I am not a long time forum user, but I have played the game for years. Over this time, I have found many issues regarding the quality and quantity of content that we get from Dovetail Games. I have thought long and hard about the overall state of the game and have come up with the following solution. Disclaimer: This is a complex solution to a complex problem, don't type away angry responses based on immediate reactions and understand what I'm trying to say. Constructive criticism is, of course, appreciated. Therefore, with the irrational assumption that these suggestions are taken seriously, and no further ado, let's jump in. Before we try to fix the issue, we need to describe it. If you talk to any company CEO, they will agree on one thing. If a company is loosing money, it is easier to turn around if it has a lot of cashflow, i.e. a lot of money coming in, but also a lot going out, than if it has no money moving. This is the main reason why Dovetail has had to just keep churning DLC after DLC, each one being more incomplete than the next. On top of that, once they sell the DLC to you, there's no reason for them to fix the old bugs, since they have no financial benefit for it. Here's my solution. It's a complex solution, but hang on. As a pre-requisite, I'm going to define something called Route coupler. I shall define this as a feature whereby if two routes share a common station, they should be inter-playable, i.e., you should be able to jump between them without a reload. (Think Dresden-Chemnitz and Dresden-Riesa, but it's a single route and you can free roam between them. Same thing with London Commuter + East Coastway at Brighton.) The best way to describe this is to give you an example with a route. Let's take Great Western Express. First and foremost, you will not receive the entire package in one bundle, i.e., the trains and the tracks shall be split into separate DLCs. This sounds crazy, but stick with me. The tracks part is basically the entire route, but you can only be a passenger (say Great Western Express for $15). This is a time-pass activity for those who don't want to engage in a lot of driving. Let's say, for instance, that you like the route and want to drive the class 166. Now you buy the class 166 (say for $5) and complete a training. Once you finish a test, you are licensed (in-game) to drive the class 166. Once you've finished with a decent chunk of the timetable, you pick up the Class 43 HST (say for $5.25) and similarly complete it's training module. Similarly, it can be done for the Class 66 (say $4.80), but all freight wagons should be unlocked when you buy a freight locomotive. Once you're finished with that training, you're a fully licensed (in-game) driver for services from London to Reading. This might sound convoluted, but this enables quite amazing stuff in conjunction with route-couplers. I should also make myself clear that you can ride the trains with the route DLC. You only have to pay to drive them. Let's say DTG (I know it's a bit much) decides to make a new route, Reading to Didcot. With it, they make two new train DLCs, Class 165 (which should be discounted if you already have the 166, or come with it) the Class 158, Class 220/221. With the route coupler and the extra trains that you unlock, you can do the same process to obtain an in-game driving license for each. Eventually, you get to a point where the entire mainline from London to Bristol has been made and all the trains that go with it are all there, but you have to pay for them separately only if you want to drive them. You can have the Class 800s, Class 387, Class 37+Mk3 GWR Coaches, Class 345 (For Crossrail) all in one place, though bought separately. On top of this, branch lines can be added with their own rolling stock. Reading-Basingstoke, Didcot-Oxford etc. can all be made. Here are the advantages of this system for RailFans: 1. It is really cheap to get started and you don't have to spend a lot of money at once. You can go stage-by-stage. 2. For those who are willing to spend the money, it's a huge mainline with all sorts of services and 100s of hours worth of good quality gameplay to immerse yourself in. 3. It makes sure DTG can't sell you the same thing twice. (Cough.. NEC) 4. DTG will have an incentive to bring older routes up to date and keep them consistent with their trains, keeping them at a higher quality. 5. It enables the making of incredibly long routes, and, some day, entire rail networks can be modelled through route coupling. Here are the advantages of this system for DTG: 1. DTG can leave branch lines and such and make them as add-ons later, using route coupling to enable gameplay between them. (Though they should be reasonably priced. Eg: I would expect the Princeton Dinky on NEC to cost $5.50 with the Budd Arrow III) 2. Because of route coupling, incredibly long mainlines, like NEC: Boston - DC, ECML, WCML, TGV: Paris-Marseille, Tokaido Shinkansen can be made by splitting them up into multiple DLCs and because trains and parts of some routes are optional, people won't buy them instantly with the route, giving a smoother stream of cashflow. 