Something that's honestly frustrated me ever since it was introduced is the journey feature. I understand that it is for newer players who are overwhelmed at the options and want a sampling platter or linear way to play, but it's implementation seems to have done a poor job of making it clear that the things in it are not separate from the content in scenarios and timetables and letting new players know they can also do the other stuff. This got a lot worse with TSW2 as now playing through the journeys is automatic unless you go into the settings to disable it, and all other content, arguably the main content, is behind an "explore" menu that you may not even know to go to if you're new to the game and don't participate in any of the various communities. I've seen dozens of posts since the launch of TSW 2 from players frustrated about something in the journey blocking their progression or not being able to do a journey part in the weather conditions provided and it blows their world that they didn't actually have to follow the journey and could pick any service they wanted with any weather they want or spawn in on foot. They had no idea timetable mode existed. I've seen players unable to access layers in HMA or SKA, and what do you know, they've only played the journey. I had several players yell at me on Steam because I encouraged them to play "out of order" or they say they would only follow the "story mode" and not do "all that extra stuff in Explore". Even here on this forum, there is a post where the OP insists on quitting the game because a certain part is very hard to complete without either using the camera to couple/uncouple to save time, or spawn in on foot through explore and let AI do it until it passes the point where the problem occurs. Despite several people telling them these are their options, they insist on only staying in the journey and doing it in order because that's where the developers start you off so that's the way he understands he's supposed to play, and he doesn't believe in playing out of order. He said if it can't be done the way it was intended than the game is broken and can't be played any further. I try to help people here on the forum but the way journeys was implemented makes it so frustrating because it feels like the timetable mode we know and love is hidden away in the menus in favor of the journeys that seem to frustrate so many new players. Do other people agree or am I overreacting?
I will never agree with you, as I find the Epxlore to devoided of life, and anyking of chalange Please if you like and want ot play the explore section, then do so, but I hope they will make the Journey even more chalangng, and longer Another thing, that could be added, to the Journey, is the part that the layers add to any train set to create a new Journey in that train set
The Journey for me is a really nice feature. It gives the route some substance and a bit of purpose even though I sometimes skip a part of it or explore services and scenarios as the mood takes me. If it was not there just looking at a list of services for some could be rather uninspiring. What for me is missing from TSW is the lack of workshop content that gave you variety in TS DLC and the journey for me offsets that to some extent. Now the timetables are starting to become more complex and realistic in TSW I no longer miss the workshop content as much and really enjoy watching a service pass in the other direction and think to myself that's the service I was struggling to get up that grade yesterday. What they could do with the journey is introduce some historical or engineering information about the route or loco's that is relevant to the scenario or service you are going to drive that you can read if you so wish. At the end of the day its a personal choice how you interact with the content that is available to you, but surely having a choice cannot be a bad thing and should be encouraged. Hopefully it may lead to new content and makes this simulator more interesting to a wider audience.
Personally, I love the variety of journey mode, never being quite sure on the weather I’m going to get etc. I like explore too, but I do want to complete the journeys. Journey is great for when I switch on and I know I want to drive but not sure what, I’ll go pick a journey service. if I know what I want to do, I may go explore. completing journeys does add a satisfaction to the game though (at an achievable level as opposed to every single service). then once I have done the journey my sim is for every service on a route (that I haven’t picked up from journey or explore already) I am fairly flexible in how I play.
I like the idea behind it, and as GuitarMan said, the random weather in journey mode. The quality of the journey mode seems to be going down in my opinion. Older routes contain more varied tasks, so the journey mode is more akin to "best of". Newer journeys contain duplicate services and most of them are A to B runs with little extra. This is however a bigger problem of the schedule in newer routes.
I’ve gotta say I’ve never touched the journey mode but it seems an intresting place to start if I was new. I rarely play the timetable mode as most of the services are uneventful with very little Ai and no adverse signals. I play almost entirely with the scenario planner which particularly comes alive on busy 4-track routes.
