PC Thoughts On Train Sim World As A Franchise

I'm sure people have read my responses in other threads if you frequent this forum enough but I'll try to summarise below:

I've been a vocal supporter whilst also being very critical of the franchise. If you've played enough Unreal Engine based games, you know that with the right people and right direction, phenomenal games and simulators can be birthed from such an engine.

Look at Assetto Corsa Competizione which is a fully fledged driving simulator, all made in the unreal engine. It has its own physics engine and is a world leading race driving simulator and is used in e-sports. Simulators are very much a thing through the Unreal Engine, no question about it.

I think DTG need to revisit their business model in terms of how they approach new editions of the game or alternatively known as the core-game. I absolutely understand they are a business but I dont know what to make of the fact they are locking bug fixes and DLC behind a £33 paywall. If they had came out with a new edition one year from now, I probably would have been less critical and I'd imagine it's likely there'd be more features added in too.

I've already said what I need to elsewhere on this forum. I'm just going to watch now to see where this goes. Once the VR injector is released later this year, I'll be posting a lot of video content captured from it.

 

I'm of the opinion that it peaked right before DTG released Spirit of Steam. Up until that point, that year was great fun. Then with all the hype and 'we all really put our hearts into this' talk, still today it doesn't have a working system for the coal system to be manual, even after future steam releases.

 

But you don't lose anything from the addition of the editor, even if nothing good is produced with it.

 

in fairness someone, maybe JetWash, brought up a good point of the editor being supported long term as each edition of the game is released. Could mean old amazing fanmade content isnt compatible with the next version of the game

 

I personally disagree with that, all three Rush Hour releases were quite flawed at launch (Boston signalling, Dresden had just 38 freight services for some reason??? and no S-Bahn branches, Brighton was just really badly optimized). Nowadays these are all top 10 routes in the TSW library, but that's really just because they fixed the issues after release. Not even counting the fact that the UI of TSW2 was absolutely made inferior once Rush Hour released!

I just have a real grudge with Rush Hour and I like saying words

 

As far as support, it seems logical that if the editor is what DTG uses themselves, it would be updated in-house as they work, and then they just need to make that current version available with the associated release.

Regarding the second point, DTG doesn't recreate every DLC from scratch with each new release; they just recook them. Same should apply to fanmade content.

 

Don't ask for community feedback and then completely ignore all of it. Listen to the community and fix the bugs that are constantly reported. And don't make broken promises about fixing stuff and then never going back and actually doing the fixes. The "oh we'll see what we can do but no promises" excuse is beyond stale and old at this point. I've seen it posted SO many times over the past few weeks. Well, years for arguments sake. Yeah, we know no promises. They usually aren't followed through on anyways...

Stop the "one and done" releases. Many games and DLC for those games get constant attention, updates, and bug fixes. Some developers release bug fixes and updates mere hours after a release.

 

Not really relevant to my point.

 

I like the franchise. It keeps me and it seems a lot of people engaged even when we are not playing it

 

It possibly is if really good fanmade material is produced that outstrips DTG material in terms of quality and units downloaded, thereby resulting in DTG not developing such assets themselves. The downside to this is that often fan made assets require various skins, DLCs etc which make them hard to access with often associated lack of detailed guides. This has and is the problem with a lot of assets on TSC.
Opening up the game is good, doing it in an uncontrolled or unstructured way not so much. With every iteration of TSW the problem becomes more acute, which assets require what from which iteration in order to function..

 

Absolutely! If it was garbage we'd have walked. But it could be better too. Thats why we are still here. When it goes quiet, thats when its either perfect or we've left..

 

There's no evidence that DTG hasn't developed or published stuff for TSC just because of the existence of a competing third-party version. And in this case such third-party stuff won't be for consoles, so there's even less incentive for them not to develop a "competing" version.

 

As does DTG. Look in the Announcements subforum and you'll see lots of patch notes, including day ones for TSW itself and new DLCs. We can debate how much more could/should be done and priorities, but it's certainly not like they do nothing.

 

I defer to your superior knowledge on such matters. Its a view I saw elsewhere and was curious how much mileage there was in it.

 

I’m quite late to the party here, but I hope this trend of one-year release cycles doesn’t continue. I feel like 2 years with a summer pack in between were perfectly fine. But with only one year cycles, there are issues. I believe in one of the dev videos or interviews, it was stated that work on TSW4 properly started more than half a year ago. That means they internally gave up on TSW3 just 4 or so months after release, from then on the next game was the priority. That’s just so bad. And you can clearly see that by looking at the routes and patches. Some add-ons that came out months ago are only receiving their proper post-release patches with the release of TSW4 now. They actively deprioritized fixing content they had just released so they could work on their next game.
TSW3 was a perfectly fine base. They could’ve added the TSW4 features with a free Rush-Hour like patch.

