Those would be Directors... Unless the manager is in the commercial department they're not likely to be focussed on revenue or turnover, more like the productivity of their department. Producers and execs worry about how things are scaled, progressed, released, and the commercial aspects within their control.
Seems like the rumble that was started resulted into immediate action. I was very surprised to see patch notes passing by with bug fixes for red lights in Harlem and medals in Tees Valley this soon. I'm not gonna throw a party just yet but it seems like this letter and other outcries of the community is starting to pay off.
It is more likely that it has coincided with a reduction in sales, and therefore profits, and that’s why it is going to have to change now. The rumble has been going on for a very long time, so nothing has been immediate in this. Cascading and overlapping issues have been getting away from DTG and I’m sure internal pressure has been just as important as external pressure (the community) in bringing about much needed change.
They unfortunately didn't seem to fix the propulsion bug for the M7A with the audio that cuts out in the last 4-6 cars of the train unfortunately based off the patch notes
I think it's much too early to hang out flags and string up bunting. These updates could have been scheduled a while ago. And, although they make welcome improvements to the three routes, they don't address the more fundamental issues that came out of Rush Hour and before. Let's keep the fireworks in the box for now. And we all know that the updates might upset something else like the last round. Plus let's not ignore the deep seated problems that we know exist with the game, and have been raised throughout this thread.
That's unlikely for Harlem. Watch the timeline for Harlem on the Playstation forum. Harlem get's released PS users report problems. Matt thinks those noobs at the PS forum need to learn how to drive a train and posts some tips for not driving your train into another train. PS users scratch their heads and don't understand the tips because they know how to drive a train and how signalling works Matt realises there is a problem The open letter get's posted DTG acknowledges the problems with the red lights in the now famous roadmap stream Update get's released for Harlem
I for one haven't purchased anything at all TSW since Rush Hour. Just couldn't be bothered with the hassle that comes with it. And it's not as if I don't have the disposable income, I'm lucky enough that I do. In the last month alone I've spent over £100 on GT7 credits to buy virtual cars! (Shakes fist in micro-transactions direction) That's happily money I'd spend on TSW if I were certain I was getting value for money. There was nothing in last week's stream that a) we hadn't heard a million times before and b) led me to believe that they would change (not in the short term anyway). And the stupid thing, if what you say is true about the bottom line being effected, I actually have pangs of guilt about not having purchased anything as i wouldn't wish anyone person to be affected directly but, the fact DTG have been going through a recruitment drive suggests not. As DTG Protagonist said many times you don't have to buy it, I guess until I see tangible results with the existing catalogue of disasters I won't be.
I wasn’t talking about the patches for Harlem or TVL specifically but more generally about the statement of change from DTG that followed (but not necessarily caused by) the views expressed by people in this thread. There was of course talk about these specific issues as examples of why we are unhappy as they were some of the latest to have been released and in the case of TVL made the route worse, so it is a simple win for DTG to fix those recent specifics soonest. We do need to see much more evidence of a change but I don’t think it was all down to our complaining as we have been doing that for a long time. What has changed with this promise of change is it was specifically stated that the go ahead to sort it out came from the very top, so there will be more to it than an increase in complaints.
I have 44 DLC's attached to this game. This game has alot of potential but with this latest update ( 1.79 ) playing the Harlem Line I see very small changes to the route but the 616 southeast to GCS is still not resolved. Fast Lane on London Commuter is still broken since November. I may get flamed by other people here but that's life. However, with that being said Dovetail will not get anymore money from me until this game is fixed.
The recruitment drive does indicate past and projected growth but if immediately after that drive a lot of the more recent issues have affected income then they do need fixing now as the growth won’t continue if the product continues to suffer greatly. If people who can generally live with the normal amount of bugs and issues DTG have been at suddenly stop buying because the issues have worsened, and that includes myself, that can have a large impact in a short timescale. New players from Rush Hour releases onwards experiencing endless crashes right from the start of their TSW journey won’t have stuck around for long, so I can’t see anything other than the bottom line being affected in the last few months.