I personally think the journey is good as it shares the route activities better than a list of 300 services I do think it’s odd having scenarios in there that I need to repeat to have them ticked off though, it would tick them off in journey mode and vice versa I think with ALL scenarios and journeys there should be an indication of length in time and miles so I know I’ve got time to squeeze it in, too many inconsistencies in some routes having bits of this information and others none
Not actually the case with Clinchfield, where each Journey chapter is one of the Turns in multiple parts. It's really kind of brilliant
It would be nice though if Journey allowed normal saving. Every time I try to save and resume the first F7 Intro task, it throws me back to the beginning.
The thing that drives me up the wall is not getting the green tick in journey chapters if you happened to have done the thing via timetable. Yes, you get the medal showing in journey that shows you've done it, but to get the tick you have to do it again! That's sometimes easy if it's short, but sometimes it can be a 1-2 hours repeat. I know this is all in the mind, and that it doesn't actually matter. But for a completist like me it's frustrating
A good idea, poorly implemented as many things by DTG. 1) Some journeys are inspired, many more are not. Good? RSN for example. Bad? LGV. What's the point of grouping all depot movements? 2) Journey is supposed to be a sequence of connected services, but contrary to timetables where I can just continue playing from the loco that runs connected services, in the journey I have to exit the game (reload) to continue. This breaks immersion. 3) Services that I run in timetables are not registered as completed in journey mode.
I agree completely. Having to go into a loading screen to load next journey breaks immersion and should be like timetable mode no loading between connected services. I wonder if it would possible to instead spawn you into the world and give a manifest or give a notepad of services that you are to fulfill during that 'shift' and that could make a journey chapter?
The idea is not bad, but the execution is often really poor. Often it's really noticeable that the journey mode runs are just randomly selected services with totally random weather. For example, several of the LIRR M3 journey runs have snowstorms with completely clear, starry skies. Who came up with that and tought "yeah, this is fine"?
I still maintain that the true soul/core of TSW is the Timetable mode. Then of course, everyone plays as he wants. The Jorney is only the solution chosen by DTG to avoid dynamic bugs at the timetable (aka unexpected permanent red aspects).
I primarily use Journey mode for the pre-determined weather, or for the better constructed Journeys, a more coherent task-to-task progression. I think the execution is fine but not particularly innovative or even perhaps deserving of an entire section separate from Timetable mode. I think of it more like a subset of Timetable (do they call it Service?) mode that allows me to get to the driving quicker without waffling about the train or weather selections. So far, in my view, Clinchfield is the only route that has proven the worth of Journeys definitively beyond the minor convenience of pre-set weather. Certainly, it was the only meaningful addition to the TSW2020 update that left us cynically wondering why a green UI is being advertised to us as a sellable feature. Since DTG are having issues implementing randomised events in timetable mode, even random, dynamic weather, perhaps Journeys could be used as a test bed in the future for semi-scripted dynamic weather that is pre-set by the gameplay team, whenever the core team gets around to developing dynamic weather further. This might be an easier way to introduce dynamic weather to the game without first having to solve the problem of dynamic patterns for every possible user-selected weather. I think it would also be nice to have an option that allows services to be continuous, rather than bookended by a graph and medal brief. Yes, I know that you can "return to freeroam" after the post-service analysis, but it would be nice to have the ability to seamlessly end one service and swap ends without the immersion break of a scoring screen. If anything, this seems like it would be a fairly simple option to add, from a technical standpoint. It is similar in nature to the auto-Journeys option, only with a different prerogative. I remember that this was the function that the forums initially fantasised about when Journeys were first announced in 2019. Cheers
The idea is nice but: 1. Inconsistent weather for sequences 2. For most routes a weird division into chapters, e.g. focusing on engine type, not on experience, type fo services you like and so on. 3. The very confusing autojourney setting, which is almost catastrophic for new players 4. The sometimes unnatural order, eg. for Clinchfield putting the hardest scenario immediately after the tutorial 5. No information on duration, or a description as it is shown in the timetable I really like the idea, but as with many things it not thought trough in all details, which would be very helpful.
Personally I like the Journey mode, its just click and go and has a good sample of what the route offers. Whenever I play a route, I usually run through the journey and then switch to the time table when I am done with it.
