Broken P S 4 Trophy Workaround (tested) And Fixes (proposals)

What should you do if you have not received a trophy, when you are sure that you have met the requirements? Short answer – switch off your internet and try again….
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UPDATED: This workaround has been updated in Bold Italics to reflect the latest feedback, information and testing.
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TRY THIS FIRST:
1. Disconnect your PS4 from the internet, and then start TSW
2. Select a route that is relevant to the trophy that is missing
3. Select a relevant module (Intro/Scenario/Service) and play it through once.
4. If that doesn’t work immediately, then read on…. >>>>>>>
If the above process works, then you will not need to start again with a “new player profile”, and this does work for some missing trophies. This might also work with X-Box, as a very temporary workaround, without you losing your offline cache (but if you play offline for a long time on X-box, you could have other problems).
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Long answer – the long answer is set out below in three sections (it’s a very long read - sorry). This is a workaround intended for PS4 only – it might not work on PC and/or X-Box, as this has not been tested. The workaround is designed with specific trophies in mind (the “complete x services/scenarios” ones) – but it has potential to work for all trophies (see detail below).
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Workaround for anyone that has not received a trophy, when trophy requirements have been met:
1. Set up a new player profile. (But this is not enough, as explained below).
2. Close TSW: press the PS button, press the Options button, and select “Close Application”. If you want to be absolutely sure that TSW has closed, then completely switch off your PS4.
3. Switch off your internet router.
4. When you are back in the PS4 interface, go to Settings/Network and uncheck the “Connect to the internet” box.
5. Load TSW. This will take about 50 seconds, as normal, but 30 seconds in, you will be told that internet features are not available (as TSW “cannot connect to server”).
6. Aside: If you repeat steps 2 to 5 (say, next time you play TSW, without having played TSW with the internet connected in the meantime), you might get some further performance improvement, beyond what is explained below.
7. Play TSW – replay the modules (intros/scenarios/services), as required, to obtain the trophy.
8. Aside: This process has been tested with internet switched off for the entire time that the new profile is used to obtain trophies, but it is likely that you only need to have the internet off at the point when the final requirement is met (see below for explanation).
9. Depending on the trophy type, the trophy should be awarded immediately upon the relevant in game action taking place, but you might have to wait a short time for the process to complete in TSW on the PS4 system (as described below). If your trophy is not instantly awarded, then you should return to the main menu in TSW, and leave the PS4 alone for a few hours, with TSW running. You can move around in the menu system, even switch player profile, but TSW should be kept on, and you must not launch another scenario/service module. (PS4 might go into rest mode, and this is fine). If you haven’t got the trophy within six hours, then it hasn’t worked, for a different reason….
10. Alternatively, you could wait for DTG to issue a fix via a patch, which “re-awards” trophies to those people that have not received them (and maybe DTG should do this with every patch they send out). This assumes that the relevant (trophy progress) data can still be read by TSW.
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Preventative Workaround for anyone that has not yet received a trophy because requirements have not yet been met, but doesn’t want the trophy to fail:
1. You don’t need to set up a new player profile.
2. Follow steps 2 to 9 in the list above.
3. If you do not want your internet to be switched off for the entire time you are playing TSW in pursuit of the “long grind” trophies (which could be months), then you will need to track your progress towards each trophy, and then ensure that your internet is switched off at the point when the last requirement is expected to be met. It would be good if TSW had a stats table giving info related to each trophy… but that’s a very big feature ask at the moment, and could take nearly a whole day to program in…
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Why does this work? What is causing the trophies to fail?

Well… to answer this question, you have to ask another question, which is “What causes a trophy to work?” For a trophy to be awarded, the following things must happen:
1. A relevant in game action must take place (say, completion of a module/service).
2. A general process must be running that contains variables and/or flags that are relevant to the game action that awards the trophy (counters/clocks/binary flags), and this could include data that is not relevant to the trophies.
3. Another specific trophy process, sub-process, or thread must be running/executing, that is watching the data in the general process, and triggers the release of the trophy when its requirements are met (from the program’s perspective).
4. The trophy trigger must be allowed to run and complete its actions, which include (on PS4) things like playing a bell sound, giving an on screen message that a trophy has been awarded, taking a screenshot, saving the screenshot to hard disk, sending a message to the PS4 OS that a trophy has been awarded, etc. There’s quite a lot of stuff happening….
5. Aside: After all that has happened, your trophy data will be synchronised on PSN so that your friends can see your achievement, etc. Afterwards. It will happen immediately if your internet is on, but PS4 doesn’t actually care if your internet is on or not. It will give you the trophy anyway. It’s quite happy to synchronise later, next time you switch on the internet. I wanted to make this point, because I want it to be absolutely clear that the problem with awarding trophies is nothing to do with your PS4, or PlayStation Store, or PlayStation Network, or Sony. It is nothing to do with being a “PS4/server” issue. In fact – the opposite is the case – it is entirely a TSW problem.
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So… come on… what is causing the trophy fail….?

