PlayStation Roadmap Clarification For Iow Fixes

Discussion in 'TSW General Discussion' started by TinTin_57, Dec 1, 2020.

  1. TinTin_57

    TinTin_57 Well-Known Member

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    DTG Protagonist in time for next weeks Roadmap update could we please get some clarification on what the item ‘updates to IOW’ actually contains? As there have been a few issues with trophies on PS4, namely complete all scenarios not always awarding and half the trophies PC has are not even available, a number of us have stopped playing the route further until resolved. With the DTG routes we get a pretty clear list of what is being worked on but the Rivet stuff has always been a bit too general IMO. I don’t really like having the route just sitting there but achievements are important to me and I don’t want to have to keep repeating things as we did with some trophies in TSW2020. Cheers
     
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  2. Mattty May

    Mattty May Guest

    100% agreed. It’s not really trade secret stuff. Just a list of fixes being worked on would be nice.
     
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  3. BigH

    BigH Active Member

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    Hilarious, missing trophys on IOW are still a thing?

    If we had a bug tracker, we could see what´s being worked on and the status of it. But we´ve got a roadmap and some issues just get buried in the forum. I honestly lost track of all the promised or needed fixes (are medals for ICE on SKA there yet?) and with every release, new route or preserved, the old stuff gets lost in an seemingly endless void of unresolved bugs.

    I really hope somebody at DTG is keeping track of all the issues and one day soon we have a near perfect game.
     
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  4. Gilly

    Gilly Well-Known Member

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    It's why I haven't bought it yet, if there had been a timetable of what and when I might have been prepared to shell out for it. Even a general before Christmas would do!
    Your the ones missing out on a couple slabs of cans for the Christmas party DTG!!
     
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  5. Maxrom

    Maxrom Active Member

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    It does sadly seem to be the case that each new release brings a bunch of new issues, which just get added to an ever increasing pile of problems. It's fair to say that DTG are addressing problems, and fixes are coming out, but the time it takes to resolve these issues isn't quick enough, so the mountain is forever growing while new content is being added.

    I'd be quite happy to have a 6 month stop on all new content, while everyone at DTG focuses all their efforts exclusively on fixing the backlog of issues. As it stands it seems that DTG are somewhat throwing a deckchair off the Titanic when it comes to addressing the issues at hand.
     
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  6. Mattty May

    Mattty May Guest

    A pause on new development for 3-6 months and everyone focusing on known issues would be fantastic. Sadly it’ll never happen.
     
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  7. Maxrom

    Maxrom Active Member

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    Agreed
     
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  8. Gronk Honker

    Gronk Honker Active Member

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    A moratorium on content releases will never happen while DTG is the primary content producer, simply because staff members cost salaries.

    Salary costs will be a significant portion of DTG’s operating costs. Regular releases help ensure they can keep their talent, and keep the lights on. So in no way is it “sad” that it can’t happen, except from a player’s personal and subjective view of what would be 100% desirable if wishes were fishes.

    In the end, it’s all well and good to talk about wishes and fishes, but unless those wishes are sustainable requests made with consideration of the business realities faced by any mid sized software development house, they’re just unhelpful discourse that builds an unrealistic and unjustified sense of “developer failure” among the customer base.
     
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  9. BigH

    BigH Active Member

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    If the fish doesn´t taste good i go to a different market store. That is the biggest business reality a games company faces, customers.
    Usually the main DLC for TSW costs €29,99, sales aside, which is half the price of a AAA game. I´m fine with paying that price, if the quality is right. I don´t expect a 100% perfect product everytime, because thing can go awfully wrong with software, but the constant release of software with minor or bigger bugs makes the fish kind of smell funny.
    And if my business model doesn´t match with a companys business model, i´m not the one who has to make some changes. If i would not like the core of the game and see it succeed, i would have left the market store a while ago.
     
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  10. Maxrom

    Maxrom Active Member

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    I don't agree with this. Of course businesses require money, and in this case, selling product provides that. It's not a hard concept to get your head around. I think the argument being levied here is with the handling of issues when they're reported.