 

The point I’m making is that I hope this isn’t a feature that is made to be a major selling point for a new addition of the game for it to then become a problem latterly as the franchise matures.

I’m sure it’ll be fine provided it’s worked on alongside the core game so that it’s not left behind at any given moment.

 

Yearly releases aren’t my cup of tea, but that doesn’t really prevent me from enjoying the content for MANY hours. Overall, I get my moneys worth.

There’s always going to be room for improvement in this genre and bugs will always be a factor but I think TSW has grown incrementally year after year. I think we’ve had some improvements from Rapid Transit to today. They’ve built up a nice library of content; which is especially important as they’ve done a good job of leveraging old content alongside new.

In any event, I see a lot more hours of my time being spent on the franchise.

 

As a console player my train options are limited, and right now I’m happy with money and time invested in it, I’m along for the ride until I get bored with it (which is a long way off I hope).
Is it perfect? Nope. Love it nonetheless.

 

Long time player here, been with the TSW franchise since its beta release. Believe me, I could easily just say how """this games lighting is trash or blah blah blah"""" and get a ton of people to agree with me, or I can say """"The train modeling is superb and blah blah blah."""
But I'll spare you folks the time. Train Sim World is one of those games that's actually got a great foundation, but is then plagued with several issues that combine to create this unfavorable image.

It's both good and bad.

There's no other way to slice it in my opinion, otherwise how could this franchise survive the last— what? Seven years? Credit where credit is due, I thank DTG for at least continuing to work on this game and not abandoning it, otherwise I wont have any other really easy way to fulfill this hobby. But the game is far from perfect.
TSW4 brings a lot of great quality-of-life improvements that I genuinely welcome. Suspension improvements, more varied passengers and actions, volumetric fog, etc. These are all awesome! But I'd still love to see improvements made to things like sound design, more immersive environments, and more accurate, comprehensive physics simulations with the trains.

I think things are fine, but we've still got some room for improvement!

 

Two points:
1. This is true of any game really. It is not guaranteed that the sequel of a game will support mods made for the previous game. In fact, it's almost guaranteed that the new game won't support mods made for the previous game. TSW is relatively unique in this regard because the versions have been so similar.

2. If a new TSW version breaks a mod then it will very likely break older DLCs as well so I think this is unlikely to happen with one exception:
The new game features an updated route that the mod depends on (for example TSW4 and Dresden Riesa update or TSW3 and Boston Providence update). If the mod changes lighting and it was made for an older Time Of Day system then it is highly likely to not work correctly if that route has an updated TOD version.

If the mod is an entirely "home made" route then I don't really see it breaking with a new version except if that new version is something entirely different like TSW-UE5 (and DTG has afaik not stated any plans to upgrade to this).

 

After having put in around 1500 hours in TSC/TSW world, I may have played TSW3 about twice since the announcement of TSW4. I'm sure TSW4 will be good, but I have upgrade fatigue and doubt I'll purchase anytime soon. I actually lost most interest in the sim due to the announcement, I'm sorry to say, and have been spending my time in other sims.

 

I've changed my buying pattern based on where I see DTG going. It's clear they see the most revenue and profit from a forward-looking only perspective. Meaning, crank out new routes with minimal assets and a higher price point, and now require an annual upgrade to remain in support.

For those of us who relish detail, quality, and immersion, this is not a compatible strategy. I have an extensive library of routes, but find I only spend time on about 5 of them. What draws me to those 5 is the number and variety of locos and rolling stock or the quality of the scenery. As for the latter, other than Niddertalbahn (which is a masterpiece), the scenery improvements have been largely provided by 3rd parties as freeware (i.e. the scenery enhancements, improved vegetation on UK routes, or improved lighting) from the likes of Bescot, SprattyHeath, JetWash, LondonMidland, etc.

The reluctance of DTG to look back, for example, to add the Class 700 to BML, leaves me with the feeling I have a collection of a bunch of half-finished work. I understand there may be limits to what the dispatcher can handle. Or that retrofitting assets into an existing route may be overly complex. But to me the fault lies in the initial planning. Certainly the 700 was a strong possibility on the roadmap when BML was released. That would have been the time to plan for its subsequent inclusion.

So the net is I am WAY more selective in when I chose to hit the purchase button. And I think as a result DTG has actually seen a reduction of revenue from me.

 

If you frequent the suggestion forums almost every suggestion involves additional add-on locos and the layering of these assists onto other routes.

My main gripe with the franchise is that each new release seems never to get revisited with additional content or if it does, it is generally a single loco / unit that is generally made for a single route.

