The accuracy of TSW dlc’s or the playability of them? I totally understand that train geeks will probably put accuracy above everything else, things like train sounds, braking sounds, scenery accuracy, etc, etc. but to tbh I just want the game to fully work. I want to be able to complete a route without abandoning it after a hour because a red light won’t change or an AI triggers a SPAD. I want any gold medals and scores Ive earned to stay there forever and not just disappear for no reason, I want doors to open every time and not get stuck, etc, etc. In an ideal world both accuracy and playability are equally important but for me as a casual train fan and a console player the type of player real die hard train enthusiasts probably hate and who's considerations DTG have to take into account after they made the decision to put TSW into the console market have to be considered, actual playability and the option to fully complete the game is by far the most important factor to get right. I wonder what the new owners of DTG will prioritise and consider the most important? If it’s accuracy and the desire to make TSW a properly accurate real world train sim then I feel TSW needs to just revert to the PC market and be done with it. If it’s playability that’s most important in order to attract casual train fans in the console market then the actual playability of TSW has to take priority at the risk of upsetting the real die hard train enthusiasts. It’s a quandary for the new owners to consider which is the most important factor to concentrate on and prioritise? What do your think? Please don’t shoot me I’m just asking the question.
I was thinking of posting something similar over the weekend. As far as I'm concerned, as long as you can drive a reasonable representation of the train between along a reasonable representation of the route without the game crashing then the route is acceptable. After that it's a value judgement. Whether the route is worth the money, how many locomotives/multiple units it has, the number of services, locations the routes includes and excludes, scenery, passenger behaviour, PIS, engine sound, horn noise and the all encompassing immersion is all a question of personal expectation, value and judgement. I think that if we all accepted this then these forums would be a happier place. For me, as long as there is a regular procession of new routes with one new locomotive/multiple unit per route that I can use on other routes in scenario planner then I will be happy.
Nothing wrong with thinking big but you’ve got to be able to actually implement it especially if your charging your customer base £30! for a dlc. Currently from what I can see TSW’s reputation is severely tarnished with players including me justifiably not buying any new dlc’s, so the new owners are going to have to prioritise what’s the most important to them to get the TSW franchise back on track They’ve bought DTG to make a profit so hard business decisions have to be made at the risk of upsetting a section of TSW’s fan base. That’s how business works. I also predict last gen console support will be dropped which is what I’m currently playing on ( PS4 ) because supporting all these different platforms is getting pretty unsustainable and eats up resources. I obviously won’t be happy about that but will just have to accept it.
So much is wrong with TSW 3, and it certainly ain’t because they’re focusing on one rather than the other (even less so because of consoles). We can have both accuracy & stability, we’ve had it before a few times. TSW 3 is just in MONEY MONEY MONEY mode right now.
TSW3 in DTG money mode, it’s hard to disagree with that because they are seriously struggling that’s why they have been bought out by a bigger fish, but guess what! the money will eventually dry up if they don’t get the basics right and current players continually drift away to other more reliable train sims or other interests. Focus Entertainment haven’t bought DTG and TSW to fail, a serious rescue plan WILL be put in place and that means certain sections of the TSW fanbase are going to be upset. Fact of life so we had all better expect some hard and corrected decisions to be made as to which way TSW is going to go. If they aren’t made then Focus Entertainment will have bought a dud and will have wasted their money. I can’t see them willing allowing that to happen, can you?
To be fair the poor sods that make this game are never going to find that sweet spot of balancing everything perfectly, because there will always be, and you see it on here daily it seems, the people that are venting and throwing toys out of their prams because a brick or lamppost is 6 inches to the right, when it should be the left, and so is unplayable for the immersion is shattered, so when dealing with that sort of mentality I say just keep trucking forward with what they got now improving the main areas like timetables and optimizing the functions that are in place for smoother gameplay.
There's always going to be trade offs but if you're doing this for a paycheck then there needs to be an element of both. Not much foliage or grass on the lineside can probably be overlooked but when you've gone to the trouble of building custom stations, how the heck can you put a girder bridge instead of an arch bridge or vice versa then fail to check that said bridges don't clip through the train roofs.
What? Is DTG Struggling? Can you see the balance sheet? Acquisition's can be made for a number of reasons. Some good, some bad. Do they want to add value & growth? Or maybe Focus saw a decent revenue stream and thought "We will have some of that". Not every acquisition improves the original company. Major changes can cause staff turnover etc. Some things may change, some things may not. Perhaps DTG shareholders got an offer they could not refuse? And congratulations if they did. Generally, people start businesses to make them successful. Good public opinion is nice, but not always necessary as long as the money keeps rolling in. In answer to the OP, it's a bit of both. Some of the citisim on here makes me chuckle, and some of it is well deserved. Its a balance that's difficult to get right, but recent offerings have simply not been good enough.