Well… to answer this question, you have to ask another question, which is, “What is a trophy in Train Sim World?” There are three types of trophy:

a. Trophies awarded for completing a number of modules (scenarios/services), or a specific module
b. Trophies for completing a number of similar actions (collecting things, etc.)
c. Trophies for completing a specific action (reaching a certain speed, etc.)

This workaround is primarily designed to deal with type “a”, because these trophies are awarded at the end of a module, when a lot of other activity suddenly takes place on the PS4 that could interfere with the “trophy trigger” process. This activity includes things like:

1. CPU activity generally
2. Addressing of memory and moving things in and out of RAM, which also impacts on the CPU
3. Reading and writing stuff to the hard disk (HDD), which also impacts on the RAM and the CPU
4. Connecting to the internet, sending and receiving data, and/or waiting for a response from an external server, which also impacts on the HDD, the RAM and the CPU

The activity that impacts on everything is connecting to the internet. And, as it turns out, to my shock, horror and surprise:

- connecting to the internet isn’t actually needed to play TSW, and
- not connecting to the internet drastically improves performance of TSW generally…..!

For example, when a service is completed, a screen pops up that gives you an evaluation of your performance, your AP scores, and a graph. This information is being taken from the “general process”, as mentioned above, which is still running. When you press the Options button to return to the main menu there is a very long pause. When I am connected to the internet, this pause usually takes 4 to 5 seconds. Sometimes (rarely) it takes nearly ten seconds (and when this happened, I was expecting to get the MSB trophy detailed below, but didn’t get it). I have a Fibre broadband connection, running on a decent router, with a cable connection to the PS4 (not WiFi). If I switch the router off, this pause is slashed by 90 per cent – it takes less than a second….!

So – an internet connection is being made, or is being attempted at this point, when your internet is on. When it is off, this process immediately shuts down (or isn’t started).
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But why does this matter?

During this time, it is possible that the trophy trigger process (for some trophies) is being interfered with. This depends on how the trigger is designed, how it interacts with other general processes, what priority it has when running, when it is expected to complete, and the time given to it to complete before timing out, and whether the process is robust enough to realise that it hasn’t completed if it hasn’t. And I suspect that this design varies, depending on the type of trophy, and, more generally, on the route that is plugged-in to the base program. There are a number of things that could happen to the trophy trigger:

- as soon as the action is completed, the trophy trigger runs without interference, and completes (I would expect this to happen for “type c” trophies, so, if you reach a certain speed on the simulation, and you expect a trophy, you get the trophy immediately)
- a final action is completed (you have collected the last collectable… a “type b” trophy), your total is noted in a table/array, and a few seconds/minutes later on (or at the end of the module), the watching thread notices, and you get your trophy
- your final action is, by definition, the completion of the module (“type a”), so the trophy trigger process runs at the end of the module, just when everything else is kicking off with the CPU, RAM, HDD, and…apparently… the internet
- the completion of the requirement is noted in a table/array as you play the simulation, you complete the module, and return to the main menu, and a watching thread visits the table “some time” later (minutes/hours), and gets triggered, and you get the trophy
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Quick Summary

In short – switch off your internet, and the things that you actually need to run, are given more time, space and priority to run. No waiting to connect to a dead server, for example. This gives you a massive performance improvement. It also kills a lot of other processes that might be running.

UPDATE: Players are now reporting that switching off the internet can have an immediate impact on missing trophies, when a relevant module/service is run offline for the first time, and this includes “type b” and “type c” trophies (see above).
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Downsides to switching off your internet:
“Downside” depends on your point of view, but if you switch off your internet when playing TSW, you won’t be able to:

- wait extra time at the end of each module, you will be thrown straight into the main menu, so that 5-10 second wait will be gone, so you’ll have to sip your tea later
- be continuously prompted to buy more DLC with the bright red dot and the bright red exclamation mark for “Dovetail Store”, and your menu will run faster, giving you less thinking time as you navigate the menu
- see the latest Dovetail Live advertorials for DLC
- see the photographic skill of the most recent winner of the Screenshot competition, as it won’t get downloaded
- broadcast/stream your driving prowess to screaming fans on the internet (unless you have a camera connected to the internet via another internet connection)
- receive notifications/news from the rest of the world via your PS4, or see what your friends are doing (and they won’t be able to see you on TSW….)

But you will be able to play TSW with the internet off, and it will be faster, and there is a higher chance of getting trophies. (I can’t guarantee that this process will work for everyone, but I am very confident it will work for a lot of people).
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Testing Results

I only had two “scenario” trophies that would not get awarded, and these were LIRR: Accessed All Areas and MSB: All In Order. I had previously completed the requirements for the MSB trophy three times, without trophy (with internet on). I even used the “create new profile” method. But with the internet off, the LIRR trophy was instantly awarded (when I did the requirements under another new profile). The MSB trophy took four hours to be awarded – I believe this trophy (and perhaps all MSB trophies), to have a very different trophy process to similar trophies on the other routes.

