New Content From Dtg Suddenly Feels Very Underwhelming.

Save game? You're aware they're causing all sorts of issues and are use-at-own-risk (even got removed at some point)?

Best not to do evaluation based on a save game. Just had someone on the Steam forums reporting a loss of power on his SD70ACe after resuming a savegame on ALV.

 

This is what I've been banging on about for as long as I've been on this forum..

 

Interesting, the Metropolitan Line (one of JT's finest routes) is running trouble free on my end. I had to install manually though, using dummy folders and then merging with what was present, eventually unpacking all assets, merge them and repack .ap files again), as JT's known issues with TSC are down to file distribution (one DLC spreading files over many asset folders, if it works or not then depends on installation order as other JT DLC might write different file versions into the same folders. Cannot happen in TSW as everything is contained in a single file.)

I think the ChilternMainline asset folder can contain, based on what DLC you got, two .ap files which immediately crash the game (leaving the zero byte blueprints.pak as a trace). I've merged the two into a single one, overwriting duplicate files by checking for datestamp. Loaded up fine then - but it can be very frustrating for average users who don't know the system.

Train 403...


...past Finchley Rd

 

FWIW I’ve found the saves on this route particularly to be bulletproof. Probably done at least 4 so far and picked them back up no problem.

 

The only real issue with the save game is losing objectives data if you jump to a fresh service then try and reload that. Otherwise got to say my experience with it has been fairly solid. In this case, if it’s something like a memory or GPU spike caused by whatever is causing the issue at Preston, which as said JT reckon is a dodgy PIS screen script or something, don’t really see how making the run from scratch or resuming a save which was just outside Ormskirk anyway would make a difference.

Anyhow I have, in the interests of science and not my sanity, decided to put the route back on later and will run the scenario again, in the same circumstances, and report the results.

 

I would add cross-city and the 323 to that list. Other than Birmingham feeling a bit empty it is a great route to drive.

 

Yep DTG need to step up their game. When they are focused they do good things. I still love BML, it looks decent, has lots of variety and is busy, SEHS has improved too.

But I do look at other routes especially Antelope Valley (check out the freeway, goodness me it’s baaad) and some of the roads in Sehs are a real let down and wonder what they would be like under JTs care.

The bar has been raised and must be met.

 

Certainly the Blackpool route is one of the finest routes released to date and has much variety and atmosphere. It will be one of my favourites because of the era it is set in.

However DTG have made, in my opinion, some very fine routes, DRA, SEHS and BCC are all favourites of mine and Cathcart and NTP of the older rotues are still very good. I would say ECW still takes some beating, if it went to Hastings it would have been almost perfect.

 

I think dtg spent more than 18 months for heavy haul to get it to where it is today. I think the beta was in like 2017 which still needed a lot of work.

 

Not had a single crash on the preston route. It runs well even better than other routes

 

It might (I have no idea, just a suggestion) be helpful if people posted their system specs when commenting on system crashes or lack thereof. It might help JT out a little.

 

Well, how to say, since the time of the TSC mid -10s, the routes from DTG have been poorly detailed in terms of various trash and objects near the paths. Type of removed rails, sleepers, abandoned gown rusty tracks, drainage ditches, pipelines. Small vegetation in the dollar of the ways (tall grass, bushes, planting in the fields in the form of spreeton images on not just painted terrain - supposedly what grows there) While the guys from the Aerosoft made very detailed routes filling all their cards with these objects, which, alas,, due to the features of the TSC engine, led to fries and low FPSs even on medium-high-ends, on a powerful gland. In the TSW, by virtue of a more advanced game engine, already any little thing is present with excess on all routes. And this pleases, for recalling the Bremen route - Munster, what kind of drawdowns were - become uncomfortable. I hope the guys from that Aerosoft will begin to make content for TSW, in the next year.

 

I completely agree with this.
Some of DTGs content hasn't all been awful but they just never seemed to go that extra mile like JT have with the liveries, the scenery and just those small touches like guards buzzing, announcements and even just the guards whistle and loco horns. If dtg had just implemented whistles like that in SOS or PFR it would have added so much. I even put a suggestion in for it on the forum ages ago. I can't imagine it'd be that much of a difficult change?

But the big one for me is clutter. We've been told so many times that clutter takes up too much memory and isn't feasible yet this route has so much detail and lineside detail. Are JT just better at optimisation? Are DTG and the third parties just not given enough time?

This route is the best currently for value for money in my opinion by a long way. Even without owning the layers you get so much!

