Enough Is Enough!!! The Ongoing Saga!!! 2 Year Anniversary

What do you expect DTG to answer? They're not allowed to talk about their situation, as we all know how volatile the stock market reacts to the tiniest official statements. And DTG are only a subsidiary studio. Wait for the roadmap and calm down, Vern. Not worth getting upset.

 

I’m as cool as a cucumber!

Got plenty to get on with anyway outside TSW which has very much gone on the back burner at present. The Class 104 will probably be the next item of interest, the one handled Goblin EMU not that high on my wish list.

 

Wasn't Rush Hour also about three new Routes; timetables and some other assets? Trouble remembering as it was over 2 years ago now.

 

Well my forum post took a turn I didn't see coming!!! I was just airing my grievances about a game I was in love with for a very long time that's turned into a cash cow... I never intended for it to turn into a Jerry Springer Marathon Everyone turning on each other isn't the point of this post, it's for players like myself that won't let a games company take its player bases loyalty for granted. Its 2024 let's just be nice to one another and stop with the toxicity towards one another. I don't want my thread to get locked as it's a good outlet for people who feel the same about the state of the game. Thankyou & Happy New Year everyone P.S over 65 pages damn!!!! Also I still haven't brought TSW4 and I don't intend too, when I said I was walking away from the franchise I meant it. Just wanted to check what state my thread was in these days

 

Everyone seems to forget how many man hours are involved in supervising and approving mods when used on console. For a small group like DTG it’s not feasible, imo. Consoles such as Xbox are very strict on mods. Policing, regulating, and approving in order to stay within console rules is not a small endeavour.

 

... and suddenly DTG is small and incapable of getting mods out for approval? Or just not interested in going through the application?
TSW mods for PC are sort of tolerated, and no doubt DTG will try to implement to best mods into their future products because independent creators, often referenced as 'hackers' are often more creative than studio-tied developers.

 

All true ! Just look at how well DCS is going by allowing mods. Even Eagle Dynamics put mods in their official video.
DCS is clearly an example of a good simulation game that have official content, 3rd parties devs and modders.

 

Why doesn’t anyone criticise TSC’s performance issues, but are very quick to debunk TSW?
Is it because TSC is the fore father of modern train sim.

 

Because TSC is more than a decade old. It used to have good performance, but as time went on, they added more features and developers started producing more detailed routes and rolling stock. The original engine wasn't really made for the detail people are going for nowdays, so the performance is horrible.

TSW on the other hand is produced on a modern game engine which can work wonders, but we mainly have performance issues because of the developers making mistakes. Many assets, rolling stock and simulation elements are unoptimized, resulting in unnecessary performance loss.

Of course, it is not easy to make a train simulator with such big scale. But it is their job to fix these issues, as developers. Especially when a fix for many of these thins would be easy, they should just take the time and care it requires.

 

My brother downloaded the editor out of sheer curiosity as a developer. He said he could see immediately that they are missing garbage collection opportunities.

 

Just look at the actual game, GC is doing overtime there.

 

65 pages now, the DTG forums have literally created the bayaux tapestry of train game controversy

 

Bayeux

 

the father of the thread has returned to us! Now let us celebrate the new age of "enough is enough".

 

Donna Summers should make an appearance in this thread.

 

Then there's the Bayonne Tapestry which for the most part commemorates a series of Mob killings

 

As we’ve drifted off into tapestries and Love To Love You Baby territory, just pop my head round the door and declare after reverting to the release version of ETS2 rather than beta and reshuffling the mod order a bit, now running okay with ProMods installed.

Iceland and Karelia look out, here comes Vern!

 

I went on a trip and came back, my spirit is renewed, but here everything remains the same, a mess on the trains, the drivers are upside down.

 

Phew! We'd gone a couple of days without any posts. I was getting concerned.

 

Probably cause there isn't anything new to talk about right now, unless you want to bring back old topics.

 

Old Topics?
Is there such a thing?
Ours usually get eaten before we get home from the Supermarket

 

Meantime DTG community managers

 

It certainly seems to be a slow return to work.

In the meantime, some more fuel for the fire. A half route (Bernina) with one less than iconic train (modern Allegra) is now going for the asking price of £30!! Enough really is enough...

 

It looks like QA even gave up on checking the names of routes for typos...


At this point, they want to be laughed at, don't they?

I don't expect every word in every article to be without a mistake, but this is the largest text in the newsletter... come on! Proofread!!!