3. Since the price for entry is lowered, new customers can be more easily bought into the Rail Simming space, further boosting cashflow. 4. Incentives to update imply that each update will bring a small stream of sales, about 50 copies each and since they can be made pretty quickly, they will not halt development on bigger projects. 5. Even though profit percentage has been sacrified slightly, overall profit will increase since new players are more easily attracted towards the lower price. Though the ideas mentioned above are really cool, there's one small problem you might have noticed, it's the feature that I defined as Route Couplers. I do not know how easy it is to implement something like this in game, especially with the back catalog, but being able to add value to incrementally improving older routes is the main motivation behind this idea. By having a catalog that is completely up-to-date, it will ensure that we, the railfans, are happy and DTG, the company, makes money. As much as we all like to trash on Companies wanting to make money, we have to understand that for TSW to be self-sufficient, DTG needs to make money on it. There are a couple details to sort out with this, like if you buy a locomotive that runs with a cab car, you should get both, i.e., F40PH-3C MBTA should come with the CTC cab car, ACS-64 should come with metroliner etc. This gets even more complicated when you take the dostos, which can lead multiple locomotives. In that case all those locos need to be bundled or if you buy a locomotive that comes with Dostos but you already have the Dostos, you should be discounted... These are things DTG can sort out if in the unlikely event they decide to follow my idea. Ultimately, we are all humans and we like trains. Let's keep TSW going strong and come up with solutions that work for both sides of the conflict. I am not defending DTG for their lazy work with their recent routes, I'm just saying we always need to think from the other side and understand their issues, which applies to us, railfans and equally as much to DTG. Thank You.
This all falls down on the basis of timetables cannot as yet be automatically generated, so even if you COULD link routes, you cannot link timetables. DTG would have to make a timetable for each route segment individually and then all possible permutations for people who own one, some and all routes which link together Take the afforementioned GWE You have one route and one timetable from Paddington to Reading Then you have a route and timetable from Reading to Bristol Then you have a route and timetable from Reigate to Reading So now you have six possible options for people to have various permutations of routes And what about scoring and trophies? What happens if someone has completed all the PAD to RDG runs, but then buys the Swindon add on? All of a sudden those same runs might extend further. Do you lose all the old progress, have to redo all of them in their extended form...? The linking of the actual routes together is actually a fairly simple thing given the routes are all loaded in tiles anyway, so the complexity there is linking signalling systems together. The trains are loaded in tracked form but not put into full form until they come into view, so no issue there, but the timetable and interaction is the sticking point So going back to my first line... This would only really work if timetables were generated dynamically, and even then you would have to account for player behaviour. As an example of this if someone spawns on foot at Victoria, and drives to Gatwick the game would have to pick up the timetable for that route. At Gatwick the player gets off the train and then goes to dinner, leaving the game running. The game would have to keep generating content for say three hours. The player comes home and drives to Reigate then Reading. So now the game has to load the Gatwick to Reigate timetable, then the Reigate to Reading tables, then the GWE table That's a lot of complexity for it to work out
With all due respect for the time and effort you’ve taken, I don’t think that this would fix tsw. There are more fundamental things to work on, such as bug fixes, longer routes, pricing etc
For someone like me, who can devote perhaps 7-10 hours a week to the game, this is far too much complexity. I'd be happy if the major issues, like the timetables in NEC, were solved. The current iteration of TSW would be just fine for me. I'm always amazed at how much time other players seem able to spend on the game. What else do they do? Do they interact with other people, life? Do housework? Gardening? Grocery shopping? Oh well. And, by the way, despite my frequent criticism, I don't feel I'm " in conflict " with DTG.