UPDATE: Following feedback from other players I ran a RT service…. using my original profile (not a new profile), and I was quickly given the Safety First (x500 SIFA) trophy, which I had suspected was well overdue.
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Proposed Fixes:
There are a number of fixes required, for DTG to implement.

F1. Systematic internal review of how trophies/achievements are blueprinted and cooked into PS4. The DTG Dev Team need to get together (and with third party route designers) and agree a standard process for the trophies. They then need to agree a standard process for testing that it works to spec. The standard process needs to be used on any new routes, and QA people trained on how to use the test process.

F2. The standard process needs to be applied to all existing routes, and a patch issued for each route, when DTG is sure that the routes have passed a reasonable level of quality control. All event counting systems and flags in the software need to be checked to ensure that they are working as intended, and (crucially) reporting the correct information to the relevant table/array, at the right time, and are robust enough to not time-out or be ended by any other process, until the process has been completed.

F3. When the message to award a trophy is given, DTG needs to ensure that nothing else is interfering with that thread/process. This could include:

- HDD activity (such as taking the TSW end of module screenshot for the main menu), especially since this might interfere with the PS4 screenshotting (a very similar process)
- for PS4, any completely redundant calls to the Steam servers should be removed, if they actually exist on the PS4 version of TSW
- if a call is made to a DTG server, for any reason, at any time, that the server is able to immediately respond (frankly, I would personally prefer to not have any data being sent/requested from DTG servers, at all)
- if the “behind the scenes” internet activity isn’t really needed (say, nothing much is done with the collected data, really), then just cut it out entirely
- more generally, the trophy processes just need to be made more robust and fully interoperable with other processes in the route plug-ins, and with the base program

F4. For anyone that has already met the reasonably expected requirements for individual trophies, but not been awarded the trophy, a further fix is required to force the core software to re-compare its (now correct) counting data to the TSW achievement/trophy table (presumably, as stored in TSW), and then re-deliver the message to award the trophy if the relevant trophy is not showing, or, just re-deliver the message (once only). This should only be done when everything else is fixed – but if that looks like it will take a long time, then a “re-award” instruction should be sent out with every patch to TSW, for every trophy.

F5. DTG testing infrastructure needs to be checked. Do the DTG test-bed PS4s really accurately simulate a real-life PS4? Do they have fifteen games on them, on a HDD that hasn’t been defragmented for six months? Are they connected to a second-rate broadband (minimum requirement) service? Are the variant PS4s all tested? Do they have real-life owner profiles, with followers, TV applications, and various other bits of junk added to them, like music and videos, etc.? If not, then maybe it will be easier for the Testing teams to reproduce faults, if the test PS4s were given a bit more… character….?

ASIDE: It would be quite ironic if the reason for random trophy failures was, say, connection to an unresponsive (or overly responsive...) DTG server, and doubly so if the test PS4s used by DTG were not actually connected to the same server….

F6: When the trophy system is fixed, a huge amount of time will be saved in the Support Team, as they will have fewer Support tickets to “process”. This time can be used productively by sending the Support Team members on a week-long Customer Service course. I believe Disney do quite a good one, for external customers. The funny poster with “The Customer Is Always Wrong” cartoon should now be removed from the Support Team office wall. More seriously:

- when a PS4 user reports an issue, it should be treated like gold-dust, because it is highly unlikely to be caused by a standardised PS4 – it is always far more likely to be a problem with the way TSW is programmed, so fixing it fixes it for everyone, including PC users that do have unrelated issues with PC performance – DTG should use this as a highlighting filter, and the Support Team should be told to do this. This is not complicated.
- PS4 users should not be told to re-build their database (defrag their HDD) and re-install TSW, as a default answer to support ticket queries – this is utterly ridiculous – please stop doing this immediately, it’s a waste of your customers’ time, and achieves nothing at all except inconvenience and annoyance for your customers.
- PS4 users should not be told to (just) restart the game with a new player profile, unless there is solid evidence that the design of player profiles is flawed (in which case, DTG should issue a patch to fix player profiles….)
- The Dev team should probably do an independent audit of all Support queries, to see what information is not being added to the bug database, and to see what advice is being given to players
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Feedback

Feedback is very welcome. I have put my head above the parapet here, and I fully expect people to fire at me, based on their experience, knowledge and perspective. This is fine – please fire away….! This is a Forum, after all…

Specific feedback is welcome:
- If you tried the workaround, did it work for you? This is intended for trophies like “Complete all services in x”, and “complete all scenarios”, so if this workaround didn’t work for this kind of trophy, can you let me know?
- I am not expecting this to work for other trophies (counting distance driven, reaching a certain speed, etc.), but if this workaround does work for you, on these trophies, that feedback would be extremely useful – remember, all I am really suggesting is you switch off the internet…, so if these trophies are impacted by an internet connection, that would be useful (and surprising) to know….
- If you disagree with my technical descriptions and assumptions, that’s also fab. I am here to learn, and I am always happy to be corrected, in the pursuit of better understanding


Disclaimer….:

I have tested this process. It worked for me, but it might not work for you. But it shouldn’t cause any harm to players (although DTG might get a bit annoyed with me). I don’t want to waste anyone’s time (beyond reading this post to this point….), so if you choose to use this workaround, on top of the “create new profile” workaround, that is your choice. I think it could be a good choice, but that is just my opinion. ;-)
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Hi, thank you for that workaround and all the work you put into that.

