Lots going on, an awful lot going on. Legacy tsw2, tsw3, Rush hour, Bidstack, RHTT bogies, Bremen, Checkpoint, physics. As a consumer I am very bewildered what is where, what is being worked on, what’s close to a fix, what’s in the car park, what’s been superseded? At times the term patch seems more of a plaster or papering over the cracks rather than a put that bug to bed fix. Each dlc seems to add to an ever growing blister for the team. As a consumer it seems I have to accept 90% working for 100% fee at times. I’ve no doubt the team work their arse off but having sat back, read, reflected and not bought a dlc since tsw3 released and kept quiet, its quite an interesting picture unfolding in my mind. Historically I’ve been a day one jumper but now I read much more. The price hike has further made me sit and consider. There’s a bit of smoke and mirrors here too, take the latest route, it’s £30 but actually it’s a lot more expensive to get the complete experience if you don’t have other routes. There’s a massive variability for your £30. BCC for example you don’t get the same stock variety (tangent anyhow around price, I digress). As a community if you just sit back and read, the bug list is ever growing, seemingly never slowing. Qa processes have been improved however basic things are falling through the cracks, why? Is it because the Qa process has changed when the dev cycle on these tsw3 routes is too far ahead. Assuming routes are developed for 12-18months then QA may have changed too late to catch some of these things. I do wonder whether some of the forum folk should be brought in under NDAs to give feedback when route is 80-90% complete to give a consumer perspective and highlight what they spot. I’m struggling in my mind to feed my train love almost knowing they’ll be something obvious picked up by the community in the first half hour of play. I do wonder whether the Beta team of train expects are so focused in the tech set up that when they’re playing they’re not spitting the areas to polish (missing scenery, here’s looking for you (plastered since)). Proposal I genuinely think a transparent list of what’s being worked on now needs to be released, not just the noise making bugs that stop sales but ones that have been fed back months, or years ago. What’s being worked on? What’s canned? What’s parked? What’s the community potentially forgotten? Have the team looked at it? Have the team started it? Will a new dlc fix it? Just seems to be more and more retrofit needed and the bug fixes seem to be tucked in the draw until the next and the next and the next dlc are out…..(Boston rush hour signalling etc)
The problem is this has been the way DTG have worked since the Railworks days. It’s always been an incessant release schedule of content that is almost always full of bugs, often unfinished, low quality and featureless. It has applied to scenery for sure but even more so to rolling stock, some of which has been disgracefully poor. A token patch here or there usually followed and then it was on to the next one. Most of the major stuff never gets fixed and if it weren’t for 3rd parties TSC would have died out years ago. As it stands the 3rd parties are still doing amazing things with such an old engine. As the owner of DTG I’d be wondering why Armstrong Powerhouse had managed to build a business on making content my company had released actually work and actually good. Good sounds, corrected physics, better textures, more functionality etc. TSW was meant to be a new start but it’s just been more of the same old same old. To be fair, DTG’s content in TSW is better than it was in TSC but that really isn’t saying a great deal. A good example is that after 5 years we get thrown a bone of a really half-arsed GSM-R implementation (which is the absolute bare minimum they could get away with, and pathetic compared to Armstrong Powerhouse’s efforts in TSC) and even then it doesn’t work properly. This is generally why so many people who played / have played TSC are so down on DTG. They have for so long been the only game in town and we always hoped that one day they would sort their s**t out. I’m afraid it’s about time we all realised that this particular leopard will NEVER change it’s spots. They take their customers for granted, always have, always will. If you don’t believe me go on to the Steam forums for TSC and look at posts from 8+ years ago. They are all the same as the posts you’ve seen on this forum in the last 6 months. Requests for bug fixes, lists of things to be fixed, better QA, more beta testing, frustration that things don’t work as they should. It’s all been done a thousand times before. Literally. It would appear some decent competition is finally in the offing. It really can’t come soon enough…DTG have long needed the most substantial of kicks up the behind and hopefully they’re about to get one. Simrail may not be the holy grail, but hopefully it’s good enough to present some serious and much needed competition.
