This thread has been playing in my mind for a while and I think now is good-a-time as ever to ask the question. Do you think if or when more third party developers get onboard we'll see DTG themselves dedicate more time to a route they're building whether that's in both length and or assets and scenery? Or will it be a case of money talks & no matter how many third party dev's there is, DTG will still knock out x number of routes per year dedicating a set amount of time per route because more routes = more money? Personally I'd like them to spend more time on a route but at the end of the day they're a business not a charity, they do this to make money first and foremost.
Why exactly would they spend more time on a route? More developers means more (varied) content in a given time frame.
Highly doubt it. Apart from the overall variety and health of the game, DTG should not care much about the releases of third party content in terms of dev time and sales. They will still hold to their schedules and business plan. Remember that usually a business creates a financial plan for at least the year which they will try to achieve or even better surpass. All the discussions about granting the Devs more time and willing to pay more for dlc are a bit redundant in my opinion as these are all things that target the DTG business plan, which as long as it works should be very unlikely to change.
Nothing will change. We were all told as developers spend more time with the tools, they will get more experience. Though the staff come and go so frequently, there’s no time or opportunity to show off their skills on route creation. I believe a lot of the route builders are first time, junior developers, and then move on to different companies, who pay better. This clearly shows on SEHS as the modelling is very rough outside of the immediate station area. You’ve got floating assets, roads, buildings sinking into the ground, the list goes on... It’s all very amateur looking. Especially the HS1 section.
Let´s focus on having errors fixed first and then we could think about better quality. The preserved collection is still not fixed and every single released DLC had issues. I don´t see a healthy path ahead if everything is released with errors that take months to be corrected. Then we could think on paying more for more quality. Cheers
But to counter that, if they had more time to create these routes they could potentially catch more bugs and errors before release.
Well potentially there could be countless outcomes. It might also be that they use all the extra time to just make the routes longer and to add more features. This could then mean more potential for more bugs that don't get caught or ridden, and the cycle begins anew...
I really want that DTG goes back and look at an amazing work they did in Munich-Augsburg route! TSW needs to go back to that standards and level of quality and detail. Since Munich-Augsburg, the level of quality on routes is worse... I hope that the German routes don't get the level of treatment that SEHS did. TSW has on German routes the best detailed ones and the most engaging and involvement do to the timetable extra services. And with TSG making the setup and sounds of trains we have the perfect package in German routes. Please don't ruin German routes DTG because of the reason that i said. Of course the other routes need to have the level of treatment and quality that HMA had. I really think this thread is important because TSW needs to go back to the level of quality and not tools to make the route faster and rushing things. We has a customer want to receive a good and deserved treatment DTG.
From a purely business perspective, why should anything change? SouthEastern (regarded by some as the worst route in the game) appears to have sold like hot cakes. Given it had already been pushed back, I don't think management would've been very happy devoting more time to it and rather just get it out and move on to another thing.
Nothing concrete, just a word of mouth, although in rough words, DTG said loosely that “We don’t have lots of fancy cars in our car park” which I think you know what that means in regards to the sort of people that work there. I believe working at DTG is the sort of place where you get your foot in the door and develop your skills and abilities in modelling and programming, before moving on to somewhere else. Looking at the advertised wages, they aren’t the best.
It would be good though to aspire to more than being the entry level employer of the industry. That means investing their profits to grow the company and its employees so they don't just see it as a stepping stone. From the description of the CEO this is a sort of pet project for him rather than a cash cow, and hopefully he also wants to grow and develop the company. That way they have more resources and can improve their outputs in terms of quality which will help further improve the firm and the products they produce.
I agree. At the end of the day they are a business and they are here to make money first and foremost. They are not a charity. Maybe DTG could invest the money into more resources so they can deliver better quality and grow the company further. The CEO has the passion but clearly the resources are not there to deliver high quality routes consistently. I feel like autogen has something to do with quality issues. I get that many people (like myself) want to see longer routes and more full line routes because one of the major flaws of this game in my opinion is the lack of full line routes which often leads players not getting full line routes and having to give up their trains and unrealistic points in their journey which would not happen in reality. The enjoyment of driving the train knowing that at the end, that's not the last stop has led to many requests for route extensions from the very beginning which dtg don't want to do. But autogen for longer routes should not lead to not so great quality routes more often which is why I hope it gets improved
As a customer we really are in a like it or lump it position, we want longer routes, better quality routes and extensions to existing routes (amongst other things). Yet DTG for one reason or another give us what they think we’ll like in a take it or leave it situation. Until DTG has a competitor, another company who also wants to do train simulation on both PC and console then we’re stuck with whatever they release. I agree with autogen, I feel, though it may do things quicker for DTG, it’s at a price and that price is lower quality looking terrain/scenery. I don’t know if they’re able to manually edit what’s been generated automatically or once it’s done they’re stuck with it. I guess we’ll see in the next few DLC’s whether the autogen can be improved upon or not.
I hope another competitor comes so see what they offer because we really are in a like it or lump it situation espically on console. DTG can manually adjust certain things once autogen does it's thing but it seems dtg didn't do it much with hs1
...and all for the same price as before. In other words, we want a free lunch, and there ain't no such thing.
The presence of third party DLC will make no difference to the time DTG spend on their own content. They won’t spend more time on development of their content as it is what provides most of their income. There may be an increase in quality because there are now extra developers who can come up with new techniques and ideas, techniques that will no doubt find their way into DTG creations later.
