PC [poll] How Satisfied Are You With Dtg Communication?

Just a quick post to see what fellow Train Sim World users think about Dovetail Games level of communication to us.

I have provided a poll to allow you to vote.

 

I fall between 2 - good and bad. I would rather know what was being worked on, like a monthly recap, purely because I dont like not knowing. But I also understand why they dont do that - and the issues it would cause if they did.

I do find them one of the more closed off devs teams out of all the teams I follow.

 

I did chose bad, I think very bad is to hard. At least sometimes they post something, well not right now.
Still no reply to the RT timetable or bugfixes.

 

Extremely bad

 

I've stuck my head out and chosen "Satisfactory" but it's a shame there wasn't a "So, so" option. Jay did post some of the background to how DTG approach communication with regard to the rail simulators and I can appreciate the constraints and problems they have faced in the past. I do wish however that the rail side of things would move a bit more towards what's done on the flight side at least as far as TSW is concerned.

Giving an idea of the top three areas they will be concentrating on over the next three to four months would be nice. Perhaps giving an idea of which geographical area(s) the next DLC will be based in such as US, Europe, UK or elsewhere eight to six weeks or so before release would be nice rather then the current two week advance announcement.

 

If dovetail recruited me I would be a amazing human resource employee I would interact with the fans on a daily basis.

 

You mean Community-Manager Human resource is there to manage and recruit employees.

 

I choose Very Bad, because you really don't have a clue about what's going on. "We are working on many things", yes ok but what?
I mean, take a look at SCS software, you know exactly what are you going to have in the following months, even without the correct eta. I don't thinks that it must be too hard

 

Satisfactory!
DTG need engage more staff members from different areas to reply on community question, and also choose the main channel.
So far most of the communications is provided by Jay on many channels (here, steam, ...), and he do what he know, or what he investigate from that staff guys.

 

What communication?

 

sorry but I have to choose very bad. they keep every thing a secret. from what's being worked on with csx hh and the don't put up a list of what has been fixed. no do you get any news of up coming fixes for the stuff we already have. this is EXTREAMELY bad.

 

All of our previous fixes are listed here - http://steamcommunity.com/app/530070/announcements/ and will be detailed on this forum going forwards.
Announcing content in advance is a slippery slope that I've talked about before and keeping it quiet allows us to run fun little community campaigns such as the teasers we have been doing this week (to great success from the looks of it) but we're up front about the fact that we're working on content and have are always open about our ongoing work on engine improvements and fixes that generally roll out with new content releases.

- Jay

 

well I hate to burst you little bubble but the tunnel darkness fix did not work it is still like driving a train in daylight. and you still have not fixed issues with the GP-40 with it's black ditch light covers on the rear. nor have the bugs that I submitted like the fence being jacked up by Hyndman has not been fixed. and there is another fence issue in Meyersdale that's unfixed. I think CSX has been put on the back burner. and the lack of content and scenarios or life in the game has made it boring as I have done every thing already.

 

Some things aren't always immediately fixable, just because something hasn't been addressed yet does not mean that we are not actively working to do so.
In many instances we've found that the obvious fix for some issues cause further issues in other areas of the game and we are forced to backtrack and start our work again from scratch in the hope of developing an alternative fix.

- Jay

 

well then stop worrying about DLC and fix the damn program we have now. I have not played this in almost a month because I know it will just crash and then I have to start the same scenario over again.

 

What crashes? My game has never crashed since i have it.

 

I have never experienced any game crashes either so I'm not sure what could be causing that. I'm sure DTG is both working on bug fixes as well as still actively developing for the game and I would imagine two seperate teams are responsible for those individual tasks.

 

I have not experienced any game crashes either.

 

Nope, no game crashes here either. Are you sure you meet the spec for the game?

 

I get crashes on Sandpatch Grade sometimes but on no other route.

 

as I have said before and will say again here it is not the game it's self crashing it is the UE4 engine. and yes I meet the specs for the game.