For me, I would get rid of all points, trophies, collectables and anything else related to "completion" other than maybe some recognition that you completed a run and didn't completely muller the drive on the way. Running late? It happens Going 3mph over the limit? It happens Run through a red light. Uninstall the game and put them on platform duty The biggest issue in the game is inconsistency, especially when we have people who want to run every train on every route and not have things like platform clipping. Sounds should work, signals should work, savegame should work. It's all basic configuration and tracking stuff but for me this may mean a rebuild of the game because I think they've likely programmed it back to front using the trains as the object rather than the signalling...
Not sure this is always the case. Loads of companies get bought out because they're successful rather than because they're not. I guess we need to wait and see what the management structure is like in six and twelve months to determine this one
Ok a brief rescue plan. Decide what you want TSW to be? I’d go for console as priority because that’s where the money is. People buy consoles to specifically play games, people I strongly suspect buy PC’s yes to play games but also to fully use PC’s for what they are actually intended for, ie, actual work and more complicated projects. Ok some serious gamers will buy them to play games but I suspect most game players buy a console especially casual game players. I don’t even own a PC now and neither do I suspect more and more people these days don’t. Most people initially bought pc’s just to surf the net anyway ( Probably? ) Concentrate on playability more than total accuracy because without playability you have a duff product. Make TSW3 country specific. That means UK only ( Initially ) It’s where I suspect the majority of interest is? DTG is British so probs understands the UK rail industry the best and can get licences the easiest. Plus concentrating on just one country allows DTG / Focus to concentrate much more on accuracy as resources and time will be freed up more. ( Soz to other members from other countries but hard decisions have to be made. Nothing personal. ) Trying to be all things to all men and women with regards to platforms and all these different countries over complicates and eats up resources. Focus being French will probably want to do French or more foreign routes but I genuinely believe that would be a mistake. Make dlc’s a LOT cheaper and split dlc’s into cheaper thus more affordable packs / purchases for example routes as stand alone dlc’s with no trains and then stand alone loco / carriage dlc packs that when bought will automatically sub into any / every route dlc you have bought hence why it’s better to concentrate on one country only. You can use any loco / carriage combo on any route you like. If you make dlc’s cheaper more people will buy it. Make them over priced like they currently are and fewer have the disposable income or desire to do so. Market forces dictate this. Also simplify the still over complicated Sanrio Planner so ordinary Joe Bloggs can actually understand the flipping thing and use it. Cut any staff that isn’t really needed which the above suggestions will allow. Hash but is a fact of life and I suspect will happen anyway. Develop TSW for latest gen consoles only. ( This is me being like a turkey voting for Christmas because I’m on PS4, so I’m not afraid to put myself at a disadvantage. ) Just a few suggestions off the top of my head and not based on fact just gut feeling and I know they won’t be popular and some will slate me and call me names but I genuinely believe Focus will be thinking somehow down these lines. Ok I’m ducking down behind the wall now before my head gets blown off! LOL,
That’s an insanely shortsighted point of view & generally unviable. I’d recommend you’d look at focus and what they’ve done, they’ve always published successful titles across both PC & Console (all generations). Not sure where you get the idea they’d look to slim down, in the past they’ve done the opposite.
DTG have said for years their player split is approx 33% PC, 33% xbox, 33% PS so unless this has changed your comments aren't true No way I would make the game limited to one country, especially given the sales figures for US and DE routes are probably as high if not higher then UK routes. We have enough people on this forum talking about wanting MORE countries not less to make this a non-starter You don't know that... One dev doesn't do everything on any route so there's likely different teams doing different things which is why things get devved at different rates. We know for example they only had one IO person, hence updates to the HuD and menus took a long time. We know they only have a small train art crew, hence the HST CC livery taking so long... Rinse and repeat throughout the dev process for assets and routes Not sure this equates with how timetables and routes work... How're you going to populate a timetable (currently a manual process) when you don't know what assets a player will use on a route, ie how many cars, how quick they accellerate etc? The game would become as limited as scenario planner is now! No thanks They actually develop for PC, and then cut back as necessary. So consoles (especially older ones) take more to dev for as they need to be tested more etc. Would be easier just to kill the consoles entirely but nobody (seriously) wants that
Like I said my plan isn’t based on fact but gut feeling. You make valid points and might very well be true but here’s the thing the world is constantly changing. I can assure you Focus Entertainment won’t be making decisions on what they’ve done in the past and not even how the current split of platforms currently is. They WILL be making decisions as to where they want TSW to go and which direction the want to STEER Tsw into going as well as ensuring in a future changing world TSW and all their other titles will make max profit. My points have been accused of being short sighted and not viable? Possibly so? But then again are they really? I’d wager when you really think about it I’m not far off the mark tbh. I mean why would you over complicate something and not slim it down to make it an easier product to get right for limited resources. I could be very well wide of the mark but tbh you need to all prepare yourself for a shock / big changes. Edit… You yourself have said devs do a number of things That’s part of the problem too many people doing different things instead of a dev concentrating on one thing only and getting it totally right. Who knows if they change that they might actually create jobs in that area rather than just get rid of them and get rid or jobs in less vital areas wherever that might be? An outlay that would pay for itself with increased sales and popularity of TSW if they get the basic TSW business plan right.
