Upcoming Release Master The West Midlands!

Am I the only person who had never even heard of Soho Yard before this thread? I would have happily bought and played this route in blissful ignorance, and probably still will.

Can someone from DTG please advise if there will be a Game Pass discount on Xbox (if you know). Thank You.

 

Sorry to quote full post but working from the phone...

As regards Soho Depot all I can say is how on earth was it even considered to omit this at the planning stage? It is literally 3 or 4 extra miles and an integral part of what you like to bill as the "experience ". Someone still needs taking to task over this decision, then slapping a £30 price tag on it.

 

The price increase is due to the increased cost of running the business and not related to the scope of the content. It’s because of wage increases and other overheads in the light of a much higher inflation rate than at any time in DTG’s existence. And it is nice that you have put down in words how much bigger in scope this route is than Cathcart because it is longer and has more going on. Now I could add a guess here that DTG know that hardly anybody plays the depot runs and therefore adding them to a route adds little to most people’s experience of a route and takes a disproportionate amount of dev time to player reward and so the extra amount of work in this case was not worth it and efforts have been placed elsewhere in the route.

Having features disappear from routes is nothing new for DTG and again unrelated to price. This is most likely down to the overlapping nature of route development. The wet platforms hopefully will return in later routes. You bring up the OOM issues in Rush Hour routes. That’s what happens when the scope of routes outpaces the ability of the software to adequately run them so overstretching on the scope of routes is a bad thing and it is much better for the players’ enjoyment and ability to play without problems than to cram everything possible into a big route. DTG massively overstretched themselves with Rush Hour and I wouldn’t want them to return to that. Hopefully this route will run like a dream. That again is unrelated to the price of this route though.

Neither of us are deluded but we are disagreeing on this issue, the price increase is general and not related to this specific route. All the DTG routes, big or small, have always been one set price with I think one route that was minimal compared to all others being slightly cheaper (WSR). Now that may be changing according to DTG, with a little more flexibility, but the standard price has gone up for cost reasons and nothing else and this is very much a standard UK route.

 

I had no idea either, unless you know the route or are a full-on rail nerd then I don't think many people would be aware of it. I certainly wasn't..

I read it wasn't even on the TSC version. Let's not get het up about it.

 

But TSC does not offer the prospect of an all day timetable which on most other TSW routes includes various Depot moves. It's not a complete party pooper but combined with the price increase and no preorder discount has all added to pee off those of us who were originally contemplating a Day 1 purchase.

 

Don't get me wrong, it would have been nice, it seems many people wanted it included. DTG have their reasons and I suspect "time" will be the main reason.

 

So the price increase is just for new DLCs? Or is the preservation collection stuff increasing in price too?

 

Does anyone know how many trains there are from Soho to Cross City destinations?
I didn't so I looked it up.
Today there are seven departures, the last being at 0626. There are a similar number in the evening, the earliest arrival being around 2045.
https://www.realtimetrains.co.uk/search/detailed/gb-nr:XSZ/2022-11-09/0408
So this insistence on Soho is for fourteen empty stock services on less than four miles of track, most of which will take place in the dark.
It's hardly surprising that it wasn't in scope.
Lichfield to Bromsgrove is about 80 minutes. £30 for an 80 minute route doesn't sound bad to me.

 

Well JD has stated it simply wasn't in the original spec. I can't see adding in the Depot would have added an insurmountable number of man hours for either the route builder or 3D modeller. It's a deliberate oversight at best.

 

New dlcs i believe

 

When I checked Steam last night all the pre TSW3 stuff was still at the original prices.

 

Don't know why people are surprised about the depot. They didn't bother with Slade Green on SEHS and its less than 2 miles from Dartford

 

Hi JD,
do you know, if the HST-runs are seasonal? As some people are complaining that they are included, those people could then just do their runs in another month. (I don't mind them being there, I just wished for a complete HST-set, as I saw videos of them too there)

 

It doesn't state if they are, but to be honest I wouldn't have thought so. Reading the gumph is interesting though.

High Speed on the Move
The last layer of note focuses on a series of rather unique moves which happened quite a lot during 2019. With the retirement of HST trainsets on mainline GWR services, and their planned introduction on secondary duties in the Western Region, many Class 43s and Mk3 coaches were sent to and from their depot in the west to Doncaster Works in South Yorkshire for refurbishment and maintenance. Their path necessitated traversal of the Lickey Incline.
If you own Great Western Express and Northern Trans-Pennine (more on that in a minute), you can enjoy a handful of services showcasing these HST refurbishment moves. Sent on an ad-hoc basis, they were rarely ever travelling as complete formations...

Perhaps there maybe one Full formation HST in the handful of services that are provided. Here's hoping.