 

The game isn't crashing but UE4 is? How does that work? UE4 is the game, if anything in the program throws its hands up and crashes, the UE4 crash reporter shows up. There is no such thing as a game crash vs a UE4 crash.

 

Well I have a reasonably specced PC and I've had some crashes. Not all the time and not consistently but about half a dozen or so. It's annoying rather than game breaking.

 

For me DTG has always been a big help, between answering questions about products or through their support system they always seem to be able to help in some way.

 

We have separate teams working on DLC and core fixes, work on one in no way effects the other. Additionally, we are working to address a number of community reported issues that you should see the results of alongside NEC NY's release.

- Jay

 

Every time I have needed assistance with either TSxx or TSW they have been great in replying back with either fixes or forward it to the development team.

 

Does this mean that we'll need to wait for the next DLC to be released before we get another TSW bug patch after this one?

 

Can you tell us what bugfixes we are getting with the next release?

 

see this is exactly what I am talking about we ask a question about what's coming for the TSW updates with there DLC and all we get is silence. I guess we need to wait for another bug infested DLC to get fixes for what we have now.

 

CSX8067 : jep that is why 57% voted for bad or very bad.... Just ignoring the customers and only answering the questions that are pleasent for DTG.

 

I bet the bug they’ve been fixing these last few months is the bug of TSW not being on XBONE. Jay would most likely give the usual ‘we are fixing bugs but it’s not always fast or simple; the bug fixing people work independantly of the route devlopment people’ but I doubt the bug fixing people work independantly of the XBONE devlopment. Would be no surprise if XBONE was prioritized over fixing bugs (unless those were game breaking bugs for XBONE) since that’s the path that gets more customers.

 

My guess is that we see another downgrade in details and graphics with the next "bugfix" to make this run on Xbox. That's why there is silence because nothing will be fixed.

 

lol I would have to agree there.

 

Jay, I don't think anyone expects Dovetail to release what DLC is coming, I can certainly understand why you wouldn't want to do that. I think the community is asking for more communication on fixing bugs/problems. When you don't talk about that you are currently working on FIXING things, and then you see new DLC released, it gives the impression to the end user that you simply don't care about problems or bugs. A frequently updated page of known problems and the fact that Dovetail is in fact working on them would go a long way to keep customers happy I would think.

 

I think it is obvious why they don't want to release internal information. Not yet, at least. Because that would make the community angry. Simple. What if they say to us, while we were waiting a graphical fix for CSX HH for example, let's just assume, and let's exaggerate, please play with me here and let's say we were waiting for 6 months for that fix, and even if it would take half an hour of a technical person that knows his way around UE4 that can inform us about the reason (because he activated that feature) and how to disable a feature in the ini file so color palette can return back to normal, instead what if they say they are working on a new DLC and XBOX release or something other.

Would you be happy to hear that?

 

Can't give firm details on what the fixlist will include as I haven't been provided the final list yet, but i'll try and get it out to you guys ahead of time when it comes through

And 1. Why would i lie about the fixes, surely that would make my job harder when the day comes around and nothing releases.

2. Why would we downgrade graphics on the PC version for the Xbox...?

- Jay

 

But every time we've released DLC, we've simultaneously released updates and fixes alongside them. So it should be obvious that we're not purely focusing on DLC.

I'll talk to the dev team about getting a public known issues sheet.

- Jay

 

So then we see fixes for sand patch, GP40 and RT? Or still no fixes for them?
Is it that hard to give Infos If there are fixes for them on the list? Seems so.
I don't ask for a complete changelog with every detail, I just wanna know where we see fixes.

 

This is an example of what a backlog can look like for a Software company. I don't know if DTG use Jira but the principal is generally the same. So, imagine these are a list of bugs in TSW. What happens is this list gets periodically prioritised based on internal criteria. Then bugs are passed onto developers to be worked on which can take any amount of time. Once they're done this gets passed along to QA who either pass or fail it.

