So When Can Expect To See The Likes Of Just Trains Making Routes And Locos In Tsw2?

Discussion in 'TSW General Discussion' started by davejc64, Sep 14, 2021.

  1. matinakbary

    matinakbary Well-Known Member

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    ARuscoe yes! Or steam, sony and microsoft. They all want to have a bit of the cake. At the end of the day, only a small piece will be for the dev team. And that's in my view just problematic, especially for small independent dev teams. And I'm not even talking about steam sales etc.
     
  2. ARuscoe

    ARuscoe Well-Known Member

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    It's certainly a choice they make, and the disadvantage over TS1 over and above the financials is that they can't just make it that their own DLC are in as timetabled assets (like what AP do, whenever they update a loco they change all their scenarios to use those new assets, of course meaning people then buy those assets which need other assets in a perpetuating cycle)
     
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  3. tallboy7648

    tallboy7648 Well-Known Member

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    Yes i agree that $30 isn't bad for a route dlc isn't particularly high for me personally but clearly for some others it is considering you can spend that money on other games for example and there aren't many games that sell DLC's at that price point either so for some people that price point can be too high. If $30 was too low, don't you think dtg would've increased prices. There's a reason why they haven't.

    I'm not expecting ultra realism from tsw at all from a third party or dtg. That's impossible but I do expect good quality routes and routes and trains that look mostly like the real thing and sound close to the real thing.
     
    Last edited: Oct 4, 2021
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  4. ARuscoe

    ARuscoe Well-Known Member

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    For me, the main difference between DLC in other games and DLC in TSW2 is that route DLC in TSW are complete in themselves, you don't need anything else, there's not really "base content" which the DLC add to and so on. Slightly different with layered loco assets, but still if you buy a loco DLC it is self contained. Most other DLC in other games relies on a base something for them to run on
     
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  5. Purno

    Purno Well-Known Member

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    I think $30 (or €30 as I live in Europe) is certainly not cheap. Nothing in life is cheap, so we all have different budgets. I'm buying most of my DLC during sales, usually aiming at 50% discount, which I think is a decent price for most DLC. Not saying 30 is a bad price, just saying I simply can't really afford buying all the DLC for the full undiscounted price tag.
     
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  6. tallboy7648

    tallboy7648 Well-Known Member

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    Understandable. This is why i don't really get why sone ask for higher prices for route and loco dlcs. If dtg raise prices, then they will lose sales
     
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  7. CK95

    CK95 Well-Known Member

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    Definitely a double sided issue, the cost of DLC may well be too low on the dev side of things, however the cost of a DLC is through the roof compared to any other game, granted comparing TSW to most other games is a bad start however it is what it is, most people just won’t be willing to spend much more than what they are currently charging for DLC, let alone regularly when multiple devs are producing content, most people aren’t even willing to do that now.
     
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  8. Crosstie

    Crosstie Well-Known Member

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    Well there is a "core" of software which is a prerequisite for the game. I mean you can't just buy a route or loco and expect it to do anything on its own. You had to buy the original "Heavy Haul" for instance as a starter kit, as it were. In the Steam catalog it always states that TSW2 is required.
     
    Last edited: Oct 5, 2021
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  9. driverwoods#1787

    driverwoods#1787 Well-Known Member

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    RSSLO can do the Austrian Routes like Salzburg-Wien the Westbahn Salzburg Klagenfurt Main Line the Tauernbahn they already made both in TS 22 Austrian Routes. If they made both in TSW 2 that will affect the West German routes former Deutsche Bundesbahn network especially HRR OBB 4011 SKA & Main Spessart Bahn Nightjet services Ruhr Valley Koln & Duisburg to Innsbruck/Wien
     
  10. fabdiva

    fabdiva Well-Known Member

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    Yeah, the price point is definitely going to be a problem and really there needs to be a price rise at some point because inflation is a thing. Costs are going up and DTG have economies of scale that third parties don't. I've noticed a couple of 3rd parties pushing up to the £26/27 mark

    I don't know - some of the "TrIpLE A" (said in the style of Stephanie Sterling*) studios are far worse. Either with their Gambling or Expensive Skinpacks (looking at you Dead or Alive 6)

    Laura K Buzz did an interesting video about TS and generally concluded that the DLC was expensive, but for what it contained and the relatively small market that was understandable to make things viable. But there was a big risk of things spiralling out of control if players ended up buying all the things to create/run community scenarios (I'm looking at AP's current ecosystem even if Laura didn't)



    * Stephanie is certainly aware of TS through Laura, but hasn't considered it bad enough to shout about from the Boglin Lectern.
     
