PlayStation Question For Matt Or Sam

Discussion in 'TSW General Discussion' started by Samo1, Feb 4, 2021.

  1. Samo1

    Samo1 Well-Known Member

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    As a consumer I absolutely understand bills need to be paid, employees need to put food on the table for their families and the company needs to thrive, for that reason you release routes to their release dates regardless of whether they are finished or not, as long as a game can be played now and fixed later and doesn’t have a critical bug it’s released

    You absolutely know the condition of the route when you release it and you know most of the problems that will need to be addressed later in the day by the preserved crew, my question is do feel any guilt for releasing unfinished products? maybe guilt is too strong a word, what about regret?

    Whilst doing the very best for the company, do you feel you treat your customers who put their money in your bank with the professionalism and respect they all deserve?

    I would actually love a reply from you or better still the main boss of the company, at least make this post available for the top brass to read please

    Yes I will get the usual hate that comes my way for asking tough questions but I’m sure there will be those that respect this post as well and would actually love an answer

    Thanks
     
    Last edited: Feb 4, 2021
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  2. DTG Protagonist

    DTG Protagonist Has left the building Staff Member

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    The last part of your question is actually the core of it.

    "Yes I will get the usual hate..."

    If every player had a 1-10 scale in order to rate our releases there would be some whose grade is higher across the board and others who rate things lower. This tends to come as a result of the level to which expectations are matched. Those with higher expectations, even knowing the standard we routinely hit are almost perpetually disappointed. Those with lower levels of expectation are generally more satisfied.

    Friction between users of this forum come when someone from one end of the scale sees what we've done in an entirely different light to someone from the other end. If a member of the community finds themselves in regular argument with others, it's likely because they're closer to one end of the scale than the other. The thing is both ends of the scale are right, both are wrong.

    "Good enough" from your perspective, from our perspective, from 50 other players' perspective will be different in each case, and the result will be subjective depending on who you talk to.

    We know where our creations are strongest and where we're lacking. Of all the criticism received it is lighting and sound that receive the greatest volume of negative feedback. Making this more challenging is that we can also be inconsistent in those areas, sometimes delivering above the norm, sometimes below it. We're aware of these two areas of concern and are working to address them, but they'll take time.

    A lot of the nuanced feedback we receive is about the detail in a release we make. The level to which we match or exceed the minds-eye view or hopes of individual players dictating the level of nuance that is commented upon. Some are happy to run through abstractions of reality, some are not.

    Would we like every player to be 100% delighted with everything we do? Of course we would. The fact is that such a goal is impossible. Were we to spend a year making a new route the detail would naturally be higher, but we'd still not reach that 100% mark - and we wouldn't be around to make anything else afterwards.

    We are leaning on the preservation crew to handle known and emerging non-critical problems post release. No sense in pretending otherwise and arguably we're doing it a little too much at present. This is why that team exists, to further polish our releases after they've launched. If anything this team means that there is no such thing as "finished" as we can go back and integrate new systems that are developed over time while addressing other areas of feedback we receive after launch. Even with this facility it's still unlikely we'll be able to please all the people all the time.

    In the Q&A at the end of the year we spoke about routes that for no obvious reason, didn't work as well as we wanted them to. Not in a technical sense but in the sense of them being everything we hoped when we started out. There's a hint of alchemy in game development where sometimes all the pieces slot together and create something greater than the whole, and sometimes pieces that should work together flawlessly fall short. This is something we find too. Sometimes the end realisation isn't up to the hope we had when starting out. For something so rooted in technology there's a decidedly organic result after months of work. Even then we may find that routes we were happiest with fail to meet the expectations of some players, while some we would have liked to turn out better are well received.

    We aspire to create great routes and fantastic trains to run on them. Ultimately it is up to individual players to decide whether we're close to that mark or not, and what's true for one person won't necessarily be true for another.
     
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  3. junior hornet

    junior hornet Well-Known Member

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    And I think the core of Sam’s reply is that if they spent a year making a route, it still wouldn’t be 100%. No matter how good and accurate it is, someone will still moan about a misplaced building or tree or blade of grass.

    SEHS seems to have had more criticism than any other route before it and it is to DTG’s credit that they have addressed much of the criticism either in the release build or, potentially, in the promised patch. Personally, I think it looks great and I, and I suspect many users, wouldn’t have even noticed the perceived problems if the forum hadn’t been so vociferous.

    However, I appreciate that these things matter to many people and it is probably a credit to the quality of the route that the issues raised revolve around individual aspects of scenery and sound rather than issues that stop the game being played.
     
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  4. SBos

    SBos Well-Known Member

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    Sam said:-

    We aspire to create great routes and fantastic trains to run on them. Ultimately it is up to individual players to decide whether we're close to that mark or not, and what's true for one person won't necessarily be true for another.

    I think he is spot on in respect of people’s expectations, however, as I posted earlier console users never seem to get the opportunity to see how a route works prior to the release day. This latest route will have had three streams after tonight and all on PC with the promise they will do a console stream sometime later. I don’t understand why they find it so difficult to do two streams on a new route one of which should be on console. I suspect they don’t because they know it will show issues such as stuttering and other issues associated with some of the consoles.

    I also agree that DTG will never release a game that nobody doesn’t have some kind of issue with. My main issue is the length of time it takes to rectify faults that do have an effect on gameplay. The Bakerloo Line is a typical example of this and I’m not referring to the extra services or the missing Wembley Stadium.
     
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  5. Samo1

    Samo1 Well-Known Member

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    Thanks for the detailed, well explained and well reasoned answer Sam, I really like the potential of the product and why I haven’t move on to other things, what’s a real shame for me is I’m unable to buy with confidence on day one because I know there will be some problems, I don’t know if they will be big or small for me and as you rightly point out what might be a big problem for me might be small for another person so I will bare that in mind in future

    While I wholeheartedly applaud the roadmap and your transparency, it’s also an indication of the large number of problems across the board routes and trains have had after release, as you say in streams some can be five minutes to fix while others are head scratchers but I’m amazed at the number of simple bugs that do get through testing like the missing running and wiper sounds and the instrument lighting missing in the new route, I as a consumer think if DTG’s can’t catch the most basic of bugs what more important bugs, possibly game breaking are they missing, as for the tunnel lighting I’m glad that was mentioned although it had to be really as it was clear to see

    What must be annoying for you as a company (and for me indirectly) and I’m probably in the minority is I will unfortunately wait months for you to hopefully do all the fixes and pick the route up in a sale as well, it means I miss out on the new experience I was probably looking forward to when it drops and I would have been happy to pay the full asking price if I had confidence that more time and attention had been taken and to be honest and I say this with respect, I don’t have much faith in your play testers so I have to rely on impartial YouTube streams and forum community feedback as to the state of routes at release time and it’s fair to say there are usually problems

    For the record, I really like the look of SEHS, it passes through my local station (first out from St Pancras) and I’m hopeful of getting it sometime further down the track (sorry)

    Thanks again for the detailed answer, get those bugs and glitches sorted, well not you personally but you know what I mean and I hope to be expanding my route collection soon
     
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  6. DTG Protagonist

    DTG Protagonist Has left the building Staff Member

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    At the current time only Matt has the option to stream from console which makes it tough to schedule a console based stream. We want to do more of them, it's just a case of having builds (and Matt) ready for use when we run previews.
     
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  7. solicitr

    solicitr Well-Known Member

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    Eloquently put, Sam.
     

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