    A quick trawl through these forums reveals how many people are unhappy with issues they've found, and let's face it, the people on the forum probably account for a small (but dedicated) percentage of actual TSW2 players. If DTG want to grow their numbers to make TSW2 into the product it deserves to be, then they need people to keep coming back to buy more. They won't do that if customers spend good money on something which is broken. Speculate to accumulate, and invest now in fixing things to provide a longer term sustainable business. That way they will grow a happier fan base, and will likely sell more to satisfied customers (I'm still holding off on HMA). In addition, we won't have to worry about stepping on egg shells when we find problems that quite rightly we want fixing, which we take to the forums to highlight.

    Discussing problems, and making proposals to try and improve things isn't building an unrealistic and unjustified sense of developer failure as you put it. Quite the opposite in fact. I think it highlights the fact that a lot of people on here really care about TSW2 and they want it to succeed and deliver on it's potential. They just get frustrated when this journey seems to be never ending.
     
    Last edited: Dec 5, 2020
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  11. TinTin_57

    TinTin_57 Well-Known Member

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    Yeah I’m not getting HMA even in the sale, until I’m able to do everything in the last route I bought as mentioned above, the IOW. But as an aside, HMA would also need to console layer fix before I jump in. I’m also not bothered about the new French route either come to think of it. There was a time I pretty much bought everything as it came out but now I hang on. I didn’t get IOW right away after seeing the state the textures were in at launch
     
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  12. Gronk Honker

    Gronk Honker Active Member

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    You’re all welcome to choose what to buy, of course, but you’re not able to claim your views about what DTG should prioritise are legitimate ones unless you have accounted for the very real ongoing operating costs they face, like providing periodic salaries for all permanent employees.
     
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  13. Gronk Honker

    Gronk Honker Active Member

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    Basically, show me in accounting terms how DTG could halt its primary product revenue streams for six months without going under.

    I’ll wait.
     
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  14. jeremydunn8

    jeremydunn8 Well-Known Member

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    The problem with this would be that there’s no other market to go to. DTG holds a monopoly on train simulators, for the most part. That’s why they can do pretty much anything they want and get away with it.

    This isn’t saying that they are the ones to blame though, because the other train sims are worse and don’t compare to TSW (in my opinion at least). As for the new route coming, it looks pretty good and I don’t see it coming with too many bugs, having only one train and only three stations.

    So instead of spending hours making everything fixed, I think what they will do is try to avoid bugs in the first place, on future routes and locos.
     
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  15. Gronk Honker

    Gronk Honker Active Member

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    It’s NOT a monopoly where a company dominates a very small segment of a market when selling an extremely niche product. Monopolies aren’t defined by relative levels of competing product quality but by the fact there aren’t competing products.

    Console exclusivity doesn’t create a monopoly either. If you’re willing to use a PC computer rather than a Console computer, there’s always Zusi, Trainz, Openrails etc etc etc. Some are even free. Some “monopoly” DTG has eh.

    And anyone who thinks you can “avoid bugs in the first place” has never spent even an hour near actual software development, nor do they realise just how mind-stretchingly complex even a simple game’s code can be. A very unrealistic position to take. Good luck “avoiding bugs in the first place”.

    In the end, no one has addressed the point this thread continues to ignore. If there is to be some kind of six month moratorium on new content, so bugs can be crushed while DTG’s primary revenue streams are shut down, you must show how it can be done sustainably on a business accounting level. Otherwise, your wishes are fishes and your complaints are just opinions.
     
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  16. ZeenozPlays

    ZeenozPlays Well-Known Member

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    It would be nice, but I don’t think they can stop for that long. Maybe a Month or two would be better.

    I hope they do try to avoid the bugs in the first place. It’s almost like every new release either has bugs or some type of performance issue.
     
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  17. richard cooper

    richard cooper Active Member

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    One problem is the way they release a patch. They wait until a dlc is about to be released and then add fixes to that. If they have a fix for an issue they should get it out as soon as possible.
     