I think the upcoming preview will be very interesting. DTG really need a solid route and a good release after BPO

 

Thats exactly the state, if it would come from DTG. ill add another important thing, which is also a mainfactor ill purchais only sale since for future dlcs, except they are Really worth it in terms of extra mile and quality:

- After tons of question in the preview stream about the lenght and "missing branches" it would be answered: "The route was originally planned to include the BP south Branch and the Quarry above BP north. Unfortunatlely we had to cut it back because we run out of time", "maybe well ad it to a later point, but no plans at the moment".

 

BML is a great route but it was done lazily, they took it to Reigate but couldnt take it to West Croydon?? It is a very boring route London <> Brighton only difference is if you do it in a 387 or a 377, the stoppers are boring too London<>Selhurst the most interesting services imo are the Reigate ones. Id love to see more destinations such as Caterham and Tattenham Corner those 2 extensions arent long at all

 

I disagree, it's one of the best routes, and one of the very few with end to end services that don't end halfway through.

 

Rushed at Reigate no doubt (I think they wanted to scrap it but after the Flughafen backlash they didn’t seem to want to announce such a thing again), but it’s still a great route and timetable is pretty brilliant.

I would have preferred a class 442 for something other than 2 electro stars though tbh, not that the 387 is bad just it could have came on a later route or modern timetable dlc, kinda hoped a class 442 Gatwick express loco dlc would come about but to recreate such an expansive timetable again seems to put that chance down.

 

Theres only 3 that are end to end London<>Brighton services London<>Reigate services and London<>Gatwick services... 4 if you count the Selhurst to Victoria ones out the depot. Very boring they get extremely repetitive. Same stopping pattern same everything just different times

 

Dtg can't always create everything and make everything into a network with multiple branch lines. It may seem short to you, but it is still the x miles of modeling that can't be done in a single day. They have deadlines and a budget and rush hour was already on a really tight schedule. That's why content was cut and releases were staggered. Reigate was also a last minute addition. Of course the timetable is repetitive; that's real life.

 

Actually it's a bit different to this. When they announced that Rush Hour would come in the form of a season pass rather than a single DLC, they announced the cancellation of the branches for Dresden, but announced that they'd be adding the Reigate branch which wasn't part of the original plan.

 

strange what happened to that place then, definitely feels very rushed, or perhaps forgotten.

 

If they could add Reigate they could add West Croydon.....

 

No, It doesn’t matter, if they are close or similar looking or right next to each other, everything takes time no matter what it is, they will always show the business side more than the train enthusiast side when it comes to time.

 

Same for the majority of routes, most services are the same.

Even those services that do have variety tend to be repetitive over time, that's just the nature of train driving.

 

Adding West Croydon really wouldn't do much for Bml, for starters many Southern services from Victoria to West Croydon run via Crystal Palace then there's also the issue of there currently being no London Overground trains in Tsw which would make West Croydon a lot quieter then in reality.

 

While the track would always have been there in some form as it would be needed for the timetable to work properly, it was clearly done as a rush job so that there was something players could go to. Of course, with how badly it turned out I partly wish they didn't bother. Despite the negative reviews on Steam, Rivet Games' Reigate extension for TS had a lot more effort put into it and looks much nicer overall.

 

Wouldn’t it be nice if DTG read the forums, looked at say the top 5 suggestions (route, add-on or extension). Casted a vote and based their next release on that. Out of 1000 votes, if 75% of players wanted an extension to route, surely it’s in DTG best interests to give their customers what they want most.

 

DTG have said multiple times that their policy is not to take suggestions from polls. Wouldn't it be embarrassing if one of the top 5 suggestions was something that it turned out couldn't be done, and then they'd have to announce that the project has been cancelled. It would be humiliating. Most of the suggestions in this forum are unworkable or overly ambitious anyway and are very rarely something that can be used as the basis for a route.

 

They do listen to some suggestions.

ECML was highly requested, and look what we got.

 

What about exceeding the 14 day refund period after purchase date rule? Do you have any experience with that?

Usually I don't exceed the 2 hours play time within the 14 days to make it be able to refund.

 

That TSW3 run that DTG was on at the start of last year was unmatched, two good routes released back to back. SEHS, which is still the best British route released to this day and BCC which is also up there

 

Again that's just for an "automatic" no questions asked refund.
Beyond that it is up to a valve employees discretion, but if you have a valid reason for the refund, Valve are usually pretty good.

 

I only have one word to that in my head:
Why?

Why should a company with 200+ employees have less time and resources than a team of 6 persons?

You can say what you want but that simply doesn't make sense to me.

