Ny-trenton: Usa Content Is Still Severely Flawed

I have to give them credit on the Boston route. I have done two services and the signaling works great. The approach into Boston at night looks fantastic. I’m loving the new Boston

 

WHY do we keep getting new features for the game that are completely dropped in the next release? It makes zero sense. There's no consistency from the perspective of a player, and doing this has to be a giant slap in the face to the devs who worked hard to get this working and right.

This is absolutely inexcusable. At this point in the game's lifetime, and especially for $40 USD, game assets clipping like that should not happen. The artist should've checked this when building (or modifying, since this is from years ago) the station. Everyone who signed off on that work should've checked it. Somebody in QA or the beta team should've noticed it. Since it's been there for 5 years, it should've been on "the checklist" - that is clearly becoming something that doesn't actually exist and explains why things get lost in the dirt for DTG and fixes never come...

 

Sehs had most of the trackwork laid out, so it's not like they had to remake the whole thing from scratch. So half was like already there and the other half was newly built. Catenary was remade, but it's not like they remade the original section from scratch.

Cajon was long cuz it was freight and there isn't much going on. However, the scenery was lower quality and some say it is worse than what tsc released with.

Skw was long cuz there was great demand for long high speed routes and the ice1. There are only 3 major stations, lots of tunnels and the scenery was mostly the same everywhere. And no, just cuz a 186km was made for 1 route, doesn't mean it's possible for every route. In reality, the length of the route depends on lots of factors.

So, in reality, a 80+ mile route is a time consuming process and much more complex. It's possible, but the average is about 50 miles currently

 

either a lack of time or not important or not easy to implement

 

Off topic Sherman Hill route new lighting looks amazing

 

After watching through the stream, my thoughts on it are, what’s there seems quite strong, I particularly like the changing scenery and definitely the variety of rolling stock to use. I still think it’s best for the route to have LIRR layers (I would say this for all routes if the loco is available in game) and I still have some worries as to how busy it will feel generally.

Overall quite positive.

going to try look more into the Acela being deciding further on it, im liking what’s shown so far but seems like I haven’t seen enough perhaps.

though I would like to add I haven’t found any thread dedicated to the usual get your questions in for the stream, perhaps I missed it though

Though if intentional I find the missing thread action along with how late we got a preview (not blaming illness that occurred of course, as that stream was already late in my opinion aswell) quite a worrying trend… that’s before counting all dlcs are shown in one (fair play for 3 hour+ stream I’ll add of course) and all are releasing together I find worrisome for potential mishaps (last ones just my perspective)

 

Pedel or Pedal?

 

ok so here we go. During the stream during the ALP-46 services I noticed a service from NY Penn station to South Amboy #3509. This service is actually not part of the NEC branch but is actually the north jersey coast line. So We didn't include all the services from the NEC branch but you through this service in? on top of that on this page I see 4 sunnyside yard moves , so this already drops the passenger services to 36? What a missed bag timetable is this?

 

Should be Pedal, though it wouldn’t shock me to know if it’s an American spelling difference

 

So far how realistic is the route scenery from NYC to Trenton? I don't know myself because I have never been on NJ Transit before.

 

This is all just a mess to me now. As a NJ native looking at the stream the amount of services make it look worse than it is on a Sunday.

 

The stations look nice, everything looks great but the static freight in some places (for example, some freight around Newark Liberty for the Conrail Lehigh Line, and the yard where a Turboliner is currently resting) don’t make it look realistic. And on top of that, the timetable makes Penn look bland, when in real life, Penn Station is BUSY with tons of trains everywhere, especially with the Long Island Railroad.

 

I liked the stream but I did not like the new route. On Trenton the trains look awesome like always but there is already so much wrong with this route. What's up with the pillars? If I was driving the train coming from the other side will the pillars go through my cabin? The scenery and lighting looks nice but if feels dead again.


But I do have to give a lot of praise for the commentary during the stream because I did learn a lot about trains.

 

Having watched this and reflected I think I'm sitting this content out. I "might" pick acela At some point to pad out boston but watching the new route all I could see myself and via the chat which wasn't addressed was the quietness of the route. Those empty 4 track areas just did nothing for me. Equally there's still no npc and there was one station last night I observed without a single passenger.

More money saved as this timetable thing is just not there for me now (but has been in past)

sorry

 

Same feeling here, I will get the Acela but as notes were still been taken about the quality of the new route during the live stream I think I will buy popcorn instead of the route and have an eye on the forum. I'm almost certain I'm gonna get more bang for my buck

 

One thing they didn’t show in the livestream preview yesterday was the approach into New York Penn, and Sunnyside Yard, where the bland scenery and the old NYC skyline would be shown.