I will hold off buying anything else from DTG until there is a dramatic improvement in quality. Lack of broken content and bugs for example. Haven't bought anything since Rush Hour partly because we weren't given fully what we thought we were purchasing. The London Commuter route hasn't even got rush hour quantity passengers yet and that's the best part of a year so far. I honestly believe it won't be coming. They said months ago that it's "just a switch of a button." Yet here we are months later. I also don't want to stop at red signals constantly feeling impending doom thinking its a game breaking bug. Not really fun is it? No confidence in the product at the moment so I just simply won't buy until they improve.
I don’t understand how DTG has not been downrated into oblivion for just the save bug alone. Massively important feature in any game, they know it’s broken, for YEARS now, still no fix, yet they still market and sell a game with a broken save mechanic. That’s a major bug, not minor.
I see 2 causes: - the services are short (1h or less) and lot of people dont use save feature. - the second reason go for also for the global poor quality : the lack of any serious concurrence ; Ts2022 is... more than 10 yrs (12?) old engine, others are small scale independant project. As long as no concurrent will put his own sim, DTG will be able to sell bugfested DLCs as people are eager to play train sims... And on consoles there is simply no other train simulator IMO both DTG and us would benefit from concurrential TS market.
I guess it is not that big. I don't know what the game save bug is. Probably because I never tried to save manually. I can"t even remember a game besides some strategy games where I used the save function of a game manually. If they would remove the save function I probably would never know it was there. I'm not saying it is not a big deal if you use this function but I guess this game is not downrated into oblivion for just the save bug alone because most players don't use it.
Depends on how you classify bugs. If your highest priority as a developer is that the game CAN be played in any form then a save game isn't game breaking in the sense they are thinking of it And save isn't high priority for some players either. Personally I have never used a savegame in TSW and likely never will
70 likes of the original post. Let’s keep the momentum going and hold DTG to its promise of getting TSW 2 back on track.
71 ! Still i have the feeling that we are maybe, here on forums, just a litlle part of DTG customers, a noisy part but still not that big when compared to all buyers on Steam and all other platforms. At least let them aknowledge this.
That’s the thing. We might be a small minority, but we can still make a stand. I’m not saying pitchforks at dawn or anything, but unless we make some noise, no one will hear us. We care for the game. We want it to be the best it can be. We want DTG to realise that.
I'm incredulous that you " don't know what the save bug is " and that you believe that " most players don't use it ". This issue has been prominent in forum postings for a very long time and, unless you play every service in one session and never hit the pause button, you would certainly be aware of it.
I've heard of it. But it is not something I have ever encountered because I don't use it. But I've never seen it prominent in forum postings. I guess it's more of a PC issue and I believe it's not that big of an issue because as you said yourself it was not rated into oblivion
Yeh it seems that the fix for harlem to prevent your path being blocked by another train hasn't been fixed. Absolutely unacceptable. Hey Paul Jackson, your company can't fix what they intend to fix? This is getting beyond ridiculous at this point
I play on Xbox. I don’t save a lot. Most of my plays are in on sitting. However, I have a busy life, and once in a while, I can’t do Clinchfield all in one run. Real life happens (father and grandfather, grandkids live close, boy does it get busy), and sometimes I gotta save. Nothing makes you more angry than realizing the 1.5 hours you just spent playing are lost cause the save and resume later has now messed up the dispatcher and my cars aren’t getting hauled away,and the scenario is now broken. That’s not minor. It’s annoying. Maybe I only save once a month. Guess what, still annoying. And the fact that they know about it, acknowledge it, don’t fix it, yet say nothing to new buyers is awful. I love this game, but this is poor form.
That's a bad thing. I tried one of the services that had the ram-into-another-train-bug and it was fixed. Seems like not all the issues are fixed then. Time for Open letter to DTG: Volume 2?
Since I favor US freight, those runs can often take more time than I have available in one sitting- this is doubly and trebly the case if I want to daisy-chain together a Clinchfield "turn" or a Sand Patch coal run. For these the save feature is vital. On top of that, my inclination is to treat a PZB Zwansbremsung as a SPAD and do it over- except usually I can't because restoring from a save point borks the signals and traffic.