While I value your ideas and especially the effort you've put into them, there's certain problems that I see: 1. Technical limitations - I think it was Lukas who during a German interview said these route couplers aren't conveniently or easily doable right now. Also route length, route consistency (quality wise), timetables, all that stuff will be problematic 2. What about the back catalogue? - We currently see that DTG doesn't uncouple old loco dlcs from their respective routes, now you expect them to uncouple everything? You would need to update all of the back catalogue with this system, which requires incredibly effort. For a route like Dresden - Riesa, one DLC would be split into about 4-5 (I don't remember the accurate loco count, even more if you separate cab cars from locos (which I don't understand in the first place)). This would have to be done on every storefront where TSW is on sale *and* it would need to happen for anyones personal library of DLCs as well. 3. Chaos - I own TS classic and have bought DLC via Steam for it. Browsing 600+ DLCs is not that cool and I'm never sure wether I'm up to date about what exists and what doesn't. With your proposal, you wouldn't need to search for the route only, you'd also need to look for trains that can run in its timetable by yourself. 4. Limiting of what routes are considered - We see it in all of the three big TSW countries: while some routes share joint stations, most of them don't. For your suggestion with route coupling to make sense, all parts of these long routes have to exist. So now DTG builds some long main line in the south of UK, when can we expect some new content from northern UK? In 3 years? Also, routes that don't fit into a network wouldn't even be considered at all. Upcoming Niddertalbahn for example... yes, it links to a mainline in several places but for its creation in TSW to even be considered, that whole mainline would have to exist first. 5. Third Parties - They probably won't have the resources needed to develop a big route, even if it's done in little parts. Take TSG and the Niddertalbahn again: wouldn't have happened, if TSG would have had to build whatever big mainline it is connected to first. And 6. Let's be real, who is gonna buy a route without included rolling stock to drive. Even if the overall price for a (now standard) route would stay sort of equal when buying the route + trains, this even more smells like a cash-grabbing thing. Reminds me of that subscription in some car for some feature. Was it audi or mercedes? There is no need for a drastic reform of the DLC market. The model of route+trains has worked since the beginning of train simulation and cannot be held as the cause of recent quality issues. Quality issues of whom I haven't yet found enough to not make me buy any more DTG content. Although I've heard NEC is a mess, which I conveniently do not own cheers
There are many flaws with your suggestion Mergers need to be in the same time period: merging a 1990s route with a 2022 route doesn't work, unless the rolling stock/livery did not change and absolutely nothing changed about the route. Dra and dcz can't be merged for that reason. One if set in modern times and the other is set in 2012. There is more than a 5 year difference and the two dresdens were different. Decreases variety: already mentioned above that routes need to be in the same time period to merge and to continue adding new track to it. That means we only get modern routes or routes set in the past. Timetable: every time you add onto a route or merge routes, the timetable has to be rebuilt from scratch and multiple timetables depending on what exact dlc you have installed. 2 routes merging needs 3 timetables (1 for each, 1 merged). 3 routes needs (1 each, 1 merged all together and 3 merged timetables if you only have 2). That number increases exponentially. Timetables take months of work and testing and even longer when you have multiple routes merged together, so it's not really viable to merge everything. Also can't release without a timetable either. Another reason is the size of the project and the effects it can have on hardware. When do they stop merging content b/c they can't just keep on doing it. The map would become too large, lots of things needs to be loaded in, tons of services and more difficult to test everything just to name a few. Lower end systems and current hardware might not be able to handle it. Let's say bml and ecw do get merged. Bml has 4000+ services with all ai and playable services. Ecw probably has hundreds or thousands of services. Bml struggles on some hardware and adding anything more causes issues even on current gen. Take another massive uk route for example where many different lines connect to each other. Again, how would the hardware cope with it Paying to operate a train you will be a passenger in as part of the base package is pointless. Why put all the effort into modeling the whole train and route if you can't operate it. Might as well make it as part of the base package. That's worse than what we have in tsw and would actually result in the downfall. It's a pay to win strategy and nobody likes that. Not just tsw, but other games as well. Think of a fps like call of duty where you buy the base package but you can only be a spectator and not be able to play the game. To use everything else like drive a vehicle around or use a weapon, it's behind a paywall. Regarding your comment about trains: just cause 2 trains look the exact same, they aren't the same. They still need to rebuilt to some degree. The 166 and 165 you mentioned are very different from each other. Completely different physics, max speed, sounds, passenger interiors and undercarriage equipment. Pricing: regarding your comment about the arrow 3, $5 is way too cheap for the amount dtg has to put into it. Not just the arrow 3 but every other train. 3D modeling inside and out, simugraph (physics, sound, simulation, setup), timetable, scenarios. the developers still need to be paid for their work and rent needs to be paid. Too cheap and the company goes bankrupt and shuts down no matter how many people will buy the dlc. People buy content based on quality, not price. So lower cost doesn't always correlate with more sales/profit. Railfan question 1: it may be cheap but you still gotta pay for everything individually. You can't drive it unless you buy it. Driving the same exact train over and over again gets boring quickly. Then you gotta pay for everything. That adds up. Railfan Question 2: only if you are willing. That's a minority and punishes people for not buying content. If you are poor, your loss sort of thing. Railfan question 3: it's not the same thing sold twice. It may share content, but it is still brand new. Goes all the way to trenton now, brand new signaling, brand new train and services.