I think some people here almost dream that DTG struggling and Focus will swoop in and save the day, but most likely, just wanted another title/ studio to boost their net worth
I haven't said they're short sighted (yet) but I do believe they wouldn't be as viable as the current thing of having disparate countries is (mainly because of variety) I mean there are other ways of looking at it and you could say rather than picking individual areas in each country pick a hub, develop from that hub, limit your expansion to a route where you already have several available consists even if at thefringes
I’m sure it would be easier for Tesco to only have one supermarket, but they don’t for one reason. More = More money. Anyways, I’ll excuse myself from this one now, DTG just aren’t failing financially, they aren’t going to cut revenue streams & they aren’t going to limit themselves to one country. Enjoy!
I would make TSW strong on playability and TSC strong on realism. It seems to me that's half true already. TSW for a game. TSC for a railway hobby platform. Different markets, clear differentiation, and viable for people to own both.
Define playability... And TSC is only realistic in the assets it has. Timetable wise there isn't one (each scenario is a standalone creation) so if it has a realistic table that's because the specific scenario author has made it that way
I don't think one should usurp the other. I don't feel every tree should be correct but stations should be modelled correctly, landmarks should be modelled correctly where possible and as many trains as possible are included or layered in. Most of all timetables should be as realistic as possible. If TSW starts becoming a fantasy world, more than in some cases it already is I will not be investing any more into the title.
Judging by Dovetail's 'interesting' representation of 1950's Britain in TSW I think it's clear that historical accuracy isn't something that DTG are interested in.
I think in the live stream on Tuesday, JD or Matt will take a position on the FE takeover, because their loyal TSW community seems a bit unsure at the moment. Incidentally, TramSim will certainly be discussed, which DTG is releasing for the consoles this week. In my opinion, however, we shouldn't worry about DTG's future. A new investor can ensure more peace and stability again, because the hasty and too many DLC releases lately were a bit too eager and avoidable careless mistakes crept in, since the beta testers are only human.
That’s like asking “should I prioritize take off or landing?” when hiring a pilot. If you want to live, you need the pilot to do both.
The beta testers were catching the issues pre-release. Doesn't mean the devs were given the time to correct the issues before the DLC was published
I think we need to rephrase the question. What’s more important, letting the people who know what they are doing make all the important decisions about the future of TSW, or have that decided by the ramblings of a disparate group of confused and misinformed people who can barely construct a feasible argument between them? As one of the misinformed and confused people with too much time on my hands, I would say ditch the PC players, and introduce guns and zombies into the resulting console exclusive game. That’s a really popular way to make loads of cash. Keep some of the trains but move the focus more towards what console players really want, which is blood and guts. Then move into producing action figures and trading cards of Zombie Train World with loads of merch and even a Hollywood film adaptation starring Ryan Reynolds and Tom Hardy. It may upset the tiny number of console players who want accurate train simulation that is also playable, which includes me, but just think of the profits that could be made. PC players will be happy too because they can all go back to playing TSC which they all prefer because it is much better, or so one or two of them keep saying in the TSW forum. Or, let DTG and their new owners decide based on their knowledge and expertise. I expect they will continue to do what they do now. It’s a pretty good balance to be fair and is popular enough across all the platforms.
It seems that the OP wants to turn TSW into a UK exclusive and console only arcade game. I just detest this jingoistic, xenophobic attitude. The fact that DTG is based in England ( or perhaps Paris? ) does not mean its market should be restricted to that country. Perhaps Microsoft should limit its sales to the US and Sony to Japan. How ridiculous. Markets are global these days and there is no center of the world. And PC players, who have been the backbone of DTG's business for most of the past 15 years should suddenly be cut off from TSW? Well, don't worry. If TSW becomes the cheap and cheap-thrills arcade game you would like to play, this PC player would go quietly into that good night. You may think you're just " asking questions " , but what you're really doing is peddling your own misinformed nonsense. Spare us any more, please.