Incidentally my first ever HST run was from Bristol - Derby via Birmingham New Street. it was awesome. I was about 12 at the time. We caught a 33/0 and Mark 1 set from Southampton central and travelled to Bristol caught the HST, Heads out up the likey Incline and in to B'ham New Street. then settled down for the trip to Derby and a pair of twenties to long Eaton to where we walked to Toton Depot. Then went Derby - St Pancras behind a 45 then a 4rep and 2x 4tc back to Poole (plus 33/1 from Bournemouth. Awesome journey.

Hentis

 

On the contrary, it's a line into the city centre which they wouldn't otherwise need to build and would mean building more of the distinctive city centre buildings which are visible from that direction, including the Sealife centre and quite a bit of Brindleyplace which wouldn't be visible from the Five Ways approach. Not sure it would be worth building to the required detail level, just for a handful of transfers.

 

Well have to differ on that. This isn't some freeware project, it should have been a matter of professional pride and fulfillment, rather than what seems to be thinking what is the least we can get away with and charge £30 for it!

 

I read Steams article on Google News about price increases in some country it did not list Canada as one of those countries to get a increase. After seeing the price for it yesterday was a major shock.

After being in a major 5 car accident on Saturday afternoon it will be a while before I am able to back into affording prices like this.

 

Hope you're OK after that unfortunate accident.

Whatever Steam recommends, according to my calculations, the new price for route dlc should be £29.99 /€33.99 /$33.99 /C$45.99.

I seems that we in North America are being asked to pay a premium price over and above the current exchange rate. In the past, the prices were very close to the true exchange rates. Something's not quite right in the state of Denmark.

Listen, in my situation paying a few extra bucks for something isn't going to break my bank. What I don't like is paying a 33% price increase out of the blue, without a concomitant increase in the value of the product.

If these new prices prevail, I'm going to be much more selective about my dlc purchases from this point and, unless this current BCC route is utterly spectacular and phenomenal in the stream and other players' reviews, it won't qualify.

 

Name a game that has came out with NO BUGS go on try.

 

Nice to see someone with sense comment.

 

Exactly what I said earlier. I just paid £13 for a black ink cartridge down at Asda (the printer probably cost £30 three years ago) and didn't bat an eyelid. £5 is a couple of beers or two single Marshfield "real" ice cream cones in our local park, i.e. loose change. It's the principle the DLC is already rather pricey compared to other ventures and we are being asked to stomach a 20% increase on this sawn off little effort. If they had wanted to test the water for a price rise, they should have waited until they had something more iconic to try it on.

And at the least bring back the preorder discount.

This even makes me wonder if this new stinginess from DTG will spill over into the forthcoming sales and we will see fewer discounts on existing older items. They already distanced themselves from the Halloween sale, apart from a few bits of Rivet Swiss flotsam and jetsam.

 

Fortunately I and everyone else were able to walk away from the accident, not sure how some were feeling a day or two after it. But I have gotten lucky not to have suffered any injures at all. But my car is a question mark of it being repairable or not that has not been determined as it was one of three cars not driveable.

Looking at what you have for pricing I was expecting it to be C$45.99 not C$51.99 that it's listed at now. It does seem like that we in North America are asked to pay a premium for DLC content now.

I do not mind a slight increase as it would be something I could cope with, but an unexpected 33% increase is definitely sticker shock.

Add: I did check another sim Train Life Simulator something I was thinking of getting. Checked it's price this morning and it is still the same price there was no increase to it.

 

This! For instance compared to the time PS5-Players still have to wait for the release of the addons-manager for TSW3 this is peanuts.

 

It’s interesting to read that Americans are (rightly) complaining about the premium being paid for US Dollar purchases. In the UK, we have been used for many years for like for like prices on technology (e.g. $299 in the US and £299 in the UK for the same product), even when the US Dollar was worth about 70 pence.

 

The idea that $60 wasn't standard in 2017 is ludicrous, I preordered a Switch and Zelda, that game was $60. Also I bought a Wii U at launch, and I know for sure that Mario U was $60, so were most of big system sellers that released on it. I'm also pretty certain that Nintendo were late on that front, Xbox 360 & PS3 games were at the price point before then. From what I vaguely remember you'd have to go back to the transition from 5th to 6th gen of consoles to see flagship releases at $40.

Furthermore to my understanding cartridge based systems like the SNES & Genesis had games priced at $50 usually, with some going as high as $70. But prices went down on the PS1, and Saturn, because CDs were much cheaper to make, thus allowing prices to actually fall below the standard that had been set previously. So really excluding the PS1 & Saturn, flagship releases have usually hanged around the $50 to $60 mark, with a few oddballs going higher.

Now I'm not saying that nothing's change, you could argue that DLC & special editions have gotten more common, or that more games have released at $60. I'm not sure the data on those figures, so no clue on how true that is, but I could see those being possible certainly.

 

LOL! The irony.