About two weeks ago I completed the requirements of the trophy "GWE: Mile Muncher" which is "drive the class 166 for 1660 miles" but the trophy didn't pop. After finishing some more services it still didn't work.

Just now, right after reading you post, I tried again with no internet connection (just unchecked "connect to internet") and the trophy popped as soon as the service began without even starting to drive.
That's incredible... and disturbing.

 

Much appreciated. I have a few trophies still to get in the base game, so I shall be referring back to this frequently.

 

Thank you for taking the time to come back and post your first Forum message here, as you have done.

I wasn't expecting my workaround to impact this kind of trophy. I had my suspicions, but not really any hard evidence, so I under-played this possibility. It would point to the issue being much wider than I thought.

And it gets even more interesting - after seeing your post I did another test myself. I thought that I was maybe long overdue for the Safety First (500 SIFA alarm) trophy. I went into RT (with internet off), started a service, ran the train under SIFA, and a couple of stations later... the trophy rolled in. It didn't come in immediately after a SIFA action - it appeared during a passenger loading event. But it was quick.

So - that's two "counting event" trophies, apparently awarded due to the internet being switched off. This is on top of the "all scenario" trophies. Maybe the internet connection really does somehow (somewhat randomly) suppress all types of trophies...! And there is code waiting to be run, but can't, when the internet is on...!

Hopefully, if other readers have similar experiences, they'll drop a note in this Forum. This will help DTG get to the source of the problem (which I am seriously starting to think is legacy Steam server related - it would be great if DTG could drop a line here rulling that out).

 

A few days ago, I reached 705 miles in the M7 on LIRR but did not obtain the relevant trophy for attaining 700 miles.
I had not touched TSW since, but after reading this workaround (which I have been eagerly awaiting), I disconnected the internet (also by unchecking "connect to internet") and went into a new service on LIRR in timetable. I loaded passengers, set up the controls and whilst waiting for the start time, the trophy popped.
Very bizarre!
Well done for this workaround.

 

I haven't tried this workaround yet, but have missing trophies so I will try turning off my internet next time I play and will report back if it solves the problem.

 

Hi mate,

Quick question, did you do the whole 1660 miles with a new profile and the fix, or did you just fire up a service on your original profile that had completed the required miles and had the trophy pop?

Asking as the 70 services in LIRR didn’t pop for me and I would really not like to have to do that all again with a new profile!

 

I think that's a very good question... The impression I got from Droemel is that, for the trophy that Droemel was after, all he had to was start a single service, but with internet switched off. It would be useful if it could be confirmed if this was under a new profile (but my guess is that it wasn't). This could indicate that the "counter" is stored somewhere, and that there is a "lookup" that awards the trophy, whenever a relevant module/service is started (and it is this lookup that is suppressed by the internet connection...?).

Yesterday, when I got the Safety First trophy, I did it from my original profile, without having to create a new one with x500 alerts.

My suggestion now would be to try a service on LIRR, with the internet switched off (without doing a new profile yet), and test that first. If you then get the "x70 service LIRR" trophy, can you please let us know? I will then amend the workaround to reflect this - that would be a VERY big piece in the puzzle. If this doesn't work, can you also let us know that?

When I did the MSB and LIRR "all scenario" trophies, this was with a new profile with internet switched off, but there are "only" five scenarios in each of those trophies.... If it is possible to completely rule out the need for a new profile in all cases, that would be utterly awesome...!

 

That's correct, I started a service on my original profile, which already had more than 1660 miles done.

 

I would add that my mileage in the M7 (above #5) was done on my original profile.

 

Anyone tried if logging out of Dovetail live in the game comes to the same result?

 

My TSW never was connected to Dovetail live.

 

Okay alright. Could´ve been that the issue is connected to this since the Dovetail Live integration seems to be the only reason the game would connect to a Server / need an Internet connection anyway.
But if you were never connected it seems really strange that trophys do work better offline.

 

I also do not have Dovetail Live linked to my PS4. But there are very many reasons for a software developer to have a link to the software, for example, how could you have the stats for this sort of hyperbole, if user activity wasn't being actively logged:



My greatest fear (with respect to TSW...), now that I have released this workaround (and one that actually improves user experience), is that DTG will rush out a "hot patch" and absolutely force PS4 users to have the internet switched on, to access TSW. But, if they do that, without fixing absolutely everything first, and, actually, without a pretty good reason such as some new critically important internet dependent user functionality, then I would regard such an act as the height of cynicism, and "contemptuously vindictive" towards their customers.