I do not see how the OP business model would improve the quality (as in "reliability") of the content. Maybe that business model would increase the number loco DLCs, but nothing else. And for sure not with the prices you are suggesting. The only thing that I think would increase the quality would be some kind of monthly subscription service, where DTG gets money each month to keep things running smoothly and users will only pay the next month if the service is good overall.
The fundamental issues I see at the moment is a massive decline in Quality Control, the malaise now extending even to the once dependable German routes as evidenced by the mixed feedback West Rhine is getting. Until whatever rot it is that has set in to cause this has been rooted out and eliminated the game is in serious peril. Looking further ahead, however it's done I do feel we need to go beyond the current paradigm of standalone unconnected 30 - 50 mile routes and start looking at the potential to expand into networks or longer continuous routes. How this would work and be priced is a matter for DTG expertise to plan. The Run 8 model is a start, though of course the caveat there is gameplay very much free play and there are no timetables to worry about.
I understand what you mean, and this was the basis for my solution. I don't expect people to see how I got here, but my justification was that adding financial value from the eyes of DTG to update existing code is enough to make them improve older routes. If that's the best way of making money with the model they have, they will do it. I shall go over all your criticisms. 1. I understand that Route Couplers are not an easy thing to make. This was perhaps the one problem I had with my idea when I came up with it, absolutely agree with you here. 2. I went over this in my original post. If DTG were to operate under this model, it now adds financial value to updating an old DLC. That was my point. If an older route could be upgraded and that meant more people would buy it in conjunction with an adjoining rail line that DTG are going to make, they will upgrade it. Again, route couplers are a big problem. 3. Something being complex does not mean it is hard to navigate. For instance, DTG could give the base game for free (without any routes or trains) and have an in-game marketplace for these things, making it easy to find bundles and all. They would have to sort out some legal stuff with Steam, of course, but it's doable. 4. Being flexible is one of the main benefits of my model. If DTG made, say Reading to Didcot, they won't have to model the cabs for the trains, just the outside and passenger interior, and just have the route on sale. They can get around to the locomotives, say 2 weeks later. This allows so much flexibility. Since stuff is broken up, entry price is lowered and DTG can constantly get headlines, which they obviously like. 5. Coming to your mention on Niddertalbahn. If a branch line is made, it's not necessary to make the mainline it's on first. You can do it the other way round. So, when they make the mainline, the branch can be included with it and players who already have Niddertalbahn by that time may get a discount. Since, while making a huge mainline, say TGV: Paris-Marseille, they are getting paid for every stretch of the route (say Paris - Orleans, Orleans - Lyon, Lyon - Avignon, Avignon-Marseille) along the way. That was my point. They don't have to make the route in one go. They can take time. But if one of them is finished, the incentive to do the other parts increases since it gives them even bigger headlines when they do. 6. Players don't have to buy the route and trains separately. When they buy the route+trains together, they can be given a discount. The reason I proposed this was so that DTG can't sell you the same thing twice. Classic example just last month, everybody who had Boston Sprinter and bought NEC: New York - Trenton paid for the ACS-64 twice. You mentioning a subscription is also interesting. Basically, they can make an optional subscription service (say $2/month) and you get ALL new releases, trains and everything free of charge. When you stop paying, you keep all the stuff you'd collected so far. There definitely isn't a need for a drastic reform of the DLC market. What I've just said is an idea, and every idea can add something good to anything. I'm interested to see what other ideas come up after people read this. Though the model isn't the cause of quality issues, adding value to something that already exists is what makes the incentive to update and maintain them. The only reason real railways keep maintaining their infrastructure is because only then can they run trains on it. Probably not a good analogy, but I think it gets my point across. Peace ✌️
Yeah $24 a year seems more than reasonable cost for unlimited play of every new release. I actually wouldn't be against a subscription model though but I'd expect we'd be asked to be pay far more than your $2 a month, probably 10x as much.