Nobody's forcing DTG to put out a route on the rush and doesn't give it the attention and love to detail it deserves / we deserve.

But of cause, we all know the answer to this. And things probably won't change.

I really hope that more people come and make great routes with lots of love to provide the best experience as possible.

Again, nothing against the developers of the routes who put hard work into but the management really don't understand that it's crucial influental to the sales, even if they just have dollar signs in their eyes. $$$

 

Maybe DTG - Raf and Co can take heed of all of the (totally justified) praise and feedback around the Blackpool route, certainly have JT working on another route in due course, get more good developers writing routes, maybe DTG can just stick to fixing bugs and getting ready to announce TSW5 in about (checks watch)......... 11 months time joking aside though DTG, whilst they have made some very good routes in all fairness, need to up their game, I read the reports about blackpool before I bought it and everybody was saying that it was basically bug free, and it so is!! If there is any they're well hidden that's for sure.

 

I’d say over the past year or two, I’ve been pretty satisfied with DTG’s route releases. Besides NYT, there weren’t too many duds by them.

That said, I would like to see them do a better job of standardizing newly implemented features. Hate to see a feature implemented well and then never used again.

Now that we see third parties offer things like AI guard buzzers and giving us the ability to make announcements, I really hope to see DTG implement these as well.

 

It's not a company of 200 developers. There'll be HR, Finance, Marketing ... And, of the developers, some will be maintaining and enhancing the underlying engine, while there's no doubt more than one route being worked on at any one time. And then we don't know how 'profitable' the BPO route is - JT may well be regarding it as a 'loss leader', given that they've had to learn all the new developer tools needed for TSW. If their quoted 18 months of development time equated to nearly 10 man-years of effort, that's over a million in development costs (standard rule of thumb is that employing a person on X salary costs a business 2X a year with all the overheads of tax etc). You'll need to sell a lot of copies at £30 a go to recoup that.

Which is not to say that DTG couldn't and shouldn't do better.

 

Even if it wasn't suggested it would have been done anyway as it is a popular route. It's why it was highly requested, but it wasn't made because it was suggested. Plus, if they'd listened to the suggestions we probably would have got a much better version of the route. The decisions they made with the development of the ECML for TSW is baffling. They could have built London to Peterborough, reskinned the 387 and either included or layered the 700 onto it. It was an enormous open goal that they somehow missed - they had all of the pieces for a great south ECML route but chose to include one train on a pretty unremarkable section of the route.

 

JT have the overhead of DTG. Because I can pretty much guarantee that DTG are getting a % and if it's anything like TSC 3rd party the amount they demand would shock everyone.
Unless the devs at JT did this in their spare time or they don't require paying for full time work I see no reason that DTG can't invest the same amount of effort.

Maybe JT are just more efficient and actually get on and do the work rather than endless meetings, emotion breaks, water cooler chats, staff jollies and training days. Personally working for myself an 8 hour day means at least 7 1/2 hours of work get done - when I was working for a large company I would barely get 4 hours of work completed each day.

 

I still haven't bought TSW4, but sometimes I take a look at what's happening. The fact that BPO releases with 9 Pacer versions (3 liveries x 3 power configurations), 3 Class 47s, and 2 Gronks, yet Maintalbahn uses the same wrong blue Br 363 for the fourth time, is speaking volumes. 363 could by now be in at least 5 different liveries of private operators (of course subject to licensing) or at least in the original RSN red, that's way more era-appropriate.

 

They chose the section that was easiest to make, for one.

Also, the whole point of the route was the Azuma. KGX to PBO is similar to GWE in many aspects. The Azuma would stop at Kings Cross, Peterborough and occasionally Stevenage, and the focus would primarily be on commuter, the same as the HST on GWE stopping at Paddington and Reading with the occasional stop at Slough.

The section of ECML isn't at all unremarkable. Stoke Bank is where many records have been made, including Flying Scotsman's 100mph and Mallard's 126mph, so there is significance to the section of route chosen. All they needed to do was have it terminate at York instead of Doncaster, but that's about it.

 

Now that Just Trains have shown what can be achieved, especially in terms of variety and detail, it is obvious that DTG have missed many opportunities to create more DLC for existing routes. So many classes and liveries that could have been added and were not, leaving holes in timetables that could have been better utilised, not to mention the vastly improved variety in gameplay. The only UK route from DTG that got extra attention was SEHS which is vastly better populated than any other UK route. My only hope going forward is that some of the third parties will create some of the missing classes for existing routes as DTG have practically washed their hands with them even though they are far from complete. A huge well done to the team at Just Trains on a superb route.