The lack of a proper save function is a big letdown that I was sure would have been fixed by now. Just as an example I've recently been playing Yakuza 3/4/5 on PS5, these games detect save games from each other and even gift you bonus items for playing their previous games, now that is customer service and giving something back to your players. It surely can't be that difficult for DTG to implement or farm out to another company to implement a proper save function.
It probably isn't difficult but the question is does dtg want to fix it. Frankly after 5 years, it doesn't seem like they want to fix it
For me the worst thing ist, that DTG reduced the experience with northamerican freight trains for gen 8 consoles customers. From 50 cars at SPG to 40 since CRR. The cancelation of the SD 70 Ace at SPG was also not a nice thing.
I never play freight. I can see how freight would need a save function. I remember when I tried out freight it reminded me of a puzzle game but I got so bored instead of saving I just quit. Maybe the save function should be improved because the option to save was there (all tough it didn't work) but I chose to quit.
The most frustrating thing about " the save bug " is the reluctance of DTG to talk about it. Never mentioned in streams or forum responses. This is presumably because: a. they don't know how to fix it, or b. they have no intention of fixing it. I'd love to know which it is.
It was mentioned on the New Year "state of the game" stream in some depth if I remember c. They don't see it as important d. they can't get it working without breaking something else e. they've got so many other things that people are screaming louder about that they've got too much on their plate I mean personally I see it as simply as "form a database of signal state (signal speed reduction, direction state etc), switch state, train state (location, direction, speed, cab switch states, signal requests sent)" and then when you load a save you can rebuild everything from the signals up and go from there. Currently it seems to have the train part and everything else reads from that so you end up with conflicts and trains going in the wrong direction or ending up clashing where a trains is requesting the line ahead where in the "pre-save version" it hadn't done so or was blocked from doing so
This is the first time I have logged on here for months and I did so that I could give a like to the OP on this thread. I have read through the thread and agree with practically everything said regarding the terminal decline of TSW2 on the Playstation. I gave up with TSW2 months ago after the fiasco that was the release of the London-Brighton line. I still drive the odd route on my install and (with great trepidation) allow the updates but I have largely disconnected with the title. Given the signature DTG move of putting out updates that cause more harm than improvements, even the release of patches is a stressful experience wondering whether the enjoyable and still playable routes I have will remain enjoyable and playable after the update! 6 months after the release of the London-Brighton route most of the problems present at launch are STILL there. The much vaunted improvements talked about months ago have apparently been forgotten about or swept under the carpet as DTG cynically expends more man hours on new routes that bring in the money without any thought for the unhappy customers of a well below-par product. I had been planning to get Cornwall and SEHS but that has been put on hold indefinetly until the other problems are fixed. I don't expect that to happen and as such I have deemed DTG as undeserving of a single penny of my money. No insults, no drama, no more wishlists or improvement suggestions... Just a simple solution : NO MONEY ever going to DTG till they get their act together .
They have had 5 years to come up with a fix. There is no excuse as to why they haven't decided to work on it after all this time
Same as all the other issues. Don't see why this one should be different (or why people hold out hope that it'll substantially change)
I mean the ability to save your game is a common feature in many video games. I don't think dtg will fix the save bug anytime soon but frankly it's something that should've been working from the get go. It's a industry standard feature and it's unacceptable that it doesn't work especially if people may not have the time to do a full service/scenario in one run
What other people do isn't really anything to do with it. Some people do all sorts of weird and wonderful things. Makes no odds Some would say steam trains were, or night lighting, or horn sounds... but I get your point Don't need the argument about fulfilling how players play. DTG aren't responsible for anyone else's time management It's unacceptable that an in game feature doesn't work
How does that make no odds if saving is an industry standard? You do know why saving your game is an industry standard right? So tsw2 shouldn't have a working save feature despite other games having a working save feature in their games? You give the impression that you don't care about the save feature still being broken which is fine but still...