Doing a short livestream for 3 new bits of content really is unacceptable, it barely gave enough time at all to showcase everything there is to see.

Before TSW 3, they used to do two full livestreams for each new bit of content. For example if a route was releasing on a Thursday, the two previous Thursdays would have livestream previews too. This gave a lot of time to preview the route. Boston’s previews back in 2021 had one full livestream dedicated to Amtrak, and one full livestream preview dedicated to MBTA.

They should go back to that way of doing preview streams.

 

Yeah, they're not daft..

 

I am sorry, but this still existing is insulting. NEC:NY was one of the oldest routes in the game and already there, this was mentioned as a problem. This is the THIRD release with this problem. Half a decade later, nobody can be bothered to fix clipping in this station? This more than proves the name of this thread. And it deserves to be mentioned again - THIS is for an increased DLC price.

For less than the price of this DLC, you can go to Steam, buy Hi-Fi Rush, and have some absolutely crazy fun with a BUGLESS product. And I don't mean it as "train sim fans, go play a rhythm game," but the price tags beg a comparison of how this can even happen when these DLCs are this expensive. Every route DLC is half of a AAA game in price. They have to deliver.

(Although, yeah... if you saved on Trenton, go treat yourself with Hi-Fi Rush, it is amazing, and you'll have 5 pounds/euros/dollars left also free on Game Pass)

 

From what I have seen, I will be waiting for a sale before getting Trenton. Not 100% convinced on the route as yet.

 

Alongside "pedel", I also liked it when Matt used the pantograph switch, the game awarded him for "using the headlights".

 

I was confused last night by the dead zones on the route.

A-talking about them when they're not in game.
B- Why was there catenary in said zones .



Have I missed something?

 

You still have catenary wires in dead zones, except they don't have electricity in them. I suppose they talked about them because visually they are still represented.

 

Not functional in game, but setting throttle to idle and opening the Main Circuit Breaker is just something you can do to enhance realism.

 

Happily picking this and Acela up today. That was the first live stream I've watched from start to end in nearly a year, a huge mark up in quality from recent streams, Matt was on point driving, JD was picking decent questions, and Brandon was providing endless insight that made the route come alive.

When I look at these 19 pages of rambling about how DTG doesn't care about US content, and then compare it to the obvious passion and interest in US content Matt and Brandon have, it's just another reason to write off most of the hand-wringing here. Nothing in the stream indicated this was some sort of drastic scale back of previous DTG releases, and I've no idea where the expectation came from that this had to be like BML, certainly nobody at DTG ever said that was the plan. There's an ok amount of traffic, could it be better? Yes. Could it be much better? Sure. Does "not as good as it could be" equate to "awful"? Absolutely not, otherwise nobody would actually be playing this video game.

There were a couple of familiar bugs, and that scenery collision isn't great, but none of those are particularly out of keeping with DTG's general quality, the pantographs and rear lights will probably be fixed quickly, the collision never. It is what it is.

For me, the important thing is the variety of services offered, and as far as I can see it has high speed, semi-highspeed, semi-fast, and slow stopping services. This variety is far more important to me than the absolute number of services, and the route itself looks more than good enough to make up for the gaps between oncoming trains. I hope it does get a better timetable one day, but I'm not gonna brood about it when I could be zooming up and down in Acela or trundling along in a brand new bi-level cab car. Sorrynotsorry.

 

I don't like that DTG haven't fixed these issues but tbh they never said they had or would.. They said that NY Penn was polished and that in my eyes isn't physically moving things, I could be wrong..

 

i dont get it...i just wanna buy the route but on steam i only can choose a bundle with boston which i already have....?

 

That is a pre-order bundle, it doesn't launch on Steam until later today, when you will be able to buy each part separately. Probably be like 7 or 8 hours from now.

 

It was impressive how much was shown in that time period I agree.

The Acela preview was really good, and the Sherman Hill liveries preview was good too, but Trenton could've shown more IMO, and probably should've been a separate stream.

My point was, if we look back at (for example) the Boston Sprinter previews a while ago, there was a 1h24m Amtrak preview stream on 5th August 2021, and a 1h33m MBTA preview stream on 12th August 2021. That totals just under 3 hours of preview streams for Boston alone. This is similar to a lot of other preview streams that took place before TSW 3, where there were always usually two preview streams a couple of weeks in advance of release.

Trenton should've gotten one ALP46 full run, one NJT Cab Car full run for one stream, and then another stream with the Amfleet Cab Car full run, and a Sunnyside yard depot service as well.