 

That is just sloppy on every level. You really do begin to wonder if the thoughts of amateurism at DTG and their associates are closer to the mark than realised.

In any event as regards “Berinina” (heck even my iPad spell checker tried to correct it twice before allowing the misspelling), the only possible way they could justify a £30 price tag was if this was an early access title with an undertaking the full route and additional rolling stock will follow in the summer. It’s a greedy cash grab that can stay on the digital shelf until at least 80% off in a sale or completion pack.

 

To be fair Vern it's probably just the case that the correct spelling wouldn't get past the profanity filter.

 

Ah yes, one of those classic 90’s, ahem, night shift videos… “Bernina Babes Do Pontresina”.

 

It’s like the overlapping numbers in the debrief screen. Unchecked work being released. At least this is just in promotion material likely to be read once and not in every service played in the game, and still not fixed I might add.

 

Well, they just had to make sure that "Ospizio" is properly addressed.

 

Small cynical side bet here...

In a few months it will be let slip that Bernina "didn't sell well", putting the kybosh on any further Swiss metre gauge routes. Conveniently ignoring the fact people didn't buy because, 1. It only represents just over half of the actual route, 2. The price is sky high for the content being offered and 3. After past sins, some still unfixed and likely never to be fixed (WCL Class 150 and St Ives branch "Up" speed limits), people are at best sceptical about Rivet's ability to actually issued a polished relatively bug free product.

But no, in typical software developer fashion it will be the customers (or lack of) that get the blame. Not quite on the same level, but currently watching the ITV-X true life documentary/drama about the UK Post Office/Horizon scandal where 100's of postmasters were falsely accused of embezzling money when it was actually software error. The denials and arrogance by the software company that their software could be at fault, telling victims no one else was involved and basically being backed right to the point of the courts and judges sending people to prison is frankly appalling. So sadly this "not our fault" attitude seems endemic in the software industry.

 

If there were actual fixes, upgrades and some serious love put into the products, even Maintalbahn would sell well. People would be willing to buy more, even routes they have very little knowledge of.

 

Full marks for your attempt at linking your point-of-view to current events but it's false equivalence at best.

 

I did qualify my comments that not quite on the same level, but look at any software developer and you will see the arrogance and "never our fault" attitude prevailing. Microsoft being another case in point. It's there at DTG, just on a smaller and less harmful scale, spending £30 on what turns out to be rubbish and finding you've gone over your refund time or permitted level (or in the case of console purchases, no recourse at all).

 

The end of your opening sentence does a lot of heavy lifting and reeks of conspiracy theorising ("any software developer"). I'm no legal expert but, in the UK at least, you probably have some recourse through the distance selling regulations, sale of goods act, etc.

 

Holy hell, lol

 

That is not worth taking my SSD space......

 

Do you know how many spelling errors exist across the catalogue of TSW? The BR 103 contains so many spelling errors it's not even funny anymore.

BR 642

It should be "WC-Steuerung"

BR 103


"Ölterperatur" should be "Öltemperatur", the "i" in "impuls-[...]" should be uppercase, the O in "[...]-Olpumpe" should be a Ö.

There are so many other spelling errors but these are just some examples.

 

I know they have spelling mistakes all over the place, I've seen some myself and that's when I was still buying that stuff, but it still caught me by surprise in the headline of a newsletter.

 

The spelling mistakes are probably due to outsourced development. A 3rd party developer that is in contact with an ex 2nd party DTG developer shared some insight in another thread.

Some parts of TSW are made in countries far far away from Chatham.

Not implying there's generally something wrong with that, but it explains some things.

 

This does explain some and or many errors, maybe even language barriers, I have been known to make my share of errors and mistakes. And why use Grammarly "FREE" it can also make mistakes, but it's helped me get a little better, along with Google Translate. I would not hurt all parties involved to take a little more pride in their work.

 

Pride is nothing useful.

It's all about money. TWS is there for people to feed their families. DLC must be sold at a specific price so a company works economically. So the higher ups have to decide on how to assure the DLC can be produced still giving a profitable margin when sold at a specific price with estimated purchase numbers.

Expect love for detail and rivet counting from the freeware scene, but a commercial company has to make money to survive. Playing the devil's advocate I don't think misspellings are responsible for lower sales. (But lack of quality surely is - it's what they still don't want to see.)

There's still a "Staion" sign at MML.