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  18. BigH

    BigH Active Member

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    I don´t think anybody is ignoring the fact that a company has to make money to survive. As a customer it´s not our problem to come up with a proper, viable business plan. One needs insight in the companys finances that probably only a few people have.

    Look at "No Man´s Sky" from Hello Games. When the game came out 2016 it was kind of a hot mess. They kept working on the game to make it bug free (almost) and regurlary released new features and big updates without charging anything. I just platinumed the, free if you own the PS4 game, PS5 version and will keep playing the game because it`s great. Like many other gamers do. How did this company survive? I don´t know, i don´t care. But i´m glad they did. And i bought their new released game about a month ago, just because i felt like doing it.

    Although it might seem unrealistic at the moment to do some badly needed major bug fixing and game improvements, maybe people in charge at DTG have to start thinking outside the box and review their release and, maybe, business model. Because i will have wishes as long as i care for the game.
     
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  19. ZeenozPlays

    ZeenozPlays Well-Known Member

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    This.
     
  20. Maxrom

    Maxrom Active Member

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    Very much agree with you BigH
     
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  21. Gronk Honker

    Gronk Honker Active Member

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    BigH, I’ve platinumed NMS as well. And it’s a ridiculous comparison. Hello Games has the advantage of not having a nit-picking fan base that compares every last technical or visual detail to observable reality. Nor are they simulating real flight physics. It’s an entirely different proposition, as is the business model.

    The whole of Hello’s team is only 26 people, which is tiny, and naturally that produces a fraction of the content that DTG produces. There’s a reason they can do what they do. First off, they’d be a much, much, much cheaper company to run just on staffing and equipment given scale, plus in deep space there’s also no research expenses to cover, licensing fees to pay, third party content partners to wrangle, etc etc etc. so extraneous costs would be much, much lower.

    So the point I made well and truly stands. And if you are going to keep complaining about how the business model lets you down, while admitting you have zero inside knowledge about the requirements of building train simulations, and still think your personal desires are so crucial they must trump cold hard business realities, then by all means start your own train simulator game company and show us how it’s done right.

    Otherwise it’s all just hot air.

    And if it’s not your problem to work out how DTG should run its business better, then it’s hardly your place to complain about the choices they make when doing it.
     
    Last edited: Dec 9, 2020
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  22. Maxrom

    Maxrom Active Member

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    To be fair Gronk Honker, you're contributing just as much hot air as anyone else here. Unless you work for DTG, and have intimate knowledge of their company accounts, structure and funding, then you're speculating as much as anyone else. There's plenty of ways to fund a business without income, regardless of company size, if the desire is there. Investment can come from many places including the money they may have amassed to date. DTG would presumably be more able to do this than a smaller company like Hello Games who may be less financially stable. Check out RailSimulator.com Ltd on companies house if you're really desperate to waste some time.

    Regardless of the speculation here, the almost throwaway comment about how DTG might consider getting on top of things seems to have hit a raw nerve with you. Fair enough. I'm curious to know though, what gives you the intimate knowledge of DTG's finances and investment streams that you're using to beat others with on this thread?

    To coin your phrase, "I'll wait".
     
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  23. Gronk Honker

    Gronk Honker Active Member

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    To use my phrase, you mean. To coin a phrase is to create it.

    I don’t claim to have the internal knowledge you think matters to my critiques. But that’s no issue, because from the start I’ve been suggesting on this thread that people should temper their disappointment at their subjective roadmap desires not being met with the realisation they have no real insight into what precise business imperatives shape the way that DTG addresses or prioritises its pipeline, nor will they ever have that insight. You won’t hear me telling DTG what it should do, exactly because I don’t have that intimate knowledge.

    But what you will hear from me is deconstruction of the mythic nonsense that passes for “industry insight” on this thread, like the idea that non-revenue projects such as a six month bug fix operation can just happen without any balance sheet consequences, or that “desire” is what opens up financing options, or that companies can and will sit on enormous pools of untapped liquidity like some kind of digital Smaug.