I am sure that DTG really do love their customers, so presumably they won't take such an awful approach. Hopefully, somebody from DTG will now confirm that they have no intention of (ever) forcing PS4 users to connect to the internet, to access the software.

 

Well that gets tracked like the Challenges with an active Dovetail Live link i would have thought. Can be wrong, only the devs know for sure.

However i tried your workaround on Xbox for an Achievement (CC - Stainless Steel) where i met the requirement several times with no luck of it popping up.
I´ve gone offline, reached the 70mph. I then reconnected to the Internet while in the main menu of TSW. Nothing happened, i started F12018 and while i was doing a lap there the Achievement popped. Not sure if it worked because of the workaround or if it has to do with the 2020 update (havent driven NEC since then). I will try it again with other missing achievements. For now it might be possible that this also works on Xbox

 

Thanks - I have updated the original post, to highlight that people should first try going "off-grid" without starting a new profile.

If it turns out that the "start a new profile" advice, which has been the standard line for a year...., doesn't provide any benefit in any cases, then I will amend the advice again to reflect this. I think that only DTG can help with this - they should look at the code and explain exactly what is going on with the internet connection - in fact, they are legally required to do this anyway, under GDPR.

 

You were probably doing over 70mph in your F1 car.....! Or maybe your TSW trophy really needed 170mph....? ;-)

EDITED TO ADD: More seriously, it is quite important that we don't have any false positives that support the workaround. I would be interested to know if it helps on X-Box, but only if there is some confidence in it. If there is a plausible other reason for your achievement "popping", then we need to rule that in, instead. So, I checked the update history - your CC: Stainless Steel achievement wasn't in the 14 August 2019 patch notes, but it was in the 27 June 2019 patch notes, viz.:

https://dovetailgames.kayako.com/News/NewsItem/View/164/train-sim-world-update-available-now

So, the question is, did your holiday from NEC stretch back as far as 27 June? If not, then maybe X-Box is also covered. (I have reasons to believe it might be, but I would rather have good evidence).

 

Okay, so I have tried the workaround with the King of Queens trophy (70 services in the M7) and it didn’t pop - did a full service off the grid expecting it to pop at the end (75 services now completed) and nothing.
Going to try this with The Freight Express now and see what happens

EDIT: Have also tried with The Freight Express (185kms in the 185.2) and it didn’t pop - service was run on my backup profile that had reached the required distance before I began the service)

 

Okay, so if these trophies do not "get released" in the next few hours, then you have two options:

1. Start a brand new profile (as per the long method originally proposed in my OP), but with the internet off (which is better than just starting a new profile, as I found with the MSB and LIRR scenario trophies). Try it out for MSB: All In Order (if you want) - I think that will work for you, and MSB is quite nice..... ;-)
2. Wait for DTG to push out a fix for every trophy that forces the core software to re-check your stats, and "re-award" the trophies (if this is even possible - it should be though, methinks) - and this is what I would do for King of Queens, rather than be faced with repeating 70x services on LIRR, lovely as LIRR is.

 

I tried it after the 27th June Patch both with my regular and a new profile and it didnt pop up on both back then.
I just havent tried it after the 2020 Update again. Will do another missing achievement tomorrow with beeing connected to see if it pops now. If not i try the offline version.

 

Hi synthetic.angel, thank you very much for the workaround provided, some very interesting information here. I've passed the info to the developers.

 

Hi TrainSim-Dmitri

You are very welcome! Actually, you deserve a great deal of credit yourself, for helping with the idea, in the following thread:

https://forums.dovetailgames.com/threads/lirr-access-all-areas-trophy-is-not-achievable.18223/

When you said "This is a PS4/server issue", but then you couldn't confirm the need for an internet connection (or not), I then decided to try and rule out the "server " bit, and tested a PS4 without an internet connection, and found the workaround.....! So........ thank you!

I know that this is not a PS4 issue. It is also not a Playstation server issue. But it might well be a server issue - a DTG server issue. Something rattling in the background of my mind thinks that it might also/alternatively be a Steam server issue - a failure to port TSW properly from the PC build to the PS4 and X-Box. This might be your best first line of inquiry, and the first thing to rule out. But that is just a guess, of course... ;-)

I do hope that you are not going to ask the Dev Team to now lock-out anyone that switches off the internet. That would be the wrong way forward, I think, even if DTG really does want to collect a lot of of data. Can you please confirm that DTG won't do this?

Anyway - thanks again for your thanks. I was actually only expecting a considered apology from your Support Team, but your thanks trumps that. Well, the Support Team know how to get in touch, if they wake up one day and think "Oh wow, did we really do that to a paying customer?".

 

I've been missing the "New Yorker" trophy since completing the services, which I did before any related extra dlc arrived.

Thought I'd give this method a try to finally pop the trophy and get the plat... No success.

Even completed extra services on NEC, since the 2020 update, apart from the load of broken and un-finishable services...

With the trophy being altered with the 2020 update do you think this could have affected it?

The work put into your findings is phenomenal by the way...