If it's not on the roadmap it's not being worked on, if it is on the roadmap it will either be fixed or drop off when enough people get bored of complaining about it - more frequently the latter. Let's not forget the Baby Bullet Cabcar and the RT 182 Cabcar are both completely unplayable since porting into TSW3 and both DLC are still on sale with no fix in sight
Chopper and Change on TVL, Amtrak 66 on BS, the SD40 sound drop out on Clinchfield, the missing mountain on Cajon, the state of Reigate on BML oh and the missing track at Redhill. And the huge elephant in the room - Spirit of Steam which still has massive physics issues in TSW3 and the erroneous SPADs. We can now add BCC and Bremen to the list. It certainly highlights the dire state of the game when previously generally loyal supporters are starting to question what's going on.
Agree, I defended the increase the costs, I was absolutely over the moon when this was announced and the net result is I'm regretting purchasing. Sim Rail here I come
I honestly think they’ve lost control now and have no hope of ever getting on top of things. They should have taken the break that they talked about but instead we got TSW3. This would have been fine if it fixed a lot, but it didn’t, it introduced more and left all the old bugs. Now they release more DLC on an already broken base. Combine that with the price increases and it really makes me wonder why I spend money to support this. It’s got to the point where unless something significant changes, I’ll just not bother. I have so much content on TSC and TSW, it really won’t hurt not to purchase more. Given the current lack of Gamepass discount for the new DLC, (which even if it comes later, is a nasty move to delay it until after the first adopters have already paid - EDIT Gamepass Discount finally turned up, but I stand by what I said, no use for those that already bought it) I’m just not excited by new DLC anymore. Will that bother DTG, probably not. They’ve already had a lot of money out of me. But it’s been the same story for a while now. I’d like to think it will change. I don’t think it will.
It does make you wonder whether the lull in new DLC was bug fixing or just tweaking enough to get the new release cycle over the line. I think there is a lot in the TSW 3 routes that is tremendous still, however my own level of questions prior to purchase is increasing in line with the number of new things being passed to the team to not be heard of again....
The only thing they got right with the Bremen to Oldenburg route is the DB BR 110.3. At least it's very Pleasant to drive and so is the cab car. But 40 bucks for a short route hell no
I can't help thinking that when Sim Rail comes out on PS5 in 2023, DTG will really have to up their game to stay competitive.... We've now got to the stage that we can't even buy new DLC because of PS4 DLC limits... Why didn't DTG foresee this?
The fundamental problem with DTG, as I see it, is that they have passionate developers who care about the subject matter but don't give them the time or resources to produce a polished product. And that's not going to change unless they see financial consequences for continually releasing half-finished products.
Some ten years ago there was a short era when developers had public bug trackers where community could vote on their priority. Sadly it quickly disappeared as we moved towards "we make games for shareholders, not for players", but I think TSW could greatly benefit from that again. I feel like developers genuinely care, if you take a look back, most of DLCs are quite enjoyable and fun, they just get released with plenty of bugs. But they release like 3-4 DLCs per region every year, that is insane and I can't really think devs have any spare moment at all. Even forgotten things seem to get fixed in TSW (unlike TSC) though - have you recently driven BR143 or RT Talent? I deeply hated both of those on release, but after recent updates 143 is one of my favorite locos in the game. It took years, but it got fixed. But do people even know about it? If we got a tracker with votes, they could see "alright, 300 people want level crossing bugs fixed, that will take us 2 mandays" and "oh, 15000 people want to have Berlin S-Bahn route set in 1970s, that will take us 700 mandays" and say which of these sound interesting for them and which are not a priority. Making sure the little time devs have is spent where community desires it. But that would require anybody in DTG management to care and that sadly does not seem to be a thing, we have never seen even any reaction to DLCs that got like 13% in reviews...
This DTG tapdance, one step for-, three steps backwards, has to stop. That´s what I see as the biggest problem here. Not that the SW has bugs - every software has - but that the "patches" fix an old one and introduce three new ones. Well, by simple logic you´ll never fix a damn thing and sink deeper and deeper into the mess. Fear the DTG "Fixes", it´s quicksand. Still, there´re some things that continue to amaze me: 1. Some cases of stunning developer dedication given to even the smallest details. There´s a whole thread for it. And it´s a long pager. I´ve been on foot on many routes and don´t stop to be surprised. So YES DTG, you can! 2. The quality in any aspect of the older loco developments, especially from the BR Blue era. Detailed, hardly any bugs and with awesome sound mixes. I love that somewhat clumsy Class 101 only for that. 3. Absolutely astonishing is what the so called "Modders" in their spare time are able to produce. And shortly after the DLC is hitting the shelves. DTG DevOps should be ashamed. Let alone the QA department, its shiniest virtue seems to be absence. Well, but in the current state there´s no point to throw further cash into DTG´s direction.
