PC How’s Everyone Liking The New Nec: New York Dlc?

One every 5-10 minutes is too many in my opinion. They don't operate to that frequency in real life, they shouldn't stop at Secaucus and having so many Amtrak trains doesn't leave room for any future Acela Express or NJ Transit services to be added in.

EDIT: I presume all these services are based off the Northeast Regional but many other Amtrak services operate along this route, which they haven't left room for in the service mode timetable.

 

The Secaucus situation is upsetting and should be embarrassing on DTG’s part. Even if you let a train pass you like in the scenario, it doesn’t mean you open the doors. Anyone at Secaucus doesn’t have Amtrak tickets, and anyone on the train doesn’t have a plan to get off at Secaucus, very unrealistic DTG!

Also I happen to really admire service mode, unfortunately I don’t think DTG has any plans to move it to TS, but I wish they would. The lack of AI trains is upsetting, but understandable because if they made NJT trains, people would start bashing them for NJT content, and if they made LIRR trains we’d start bashing them for that. As my primary belief is that this odd DLC was mostly made for expansion purposes, as many people (including myself) are dying to see the LIRR. And of course they’ll release the Acela, which is already done but awaiting an extension, so it can be used properly.

 

Well not every train in real life gets hit with the same signals. One train in the early morning may have mostly clear signals but another train in the afternoon may be following approach for a decent chunk. There is no variation except time of day and season.

 

Agreed, there is only the variety of time of day and season. NEC: New Yorker achievement the only achievement with 0% completion. Will probably stay that way as I doubt many people will complete all 269 services especially as they are copy and past duplicates.

 

There would be so much more variety if they just did the 50 real Northeast Regional services, split in half for the crew change at NY Penn, and some depot moves. Yeah, all the stops would still be the same, (though maybe if they did a bit more than literally just copying and pasting you would end up stopping at different platforms), but you would have the option to do one side of the route at a time in either direction due to the crew change at Penn, there would be busy times and more quiet times, so you might get slowed down by other trains or have the line to yourself, sometimes your service would end and you'd find the next step was to go back to depot instead of letting someone else take over, that's all a lot more interesting than driving the exact same darn train 200 times.

And that's not unreasonable to ask for either. GWE had depot moves. GWE had varying amounts of traffic over the day. GWE had the crew change at Paddigton ("but dude, Paddington is the end of the line, Penn isn't!" but both are real crew change points, so shut up)

The current timetable is just another example of how rushed the route was.

 

Totally agree with you, the passenger service mode for NEC: New York shows the rushed nature of this dlc. There are far too many services and they are totally inaccurate with the additional stop at Secaucus and no change-over time at New York Penn. I agree they should add empty stock moves which I was disappointed to see were not featured in the service mode timetable, its not as if Sunnyside Yard was just built for show. Again I agree that the services should be split into two, Newark - New York and New York - New Rochelle, because at the moment the only option at the moment is to go all the way from Newark to New Rochelle and vice versa. In my opinion the service mode timetable is probably one of the biggest problems with the NEC: New York dlc.

 

NorthRail1 It is most likely impossible to complete anyway because both CSX: Mission Possible and RT: Leipzig Legend don't work either. So far I haven't heard that anyone has obtained them legitimately. For Viking for example CSX: Mission impossible just randomly unlocked while he was playing RT. So I assume most people that have them either got them because they randomly unlocked or by using an achievement unlocker.

 

Well if it wasn't for those frequent trains, NEC would literally be a wasteland. No AI road traffic, no freight traffic on the mainline, no commuter rail trains. That's why they did things like that.

 

I have mixed feelings. The landscape and the huge bridges are awesome. A bit of road traffic would be nice. The services are dull, very dull. It again looks like publishing in great haste and maybe not very competent scenario developers. I wish there are scenario author tools, even though beta ....

 

Hi All
I am loving it especially the type of free roam with the freight,being able to shunt and uncouple, like most people it would be nice to walk the streets, well done DTG
Regards
Mike

 

It looks great, but the fact that we were lied to is concerning. I was under the impression that we would get Freight services when I bought the DLC, yet the only reassurance we have at the time is "It's coming Soon (TM)". Dovetail also doesn't like responding to criticisms of their products, so who knows when this is supposed to come.