I shall your questions here. 1. Not all people spend two hours each day playing the game. If you do, then yes. It gets boring. Based on how much you play, it can take upto a month to get bored driving a single loco. That is the point at which you pay. If you don't want to, you can stop at any point along your purchase journey and you keep everything you've bought so far. 2. The content being split up does not push people to not buy it. It actually pushes them to buy more. It seems counter-intuitive, but it's easier to make people spend $10 ten times than it is to convince them of spending $100 in one go. It's the same thing in social media. If you start watching a short, it asks you for 1 minute. You don't think much of it and you keep giving 1 minute to every short that comes up and before you know it, you've spent two hours on the site. 3. The content being different doesn't make it new. I understand that people got an update on Boston Sprinter when NEC: New York - Trenton was released, but that doesn't excuse the fact that the original ACS-64 and the signalling on the route was inaccurate. Therefore, in effect, when the ACS-64 got updated and you happened to own both routes, you are effectively paying for the ACS-64 twice. If not a complete brake-up into tracks and trains, players who got the updated ACS-64 and then bought NEC: New York - Trenton need to be given a discount on the latter. It's like going to a store to buy an CPU and the manager will only sell you a fully-built computer. About pricing, I don't set these things, man. It's upto DTG to set the actual prices they're going to sell you stuff for. About the 166/165, yes. I understand. I kind of tossed my statement in without thinking too much, but yes. The 165 will have to be sold separately if this model was to be used. It's way too different to the 166 Paying for driving is not a pay-to-win strategy. That's why I mentioned that even if you buy the loco, you need to pass an in-game test to drive it on timetable mode. It's far from pay-to-win. It's partially to pay, yes. But adding value on top of that to driving a train is TSW will make it feel more realistic than ever. Speaking of quality control, I forgot to mention this. Beta testing should be made public. Even if everything I've said is rejected, this needs to happen. You don't have to be crazy to do it. Regarding Time frames, this is an issue which I did not foresee. That's part of the reason why I put it in the forums, getting questions like this would mean the model can be refined. Will try and work out what can be done for timeframes. Regarding hardware capabilities, they are obviously going to increase in the future. But that aside, it's not necessary to have the timetable for the ENTIRE route running on say London-Bristol(+Didcot - Oxford, Reading - Basingstoke). Because there is train times for each station, the timetable within say, a 10 mile-radius of the player can be kept running and the others can be left out. On top of that, non-stop trains can have speed and time markers every 5 miles or so so that even if it doesn't stop, we know when and where it should be. In the end, I don't want to hate on anyone. It's just an idea and an idea alone. This will have to go through way more scrutiny to actually get approved, the probability of which is almost zero. I just wanna see TSW get better, and thought this was if not ideal, a convoluted way of financially incentivising updates. Cheers ✌️
Makes sense. Or they could layer it. If a billing cycle had new releases, it could be $5, then it could go back to $2 for without. There are details, of couse, which I'm glossing over.
Are DRA and DCZ different in architectural landscape? I think we can have two sets timetable in same station.
A bit more on subscription models: I'd envisage 3 tiers Tier 1 - Access to any single country route with the promise of 1 new DTG route, 1 new loco DLC & 1 game play pack per quarter probably priced in the region of £10-£12.50 per month. You could take 2 subscriptions for 2 countries if so you wished. Tier 2 - Access to all UK, German & USA routes with 3 DTG routes, 3 loco DLC & 3 game play packs per quarter. Priced at 2.5x the cost of single country access. Tier 3 - The deluxe package all of tier 2 plus exclusive early access to new content (minimum of 2 weeks pre release), public beta testing and deluxe only game play packs and special timetables only available for tier 3. Price about 3x the cost of single country access so about £30 - £40 a month. You'd also earn "DTG cash" each month which could be put towards buying any content outright if you ever wished to cancel your sub or for any DLC outside your subscription. Third party routes could still be purchased as standalone content and all DLC (apart from tier 3 exclusive content) available to buy in full for those who dont want a subscription and would rather own their content outright. Third parties would also be able to provide their own subscription models to be bolted onto any DTG subscription at whatever price they wished.