I really wish someone from high up would wind up in one of these threads talking to the community, not just the classic "we hear ya" that appears here and there, but truly explain their POV and discuss the game's trajectory. Wishful thinking.
What exactly is the issue with the Baby Bullet Cab Car? I be playing it but perhaps there is a issue I missed because I haven't really noticed one
I was busy with some work today, and just came to the forum right now ( 11.40 in the night, my local time ) Seriously, haven't seen the forums on this much fire before... My biggest concern at this time is that they should stop breaking the things that used to work earlier. Let alone expectations of anything new to work properly going forward... Said it over and over again. Most of the problems with this game ( or DTG in general ) lie with their Public Relations and Quality Control Departments. It's frustrating to see how amazing and awful this game is, at the same time. That's creepy, to be honest...
Wouldn't a bug list be difficult to keep track and update with how quickly things can move? Some bugs being fixed really quickly and hard to keep track of everything that gets reported. Or it could be that they fix something which also can cause other problems, resulting in the list becoming larger and harder to manage. Or the fix does not work as intended. Are we talking about every single bug from the smallest to the biggest or is it more of the larger bugs that people call gamebreaking? After all, no game will have 0 bugs.
See: https://cdn.akamai.steamstatic.com/steam/apps/1422130/extras/roadmap.png?t=1670427406 and: https://store.steampowered.com/app/1422130/SimRail__The_Railway_Simulator/
Maybe they'll fix everything by the time TSW4 rolls around in 2 years. Spoiler "100% it would just lead to an even more broken mess. "
agree to some extent but I fear if you was to lift the carpet under the dev teams desk you’d find the lists for the bugs we’re still experiencing. Not all bugs disappear, however many disappear into the “we’d like to (but won’t or can’t pay for dev time to fix)” cabinet or the bug ostrich that buries it’s head in sand and never acknowledges anyone comes out to the support desk.
It's an incredibly frustrating situation. TSW has so much potential and there are so many places to take it, but I can't for the life of me understand why significant gameplay bugs that prevent the completion of services or scenarios are left hanging for so long. I'd be more willing to accept slightly buggy DLC on release if I could be confident that it would be fixed quickly (within a week or two tops). A good example is the London - Brighton service spawning bug introduced in TSW3 which means that the whole timetable gets slowly snarled up and begins to queue up trains outside Haywards Heath after a maximum of half an hour of playtime. Joe root-caused it (with a bit of help from the community) and apparently fixed it on an internal build as long ago as October but it's still not released. Similarly, I had a lengthy discussion with Matt at Warley recently where we spoke of the steam physics issue which broke on the move to TSW3 - again this is understood and I believe a fix is essentially in place, but still not released despite it more or less bricking the route. Spirit of Steam beyond this has multiple further issues that are kneecapping a potentially wonderful route as well (AI SPADs and the Ghost Town timetable with AI timings meaning it's not possible to actually keep to time among others). I wonder if bugs / missing features are ever triaged or if they're tackled in a more random order. I love this game (I've racked up nearly 900 hours across the franchise now) but even I'm starting to doubt and wonder if key issues will ever be fixed or if we'll actually see the DLC required to properly finish routes (the elephantine Class 700-sized gap in L2B and SEHS timetables comes to mind). Sorry to whinge - maybe it's just late and I'm tired.
Which befuddles me, because the US price is $40! I assure you, the GBP is not trading at $1.33 nor has it for quite some time.
At this point, the already lacking QA should seriously just focus on new releases and fixes for them a month or two after release. If it's a fix/upgrade for older content... just let the community do the testing. We can apparently provide better feedback and might help speed things up. DTG is sitting on so much fix backlog because it has to go through QA... which won't really solve anything as the updates still break things.