Even though it could do with some refinements, the simplicity of Journey mode is what I like the most.
I felt like Journey Mode was added in to give some sort of progression for new players. I also think it was silly to have Journey Mode load automatically and it should of been set to “off” by default. Whenever I play Journey Mode on any route, I like having everything checked off the list in each chapter. When that’s done, then I go straight to timetable and select any loco I enjoy driving and pick the time of day.
As it stands right now, Journey mode is simply a playlist. If items completed outside of the journey menu were ticked off, it would sort out a lot of complaints with it. Personally though, I think journey mode could be overhauled into something else completely. I'd keep the Journey mode menu as is along with the checklist but instead of each item being a tutorial, scenario or service. They'd be a task similar to the in-game schedule for a scenario/service. Take the Class 37, when you boot up the "journey" you start at Thornaby Depot early morning, your loco is sat there cold waiting for you to fire her up. You do a cold start and that's the first item off the list ticked, the game checkpoints your progress without bringing up any results screens and you can carry on playing or leave it for now and resume from that point later. Next, say we drive over to Tees Yard and pickup a train of loaded coke wagons to take over to the ore terminal in Redcar, you arrive at Redcar and the next item on the checklist gets ticked off. You empty the wagons and return them to Tees, another tick of the checklist and another checkpoint to resume from. You find another train of empties that need filling up so off you go back to Redcar to fill up these wagons before taking them back to Tees Yard, 3 more ticks on the checklist. Next, there's a bit of time before you're scheduled to take some empty steel wagons to Lackenby, so go and refuel at Thornaby Depot while you wait, another item on the checklist. You take the empties and then pickup a loaded train heading to Dalzell with another 37 already attached, this train needs to be double headed but you'll only be taking it up to Darlington where another driver will take over. Completed another task and you now need to disembark this train. Next, you need to head back to Thornaby Depot. A BR Class 101 will be departing for Seaford, you can ride this service back to Thornaby and go back to the depot where you pick up the next task on your checklist. Another tick on the list and so on... Now all of this would continue until you got to the end of your "shift" and then at the end, your AP score for all of the tasks combined is tallied up to award you a medal for the entire Journey. Can throw in an achievement/trophy for a gold medal for the trophy hunters out there. Every loco would have it's own journey in this format. Maybe instead of chapters it could be split into "Day Shift", "Night Shift", "Morning Rush Hour", etc. So you have different times of day to work with. Weather could also change over the course of a shift, which is triggered by task completion. So in the above example, when you pickup them empty coke wagons to fill up, the sky becomes cloudy and it builds up. Then when you get to the return trip checkpoint, it triggers the weather to change to rain. Totally scripted I know but it would still be pretty neat. This was just a quick idea, DTG would be able to schedule it much better than I could but it would be something that stands out from the usual modes.
I think journey mode is good for grouping logical train operations together like the various mine turns in CRR. However I have been requesting a randomise button for timetables for years, alas to no avail.
Arosas journey mode was terrible. Who thought having two complete chapters of runarounds was a good idea?
Journey mode is not without its issues but overall I would say it’s a very good way to play. The Auto Journey should be scrapped though, it is not helpful, especially when there is an impasse in the progression for whatever reason, which there almost always is. I like the way things can be put into chapters, the only issue I have with that is that a lot of the time the chapter names don’t tally with what is contained in the chapter. That’s not an issue with the mode but an issue with the content or naming. It’s probably a different team that names them as make the content. Some of the weather settings don’t make sense with heavy rain from a partially cloudy sky, again an issue with the content creators rather than the mode itself, but there are weather types put in there that you may not choose yourself so it adds to the experience. As with everything, the individual cases of its implementation are hit and miss, but the mode itself can be used creatively by the content creators to make an awesome ‘journey’ through a route. I hardly ever go through them in order now because I’m more experienced with the game and I certainly like to leave scenarios until I’m more familiar with a route but I almost always complete the journey because it does throw up the odd gem that I might otherwise miss. They almost always put a service in where you are driving towards a sunrise or sunset, my favourite experiences in TSW.
