people (me as well) who have said that German signalling is confusing with PZB & Sifa whereas AWS, & DSD/DVD is straightforward.

 

Can’t please everyone. It’s just not possible.

 

My original point was that the same team that built a route from nothing could easily rebuild or “preserve” a route.

It was countered with the argument that there’s no money to be made from that and the need to rebuild was a function of changing the game engine version. Therefore the team must produce new content.

I returned with the fact the total cost proposition for using that game engine would have been taken into account when choosing engines, and therefore, without specifically stating it, DTG had no intention of ongoing support when they selected UE as they clearly didn’t allocate budget to do so. They apparently have now changed their minds, but it will take a while until we see any result.

 

Ahh, I meant the route signing. HUD only, no Sifa, no PZB (remember it’s turned off by default). Speed limits on the HUD, Red,Yellow,Green on the HUD and you can drive the route easily.

Not always the same in the U.K as route signalling isn’t catered for in the HUD. Imagine a 20mph crossover speed limit immediately after an 80mph main limit. TS20xx HUD would cover this, TSW doesn’t.

 

I think DTG dropped a ball on this one. If you look at the games they have produced in the past they're based on other people's engines and I don't know of others that have moved engine once DTG got there. Certainly TSx is based on an adapted DX9 engine that DTG haven't moved from in however long they've had the game in their mitts.
With TSW they did move up a version or two, and found to their cost that people want to bring their content with them, and they want it to work
Hopefully this new found level of support will continue, but it IS new found, so that's being taken into account by me anyway

 

I think you’re right, and I’d actually be surprised if significant engine development was ever done in TS post Kuju. The broken bits (brakes, adhesion etc) were never fixed and RSC/DTG were focused on pumping out new content. But TS was a static proposition, and I can still run WCML North and Port Road on it now, nearly 12 years later.

Having successfully avoided the FOMO sale beast I’m waiting to find out if the real bug fixes are actually forthcoming, if DTG have actually changed their strategy. If the IoW PS4 LOD issues are blamed on Unreal Engine I’ll have my answer!

 

In who's opinion? Yours', DTG's, the community's? I know of quite a few people who want TSx moved to DX11 with various enhancements, so it may have been left static, but it's still a living thing dev wise (outside of DTG maybe)

The IOW issues are a port issue onto the PS4. Simple as. Don't know why Rivet or DTG haven't just come out and said "oops, we'll fix that" but then that's not their style

 

Static in that the background technology hasn’t changed. I didn’t say it was dead, I said it was a static proposition to develop on, in that once a route has been made it will continue to work, as-is, for years.

 

Ah, then so is TSW unless DTG decide to update the platform (which I didn't think was that likely until they announced TSW2)

 

That’s exactly my point. Version 2 of TSW broke compatibility.

We went from Railworks in 2009 to TS2021 (in 2020!) with compatibility.

You didn’t think it was likely, but it happened, and why? What awesome (game engine) feature did you get that TSW2020 didn’t have? What about TSW3 next year? Will multiplayer need a major engine update too? What about steam or particle effects? What about next-gen consoles (without relying on backwards compatibility)?

The game engine isn’t in-house, so changes will most likely be more common.

 

You mean the engine didn't change. Compatibility would mean that the background change. That hasn't happened so, wrong word

I don't know enough about UE to know that. I hope DTG do

More like 3 years

I wouldn't play multiplayer if you paid me real money

Not bothered. Don't see them when driving a train (which is what I play the game for)

So long as they support UE, shouldn't be an issue. Thats a commercial decision for Sony and MS. Nothing much to do with DTG. I would imagine if consoles dumped the engine then TSW would end and a new software developed

 

All understood, but in principle you can see that adopting an external engine exposes DTG to more engine version changes than would have happened with the TS series?

Each one of those hoped for upgrades I mentioned may mean DTG have to adopt another new version of UE which, without a proper system for updating older content will leave it behind in a way the TS series doesn’t suffer from.

To be clear, I’m not saying UE was the wrong decision, but rather the choice to go with UE has created the requirement for the “preservation crew” and as such talk about how preservation must be financed misses the point that the preservation cost point originated with the UE decision.

I like the idea of the preservation crew, I would have preferred the preserved content including fixing known issues was prioritised ahead of new content. I feel that would have been a more customer friendly approach.

 

only if they want to "chase the engine"

Problem is this would cease new content for six to twelve months, by which time DTG would go bust.

 

I don’t know, going bust is a fairly large jump to make. But you’re on the right track, unlike some other sim developers Dovetail fundamentally have to release new chargeable content almost continually. (I think we agree on the subject, we’re just saying it different ways!)