Now it's possible that AAX-1368 passes and is ready to be included in the release but someone starts working on PT-214814 and realises its going to interfere heavily with AAX-1368. This might necessitate removing AAX-1368 from the list. Thus, nothing is final until the cut-off point for code submissions is reached.

This is why DTG are hesitant to say what is being worked on. Because they could say X, Y, Z but by the time of the release only Y and Z appear causing the community to accuse DTG of lying about X. Keep in mind the community already accuses DTG of lying whilst spreading their own lies, rumours and conspiracy theories so there's hardly any incentive there for DTG to potentially open themselves up to more.

Also, many people tend to look at a bug, in isolation, and come to the conclusion that its a simple fix. The reality is that in a large codebase a simple fix may in fact have complicated knock-on effects or simply take longer to fix in comparison to the value gained from fixing it; as in I could fix bug X but in the same time period I could fix V, W, Y, Z.

This is the same reason the company I work for only goes as far as telling clients: "Our developers are looking into it."

 

Just to add; I'm not saying DTG shouldn't communicate more but I am saying there are valid reasons why they don't use certain avenues of communication.

 

What can be blamed on DTG is not to post patches more often.
We have a fix, with a new DLC. Two patches a year is not enough.

 

We got a update in december, we got a update in january.. Thats 2 updates in 2 months. Soon we have one more update with the release of the DLC.

 

But one of those patches was just a chinese language patch rather than a TSW core or DLC patch. In general it now seems that we get a TSW core/existing DLC patch when a new DLC is released. Because, so far, there's always problems with new DLC we then get a subsequent patch for the new DLC. Sadly this subsequent patch tends to break other stuff.

I do wonder how much the development of the XBox release impacted the PC version. According to Matt's article it involved an awful lot of performance optimisation which presumably means the people doing that were primarily focused on XBox rather than PC. I hope the PC version will now have those optimisations backported.

 

No it was not

14 December: https://forums.dovetailgames.com/threads/train-sim-world-happy-holidays-update-available-now.2777/
18 January: https://forums.dovetailgames.com/threads/train-sim-world-new-year-update-out-now.3058/

 

So what I gather is that DTG doesn’t want fans expecting things that wont ultimately come, and that actually communicating would cause bogus expectations, but does DTG realize that a lot of people are expecting things that won’t happen because there isnt communication to not expect those things?

Maybe it would be more effective to confirm what definitely isn’t happening instead of saying preeeety much nothing. That would do what you want by clearing up people’s expectations, without putting things in that might upset people if they are not true at the end of the day. (If you say something isn’t happening, but it turns out that it does happen, I think there’ll be more “woah dude, you said that wouldn’t happen but it did! Cool!” than there would be “what the #%@! dude!”)

Doing that clears up speculation directly by shooting it down, instead of leaving room for people to say “well, nobody said it would happen here...but nobody said it wouldn’t happen.” Sure, it upsets people to hear that the #1 expectation still isn’t being worked on, but more rage comes from finding out the #1 expectation isn’t true only when one loads into the route, then leaves a negative review because it fails to meet their expectations.

The less time bogus expecatations live, the less true they feel, and the easier it is to let go...so don’t let them live.

 

*Slowly Claps* Well said. Completely agree.

 

Can't say as I haven't been in touch but Facebook chat they're quite fast

 

A patch is a patch and declaring that the Chinese language addition was not one is a clear example of prejudice.

 

I recently bought my first full-fledged "smart" phone, which came with Facebook pre-installed. After receiving dozens of posts or whatever they're called from TS, I quickly found a way to stop them and then deleted all of those already received. I appreciate DTG's communications and think that their level of communication is satisfactory, but life is too short to spend hours of it reading drivel from fan-folks and trolls. You know: the sort of drivel I expect to find in replies to this post -- and which I will not read, preferring to spend time actually running TSW (just 4 days until the latest DLC) and running or writing scenarios for TS.

 

It's not poor communication that's the problem it's poor understanding on what the community actually wants in the sim they have payed for which in turn keeps dovetail afloat