    Last edited: Oct 5, 2021
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  11. ARuscoe

    ARuscoe Well-Known Member

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    Well yes, there's the game engine itself, but that doesn't have "content". You can uninstall everything bar the game engine and one route and still run that one route perfectly well, the only reason we need multiple routes installed is because of DTGs decision to hook the loco assets to routes, otherwise you wouldn't even need those
     
  12. meridian#2659

    meridian#2659 Well-Known Member

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    Well thats the reason i wasnt getting a season pass and got all 3 routes seperate for 30 euros each.
    With what we got with rush hour is way more value that we spent. Devs should survive and dtg is on its right path with quality, so i want dtg to get paid for their effort.
     
  13. redrev1917

    redrev1917 Well-Known Member

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    If £25.00 for 50+ hours entertainment is to pricey how do you justify going bowling or the cinema
     
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  14. Doomotron

    Doomotron Well-Known Member

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    One is a real experience. One has no physical value whatsoever.

    And if we're basing price on enjoyment, one could make the case for much of the DLC library to have a permanent discount, and Minecraft and Gran Turismo 4 to cost £1000 each.
     
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  15. dhekelian

    dhekelian Well-Known Member

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    There could be a solution. Bethesda in there wisdom made a thing called the 'Creation Club' Many people were against it including me as it was obviously a money grab and there are just loads of free mods available but saying that if independent modders/third party can survive making mods for games like Fallout 4 could it not work on TSW2. DTG will get their cut and that is their biggest concern no doubt.

    And all the platforms are catered for, yes there are more mods on the PC but that is to be expected.
     
  16. DTG Matt

    DTG Matt Executive Producer Staff Member

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    Just chipping in a couple of bits on here...

    Some of the percentages being shared on the thread aren't correct (like, at all) - so I would strongly advise third party developers to get in touch with us for actual accurate numbers.

    Making TSW content is necessarily more complex than making it for TS because there's simply more to it. There's a learning curve to get used to it just as there was for TS. If you're not coming from a UE4 background it'll be a bit steeper, but it's learnable and we do spend time with our third party developers helping and providing direct access with our own team - nobody's expecting anyone to figure this stuff out alone. There are a growing number of people outside of Dovetail now that know the tools and are able to help answer questions from a different viewpoint as well. In short, if the will to learn is there - it's very achievable. In fact, we learn from our third parties as they explore new things too, it's a two way process!

    Conversations with some of the external developers who have learned our tools have been interesting and fun, usually starting out as "my word this is so much more complex, it's needlessly difficult and will be impractical to use for a full project" and then a little later "oh wow, its so powerful, i can do so much more than i could before, this is going to be fun!" :)

    Third party developers are going to have to all work through us to publish now - that's a good chunk in part due to the licensing with Epic, we simply have to manage that so that we can report sales to Epic and pay the appropriate royalties, it's also down to how you have to publish to Xbox and Playstation - even if you were your own dev with them and paid for your own developer kit consoles (which are eyewateringly more expensive than retail consoles) you would find you can't publish DLC for the game because only we can do that, same as nobody else can publish DLC on our Steam page. Not publishing DLC for a console is massively short sighted too - having made the content, why only sell it to a third of the audience? :) Someone made the point that while there's more cuts being taken out publishing via us, the volumes are much higher - and that's completely valid. TSW content reaches a significantly bigger audience than TS content does, *significantly*.

    I'd also argue that it's not a simple as some people might think when it comes to cuts and percentages - given that a third party pushing out content through us won't need to handle direct support, they won't need to handle any kind of card processing or refunds, manage server hosting or any of those aspects. We handle extensive marketing, we manage all the store pages and make sure it's visible everywhere including in the game and we of course support with our own QA teams and customer service teams. Basically it ends up taking a load of nonsense away from the developer and lets them focus much more on what they do best, developing. You probably are going to make a bit less money per sale, but your life will be simpler, and you will make a lot more sales.

    TL;DR - There's a great opportunity here for third party developers that want to take it up :)

    Matt.
     
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  17. cyrill.kroonstuiver

    cyrill.kroonstuiver Well-Known Member

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    Once again thank you for your helpful answer, Matt :)

    This does (hopefully, if it reaches them) put some concerns to rest, especially possibly after contact has been (re)established.
    That being said, could you elaborate a little perhaps on the concern raised by Christrains in his corresponce with and provided by Lunar_Twisted concerning the freedom of the 3rd party content creator to work on updates for their creations?
    You'll find the part I'm talking about at about 2/3 in.
    [​IMG]
     
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  18. Doomotron

    Doomotron Well-Known Member

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  19. DTG Matt

    DTG Matt Executive Producer Staff Member

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    Patching a piece of DLC doesnt necessarily require an update to the core game, no. Depends on the nature of the fix of course. On PS4 it does require a core update - but then so does basically anything (love ya lots PS4 :) ). Updating the core game is also not really a big deal it's all tested together and the build and update process is no different and we basically expect core updates alongside DLC anyway. Basically, this isn't really a problem :)

    In terms of update frequency - I mean yes there is going to be a limit to how frequently we can turn fixes around and cert them for updates but it's doable more than annually I am sure :) - People don't like constantly re-downloading things either - so finding a balance and batch fixing has got to be a more sensible way of doing it in any case.