Take Spirit of Steam, cast aside (for one moment) the bugs and gameplay issues, the route lacks any further locos and stock to add variety and increase gameplay, all those yards and no shunting. Even though a small loco was introduced with a route recently.

Same is true on Diesel Legends, why not utilize the class 08 more in the yards?

Class 31s on Northern Transpennine?

Cathcart has been basically abandoned and there has been lots of suggestions for an additional unit / units / layers

Birmingham New Street is empty on BCC, as is Glasgow Central on Cathcart Circle as is everywhere on Spirit of Steam.

I own the majority of the British routes but rarely if ever play any of those mentioned above as it feels like there’s no traffic to interact with.

Sadly I find myself buying fewer routes (I bought TSW4 for BCC and I bought Midland Mainline but haven’t purchased any of the others.

Will I buy TSW4? Not sure, certainly not at the moment, I’m only interested in the UK routes (I bought a few German and US routes on sale but have never touched some of them) the LNER stock doesn’t interest me really, but I’d be happy to see it layered onto routes now and in the future. I’m not a big fan of Scotsman (Mallard will always be the king of Stoke Bank)

I’m interesting in the JT route but I’ll wait to see what it is like before I think of buying it and I’m not buying the LNER route at full price just to get a second route.

It does seem that a week or so after a new product has been released it is abandoned as they focus on the promotion of the next one.

 

• Does steam have more sales for TSW then consoles If so, should I switch to steam?
• I hope DTG does a better job with TSW moving forward in better quality content and more affordable pricing?

 

Regardless of which platform sells the most copies should have zero bearing on where you buy your game.

As for your second point, all signs point to 'not likely'.

 

Steam benefits from more sales. You also get access to mods if you ever decide to use pc.

In terms of pricing, it's high because everything's high in price.

 

Graphics are still below par. Still has stuttering and the menu has not really improved much at all. I think it would be fair to say TSW4 it is disappointing and in some ways the developers should be a little embarrassed. Yes, it's nice for them to make money, but do it with dignity and what is right.

 

The next version should be called Train Sim World Fixed.

 

I think it improves on every release.Also TSW4 I'd giving you three decent routes for £52 so that is pretty decent value for money in my eyes.
Also the new free roam is a (litral) game changer

 

TSW4 is definitely a step in the right direction. Let's just hope the trajectory continues.

 

Memories are often short, but 2021 was the absolute peak: TSW2, Rush Hour (and that was an example of something with a bad release that got fixed later for the most part), the streams so enjoyable and a general positive vibe. Now read the Forums and consider the lack of game support since really the release of TSW3 but especially now, and that magic has been lost. TSW2 rivaled TSC on peak playership on Steam; TSW3 and 4 do not come close.

 

Absolutely true. I don't know of he's the ONLY one left, but he's the reason we have the game!

 

But it's a bit unsettling to know he has to do this himself.

 

Wow, I did look at it and had immediate desire to buy it! HAHA, I didn't do so because I'm not into car racing, but WOW.

 

Something to bear in mind is that since some time on TSW2 that PC market has been split between Steam and Epic - TSW2020 and early TSW2 did not have Epic as an option...

 

Fair enough! It would be good to know how many concurrent players there are on all platforms, but I don't think that's possible?

 

Sadly I don't have any insight to any effect it may have had - It may have had no effect - but it just something to bear in mind. As far as I know steam is the only store to share that kind of data...

 

So that's all we have to go on then. The only other thing would be actual sales figures from DTG for each version of the game.

 

Steam DB does make an attempt I think. I dont understand the data collection behind it but there is this..

 

I found another site called "Steam Spy" but their numbers cover a huge range (like up to 2 million owners of TS Classic which I don't think I accept with an all-time peak playership of 3,800).

 

I think the vibe of the streams was tremendously boosted by Sam, an asset to DTG who is sorely missed out here.

 

Absolutely no question - Sam is upbeat, honest, engaging. The 4-up challenges with combinations of Sam, Adam, Natalie, Matt, JD, and Jamie are total classics.

 

Definitely, and props also have to be given to Natalie. Any comedy team will tell you that a good straight man is every bit as important as the funny one, and Nat did quality yeoman's duty there. And on her own, I always admired her fearlessness in being willing to learn and fumble with unfamiliar things on camera.

 

"Colonel" Sam really is missing and I hope he's doing well and he's found a good job.

His style of handling the forums and cooling down hot arguments, with a good sense of humour and understanding, was great.

He was a customers' advocate and asked the right questions in the streams.

Uttering "Transport Feve... uhm... Train Sim World" a bit too often probably got him sacked Nudge nudge

 

Not sure what you mean by ACC. I play ACC a lot and their graphics are equally bad, if you compare it to say AMS2 or even F1 202...

 

Thank you for your comment, I am thinking of moving over to steam with TSW. I will keep that in mind....