I don't care about the save game feature as I have never seen the need to save a game. Happy to walk away from it and never return unless the mood takes. But as I've repeatedly said, it's there so it SHOULD work. I even typed out the framework of how I would see it implemented
What stuck out to me in whatever stream the save bug was brought up in briefly (I think it was the end of year Q&A), was Matt saying when he was talking to one of the devs about it (specifically referring to why some locos don't fully restore their state) their reply was "well we can save the state of every control, but that would make the save game file bigger" If you look at the save file, it's mostly binary garbage, but some of it is readable text and they save a lot of information already: scenario/service, weather, consist info, each track segment with info like how many rail vehicles occupy it, states of AI trains, and more - that's just the readable part. So, it seems to me the save issue exists for two reasons: 1- The devs are purposefully not saving every thing to keep file size down. My current save file is a little over 2MB, a few extra in-cab switches or whatever isn't gonna suddenly make it a GB. 2- What they do save seems to have issues being read back into the game and properly initializing all the game components. One of my questions here, primarily for when it corrupts the dispatcher: I wonder, since they version control the dispatcher/signaller, do they also ensure the save function is version controlled along with it. It's very likely if the save file is slightly different for each dispatcher/signaller generation, reading it back into a route with an older version or not having the load function properly updated puts the game in a corrupted state which leads to the issues we encounter. Honestly I don't think DTG really cares about this since most of their content fits into the average player time in game - which 98% of the time, I fit right in that time. More recent stuff has been a little beyond that though (closer to an hour). Not being able to restore a save basically puts this into the same bug tier as normal "can't complete service" bugs, which seem to be quite high on the priority list.
I think the people have spoken. The message of this thread is very clear and needs to addressed urgently in the next YT stream. As Mr. D. Dastardly screamed.......... "DO SOMETHING MUTLEY!!!!"
That's the thing though, we don't need another stream for them to tell us about how they're going to respond. We've had enough of those. JD said in the last one he's tired of apologizing, and we're tired of hearing it. What we need is action. DTG's been all talk with new content and updates still coming out broken/in a sad state. That being said, the types of changes needed aren't going to happen overnight, no matter how many threads open up on the forums. This is going to takes weeks to months for us to see the result. Right now, they're still stuck deep in their hole because they haven't implemented anything yet but are still pushing the queue through QA and things aren't getting caught like they should. I can't speak for anyone else, but right now, as much as I'd like some of the pres crew updates in queue, I'll happily wait another few weeks (it's already been over a year so what's a few weeks) if DTG would stop their production line (from QA onward), get their changes and routines in place (including the public betas they've talked about), and start back up - that way the current queue gets tested with the updated standards and hopefully we can see some positive results sooner rather than later.
Heh, with steam arriving, what can ever get wrong ?? Let see what happens in 1 year, my fear is that not that much. DLC will still be thrown unfinished and barely debugged, steam will be here. Some bugs will be removed but new ones introducd... It's pessimistic but maybe somebody will deter this post and prove me wrong. I would be delighted !
And people will keep buying the dlc, well aware of the track record, and complain. If people want to be a glutton for punishment, that's fine, but they have to take some of the blame.
Not me, I’m not buying anything else until DTG take some ownership and fix some of the stuff we already paid for. I want to see more action and less promises. They need to earn my trust to earn any more of my money.
Frankly I don't think we need another stream of JD grilling Matt. It just be another stream of all talk and no action. Most of the problems DTG put on themselves and will take time to rectify. How in the world do you not have anyone supervising QA. Now they decide to bring a "QA manager". Perhaps things could've been different if QA had proper supervision. For now though we will just have to wait for change to come. At least I have other games to play along with the existing routes I own to fill the void. I certainly won't be taking out my debit card anytime soon for this bug ridden product
Yeah, Harlem Line was the last straw for me. There aren't many rail sim options on console here in the States, but I have managed to track down a few imports. Densha De Go! (PS4) is pure joy, looks fantastic and is a blast to play. I'll be sticking with that for the time being.
What I got from Matt's comments is that up to now they have had a "head" of QA, but the new "director" will have more authority and internal muscle to Get Things Done.