 

Not when I just looked. There are a handful of items in the so called "Encore" sale, otherwise full price.

 

I do agree with you, corporations like DTG must make the sales to survive, and the misspellings do not contribute to lower sales, if that were the case, DTG and or those involved would more than likely be hurting financially I would think.
I still believe that if more effort was put into quality control as a whole, from spelling errors to how a program/app/game works and runs, who knows how much better things could or would be.

And yes over the years, to this day it is the modding community that has made so many games and apps so much better.
The perfect and best example is IrfanView I have used this FREE and powerful image viewer as well as for editing going back to the mid-90s. As well as all the mods for TSW2 - 3 - 4 that I use, which are making my gaming so much better.

 

Absolutely. Better quality means less time spent on aftersales bugfixing (on which they do not really spend a lot of time - Matt did some scenario fixes in his spare time). But there's people calculating all this and it's working so far. People are used to buying flawed content, because they have been trained to do so. (With TSC, it wasn't different. But due to the inline editor and tools delivered with the game, many issues could be quickly fixed by the community without relying on DTG. There's a lot of route reworks, enhancements, and route mergers on the workshop.)

Btw; I'm almost completely using OpenSource/3rd party software on my system, banned Adobe Reader for SumatraPDF (which is small and fast), MSOffice for LibreOffice, OneDrive, Edge and Cortana removed as far as possible, using IrfanView also for years now (which also displays my old Amiga IFF-ILBMs). Faster and less overhead and telemetry.

 

DTG is oblivious to spelling errors on this website.

For instance, I pointed out that " helpful recourses " mistake a couple of years ago, but it remains uncorrected.

Depending on your trade, spelling and grammar might not be important. But, if you're a copy writer or editor, such errors are unforgivable and unforgettable.

 

All it does, for me, is just highlight a complete lack of care over their products

 

Not only that. Click the Logout button. Redirection error for years now. DTL still an alpha. And btw, what was that short-lived "Dovetail Direct" thing again?

 

Stuff like this was always a trademark of DTG and not to be found in other simulators.

This is the old SD75M pack for TSC. The instrument lights switch is located where the Engine Run switch should be. Gen Field is "Sen Fld". Control/Fuel pump is the wipers. And these errors are in a lot of US DLC.

That gives you an idea that the people that made parts of the DLC do not have a clue on what they are working on as a whole.

Though the model itself is decent (and so is the sounds), the decals and switch positions are not. But the only way to put out DLC in the frequency DTG needs is to distribute the workload to as many people as possible, which provides a high risk of inconsistencies and bugs.

And this is apparent throughout DTG's history. It was never their goal to make the perfect simulator, but the best selling one. TSC/TSW's attractiveness lies in the mass and variety of content available, whereas other sims are more specialised but better in what they are doing, generally speaking. (I've just been blown away by TSC's Berliner Ringbahn. Wow. That's some fantastic work and detail there. Even turning on the fluorescent tube cablight makes these realistic ignition sounds, followed by flashing intervals until they're fully lit. And of course, working automatic announcements and fantastic lighting. Made by a dedicated 3rd party team, VirtualTracks. Of course accompanied by a very detailed manual. That's what I don't regret spending €35 on.)

RSC\SD75Pack01 French labelling? Ok, EMD's were assembled at LaGrange

 

I really don't understand this thread. There are now thousands of posts, all with an overriding theme of hopelessness, despair and cynicism, from people who are convinced that nothing will ever improve and everything related to this simulator will always be disappointing and low quality.

What I really don't understand is, why are you even here?
If you thought that there were a lot of problems but reporting them would make things better, I could understand discussing in great detail what the problems are, but it seems like no expects that anything they report will ever be fixed, or that any lessons will ever be learned from past mistakes.

As far as I know there are no professional TSW twitch streamers, so no-one is forced to play the game.
If playing this game just makes you miserable and always will do, why don't you just turn off your computer and go outside for a walk?

Walking always lifts my spirits. As I write this it is a beautiful sunny day outside. Tomorrow there will be dew on the grass, a morning mist and the sound of birds singing. Just try it. I think you'll all be a lot happier.

 

I'm not unhappy. But many people are here and enjoy the game, so do I. It's like seeing your daughter doing bad at school just because she's stuck to TikTok all day long.

People want to push DTG to making a better game, because TSW has a lot of potential. Seeing that potential and what is made of it is what is annoying. Doesn't affect my life though It's a hobby. But a hobby that has a dedicated community.