 

Hi

At some point i have my internet conection turned off playing peninsula corridor and the level 20 route trophy of peninsula corridor doenst pop.

 

Today I finished the last of the 64 services of Rapid Transit with internet conection. No trophy came up.

Then I repeated the last service by restoring the backup from just before.
This time with no internet connection. Also no luck.

I did all this on a new profile that was created after the TSW 2020 update.
Apparently it's still very much broken and not possible to work around by creating a new profile or playing with no internet connection.

Any feedback from the devs yet?

 

I completed all the services in West Somerset Railway and no trophy was awarded. I tried shutting off the internet connection and repeating one or two of the services and no trophy was awarded. I can only assume since the services already had a check mark it did not trigger the trophy.
So I created a new profile and completed all the services again. Before I did the last service, I shut down the internet connection. This time as soon as the service was completed the trophy popped.
Just wanted to confirm it worked for me.
Thanks again!

 

A weird unlock occurred for me with "The Freight Experience". Having tried your work around, I then moved onto RSN to rack up some services while the MSB trophy system is mended. I fired up a service in the 143, and almost immediately, the 185.2 distance trophy popped.

 

I have also not received the King of Queens trophy (70 services on LIRR) even though the final few services were done without an internet connection. This was on my normal profile so I guess the only alternative is to try doing it on a new profile without internet.

 

synthetic.angel you beautiful person! Iv been trying to get the Leipzig Legend trophy for so long and after multiple attempts at clearing them all (including the DLC) and still not getting it, i was at the point of giving up on it until it was properly fixed. Then i saw this post last night and decided to dedicate my day today to attempting this one last time. Made a new profile, completed 63/64 of the services and did what you mentioned with turning the net off. Ran the last service and boom, there pops the trophy. I owe you big time! Can't count how many times iv attempted these services. Thank you so much for finding this. You absolute legend.

 

For RRO reach route level 20 trophy (I am now route level 23) I tried running a couple of RRO services offline when it wasn't awarded and also left TSW on a few hours but no joy. I'll try again tonight. Incidentally I reported it to DTG and they report if the above doesn't work I have to wait until a fix comes in a future patch!!

 

I left these forums a few weeks/months ago, having largely given up on TSW to play some very high quality, content rich, low cost, and completely bugfree sim titles like Dirt 2.0 (now £12) and GT Sport (now £12), and the truly massive Dakar game (for just £10....!) plus some "free" triple A titles provided with PS Plus. I noticed that the trains in GT Sport always seem to be realistically simulated (although you can't drive them...).

But then I noticed the last update to TSW adding a bit more unused bloat to my PS4 HDD, so I had a look on here (these Forums) to see what the deal was. I was then tempted to make a thread/post ahead of the new Coastway DLC going live, with the simple question "I wonder if Dovetail tested the DLC, before publishing it and making it available for purchase?". I decided to give DTG the benefit of the doubt, but the answer to the question is now fairly clear and unsurprising..., so I won't be buying that DLC for a very long time, if at all (unless they add the route to London Bridge and Victoria, plus the whole South London Network....), and certainly not until the "full-price"-paying user-base has tested it, and only after DTG has started thinking about going through the first stages of making a start on scoping out the possibility of whether they should consider if it is worth their time and their customers' money to fix it so that it works properly.

Anyway..... Trophies.... (via RSN).... >>

The last update brought some potentially welcome changes (such as cab-sway) that I wanted to try out. I even bought the RSN DLC (which looks utterly fabulous by the way, especially at night....!). But then I started to get a bit grated by the playability bugs (to do with how the Dualshock is poorly set-up for the brakes). And then the sound bugs (no sound at all through certain tunnels) left me, like the software itself, entirely speechless. I remember reading about these issues some time ago, but I never commented on them because I hadn't experienced them personally. They are still there (December 2019).... Too many bugs to mention, and I like writing long posts..... Shocking.

Anyway... after trawling the internet for workarounds on how to start and complete the RSN scenarios, I completed the last one, expecting to get the "Valley Veteran" trophy. It's quite well-named, because getting through all the bugs to complete the five scenarios is a bit like jumping out of a boat and trying to take control of a beach defended by a bunch of guys with machine guns, whilst being hammered by artillery and strafed by the Luftwaffe. Albeit from the comfort of my sofa. ;-)

I didn't get the Valley Veteran trophy. Even with the interwebs switched off. I could not find any workaround or process to debug this. This is the first time that I have been completely defeated by the many challenges provided in TSW of the type: "After going through all those other bugs, can you solve the last step, and get the trophy to work?". I even tried praying, despite having turned away from religion many years ago. But I have now found that when it comes to trophy bugs (or the very many other persistent bugs) in Train Sim World, not even God is willing to help.

And you thought that it was worth your time talking to the DTG Support team...? I do love an optimist!