You're right, it's just a proposal from your side. And while I'm not so sure we all got the hang of it, you surely understand your idea best I do, for sure, recognise how detailed your suggestion is and I really respect that. If done correctly, it would probably end up with the positive consequences you've named. Still, I suppose it's unpractical to introduce this in the 3rd or 4th iteration of the game as it would be way to big of a workload for DTG with it's current workforce. thanks for your answer though
Some random thoughts on timetables that occurred to me as I read this thread, probably heretical to some, and probably unrealistic. But still. 1. Railroads have already done all the heavy lifting - they've created timetables that work. IM probably ignorant O, the integration between real world timetables and TSW is made difficult by the need for an artificial dispatcher to replace a whole network of humans and their professionally designed operational railroad software, that convert timetable theory into real railroad practice. They are the oil that lubricates it, so to speak. So could anything be done to make that integration, make the calculations and decision points, easier? 2. One option would be to eliminate timetables entirely. (This is the heretical bit, if you're only skimming.) Not going to be popular for some, granted, but it would solve a lot of problems. 3. Another option might be 'dynamic timetables'. Why the need to see the whole network at once? Why do we need the whole timetable from end to end calculated, if the player/game is only interested in the next bit - the time and distance to the next station? So the player departs a station and the game generates a realistic time to next station that is independent of the real world time table and based on a number of factors including distance/speed/speed changes/network traffic. This could even be a setting - easy, medium, or hard. The player either makes it in time or doesn't, and is scored/graded accordingly. Then, when departing, a new time-to-next-station is derived, again based on the limited station-to-station horizon of the player. 4. So the player's time, which we'll call time T, advances on a station to station basis independent of the real schedule (but should still be roughly close to it, I'd surmise). However, for that time T, the game can calculate how many trains (and what type they are, what speed they should be doing, etc) will be in the player's horizon, based on those real world timetables. For example, if the player is departing a station at 10:00 am on the 21st of June, there are a known and finite number of trains that will be in the player's horizon to the next station. Some will be passenger. Some will be freight. Some will be waiting for the player's train to pass, or vice versa. Some will be on adjacent tracks, such as the WCML tracks on Bakerloo. If using the real world's timetables as the basis for interactions with other network traffic, it should be relatively easy to predict how many trains the player will see station-to-station, and this would factor into the time-to-next-station that the player sees. 5. Freight is variable and not to timetable as much as passenger services are, I think, so there could be a random freight train thrown in, or else freight trains could have similar real-world schedules added. i.e. known and regular freight traffic such as the sugar beet trains in the upcoming release. 6. Players can still be late, so the challenge aspect will be there. And this would avoid the irritating 'I need to drive absolutely perfectly to have any hope of ever getting there on time' situation. Knowing that even though you may have 60 miles still to go to end of route, there is no way you're ever going to catch up because timetable timings are so rigid and no padding is given like is likely there in real life, already built into the schedule. And for evidence of that, I refer to Dadrail's comments in some of his videos. DTG really have done an incredible job simulating the impossible - an entire industry's software, at least in terms of train management. But the limitations are already showing. The cracks are already there. My probably naïve point is asking why is there a need to consider anything outside the player's immediate horizon? Dynamically generated timetables, I suggest, might offer a solution to explore. [Edit] Now waiting nervously for Joe to open gun ports and let loose a broadside, lol.
I don't see what the exact problem is that you're commenting on? Timetables and schedules are a very real-life railroad thing, so why should they not be present in a simulator trying to imitate it? You can be late in real life too. The things outside the players immediate horizon aren't considered, they are simply set. The timetable for a route isn't calculated when you start a service, but is hardcoded into the add-on. Any timetable also does differ from reality a little bit and is made sure to be drivable in game through simulating the whole set of services together using AI during the route development. So my questions are: what limitations are already showing? Which cracks are already there? And to what problem is this overly-complicated dynamic timetable generation supposed to be a solution to? I'd be happy if you could elaborate a little on that
Interesting ideas - to me the issues with the game are not whether Routes can or should be coupled when they share a common station, but rather: stuttering, poor sound, lack of optimization, shadow draw distance - technical points. Support for those items can be done without changes to the Routes themselves. I say this as a customer of course, not concerned about the business model. My only role is purchasing and playing, along with the (free) feedback we provide post-release of a Route.
Not only would this make the game more complicated for the player, the utterly confused new player, and put off the potential new player, it wouldn’t improve the game at all. Even if it was technically possible to start with a section of a route and then keep expanding on it and sell that as a complicated array of smaller transactions, it would take a way the diversity of what is on offer. The LIRR may have grown quite large by now but would still be just one route made at the expense of other routes. But it isn’t technically possible to just keep piling on bit after bit when it comes to rolling stock and playable services. TSW struggles with too many different trains. For every extension that has been suggested we take away a new route developed. I’ve said it before that if every route had been extended as suggested we would be in a situation now where we have exactly half the number of routes we do have. Take away the really small number of routes that share a common station and we would still only just be getting to Rush Hour now, if that. We would have some longer routes that we could choose our portion of which to play on but we would have less of a game and less content in reality. I’m not going to go into any more detail as it would be pointless but baffling the consumer for a product that is worse would end TSW as a going concern and that is what would happen. In conclusion, there wasn’t an option for “it will make thing considerably worse” so I just voted with the closest.