Nothing wrong really with the preview stream yesterday, it did show pretty much everything with the trains and such, and the questions being answered were good too, Brandon answering all the technical questions was also really good as well, but it's just a suggestion to consider going back to the "old way" of doing preview streams in the future (for route DLC).

 

again, it’s not QA at fault, I’m 99% sure they are aware of the issue. It’s just nobody is getting the time to fix it

 

I enjoyed the stream. The Acela looks great so I will certainly be getting it for the Boston Sprinter route. Also the new skies are a great improvement. I am very glad Brandon has overhauled the signalling too, it should be a very immersive route to drive now with quite a variety of traction.

The NEC route looks very good but I am afraid the trains clipping the pillars at NY Penn spoil that effect and that with the lacklustre timetable means the route will be a sale purchase at most at the moment. A shame as the NEC on TSC was a favourite of mine at the time.

 

If you keep this up, you could soon be an ambassador!

 

this has been raised. You get a bum deal

 

Yesterday it was one of the longest live streams ever. In Germany we have a one-hour time difference compared to the UK. So it went until almost half past eleven in the night. The American DoSto commuter trains with the TRAXX-like looking ALP-46 from NJT come across very well. Comparing this NEC route to that of 2018 is a big leap forward, and not just because of the volumetric clouds. I also found Brandon's insider infos very helpful. What I call something new is that the solar-powered spray devices have been set up in the winding areas of the track. There were also a lot of trains on the way, so that one can speak of a busy traffic. Conclusion: the Acela Express is a must-buy for me and NY-Trenton came across as convincing, even if the pantograph still needs to be fixed.

 

I see they still need to fix terrain specularity in TSW3 across the board, as the new lighting seems to have a bit of a speech impediment, turning grass into glass.

 

That used to happen in old TSW routes, not happy to see it's back.

 

Can someone please let me know once the game comes out curious to see if they are other services from any of the other NJT branches since I spotted #3509 belonging to North Jersey coast line heading to Amboy

 

Just a partial quote here. So what you do here Matt is basically you admit, that you = DTG are actively selling a faulty ("completely unplayable") product = LIRR for a full price also with the option to buy an additional M3.
Now what am I supposed to think about that?

 

Isn't Matt talking about his own personal timetable he created which isn't published..?

 

The current version technically is not unplayable as it has a lame and empty timetable. Matt was describing the more busy timetable as unplayable, hence why that timetable is not released for the public.

Though I have to admit, it would be fun to have it as an optional timetable to fun around with. LIRR deathmatch. See how long you survive.

Or you know... fix the signalling and release the busy timetable that way ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)

 

Well, you could think "Aha! I found the smoking gun! Fraud!", which I suspect you would do whatever he actually wrote. But as it happens, if you did more carefully read what he wrote, you might think "Oh, I mis-read it, he is talking about a publicly unavailable timetable. I should probably apologize for making the accusation without properly reading what he said first".

 

It would be great to see a new timetable on LIRR with a Brandon fixed signalling system, there aren't many networks in the sim and this would be a very interesting one with a fuller timetable.

Maybe thinking would be a good place to start!

 

Yeah. LIRR is full of interesting situations and sights when you actually encounter other trains during your runs.

Like waiting at Jamaica and seeing trains going through the overpass. Or coming from NY Penn arriving to Jamaica and seeing trains in the distance on the Atlantic branch. Woodside also offers good moments when there are at least two trains on the station at the same time and an express whooses past on the inner tracks.

In one of my custom scenarios, there is a moment when a train is arriving to Jamaica through the overpass, while there is a train passing under it towards Atlantic and another one leaving towards NY Penn at the same time. Looks so cool with all 3 trains sneaking around.

With a fuller timetable, it would be an amazing experience.

 

Even if nothing much comes out of it, Thank You for listening to the feedback and taking down notes for the team, it's very much appreciated.

 

TripleJ814 thank you for starting this thread. I thought Inwas the only one that thought the US routes were lacking behind our UK and German friends. I think we at least got their attention and hopefully something positive comes out of this. As I mentioned many times I love this game and we voice our concerns and give feedback to help improve and make the game better for all of us. I think JD and Matt know this. Again thank you

 

Watched the preview, and I'm mostly pleased with what I saw and heard. Acela is pretty much a first day buy, but I'm still deciding on NY - Trenton. Great scenery and a sizeable distance but it's a huge shame for it to have such a meagre timetable (compared to some other passenger routes). I really hope DTG plan to add to it in the future, it would be a shame if the same miserable fate befell it as has LIRR.

 

Nobody mentioned that the route timetable said 301 services.

 

Cuz that was known since yesterday