Anyway (finally...). I have mostly dropped this note here to say that my workaround, as posted in this thread, no longer works for me. It has been bullet-proof (for me personally), until now. But I now realise that it was all in vain, and I now officially completely give up. I have no idea why it doesn't work. I have noticed that the UI has become extremely slow (in TSW, and only in TSW), since TSW was updated, so there's probably some newly introduced failed processes there that are taking ages (3000ms+) to time-out, but I no longer care.

To get me to no longer care about TSW, on top of all those other people that have given up on it, is quite an achievement - so well done and congratulations to Dovetail.

NB: I appreciate that the last update resolved numerous bugs, across many routes/DLCs. But it is too little, too late. Bethesda lost hundreds of millions in revenue on Fallout 76 by taking the same approach as DTG by releasing broken software. That vastly more complex software now (a year after launch) largely works (and now available for £12), but TSW doesn't. Some estimate that Bethesda lost 75% of their Fallout customer base, and 100% of goodwill, and that neither is coming back anytime soon. But a few people will still continue to buy TSW DLC (and pay a heavy price for it), so maybe there really isn't a problem with TSW to be fixed after all... It's all just fine.

 

As always, a very profound post from you.

I also haven't played TSW for some while. I would like to but consider it a waste of time as things don't work. It has become quite clear that DTG either don't bother testing their products or are perfectly happy to publish them knowing that they don't work properly. I am sure some people won't agree but nevertheless, it is my opinion.

 

Yeah, they're doing their best to lose me too, and the trophy/mastery shambles has been a big part of that.

I've been playing The Crew 2 for a bit of light relief. It's varied, good fun, the trophies all pop exactly when you expect them to, and you can see stats on everything you're achieving as you go along (and they actually track when you do things). Seems like such a simple thing to ask for. Oh, and for the Gold Edition, with the DLC season pack, it cost me... £25.

 

Hi TinTin

I thought I owed you a constructive response regarding your specific situation on RRO. And I had to think about it a bit. We now know that turning off the internet is not the whole solution (or possibly any part of the solution...) for these trophy bugs. So, the TSW software probably needs to be patched to provide an individual solution with some hard re-coding, for every single trophy. The failure of your RRO trophy completely flummoxed me (for those with English as a second language - "flummoxed" sort of means bewildered/confused/shocked/surprised..... ;-) )

This is why I was completely flummoxed off:... ;-)

Question. How can it be that TSW can be programmed in a way that it doesn't have the ability to count to 20?

I don't know the actual answer. But I can conceive of the possibility of very poorly written code which might work sometimes for some people, but not for others. A random failure. Here is an example:

Example: The software doesn't count levels in whole numbers (integers), but the trophy process wants to see a whole number tick past before it rewards a trophy. So, you could have been at level 19.97 one moment, and the next moment you could have been at level 20.06. You never reached exactly level 20 (Level = 20.00), so you don't get the trophy. But wait a minute - after you finished a run, you saw that you had level 20, right? Nope, you had level 20.76 (say, a bit more than 20.06), but the display for "level" number showed it rounded down to a whole number. Anyone lucky enough to pass through Level 20 at exactly Level 20.00 gets the trophy. You could start a new profile and take it to Level 20ish, and hope this time that your counter ticks exactly onto level 20.00. If you start a hundred new profiles, then you have a very good chance of getting it, etc. (NB: the "0.76" would show that you are well on the way to Level 21, and would make the progress bar 76% filled....).

I am not saying that this is what happened to you. I am saying that this is possibly what happened. It would mean that the person that coded the trophy had literally no imagination. It is unlikely that anyone checked the work or QA'd it, unless, by chance, they also had virtually no imagination or common sense. We know that they don't test anything (or if they do, they don't care about the test results, unless it will cause a crash when Livestreaming new broken DLC...but maybe they don't care about that either. It's just a bit of a laugh when things go wrong...

OKAY - What can you do about it? You need to get an answer to the following question:

Q - What are the precise conditions that trigger the "reach level 20" trophy (Rhein-Ruhr Living....?). It isn't enough to be told that you need to "reach level 20". You need to know the exact line of code that is used. Then you (or anyone with some common sense) can explain to Dovetail that the line of code doesn't work in most easily conceivable situations.

If you do get an answer.... - can you ask them about the RSN Valley Veteran trophy...? ;-) My suspicion here is that the criterion to be met is to have "5/5 original scenarios completed", but that I could not get this because I was stupid enough to buy the DLC to the DLC, so my counter went to 5/8 and then 8/8, and never had the chance to precisely match 5/5. Just a guess, of course.

That said, the BR 155 is a particularly awesome addition to TSW. (The artwork and modelling is usually fabulous in all of TSW, and I feel really sorry for the artists and their hard work - it's like going to the National Gallery only to find that the management has decided to use the Van Gogh and the Caravaggio paintings as toilet hand towels).

Last rant bit: What gets me the most flummoxed, is that Dovetail know that their systems for counting do not work. They know that they can't count scenarios completed/ticked/medalled, etc. They know that they can't count miles/kms driven. They know that they can't count, measure and report level progression. They know that the "distance to objective" in the simulation is the bird's flight straight line distance and not rail miles/kms (which is particularly annoying in RSN because of the huge loop in the middle of the route).