When loyal customers who are very active in the forums are getting fed up to the back teeth of excuse after excuse, issue after issue, bug after bug and fixes taking an unreasonable eternity something needs to change. However, I really think DTG has got its head so buried into the sand it cannot pull it out now.
It's currently trading at £1 = $1.21, which is higher than it's been in a while. The US price is being rounded up from about $36. Or, maybe it's the other way round and the UK price has been rounded down from about £33. It's a toss-up.
Part of the problem I think as well is that people just keep buying DLC after DLC. People will complain but just keep buying anyways. I haven't purchased any DLC for tsw3. The only real way DTG would learn in my view is if they took a massive financial hit but that won't happen because there are some that are simply too gullible when they see something nice and shiny on what seems like scripted pr streams which only show the good on high end PC's. In fairness when there is no competition, where else are players gonna go. DTG have a bad habit of "release now, fix it later....maybe". There are trains like the lirr m7 that still have poor propulsion sounds. The signaling on Boston Sprinter is still borked. Running trains practically empty alot of the time because passengers will get off 1 stop but any passenger at a station won't get on. The list goes on and on. Since DTG keep releasing buggy dlc after buggy dlc, it causes a huge backlog of bugs that we don't know will be fixed. Not to mention patches seem to cause a whole host of new problems I knew that when DTG increased prices and charged above the rate of inflation, quality wouldn't improve and judging by the issues with BCC and Bremen-Oldenburg, it's good to be proven right. DTG seem to also be charging more for less. Sure you can have more trains running on Bremen-Oldenburg, but just give DTG $19.99 to $29.99 per train on top of the $39.99 each to get more trains because why would DTG just include all these extra trains into the base route. It just wouldn't make sense for them, right? If your gonna charge $40 for dlc, then the dlc shouldn't be having all these issues DTG clearly have passionate developers in the company, but frankly it seems the executives rather focus on their bottom line instead of ensuring the content is good quality. They have no competition yet dlc after dlc with issue after issue with game breaking bugs in some instances is released as if it was rushed. They claim they test but some players catch issues quite quickly in many cases as if players are paid beta testers. Then they wonder why some don't think they do. When issues are brought to the forefront, we get the same generic responses and in alot of instances issues won't be resolved for more than a year. All I gotta say is I hope SimRail gives DTG the kicking in the behind it frankly deserves. TSW has alot of potential but time and time again DTG cuts corners, consistently releases buggy dlc as if they don't learn, gets outclassed by modders with less resources, releases patches that at times breaks something else and now has a self inflicted backlog of issues that frankly may never get fixed. SimRail can't come soon enough.
I used to frequently play TSW but since spring this year I took a break and waited for something drastic to change. But to me, what I've read and heard so far nothing has changed and I can't even remember the last time I looked at the DLC store. They could whip out my favourite route and I probably won't get it if the usual bugs/quality issues pop up. It's such a shame. I just don't think lessons/mistakes are being learnt
Hoping I can get on the server later for a quick look see. Shame the initial testing is only for multiplayer. SP specific test starts 21/12 apparently.
I am 100% certain it won't. Just like run8 or zusi don't destroy DTG with their existence despite being praised here as the best in the market. DTG have the upper hand by content and variety alone. Not just TSW but TSC aswell. If I'd be looking for a train game without any knowledge of the games whatsoever, looking for german, american or uk content, with access to steam or epic games or a console, neither of these competitors stand a chance. And that's my two cent on why, even if the whole forum moves to Sim Rail, it won't touch them to bad.
I don't think it will end DTG. What I was implying is that it is good that we have an alternative and that it will hopefully push DTG to do better if SimRail turns out to be a decent product in the long run
I understood what you mean, but, even if it is a great product with good value and content to come, the sheer size and reach of DTGs products overshine this. Just like any truck sim, even if objectively better than ETS2, will have a very hard time to grow and attract people.
True true. I don't want tsw to fail or anything. I just want it to do better because I know it can be better than the current state it's in which seems to be annoying some of the most loyal customers Certainly in the short term, simrail won't touch TSW. Like how On The Road which was made by TML studios (which seems to be abandoned ironically) didn't make a dent with Euro Truck. SimRail will have to be judged by it's long term potential but even then it won't really touch dtg for a long time.