 

Like you said to me previously take that advice you give others and put it to good practice.

 

I thought there was going to be a price increase after Rush Hour. So no surprise here.

I don't play anything else except one other sort of game. So I don't have to spend $80.00CDN a pop on new games every 3 months so still within my budget. And I don't like US freight or older routes so I have always been picky on the routes anyways.

The other game is Rocksmith. I've basically taught myself guitar and bass using it, that I can actually go and play in bars in a cover band. Thats not bad for an old geezer like me.

 

A good surprise for me (and many others), would be news of a TSW2 patch for derailments/buffer issues. I would be surprised, but not holding my breath, your firm now has form for dropping the old version.

 

The route being short is a bit of a disappointment, the depot missing even more disappointment. The price increase! Ok I understand times are hard, things are more expensive they have ever been, electricity is more expensive than gold!
I'll buy that. Here's hoping the route will be one of dtg's most detailed routes to date.

 

And with raindrops DTG JD

 

A comment with sense because it reflect your opinion? Sorry but all i can read from you is that you getting almost personal if someone hasn't the same view and dares to criticize a DTG product.

I respect your opinion and if you all okay with the way TSW3 is going and which way DTG takes in terms of pricing than good for you. But other players are allowed to have another opinion and are absolutely right to criticize. In the end its important that we all can speak freely here in the forum so the guys and girls at DTG get some feedback that they will consider when creating new stuff. We as the players, customers and member of this forum should stand together, even if we have different opinions on some aspects and not 'attacking' each other. In the end we all wanna enjoy the same : a good replication of being a real world train driver.

Cheers.

 

it’s called being realistic how long have DTG charged 24,99 for a route how many years ????
During all those years everything has increased in price all over the world including the staffs salary I imagine. As inflation has gone sky high DTG have obviously had no choice but to increase. Looking at it from a buisness perspective you can do one of 2 things. Increase prices to cover overheads again. Or reduce staffing to lower overheads which in turn slows down production which would then turn slow down the amount of releases we get which would then cause people to complain as well.
So what would you rather do and if you ram a business what would you do.

 

Because this relates to a business strategy, my personal view is that if you put the effort in quality into the product and this is proven within the product you sell, then you can charge a higher price. However, the amount of issues spotted by fellow users and forum members confirms that an increase should not be conducted until the changes are made. This is why a preview stream should not be so close to release because the issues get swept under the carpet, or are not issued at the time of the official release.

 

again take your advice you gave me and kit it to practise please.

 

For people complaining about no Soho Depot, how much would you use it out of curiosity?

 

wait for them to come out with “every trip” just to justify the moaning they are all doing lol.
Someone up thread worked out 6 trains in am and 8 in on use it out of the whole day lol

 

If people disagree on a topic then why should they agree just because there's some commonality as in the company they're dealing with?
Personally I don't think £30 is that bad in the current gaming climate. Your mileage (and wallet) may vary

If there are 14 trains on the route then they make at least 28 movements a day as they all have to leave the depot and all have to return to the depot. Any trains that do this more than once a day (say to allow for peak capacities) add two each time
So out of 200 movements each day, if say 36 of them are depot moves that's quite a high percentage
I live near Gillingham depot on the SEHS and there are plenty of depot and ECS moves each day

 

Erm, no. You have raised a question and I am replying on a forum. Don't belittle me if you can raise your own comments! I will respond if it's regarding a product.

 

Take your earlier advise and put it into practise please thank you.

 

Not all trains return to the same depot nor to go a depot for that matter.

 

From an earlier post, I don't think it was anywhere near that; apparently not all of the trains are stabled at the depot, some staying at New Street overnight. If you check the working timetable on Real Time Trains, the numbers are much lower that you'd expect, eg. for tomorrow, four services are terminating there, seven starting there, and one of those goes to Birmingham International so wouldn't be included anyway.

 

Yeah I looked at RTT but also note that sometimes it lists the depots in multiple parts.
Does seem that the 323s get stabled at New Street quite a lot

 

Just put him on an ignore list and move on.

 

And Coventry too! One set runs empty at roughly 05:30 most mornings. As well as that, there's only 13 sets available to WMR anyway as they currently run as 6 carriage trains (Not including Sundays here).

 

good idea it appears a few others have done as well. Thanks for the heads up.

 

What were the differences between 101s and 115/116/117/118s?

 

The class 101's were low density units with generally two passenger doors per vehicle. The class 115/116/117/118's were high density "suburban" units with doors to every seating bay and were designed for services on commuter lines or lines with frequent stops.

Class 101's would not have been used on the Cross City line by choice, if one appeared it would have been because nothing else was available. Just like they weren't used between Paddington and Reading, although that didn't bother DTG!

 

1992 they were used and same with the 309's on the Redditch line.

 

101s were used at Paddington but they weren't the ideal choice of DMU