So why the flummox have they introduced even more counting processes with "Mastery", when they know that they are not going to be able to make it work, because they don't know how to make things that count stuff....?*

*NB (full disclosure): I don't actually have Dovetail Live active on my PS4, so I have never seen this "Mastery" "feature" - my comment above is purely based on all of the third party complaints that I have seen. Apparently "mastery" doesn't work in their fishing simulator either.



.

 

I too am becoming rapidly disenfranchised by the consistent and same issues that are rolled out time after time. I am currently staring at the Californian route scenarios at 5/5 completed and no trophy. Also no trophy for completing one scenario in particular. Why would i plough time and money into a product when it would seem the community care more than the developer for sorting out these issues?

 

Hello
Yesterday I was playing at rapid transit. I have all the trophys just German legend. Yesterday I have reached all 64 services and no trophy pfff. I was reading to start a new profile how do you do this in this game??
Can somebody help me???
Thx greets

 

If you go along the main menu to your Profile page where it has your stats, there's an option to Change Profile (Square on PS4) and you can make a new one there. Not guaranteed to work on a new profile though.

 

I’m trying your suggested method for the MSB: All in Order trophy.

I have completed the five scenarios with a fresh installation of the base game with only MSB DLC added and used a brand new profile.

The trophy hasn’t popped.

I am now in the main menu to see if the trophy will pop in a few hours. I’m not holding out much hope.

This trophy is really getting on my nerves now.

 

I had trouble with three trophies on the LIRR. Just out of curiosity I did a short timetable service and then let the game idle.
What can I say, it was worth the wait. It took more than six hours, but finally two of the missing trophies popped at the same time.
If it hadn't been during the night when I was asleep, I'd never have waited so long.

 

This is ridiculous. DTG must know what it is that's triggering it and when that happens, but still we're having to resort to nonsense methods like this to get our trophies.

 

Well, we've lurched into January 2021 and still this is happening! I have been working my way through the Peninsular Corridor and having nearly completed it decided to add some DLC, the first I have ever bought BTW, as it was on offer over Xmas. I got the Switcher set, plu Heavy Freight and the Tees Valley line.

Fancying a change, I decided to start on the Tees Valley Line and did the first part of the Journey, which is the Class 37 training module which should also start you off with a trophy, the Tractor Trainee. I swiftly followed this with the Tubeline Diversion scenario, which should also give you the Metal Sector trophy. Nada for either despite being completed to Gold Medal standard first time.

Frustrated I stumbled onto this thread and cannot thank the OP enough! I tried the internet off first and did the training again, nothing. Restarted the PS with the router off and did it again, nothing. Restarted the PS with router off then created a new profile and did it, bingo, up she popped. Did the Tubeliner again, pop that one appears too.

So in my case, great, but I'd be as mad as hell if this was something that took literally hours of gameplay to achieve. And I do ask the same question as above as to why, after what two years of this being flagged, clearly nothing has been done to fix it? Come on DTG, this is a brilliant game and so beautifully drawn, but not getting rewarded for the hours of play is extremely frustrating and not likely to encourage more custom in the future - take heed of the example above regards Bethesda and Fallout76.

 

I had LIRR trophies for distance not popping, as well as GWE tutorial trophy, and found this thread doing research. I found this thread and immediately turned the net connection off and reset the console and game. Upon loading in, I got my LIRR trophies. Since then, I've not had any net connection, and today I was stumped. None of the MSB trophies popped for doing all tutorials OR scenarios, yet a RSN trophy popped for the BR 185. Incredibly frustrating, as all stuff was done gold medal. An absolute joke tbh, not a fan of redoing stuff that shouldn't need re-done.

 

Did you ever get the trophy to unlock as I am stuck on this one now and have completed the scenarios including a 2nd time with another profile?

 

I did eventually on TSW 2020. It involved me uninstalling the entire game (keeping my save file) and just reinstalling MSB. On TSW 2, the trophy popped first time with no issues.

 

The trophy only popped after leaving the game on following completion of the 5 scenarios for over 3 hours.

 

worked right away on TSW2? maybe they knew the TSW 1 was really buggy and fixed things under the hood for TSW2 to make it work better, when you finished the scenario did you go back to the main menu ? or stay on the debriefing screen?

 

Stayed on the debriefing screen.

 

I had already completed all 5 scenarios did you replay all needed or just one then waited? Thanks for your advice

 

Not been able to get the trophy, just for my info do you have the digital version of TSW2020 or the disc ? As if you installed it offline and played it that way it would be a pre patched version you cant get with the download ?

 

i had the MSB scenario issue too. i have MSB, NTPl, LIRR, and SW1000R installed. i deleted all saves, turnd net off, did MSB intro sequence, then all 5 scenarios. it took about 20 minutes to pop after the final one whilst sitting in the menu. The stuff works on TSW2 b/c the preservation team has one of their main focuses on having achievements work as they should from now on.