 

Oh, this is a cordial discussion, but I think people have to remember that the bottom line IS the bottom line, and if a company stops makign and selling things, there isn't a company

 

It’s a bit of a chicken-and-egg situation really. If they’d given me an option for a German core game with all the routes linked and useable as a much larger world, with all known issues fixed the play value is much greater. I’d be prepared to pay more for it, and they’d be able to sell me more loco and vehicle DLC for that expanded network too. So although the dev time is slightly longer the payoff is higher overall, and the extra content they sell would be worth more to me also.

I know they currently survive on output quantity, but if they aspire to survive on reliable quality I’m more likely to buy into that. I’d even be persuaded by a subscription model if the quality, consistency and support was there.

 

Good for you. A load of red and white boxes may satisfy you, but some people want other things.
And I agree with you that building a network and working from there would be a good model to have, indeed it would be helpful for ongoing sales in many ways, but they don't seem to agree with us.
I mean if they started with GWE, then added in the SWR lines to Guildford they could go over to the Southeastern lines at Redhill and Gatwick then onto Portsmouth, Bristol and Kent as well as pushing north via Oxford or Gloucester to Birmingham...
Unfortunately it seems that the powers that be in DTG want to bring a greater breadth of train experience (you know, old stuff)

 

I picked Germany as it’s closest to a “network” with the collection of DLC we have currently - was maybe a bad example - but yes expanding a network in any of the core countries with DLC that all works together rather than bits here and there.

 

I don’t know of any other train simulators for all three platforms to compare it to.

 

For reference, there's a large collection of games out there other than train simulators. A number of games are just as hard, if not harder, to develop.

 

Oh please. If you have a bunch of programmers creating TSW (or any of the DLC's) then when it needs patching you don't pass the buck to a bunch of fixers, you employ the same group of programmers to make the repairs because they are the ones with a clearer working knowledge of the product. What you don't do is put things to one side and get those guys to work on yet more DLC - something which the roadbook is clearly showing what is happening. Also, if most the core team is working on development of preserved collection then how comes during this process of readying up the old stuff DTG can create a brand new route from scratch, test it and have it released in a little over two months...and still not manage to get all the preserved content finished?

It's clear and obvious that the self same 'make it, sell it with very little consideration towards it's overall quality' attitude from TSW2020 has spilled over into TSW2- only this time they're actually telling you in advance that they're going to do it - so If you can condone that then that's entirely your perogative, but as an owner of TSW2020 the very last thing I wanted to was a continuation of the same business model into TSW2 because at the end of the day the cost of two routes is the equivalent price of a AAA game so for 'normal' people it's not something you can (or should) continually pass of as being an inconvenient bi-product of the game.

 

(sorry, I cannot multi-qoute on console)
Wrong. Not everyone has an automatic entitlement to free preserved content so refurbing will generate extra income. After all, I've just bought Tees Valley for £22 (erm, £2 plus 23,500 reward points ) and that certainly wouldn't have happened without it's inclusion into TSW2 so never underestimate the value of this older stuff.

 

So DTG get what? 50p of that... hardly going to pay for 50 full time devs there...
The point is that preserved collection will bring in trickles of money consistently, but new routes bring in lots of money all at once, so stopping development of new releases will not sustain the company

 

“If it’s not on the roadmap” then don’t expect a response, as they are not working on one

 

I applaud their transparency and honesty, we are sorry for this we are sorry for that, this don’t work, that don’t work, this is difficult to fix, that’s not easy to do, we might fix it at some point but don’t know when, we know this is wrong and we know that’s wrong so yes I applaud the honesty, just a shame they get so much wrong to apologise for in the first place

 

I have to say I feel that DTG do a fairly good job on communication. By following the roadmap and announcements I'm able to keep on top of what's going on. At the end of the day it's only a game and if I have to wait for resolutions or updates it's not the end of the world.

 

Because they have easier access and less restrictions compared to other countries.

 

Agree, we have the weekly stream at the moment, either workshops or discussing the road maps. Regular updates, the efforts to bring the preserved collection to TSW2 (they could easily say they're not compatible so tough) and new routes.

Ok, TSW2 isn't perfect (neither was |TSW 2020) but once the last set of preserved collection comes to TSW2, we'll have over 20 routes, umpteen trains, hundreds of miles of track and enough training modules, scenarios and timetables to keep us busy for quite a few hours.

Credit where's it's due.

 

The reward points convert to real money and I make a regular purchase. DTG receive whatever they normaly get from a unit sale.
Also,you shouldn't underestimate the popularity of the older stuff because according to the trueachievements stats the number of people who have completed the IoW basic tutorial achievement (the one you have no choice but to play) is almost identical to the number of people completing the same achievement on Tees Valley so although these stats aren't a true guide on overall sales it still shows equal popularity between a (not free) preserved and a brand new route.