It is only a vanishingly small minority who think this I am sure. Certainly when I started using TSW I mainly played British routes, but the sim has helped me get interested in German, US and Swiss content.
Oh! Behave yourself Crosstie. [Removed - Alex: Rude language] Try to understand where I’m coming from, and if you or others disagree that’s perfectly fine by me. Just DONT try and hijack my replies and turn them into something that I didn’t mean which just encourages other people who are obviously unable to think for themselves to support your ignorance. Putting false words and associating them with peoples replies and views is just bloody rude. Oh and btw I’ve successfully ran my own business before and had to make similar tough decisions not that it’s got anything to really do with it. I’m just saying.
Absolutely agree, been saying that for years. Will never happen though. The trophy-hunters are a big part of the market. I've pointed out several times that when something goes wrong with the points, trophies, collectables and " mastery " (whatever that is ) the Moderators are on it like bees to honey. Something affecting gameplay? It can wait. ( Shields up, Warp speed Mr Sulu )
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Mr JMB. Yeah the realisation that I might have some valid points. Ha ha. Listen like others I don’t know how things are going to turn out but expect TSW to go in a specific direction and to be slimed down in some way the current business model is over complicated, resource intensive, A quality shambles and far too expensive for what it is and supposed to be. Also it’s pretty unsustainable imo. I said months ago if things continued as they were DTG would be bought out and guess what it’s happened.
Sign me up, I bloody hate zombie games, but you just sold that in such a spectacular way, plus it's got trains in it so it has to be a winner........
I’m not a simpleton and I did write that guff for a laugh. It is no more preposterous than the guff you’ve written in this thread about your plan to save TSW. The only difference is that I don’t actually believe what I wrote. Not only have you completely missed where the issues that TSW has actually arise but you have come up with a plan that does not address any of them but makes the whole commercial viability of TSW disappear into thin air. You would be better off being like me and suggesting adding zombies than trying your hand at business consultancy. Your plan is ridiculous. UK only Gen 9 console playing train sim fans who do not care for realism. Now we’re talking. This is exactly what my other half would like TSW, or rather ZTW to be like, it would make a great gift for her. Finally a game we can play together. I’m excited about the flamethrower on a Jubilee, that sounds awesome.
Given FE's stable including a number of GW Warhammer 40K titles, I think we're more likely to see Ork's, Chaos Daemon's and Space Marines riding the rails than zombies.
No doubt it keeps the scenery artists busy when the train people (possibly person) isn't quite keeping up with them... Shame they can't just keep making good scenery for existing routes or maybe a bit more scenery on new routes... Who knows?
But I don’t think there will be a live stream just about the takeover, I think it’s going to be the preview stream for Peak forest, and maybe they’ll say something about it in the beginning or when the question pops up in chat
I suppose one possibility of solving the problem of areas looking wrong is to have a local train enthusiast have a look at the route before release?
Well I guess if blowback was modelled going through tunnels with the firebox door open... MML was allegedly built by people who live close to the route.
Removing successful revenue sources, be they host countries or supported play systems, is not trimming fat, it's lopping off perfectly viable limbs. Basing a business plan entirely on "gut feelings" rather than facts tends to go as well as voting for government leadership based on same. Many past & present examples are available of how that turns out. Focus is not going to disregard the past in looking to the future. DTG's history is why Focus bought them. This is a rescue plan in the same way that a lethal injection for an ailing pet is a rescue.
There’s a balance between the two for example I made a run from Trenton to ny Penn the other day. It was fun. It was an hour well spent. However it would have been much more fun had a realistic timetable also been implemented and running on the route during my trip. for $40 it’s not unfair to expect a high degree of both.
I find this rather strange as I think the balance with this aspect has been reasonable, even though I am here for a train simulator not an arcade game. I only play British routes but I wouldn't even think of saying that other countries shouldn't have routes as they form a large amount of the income as some people will only play german or us routes. Laying all their eggs in one basket definitely wouldn't be the way to save the business, which I don't think needs saving anyway. Anyway off to see if ZTW is available for pre-order yet...
Oh, another thread about how to fix TSW? We have no idea if Focus bought DTG because they were a good business, a bad business, or anywhere in between. However, we can safely assume that they already have a plan in place, and they're not going to read through the forums for ideas. There is only one Elon Musk!