    And I am entitled to do that, because I speak from a position of experience. I’ve had a multi-decade career in the commercial software development industry, including working in the games industry, while also having a multi-decade career in its associated academia. I’ve had senior roles with upwards of forty people reporting to me, including some very talented AAA studio veterans whose games you’ve played. I also can guarantee you’ve played games made by people my teams and I have trained. I’ve headed colleges, won industry awards for my development work, and overseen accredited game degree development projects. And I was on the board of my country’s independent game developers’ industry association for a good number of years.

    When I say you your speculations are disconnected from the realities of development, I am speaking from a place of deep experience, which gives you a nose for bulldust.

    And no bulldust quite annoys me like subjective pontification disconnected from fundamental business realities that apply to all businesses, like the need to earn revenue, to pay salaries, and to avoid insolvency. It doesn’t require any special insights into DTG’s finances to figure out that cutting off all revenue streams, while incurring salaries and operating costs over a six month period, solely in order to deliver a non-revenue generating project, will be completely unsustainable.

    Yes, yes, I’m sure you could just pay for a project like this with DTG’s fishing game profits, but I watched a large game company in my home city do exactly that, and quelle surprise they don’t exist anymore.

    It’s just basic business sense, which is something this thread and others like it need a lot more of.
     
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  24. Maxrom

    Maxrom Active Member

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    I'll congratulate you on your experience and achievements. I too have been running a software business for many many years. I am also investing heavily into new products, and have been for several years, without revenue, and I'm sure I'm in a less wealthy position than DTG. I can tell you it is very much possible to do this, if it's done correctly and with some hard work and good fortune. So, it looks like we both have a wealth of knowledge and experience, but perhaps from different angles. That's fine. Getting defensive to the verge of an argument is perhaps not.

    Nobody here, you included, knows fully of DTG's financial situation. Speculate all you want, and remind people of the very basic principles of business if you like, it's not going to change anyone's views here. People want things fixed, and people will suggest ways it could be achieved, and this is reasonable if you buy something that's not how you expect it to be. That's all that's happened here, but you've taken it extremely seriously, almost personally. I'll leave the discussion at this point, but do feel free to carry on.
     
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  25. Gronk Honker

    Gronk Honker Active Member

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    If you need to use the excuse that “I’ve taken things personally” to bail out at this point, don’t let me stop you. If you can’t take heat, the kitchen isn’t your jam, I guess. But either way I’m not greatly convinced by the experience you offer up at this point. Not all experience is equal. It’s just rhetoric to say we merely have “different angles” that somehow equalise us. Pro tip: if you’ve been investing several years in software products without any revenues, and you aren’t running them as vanity projects or as social responsibility projects or tax write-offs or similar, then perhaps it’s time to kill these projects off.

    Above, I asked the thread to “show me how a six month non-revenue project can be done while cutting all revenues”. In your last comment, you said you know how it could be done. Yet you don’t tell us how. You claim you know, but offer no evidence. And you then repeat your lie that I’m speculating about DTG finances when my whole point turns on the fact that that no one knows them. So I call bulldust.

    I take things seriously precisely because they are serious. I’ve watched game company failures ruin lives from up close. Literally thousands of people’s livelihoods, their ability to make rent or mortgage, turn on whether the gaming community has reasonable amd supportive expectations, or acts like a horde of Veruca Salts.

    Continuous bleating about unrealistic complaints or impossible non-revenue projects creates unwarranted negative impressions about the product in the purchasing community that accumulate over time, to the detriment of sales. If I didn’t know better from experience, I’d probably believe you lot and your echo chamber, and think that the sheer volume of whining threads meant that DTG was messing up all over and not doing all it could to fix crucial problems that ruin gameplay. I’d have a sour impression of them, thanks to threads like this. Thankfully I know better, but plenty of people don’t. So stop being such little Verucas.
     
    Last edited: Dec 9, 2020
  26. TinTin_57

    TinTin_57 Well-Known Member

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    If you look at the original post in this thread it is a legitimate question with a number of likes. Not sure who took it off topic but it wasn’t me
     

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