 

To sum up several of the posts here and elsewhere:
1. From the moment DTG announces a new DLC for TSW, the cry "we waaant it now explodes in the forums.
2. From the moment said new DLC becomes available (and sometimes even before), several screams arise: "it stinks", "they brought it out too soon", and "we demand more DLC".
My impression, formed over 9,527 hours of experience with TS and 292 hours with TSW is that the teams of in-house developers and testers are fairly small in number and greatly overworked. I'm willing to cut them some slack rather than expect them to drop everything to accomplish my every whim and respond to my every question or complaint. For example, I'd like to have more thorough manuals and the NEC freight sessions, but I'm willing to wait for both, knowing that there's more than enough work to go around.
I'll stop with that thought and duck the down votes, etc. headed my way.

 

TSW is by nature more complex than TS1, for example because of the "simugraph" engine that allows them to simulate various subsystems. However, this approach also requires much more fine tuning than whatever TS1 used, as you have to tweak those subsystems individually to make them work well in edge cases. I suspect that is the main roadblock to make diesel-electrics work correctly, because currently they don't. But, all that requires time, iterative testing, and possibly tweaking even more subsystems. A TSW route also comes with services, that also require some time to lay out, and if you want something closer to GWR and not NEC with one service copy-pasted 300 times over, that probably takes a lot of time as well.

Most people with brain not consumed by hatred will agree that teams are probably small and overworked. However, that's exactly the issue. The "corporate Overlords" demand too much from the developers too fast, and we get less than stellar results, with many bugs not getting fixed, and DLCs getting released without key features, and sometimes barely functioning. Like GP40 scenario bugs, GP40 services unable to pull trains uphill, NEC services being pretty much a placeholder, lack of freight services, and the list continues on and on and on.

I understand why DLCs are needed - compared to TS1, TSW has pretty much no content - only four routes and nine locomotives across all the DLCs, so to compete with TS1, TSW needs much more content as well. However, the content should be functional.

Honestly, I'm afraid TSW is already dead. It's probably way too hard to fix it now, unless they decide to hire more people or something, if they want to keep releasing DLCs, which of course nobody will do for a game which isn't very profitable and has rather bad reputation at this point (Mixed steam reviews, for instance)

 

TSW is not dead yet. It's dying but it's not dead.
In my opinion 2 are the issues that Dovetail should face if they want to save the game.
1) It takes much time to work on TSW than on TS, so they must give developers more time to develop add ons. I think NEC would have been much better with just an additional month of developing. Of course it's a business and they need cash to continue, but it's better to have rushed DLC that few will buy or more perfect DLC taking a longer time but that would appeal more people?
2) It also takes time to fix content, but more frequent updates than "we are working on it" are necessary.Maybe they need to consider airing a web communication and marketing planner, because they clearly don't have one or if they have he's not very good.
THAT would save TSW

 

It is 100% correct that the staff is undermanned and overworked. They only have a small window to fix certain things before moving onto the next project.

It's a shame but such is the nature of businesses

 

It's also quite sad because it results in a domino effect. The fact that issues like quality control, and releasing a product without all of it's features advertised results in a lower review score, and will result in less new players investing in TSW. Everybody on this forum is already invested enough into this game that we created forum accounts to discuss about it, but this small audience is entirely unsustainable. I've known first-hand that the poor reviews of TSW and the outrage displayed on the Steam forums is off-putting to newer people, and have seen people entirely avoid this game because of it.

TSW is digging itself into a deeper hole with false advertising, and lack of critical features that made TS18 a success. Until we see concrete evidence of these route builder/scenario tools, instead of "It's coming SOON(TM)", this game will never succeed.

 

A bit more transparency from DTG would be helpful. I think a lot of people are will to support TSW, even with a number of flaws, provided we get honest information on development efforts and challenges. I would even be prepared to some testing for free, if we can get a better product in this way ... Unfortunately they try to keep the curtains closed....

 

How many routes and locomotives were available when TS (then RS) was two years old and how "functional" was that content? Your remarks lack context.

 

I don't know. I haven't played Railworks in 2009...

 

It came out with 5 routes and 10 trains althoug with much less features than those in ts20xx as of today

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rail_Simulator