    In terms of dev - when using the editor you run the entire game within the editor so you don't need builds back to you until you're happy you have something working and want to just finally check it in a build over steam beta branch. Most devs only send us build at the end of the dev process when things need to go through QA and then certification. Of course they can send more frequently and we can provide early feedback and make available to the beta community for example, but it's not mandatory, your entire dev can be built and tested locally via the editor without any need to build at all (it just cant be distributed, and will ONLY work in the editor at that point).

    I don't know about Rivet's estimates - 24 man months across three teams sounds really over the top, I don't think ours take that long. I'd say 1 person on art for a couple of months depending on complexity, 1 person on audio for a month, 1 person on simugraph for a month, 1 person on setup for a month or two, one person going gameplay for a month. Service mode may add additional complexity there - chuck in another month for a worst case (if its a substitution only, it's basically nothing, if it's a simple layer with some basic services it's probably a few days, if its a complex layer - if it takes more than a month you're doing it wrong, a full route timetable can be done within a month :) ). So thats what 6-7 months or so? Nowhere near 24. Those numbers are really coarse - clearly a 4 car EMU with 4 unique vehicles is going to take longer than 4 car with almost identical vehicles, and that will be longer than a loco on its own.

    It IS longer than TS1 for certain - because you can do a lot more and you are *expected* to do more by players - e.g. setting up all the interactive controls, working seating, all the collision volumes for where you walk etc etc - there's just a lot more to do that you would in TS1... but then, that's why you're doing it in TSW in the first place - surely :) If your point of comparison is Maik working on the G6 shunter - remember in the interim time he's also finished quite a lot of 2nd party work for us on a good few projects during that time also :)

    Matt.
     
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  20. dhekelian

    dhekelian Well-Known Member

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    So Matt when DTG said on a past stream we would get more frequent fixes on PC/Consoles it wasn't true?
     
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  21. DTG Matt

    DTG Matt Executive Producer Staff Member

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    Not sure how you get that from what i said? We update the core game with literally every DLC release. There are frequent patches to content in just about every release as well - and we just put out a patch update today. We are still working to streamline the process to get more of preserved crew's updates out faster but there are more logistics to solve there. We are solving them though.

    Matt.
     
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  22. OldVern

    OldVern Well-Known Member

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    I know it's a bit OT for this thread Matt, but as you mentioned the update process any word on when we can expect a less flakey save/load process would be much appreciated, as that seems to be where many of the issues with BML in particular lie?
     
  23. DTG Matt

    DTG Matt Executive Producer Staff Member

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    No update on save/load - it's going to need a good hard looking at - its not just a matte rof bug fixing core - each of the bits of content will need looking at in order to verify it is saving and resuming properly, there will bei ssues across the board i'm expecting.

    I will try and set up a thread for save/load issue repro's in the next few days to start collecting specific fail-cases ready for when an engineer can start devoting time to it.
     
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  24. OldVern

    OldVern Well-Known Member

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    Thanks Matt, as it is the biggest single cause of frustration and keeps driving me back to Snowrunner!
     
  25. ARuscoe

    ARuscoe Well-Known Member

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    The last I heard on this was that the preserved crew was going to work in a different way, fixing issues on all DLC rather than fixing issues on EACH DLC, so issues that are general would be fixed faster across the board, but specific issues may actually be fixed slower.
    In the end there is only so much dev time in a day
     
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  26. Doomotron

    Doomotron Well-Known Member

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    I agree, it's so broken it might as well not be there. I used to use it in some simpler DLC - GWE seemed to be fine with it - but as soon as it started breaking scenarios and stopping trains from working, I gave up on it.
     
  27. cyrill.kroonstuiver

    cyrill.kroonstuiver Well-Known Member

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    Though to be fair, I quite like how save-loading disables SPAD game-overs which I think should be optional anyway so you can have your crazy dangerous fun or just cause havoc in stupid ways especially in the absence of free-roam :)
    I honestly wish that's not patched out though actually, not unless the game overs on SPAD's and perhaps even on derailments are made optional too.
     
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  28. jamesthepershing

    jamesthepershing Active Member

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    I wish DTG did TrainSim-Matt
     
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